Night Visitor (8 page)

Nay!

“Up?” she repeated, still staring dazedly at his amazing eyes.

“Yer bundled in my plaid.” Malcolm took her chin in hand and tilted her head down.

For a moment, she was still uncomprehending, but the sight of their nearly entwined legs finally penetrated the fog in her brain.

“Oh! Certainly. Excuse me.” Taffy scrambled to her feet, both relieved and yet terribly disappointed to be away from Malcolm’s warmth. Almost immediately, the ringing in her ears and the thrumming of her heart subsided.

The piper chuckled. He wrapped his length of tartan with skill of a lifetime, donning his apparel in only a moment and fastening it with a curious silver brooch. He kept his body and face three-quarters turned from her, for which she was grateful. Another moment of all but sitting in his lap and there was no knowing what might have happened! Something ruinous, most likely.

On the heels of that thought, Malcolm swiftly turned her way. Wisely, Taffy dropped her eyes and began counting pebbles on the ground.

“Let us go down tae the stream,” he said, at last. “There is watercress and berries fat with the
summer sun. And ye may see some of yer timorous kin.”

“My kin?” Startled, she looked up again into Malcolm’s eyes, which was what he had intended, she was sure.

“Aye. Tae my mind, you are one of the shy blackberry blossoms. Pretty and some day tae bear fruit if a lucky bee can make it past yer thorns.”

Taffy turned away before he could see her blushing. This time she contemplated the trees. Some of them were more than passing strange. One actually seemed to bear the face of a bearded man with staring eyes and leafy branches sprouting from his opened mouth.

“Would you consider yourself to be a blackberry as well?” she asked, facing her eyes away from the disturbing tree trunk and searching for something—anything—safe to watch.

“Will ye spend the day blushing if I answer that I would rather play the bee?”

“Very probably,” she muttered in a suffocated voice, causing him to laugh.

“Then I’d best say that I am a thistle, for I am no’ so pretty as berry flowers, and e’en more likely to draw blood with my thorns.”

“What you are is a flirt,” she told him pertly, heading for the stream without a backward glance. “And I want more than watercress for
breakfast, which it seems is all I can have and not be a cannibal.”

“Lass?”

“What?”

“The water is this way.”

“But—” Taffy stopped. She was absolutely positive that they had come from the stream in the direction she was walking. But a moment of silence presented her with the soft gurgle of a brook from the direction Malcolm was pointing.

With one of her forbidden Gaelic oaths, she spun about and headed for the sound of the stream. A quick glance upward showed her that Malcolm’s eyes were twinkling, though whether it was at her poor sense of direction or her profanity that amused him, she could not say.

She spotted a tiny path winding through the shrubbery and stepped onto it without waiting for Malcolm. If he thought he wanted a spirited woman, then she would just let him have one.

The stream soon materialized, looking less placid than it had the night before as it rushed about a tumble of largish stones with tall sprays of white plume.

Malcolm’s still amused voice spoke from behind her:

I stepped intae a sparkling brook Tae cut and peel a wand.

Tae catch a silvered fish Of which my lady is most fond.

Taffy turned and watched as he suited his actions to his words. His silver knife quickly stripped the bark from a flexible branch. True to his prediction, there was a trailing vine of berries waiting at the stream’s stony side from which he plucked a single piece of fruit.

I hooked a berry tae my stick And cast it softly out And in the blink o’ an ee, I’d caught myself a trout.

Taffy stared, amazed, as only a moment later Malcolm had pulled a silvery fish from out of burbling water.

“Ye’ve time for a bit of a buskit, lass, while I cook yer breakfast,” he told her, eyes still twinkling as he went to fetch his trophy. “Go down stream a pace and you’ll find the water calmer. And, lass?”

“Yes?”

“Yer willfulness is showing. Have a care, or some man will think ye spirited enough tae follow what’s in yer heart and do it.”

Taffy, recovering from her amazement, was suddenly aware that she was definitely feeling the need for a bit of privacy. Without saying a
word about his provocative remark, she turned away and followed the curving stream until it bent out of sight.

“I know that he was just showing off—but how did he do that?” she asked the calming waters. “And can he truly read my mind? Or is that another trick?”

The water did not answer.

Feeling extremely vulnerable without the protection of her shift, she nevertheless decided to indulge in a morning bath. The previous night’s dip had been a hasty affair and she had feared going too far into the water without a light to guide her.

The waters this morning were cool but not unpleasantly so, and they seemed slightly scented with heather. As the stream here was just a gentle eddy and clear as purest crystal, she decided that she would wade farther out where she might easily rinse her hair. Once wet, she could more readily arrange the wayward mass to be contained with a band or braid.

The water was extraordinary, infusing her body with vigor. She felt ready to cycle a hundred leagues or dance a reel at double-time—or even swim with silvery trout. Lowering her face into the pure liquid, she allowed it to ripple over her cheeks and forehead and to comb out her tangled hair.

As she rose up into the warming air, a movement
by the stream’s side tugged at the corner of her eye. Oddly unalarmed, she turned to look for Malcolm. He had likely come to see if she had drowned while bathing.

But there was no Malcolm waiting on the heathered bank. It was empty but for a few stands of bluebells, nodding gently under stream froth that fell upon them with a careless patter.

There was no jean dress on the bank either, she noticed with sudden alarm, dropping back down into the water’s protective cover. She looked about with very attentive eyes.

Her attention was rewarded, for presently a flutter of white caught her gaze, and downstream a few paces, she saw the shift she had washed the night before was laid out on a rock warming in the sun.

Only it wasn’t the same shift she had cast off the night before, she realized as she crab-walked downstream under the protective cover of water. The silk had been shot-through with silvery thread and tiny berry flowers had been embroidered upon it. The skirt had also been sundered in a dozen places and the edges knitted up with the tiniest bastings of silver. The whole garment was sheer as morning mist.

She looked about quickly. Not a branch or leaf stirred to betray passage.

Debating for only an instant, Taffy left the water’s cover to come up onto land. The strangely
softened heather branches crushed beneath her feet erupted with perfume at every step.

Beside the shift there were handkerchiefs, which she had brought to serve as bandages, laid in a neat pile. They were a bit small to apply as an effective towel, but she managed to dry off with alacrity. As soon as she was passably dry, she reached for the gossamer garment. It was surprisingly substantial as she pulled it on over her head. Not heavy precisely, but…

Protective armor.

“Ladies’ chainmail?” she asked the heather with a smile. The expression froze as she saw the words written out in water rivulets upon the tabled rock under where the shift had lain:

Vast love, for whom he lives, For whom he died. Behold him, the warrior. The poet made lover.

Even as she stared, the startling words evaporated with the glittering sunlight in a soft curl of silver mist.

Her gown settled against her, lying warmly next to her bare skin with an intimacy never accomplished by human silk. The only sounds were her thudding heart and the soft splattering of water drops that fell from her hair onto the bruised blossoms at her feet.

Still, Taffy was not surprised when Malcolm’s voice spoke from quite nearby. She was growing accustomed to the fact that he always appeared when she was distressed, and that he moved in silence.

“Lass, are ye snared in the heather or gone away wi’ the faeries?”

Away with the fairies? Yes, indeed,
she thought with a small spurt of reasonable alarm, turning in the direction of Malcolm’s voice.

She found his gaze intent upon her. He was smiling slightly and breathing hastily as though he had been rushing to reach her.

He stepped nearer, reaching out, as he so often did, to touch her dripping hair.

“Fell in the stream, did ye, lass?” he joked.

“I did not,” she answered, sounding completely normal even though she knew that she was not. Somewhere in the last day and night, years of parental moral teachings had been stripped away, leaving a terrifying tendency to speak the truth.

“Nay? Well, let us grane this dry and then be away. I’ve a pretty trout wi’ berry gansel for ye that would please a hungry Brownie.”

“A Brownie? Are they here, too?” she asked as he twisted her hair into a rope and wrung the worst of the water out. This time she didn’t bother to fight her attraction.

“Donnae be silly, lass. ‘Tis just a manner o’ speaking. Brownies never eat fish.”

“Oh.” He released her hair, then taking her chin in his hand, tilted her face up to the light.

“Ye’ve the look of one bespelled,” he said.

“Is that so surprising?” she asked, staring into his beautiful eyes. This morning they were a shade of sterling green and reflected the swaying leaves of the tressy yew that overhung the stream’s far side. A part of her wanted to fall into their depths and drown.

“Ye’ve never felt the still-ones, have ye, Taffy lass? Never sensed them in the forests about ye, or watching from the rocks.”

“Never.”

“The blood has thinned then o’er time. Mayhap this is why they’ve brought ye here,” he said absently.

“To learn about them?” she asked, feeling completely unable to move away from Malcolm, though they were standing so close that she could not draw breath without touching him. She was intensely aware of her nakedness beneath her clothes. Her supposed chainmail was utterly useless as a barrier to his heat.

“Nay. Tae teach
me
tae
travel
more like.”

“Travel?” She dimly sensed the word had some greater meaning than her previous experience assigned to it.

“I think I must leave this place soon. One way or another.” He smiled oddly.

“Oh. Of course you must. We both must. As soon as the Campbells depart.” She cleared her throat and made an effort to answer intelligently. It was difficult as her lips seemed more inclined to kisses than speech, her body to lean against the wall of muscle that was his chest than to pull away.

“They’ll never depart. But let us not spoil the day wi’ unpleasant things. Have ye no hunger left?”

“Actually, I am hungry.” Taffy wondered if she could step back if she made the effort. But before she could decide if she should try, Malcolm’s arm was quickly around her, pulling her scantily clad body close. The heat from his body was so great that her shift might not have been between them. Desire welled inside of her, unfurling like the rose in summer sun. It was delicious. Irresistible.

“So am I, and I would have my breakfast now.” He lowered his head and brushed his lips over hers. His touch was gentle, but she sensed that it was kept that way only by great effort.

Taffy’s eyes rounded, but she did not resist the sensation blossoming inside her. Too much of her own inclination was to return the caress, to breathe deeply, to pull his scent into her lungs.

“Bonnie and sweet,” he pronounced with a smile, dropping his arm from her waist and stepping
away. Cold air rushed between them, making her shiver where it slapped at her sensitized skin. The gray-green eyes under Malcolm’s arching brows were brilliant, the pupils beginning to dilate. “Yet, I still hunger.”

“Then I’ll share my trout,” Taffy answered, feeling the pink that tinted her cheeks, but refusing to give any other acknowledgment of this second kiss. What was she thinking to be so forward and allow this intimacy between them? Her body and mind were in some form of shock.

“Trout. I doubt of it being enough, but we shall see,” Malcolm answered, taking her hand and pulling her up the gentle slope. The blisters on his fingers were healed and gone.

Taffy didn’t answer him. She suspected that this morning’s kisses were not idle flirtation, but rather a completely serious statement of his future intent.

The disturbing words written on the rock certainly implied as much as well, and she was of mixed feeling about that. Her whole mind was turmoiled and did not seem entirely her own. Her body, too, did not seem to know itself. Even now, her breasts ached where they had pressed tight against him.

The carpet of heather soon gave way to springy moss. Taffy was grateful for the soft vegetation as her boots had disappeared along with her dress and she was forced to walk with bare feet.

“I wonder where they took it,” she muttered, not looking at the man beside her, but rather paying attention to the ground and the way her silver skirts swayed as she walked, closing and parting like a curtain of veiling. It made her more vulnerable than any nightdress she owned.

“To sew it up,” Malcolm told her, guessing her thoughts with an accuracy that she was coming to expect. “Careful of the bent, lass. ‘Tis coarse for walking barefoot upon.”

“Why
my
dress? They’ve left your plaid alone and it has a hole in it,” she pointed out, shivering a little as she remembered how the hole had gotten there.

“Aye, but then I’ve either been in it or on it since we came. They’ll take it soon enough—can ye part me from it for any time.”

The smell of roasting trout reached her then, and Taffy’s mouth began to water. Though she was not particularly fond of fish, at that moment no other food she had ever eaten seemed as ambrosial.