Redeemed (Heroes of the Highlands) (The MacKays #2) (6 page)

“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.

Every memory created by a loving man and father in that room had been defiled, replaced by the image of another man’s hatred. His domination. His sweat. Her pain. Her blood. Screams. Flames.

“Keep your secrets, Daroch McLeod.” A tear snaked from Kylah’s eye and burned its way down her cheek. “And I’ll keep mine.”

She’d vanished again. The evening seemed darker without her, and not just for the absence of her ever-present glow. Daroch inspected the ruins of the quaint washhouse with renewed intent. What would keep her from entering the forge? What harm could befall her there?

The living structure just off the business had been made of wood rather than stone, so only the blackened outlines of two bedrooms and the cook hearth of a kitchen remained. They told Daroch nothing, except that if anyone had been trapped there, they’d have perished.

Beneath a mulberry bush, a stone cross and two small wooden ones were lined neatly by the pond. Perhaps his wee Banshee was buried there. His nose pricked to the smell of the heather blooms mixing with the mulberry as he made his way to the tiny, well-kept graveyard.

He ran a finger across the stone engraving of Diarmudh MacKay. His cross was done in the olde way. Not to symbolize the Christian sacrifice, but in the way of the Druids, symbolizing the great balance of science and magic. Of earth and the sky. The body and the soul. Man and woman. Life and death. Twined together with sacred, eternal knots.

Sinking onto his haunches, he found the next two graves to be small, shallow, and relatively fresh, only recently overtaken by moss and grass. The markers were rough hewn and wooden. They read
Katriona MacKay
and
Kamdyn MacKay
in shaky, hand-carved script. The graves were small enough for young children.

Only their bones rested here. Daroch shook his head. That must have been all that was left after the fire. He stood and scanned the outlying area, capturing each detail in its entirety.

What about Kylah’s bones? Where did they rest?

His gaze landed back on the ruins and a cold spear pierced his chest.