Legends (12 page)

“I’d rather die! You can dance on my grave!”

She left the cottage and strode into the brutal night. Bitter, she wondered if only foolish hearts and people unhappily in love were willing to brave the darkness outside rather than examine the darkness within.

Elgiva would not leave him there to starve. He’d bet his life on her honor. In effect, he
had
bet his life on it.

By dawn Douglas’s anger gave way to disbelief and then to alarm. Either she was punishing him and would return when he had shivered and gone hungry for a few hours more, or something had happened to her. He found himself worrying more about her well-being than about his own predicament.

Sam had waited patiently as long as he could; now he was desperate to go outside for reasons that had nothing to do with either Douglas or Elgiva’s problems. He sat by the cell, looking up at Douglas urgently and wagging his tail.

Douglas shook his head. “You’re on your own, boy. You’ve got my permission to decorate the front room to your heart’s desire.” Douglas waved a hand in that direction. “Go.”

Sam ran to the other room, but years of strict training were too much for him to ignore. Douglas heard him scratching at the outer door. Surprisingly, the door creaked open. Douglas clasped the cell bars and listened, thinking that Elgiva had returned. But the sound of Sam’s galloping paws disappeared into the sleet-streaked morning, and Douglas
heard the unlocked door squeak as it swung back and forth on its hinges.

Where was Elgiva? He stared at the ugly weather outside the cottage window. She was probably drinking tea at a little highland inn somewhere, drinking tea and laughing about his misery. He cursed his concern for her and pulled the tartan closer around his shoulders. The cottage was freezing cold. He wouldn’t forgive her for this little torture scheme.

Douglas lifted the end of the tartan drape and gazed at it in bitter consternation. Of course she was lying about there being a Kincaid clan. He studied the material closer, noting the skillfully woven cloth and perfect handwork around the edges. Doubt nagged at him. She’d gone to a lot of trouble to make him believe a lie.

What if nouveau riche Douglas Kincaid, a poor kid from the streets of Chicago, actually had a heritage that rivaled the proudest and the oldest in the Anglo-Saxon world?

He shook the sentimental thought away and began roaming around his cell again. An hour later Sam returned at a gallop and crashed to an undignified stop against the bars. He threw his head back and barked like an addled puppy.

“Quiet,” Douglas ordered. Soft yips replaced the barking. Sam rose and planted his front paws on the cross bars. His whole body wiggled with impatience, and he looked at Douglas with pleading eyes.

Douglas stared at him worriedly. “Did you find her? Is something wrong with Elgiva?”

Sam howled. Douglas didn’t know if the retriever’s strange behavior had anything to do with Elgiva’s disappearance, but it seemed likely. He looked around desperately, then snapped a hand toward the fireplace poker. “Fetch!”

On the stone wall of his cell was a rectangle of mortar and new rock where the window had been filled. Perhaps he could chip through it. Sam scrambled over to the poker, bumping a footstool on the
hearth. The stool crashed to its side. A small drawer popped open under the upholstered top.

Out fell a large ring bearing a key.

After a stunned second, Douglas pointed at it instead. “Fetch! Get the key ring, Sam! The key ring!”

Sam brought the footstool, dragging it by one leg.

Douglas took a calming breath and pointed toward the hearth again. “Fetch!”

Sam brought a piece of firewood.

After five more tries, Sam brought the ring. Douglas took it, reached around the bars of the cell door, and slid the key into the lock. With a soft, well-oiled click, it turned. Douglas rammed the door with his shoulder. It snapped open.

For the first time in almost two hundred and seventy years, a Kincaid was free on the moors of Talrigh. In the best tradition of his ancestors, he immediately went to hunt down a MacRoth.

Half-conscious from fatigue and exposure, Elgiva barely knew when Sam returned. He had come once before, she remembered dimly, as she lifted her head from the soggy ground. Her head bumped a tree limb and she winced in discomfort. The drenched hood of her cape clung to the sides of her face like blinders. Her forehead met Sam’s cold, inquisitive nose and warm tongue.

“Shom,” she croaked, wondering how he’d gotten out of the cottage, but too weary to care. She rested her head on the icy, matted grass again.

Suddenly Sam’s snuffling nose was replaced by a hand that jerked her hood back and checked the pulse point on the side of her throat. Elgiva frowned in groggy confusion.

The hand left. Someone began tugging on the tree limbs that pinned her down. Didn’t the someone know that it was a good-sized tree that no person of ordinary strength could budge? Hadn’t she tried for hours to crawl out from under it?

This someone was obviously not ordinary, because the tree began to move. Elgiva stirred weakly and tried to shift her numb, water-logged body. Soaked with rain, the wool cape was a mantel of lead that clung to her possessively.

The hand returned. It brought a second hand with it. Together they pulled her from under the limbs and turned her to lay on her back. She covered her eyes against the sleet. A long, thick arm went under her shoulders and pulled her upward, then cradled her head against a broad chest. The hand pushed her matted hair back and stroked her face with gentle fingers.

Elgiva squinted up to see if she could recognize the good Scot who’d come to her rescue. Instead she found the rain-slicked frown of Douglas Kincaid.

From her garbled description Douglas finally determined that as she had walked through the small ravine last night, the tree had fallen from a soggy bank above her. When he explained the method of his escape, she watched him with grim, exhausted eyes.

Carrying her, he headed back to the cottage. Douglas kept glancing down at her, fear a tight knot inside his chest. Her fair complexion was ashen, her lips blue. Her hands shook violently and her teeth chattered even though he’d wrapped her in the tartan drape he’d been wearing.

They were nearly two miles from the cottage. Douglas had to stop and rest for a minute during the long trek back. Sitting down on an outcrop of rock, he tucked the tartan closer around her. His breath shuddered from more than exertion—what if she were seriously hurt? Though the sleet had made a wet, icy prison of his sweater and trousers, he shivered because of what she’d suffered during the past six hours. He lifted her and walked on, Sam trotting beside him.

“I w—weigh almost t—twelve s-stone,” she whispered. “Y–you c—can’t carry me the whole w—way.”

“Since I don’t know how much twelve stone is or are, you’re in luck.”

“N—not l—luck.” Her voice was woozy and weak. “F-failed. All is l-lost.”

“Well, that’s gratitude for you. Do I look as if I’m escaping? You don’t see me running off and leaving you to freeze, do you?”

“N—no g—good to you f—frozen. N—no revenge in th-that.”

“Right. I want you alive and worried senseless about what I’m going to do to you. Now pipe down.”

He held her a little closer to his chest and angled his head over hers to protect her face from the sleet. This was an unusual and caring form of revenge, and they both knew it.

Shock and defeat crouched in the back of her mind like wolves waiting to attack, but Elgiva was too dazed to acknowledge them. Every bone in her body seemed to be rattling against the others, and only one thought penetrated the fog in her mind: She had to get warm.

Once inside the cottage Douglas lowered her to the hearth and quickly built a fire. While he ran to turn up the gas heaters, she tried to stretch her hands toward the flames, but her strength gave out and she tumbled sideways. Sam, dripping wet and cold himself, flopped across her and licked her face.

Immediately Douglas returned, pushing Sam away and lifting her into a sitting position again. He stripped her cape off and looked at the soggy sweater and skirt underneath. Elgiva heard him mutter something dark and anxious sounding.
He’s afraid
, she noted in amazement. She’d never imagined him being worried for her sake.

She smiled at him groggily as he undressed her. One minute she was sitting on the hearth encased
in freezing, wet wool; the next she was sitting on the hearth stark naked, and Douglas was scrubbing her with a towel. He carried her to bed and shoved her under the covers, for which she was ecstatically grateful. She made soft, mewling sounds of appreciation and burrowed into a cocoon of feather mattress and muslin sheets.

Not long afterward her cocoon was invaded by a second caterpillar.

Elgiva hesitated, then gave up and huddled against Douglas’s body. He wrapped his arms around her. She didn’t mind that he was naked too. He was fantastically warm and furry, and that was all that mattered when her teeth were clattering like castanets.

He threw a leg over her and drew her against his torso and thighs. The heat began to return to her skin as he rubbed her back and buttocks vigorously. Grasping her hands from where she’d tucked them against his chest, he blew on the icy fingers, then impatiently shoved all four fingers of one hand into his mouth and sucked them for a minute. He repeated the technique on the fingers of the other hand, and Elgiva decided with fuzzy objectivity that her fingers now felt wonderful.

“Get into your tent,” he ordered gruffly, and from somewhere he produced her nightgown. Elgiva refused to lift her arms from the sheltering heat of his body, so finally he slid the gown over her head and pulled it down, leaving her arms inside.

Abruptly he dove under the covers. Elgiva had her legs drawn up. He curved himself around them and nestled her chilled feet into the hollow of his stomach. Her shivering toes curved downward, and he jerked them up again. She heard a muffled protest, something about his Popsicle.

As he scrubbed sensation back into her feet she bit her lip to keep from crying out in pain. Finally he covered them with a pair of her bulky wool socks, and she relaxed as if unwound.

He stretched out beside her again. She felt his
fingers stroking her face, then his breath as he blew on her skin. When he warmed the tip of her nose between his lips, she opened her eyes and stared at him in sleepy, nearly cross-eyed fascination. True to Douglas Kincaid’s nature, his first aid techniques were commanding and bawdy, but irresistible.

He rubbed a towel over her head, then bundled it around her damp hair. She felt his tongue covering each of her earlobes with delicious heat. Elgiva sighed when he put his arms around her again and angled one leg between her knees. His mouth touched hers; he kissed her very gently, then pulled her head into the crook of his neck.

“I’m in charge now, and you’re in deep trouble,” he whispered.

“I know,” she mumbled, and fell peacefully asleep.

The extent of her trouble dawned on her hours later, when she woke up. A dull sense of dread crept into her thoughts as strength returned. Douglas had escaped. He could do what he wanted with her inheritance and with her. Elgiva opened her eyes and peeked groggily over the covers. She was alone in bed.

She’d slept all day. A dark night had settled outside the window beside the hearth, and shadows danced on the walls from the fire. Sam was curled up on the hearth rug. She heard sounds in the kitchen and smelled the fantastic aroma of hot food.

Douglas came into the room carrying a large bowl and a spoon. He was wearing his red long johns. She felt a twinge of guilt, recalling that she’d chosen them to ridicule and humble him. However, there was nothing ridiculous or humble about the way Douglas Kincaid filled the clinging garment.

Quivers ran through her as she thought of his nakedness earlier and the lusty methods he had used to warm her. He saw her staring at him and
sat down close to her on the bed, his eyes troubled as they searched her face.

He held the bowl on one knee and cupped a caressing hand against her cheek. “How do you feel? Have you thawed out?”

“Aye. I’m fine.” Questions were trapped in her throat. She struggled to ask them but couldn’t.

He shook his head at her efforts. “Have some supper. A Kincaid special. Canned soup fresh from the can. Heated to perfection over a hot burner.”

Elgiva sat up in bed and arranged the pillows behind herself. With her hair streaming in a shaggy mop over her shoulders, she felt like a hag. Why was Douglas looking at her as if she were the prettiest woman he’d ever seen? She leaned back and accepted the spoonfuls of delicious beef and vegetables that he lifted to her mouth. He dabbed one finger under her lip, caught a drop of broth, then brought the finger to his tongue. “Hmmm. Soup du Elgiva.”

She grasped his forearm and gazed into his eyes with agonized uncertainty. “What now, Douglas?”

“How about a cup of tea? And we have some oatmeal cookies left from yesterday.”

She shook his arm in rebuke and repeated grimly, “What now?”

He set the soup bowl aside and clasped her face between his hands. “Somehow we’ll work things out. Well find a way. But not tonight. We’re both too emotional right now. I don’t want to argue about the future tonight, doll. Just trust me—there
will
be a future, and it will be happy.”

Her breath fluttered in her throat. Stunned, she studied his eyes and saw the unmistakable concern and sincerity there. She wanted so much to trust him. She wanted so much to believe that there might be a future with him. If he cared about her at all, he’d do the right thing for her home and her kin.

If he cared about her even a wee bit as much as she cared about him, she’d never regret her decision.

Elgiva threw herself against his chest and kissed
him, distraught and awkward with her arms still trapped in her gown. Douglas responded as if she’d done the most seductive thing in the world. He whispered her name and pulled her across his lap in a fierce embrace.

Elgiva felt senseless with tender lust; she wanted to touch him everywhere and make him happy; she wanted to smile and cry and hug him until her arms ached; she wanted to feel his hands on her skin and watch his eyes as he lost control. She put all her energy into nuzzling and kissing him.