Reclaimed (A Highland Historical Trilogy) (The MacKay Banshees 1-3) (18 page)

“What is yer name, Banshee?” His question stunned them both.

“Kylah MacKay.”

Kylah.
Lovely, feminine. Like her.

“Ye made a dangerous enemy today, Kylah MacKay.”

“I know.” Her iridescent face shone with earnest regret. “I’m sorry to cause you all that trouble. I’ll do what I can to make amends.”

That foreign, soft emotion bloomed in his chest, soothing the cold fury pulsing there. “I didna mean me, lass. I meant Ly Erg.”

A dark shadow crossed her illuminated features. “He doesn’t frighten me.” She drifted around him and took a slow pace down the bluff.

Daroch followed her, for once, catching her easily. “He should. Ye doona ken what he’s capable of.”

“Yes, I do.” Her eyes remained fixed on the fragrant fields of blooming spring buds. “I really feel so terrible that he found you because of me. That’s how he did it isn’t it, because you had to use your magic?”

“Aye, well, no permanent harm befell me.” If Daroch were completely honest with himself, it wasn’t her presence that had surprised him into gasping water into his lungs. It had been her beatific smile. She’d taken his breath with her loveliness, and it happened to be in a place where air was in short supply. His brows drew together. “Let’s forget it ever happened.”

She nodded, seeming eager to do just that. “Where are we going?” she asked.

“Lake Shamrock.”

Her mouth formed a relentlessly familiar shape.

“
Because
,” he cut her off. “I need a shamrock and some bog myrtle.”

“Bog myrtle for your wound,” she seemed pleased with herself. “I should have thought of that… but a shamrock? wh—”

“
Because
when one is holding a shamrock, one can see a Faerie, whether they want ye to or not,” he answered quickly trying to stay a step ahead of the dreaded word. “Who knows what they’ll send after me next? Or when.”

She was thoughtful for a blessedly silent moment. “May I ask you something?”

A harsh laugh escaped Daroch’s throat. “Did ye just ask a question about asking a question?”

It was her turn to look exasperated. “Well?”

“When has it stopped ye before?” Daroch motioned for her to proceed, shocked to discover that he wasn’t as aggravated at the lass’s questions as he’d previously been. He wouldna say he was enjoying himself. Nay. He wouldna say that.

“How old are you?”

Daroch frowned. “That’s actually a good question. One to which I doona know the answer.”

“Well, it’s not that complicated, in what year were you born?”

He furrowed his brow, trying to remember. “About… sixty four.”

“Thirteen hundred and sixty four?” she asked, aghast.

“Nay lass,” he smirked. “Sixty and four, about twenty years before Agricola and Caledonia.”

“The
Romans
?” she nearly shrieked.

He winced.

“That makes no sense at all. You say you’re not a man of magic, yet you are. You say you aren’t blessed by gods or a Faerie creature, and yet you’re centuries over a
thousand years
! I can’t believe all this, and I’m a bloody
Banshee.
” She swung a slap at his shoulder, but of course it only resulted in chilly goose bumps.

“Did yer father ever tell ye Faerie stories when ye were a wee lass?”

She sobered a little, her eyes becoming wistful. “All the time.”

“Did he ever mention what happened when an unsuspecting human ventured into a Faerie ring and spent a night in the land of the Fae?”

“He said that a man would spend one night in Faerie and come back in time to meet his grandchildren all grown. That time doesn’t pass there like it does—ohhhhhh.” Comprehension dawned and her eyes went round as an owl’s.

“Imagine what a month or so would do to ye.”

“Dear me!” she exclaimed. “In what time did you return to Scotland?”

Daroch focused on the pain in his leg so as to deny the hollow ache lancing through his chest. What time had he returned? In a time where the Druids had mysteriously disappeared leaving not a trace to prove their advanced existence. To a time where the united people of the holy emerald isles had divided into warring clans living in hovels while their English overlords oppressed and objectified them. To a time when everyone he knew and loved was long dead and forgotten and he’d taken on the clan McLeod because they’d been the first to shelter him and show him kindness. “In time to ride with Robert the Bruce against the English,” he answered darkly. “I was the mood for warfare right about then.”

“A hundred years at least!” she put a hand to her forehead in disbelief. “And you’ve been so young and…” she gestured at him with a helpless hand and Daroch found himself mighty interested as to what descriptive word she would pull out of that inquisitive brain of hers. “And… vigorous this whole time?” Her pale translucent cheeks tinged a becoming shade of pink.

She thought him vigorous, did she? Heat crept up his collar from beneath his robes and he cleared his throat. “My theory is the food I ate and drank in Faerie had properties that slowed the aging process down, though I seem to have aged about fifteen years in the last twenty, so I also theorize that the process is accelerating again.”

“Oh? So that would place you at about five and thirty, I’d wager, though your physique is far better than that of any man I know of that age.” Her blush intensified.

A niggling warmth swelled inside him and Daroch squelched it the best way he knew how. Intellectual distraction. “I find it fascinating that ye blush.” He squinted at her creamy complexion, the tinge still prominent through her ever-present green hue. “Blushing is usually a body’s reaction to emotional stimuli through the thermo dilation of blood veins. But yer heart doesna beat. Yer blood doesna flow. So how does blushing occur?” The temptation to reach out and touch her skin became so overwhelming, he passed a finger through her cheek.

Startled, she jumped back from him and batted at his hand like a wee kitten. Both of their attempts at contact were predictably unsuccessful. More was the pity, in his case. Which caused him pause. He hadn’t wanted to touch a woman in over one hundred years. Why had that suddenly changed?

“Now who is asking silly questions?” she huffed, clearly disconcerted. “It’s magic, who knows how it works, only that it does? Everything seems to work as it did before except that I don’t eat or drink anymore, of course. But when I cry, tears flow. When I spit… well it’s strange but it… happens. Mostly.”

The erotic possibilities of her admission slammed into him.

Gods be damned.

“And only lately, I’ve started to feel my heart beating. Very fast, in most cases, like it’s going to jump out of my chest.” She pressed a dainty hand to her breast and speared him with eyes the color of Irish moss.

“Do ye,” his brows lifted. “And when does this occur?”

“Only when I’m around you.”

Daroch’s own heart threw itself against his ribcage. Something had to be done about this.

She was no longer harmless.

He truly was a man out of time. Kylah studied Daroch as he foraged through the unused piles of peat bricks and coal in the ruins of her family home and washhouse. He’d been strangely quiet after her admission and his withdrawal depressed her. As he’d reapplied his layer of silt at the Allt Dubh, it had been like he donned an extra layer of armor
against
her. When she’d asked him why he wore the mud, he’d simply barked, “Protection.” As if she was supposed to know what that meant. She’d tried to pry it out of him as he stored his satchel of fish in the frigid river, but he paid her no heed.

When he’d gathered shamrocks from the loch and dressed his wound with herbs, he’d been strangely modest, hiding most of his action beneath his robes.

He’d been so bloody adamant about wanting the truth, hadn’t he? Well she’d been honest with him. What did she have to lose by the admission? More to the point, why would he be disturbed by it?
She
didn’t particularly like the idea that the only thing to break the bleak apathy surrounding her this past year was a miserly
old
Druid with an infuriating air of superiority. But there it was. He awakened sensation inside of her. Evoked her natural curiosities. Fascinated and distressed her.

Made her forget…

Most men would have welcomed her questions, taking any occasion to impress her with ceaseless conversation on their favorite topics. Namely themselves. But nay, not he, not Daroch
mud-face
McLeod. What did he do when he’d garnered her interest? Ordered her to leave! Thrown things at her—well—through her, but even so. Treated her as though her company was undesirable.

And yet the question remained:
Why!?

“Yes, brighten yer glow until I can get these bricks started.” He stacked them in his arms.

Kylah made a sound of irritation which he either didn’t recognize or ignored.

“This is all new and fine material. If ye lost everything in the fire, where did ye get it?” he asked.

“Laird MacKay had it delivered to my mother as we resided here until recently.”

He turned to her then, the surprise on his face evident, even through the mask. “She remained… here?” He looked around as though seeing the place for the first time.

The large circular room had accommodated the smithy’s waiting customers and, later, the washhouse. Blackened stones, earth, charred beams and ash covered the ground. The once vaulted ceilings were non-existent but for one corner which had been where her mother had stacked the cot upon which she’d slept. A wall of stone lay where the arch to the small room that housed her father’s forge had been. That room remained mostly intact, though the bricks were now black instead of earth and all that remained of the ceiling was a fine layer of ash over everything.

Kylah never ventured into that room.

“How did she survive?”

The corner closest to the burned-out entry had become Kylah’s by edict of the amount of time she spent there. Kylah lurked there now, feeling on edge as she considered the Druid’s question.

“The Laird sent food, bread, cheese, potatoes, jerky, things that didn’t need to be cooked. Animal furs, and that.” She gestured to the makings for a long-lasting fire.

“There’s a year’s worth of fire here, she never lit one? Even in the winter?” His skeptical voice grated on her already raw nerves.

“Never.” She cast a pointed look at the state of the building. “She had somewhat of an aversion to fire.”

His brows lifted, but he wisely remained silent as he maneuvered through the rubble with his arms full of coal and disappeared into the back. “The bellows are not too damaged,” he called to her. “I’ll need to go into town for the textiles to repair it. ‘Tis a fine forge yer father built.”

“Aye,” she agreed, still unable to look at it.

He appeared in the entry, returning for another load for the fire. “If I’m lucky, yer father will have a safe place in the fireclay where a few of his tools would be kept untouched by rust and such.”

Kylah searched her memory. “Behind the row of anvils, beneath the slack tub.” At least he was speaking to her now.

He disappeared into the room again with another armful of coal. “Show me,” he ordered.

“Nay.” Her refusal was instantaneous.

His head reappeared in the entry. “Nay? What do ye mean, ‘Nay?’”

“Have you never heard the word before?” she asked, stunning them both with the ire in her voice.

His hazel eyes turned stormy and he stood atop the rubble, glowering down at her from across the wide ashen floor. “What’s gotten into ye, woman?”

“
Me?
What’s gotten into me, you ask?” Kylah watched her green glow crawl across the ashes, though she didn’t move from where she stood. “You’ve been naught but churlish and ill-tempered with me this entire afternoon.
If
you’ve acknowledged me at all.”

“Ye did almost get me killed. Twice in the space of an hour, which is a feat, even for a Banshee,” he replied archly.

“That’s not why you’ve been insufferable, and we both know it,” she sneered.

“I’ve lived in solitude for a hundred years.” He crossed large, defensive arms over his broad chest and Kylah had to force herself not to remember what that chest looked like without the robes. “Ye canna invade every moment of my life, demand every detail of my history, and uncover all my secrets expecting me to
like
it.”

Anger covered the flash of hurt and truth in his words. “Well, Daroch McLeod, if you want your solitude so badly you may have it. I will not venture into
that
room. You’re safe from my odious presence there, so do what you will.”

Were she not in such a temper, she’d have found his expression of absolute befuddlement endearing. He looked behind him into the forge room, then back at her. “Why doona ye go in there? Because it’s where yer father—”

“It has nothing to
do
with my father!” she exploded, her glow pulsing further into the waning twilight.

“Then, why—”

“You don’t get to ask why! That’s
my
question.” At this point, Kylah realized she was being childish and ridiculous. But she’d never in her life lost her temper. She’d never felt this kind of organic, indignant anger before. Never had a deserving outlet for it. And since the horrible day she died, she’d only ever lurked in her corner, staring at that damnable forge, reliving the horrors that befell her there.