Tall, Dark and Kilted (31 page)

“Have done!” The Dark One showed himself briefly, his tall, imposing form appearing silhouetted in the open temple doorway as he flung a berobed arm at the root-dragons. “Sleep until you are summoned!”

At once, the beasts vanished, leaving a tangle of harmless-looking roots in their wake.

“So, Seagrave!” The Dark One’s voice came again from within his sheltering temple.

The still-lit arch of his doorway loomed empty.

“What boons would you have now. . . . After the generosity I showed you before?”

“I am a different man than when I last stood before you.” Hardwick folded his arms, unwilling to bend. “As such, I have different
needs
.”

“Needs important enough to bring you here?”

Hardwick swallowed, prepared to give his all. “Needs important enough for me to offer everything you required of me now, before the end of my testing period.”

He could almost see the Dark One’s brow arching again.

He wasn’t prepared for the long stretch of silence.

A quiet peppered with a noise that sounded very much like a man scratching his beard.

Almost as if he were mulling.

Hardwick frowned.

Good things weren’t known to come when the Dark One mulled.

“Tell me, Seagrave, do these
boons
have aught to do with the maid?”

“You know that they do.”

The Dark One reappeared on the threshold, a silent wind whipping his robes. “There is naught I do not know.”

Hardwick felt the back of his neck flame. With surety, the Dark One’s hags had extolled on all they’d witnessed in Dunroamin’s vaulted undercroft.

“Do not forget I was once a man.” The Dark One’s words proved the hags had spoken.

The heat on Hardwick’s nape whipped round to flush his face, as well.

“We were all once men and still are. . . . In whate’er form allowed us,” he snapped, curling one hand around his sword hilt and tightening the fingers of the other on the handgrip of his shield. “What I want from you is one night to lie with Cilla, to truly take her as befitting two who love. And”—he kept his gaze on the black silhouette in the doorway—“I want your word to leave Dunroamin in peace. I’ll no’ have your hoary hags manifesting there again.”

“Indeed?” The Dark One appeared to study his knuckles. “You forget that you are not in a position to make such demands. But”—he lowered his hand and a gust of chill wind rushed through the trees—“be that as it may, I’ll speak with the ladies.”

“Ladies?”
Hardwick nearly choked.

The Dark One sent him a reproving stare.

Hardwick felt it to his bones.

“They were but a bit overeager.” The Dark One took their side. “They, too, once knew love and have missed it.”

“And my boons?”

“Done.”

“What?” Hardwick’s eyes flew wide.

Relief washed over him, and triumph, hot and sweet, nearly buckled his knees.

Until the Dark One raised a quelling hand. “Done, that is, after you’ve mastered one last proving.”

“A last proving?” Hardwick’s heart plummeted. “Is it no’ enough that I’m offering you my soul? Now, well before the year and a day you required?”

He wasn’t sure, but he’d swear the Dark One shrugged.

“ ’Tis a grave matter, Seagrave.” His deep voice filled the inner sanctum. “You ask me to grant you a night of bliss with your lady and”—there came that soft chuckle again—“then deny
my
ladies their pleasure. Yet it can all be arranged if you are willing.”

Hardwick crossed his arms. “Name your price.”

“Your lady’s soul.”

“What?!”
Hardwick stared into the mist, not at all surprised that it’d suddenly thickened again, blotting the Dark One and his temple from view.

“You heard me, Seagrave.” The voice came from within the temple walls again. “One night of pleasure, Dunroamin left in its Brigadoonish innocence, and—the price—Cilla Swanner’s soul.”

“Nae!” Hardwick roared the denial.

Then he was falling, twirling and tumbling through a deep black tunnel that seemed bottomless. Down and down he spiraled, cold winds tearing at his kilt and whipping his hair.

And as the darkness rushed to claim him, one word slid round his heart, giving him comfort.

Cilla.

Chapter 15

Several evenings later, Cilla perched on the edge of a plaid-covered sofa in a back corner of Dunroamin’s heavily tartanized library. Flickering candles glowed everywhere, the only lighting Uncle Mac allowed in the room. Standing candelabras, wall sconces, and table candles; each one offered an eye-catching, golden pool of light for her to focus her attention on.

Something she appreciated, as she was trying hard to look anywhere but at the tall, teddy-bearish man lecturing at a podium near the library’s black marble fireplace.

Wee Hughie MacSporran—
the Highland Storyweaver
—was everything she hadn’t expected.

She leaned into Hardwick, sitting beside her. “I thought he was a renowned ladies’ man.”

Hardwick shrugged. “Whate’er he has, I do no’ see it. Or”—he cocked a thoughtful brow—“perhaps he is skilled at giving Highland kisses?”

Cilla’s face flamed. “Somehow I doubt that.”

No one could be better than Hardwick at
those
kisses. He’d made her positively addicted to them. Not that he’d given her any in days, much to her regret. Thinking about them now, the sweet, hot glide of his tongue and all those incredible little swirls across a certain sensitive spot, sent a flood tide of blazing tingles whipping right down there.

She crossed her legs and squirmed in her chair, certain everyone present could see where her mind was.

Embarrassed, she made a point of looking back to the front of the library, studying the evening’s speaker. Her tingles cooled at once.

Although at least six-foot-four, Wee Hughie appeared well-pudged rather than muscled. Even his scholarly high forehead and thinning auburn hair couldn’t keep his round, apple-red cheeks from giving him a jolly, clownish air. If only he wouldn’t puff and strut like a preening peacock.

“Time is of little importance in the Highlands,” he was saying, his burr smoothly buttered, almost a touch too rich. The words rolled, as if he’d said them again and again. “Our hills are a magical place of picturesque beauty, languorous and seductive.”

He paused, casting a look at the little cluster of Australian women who made up his entourage and had claimed front-row seats.

“Scotland, the whole world knows, is a place where you can believe the distant past happened only yesterday, and the faraway and long ago is not lost at all but waiting to be discovered by those with eyes to see.”

He looked about, baiting his audience. “Do
you
have such eyes?”

A round of quiet nods from Dunroamin’s residents answered him, while his Aussies, all sporting Official Kilt Inspector jackets, oohed and aahed agreement.

Beside Cilla, Hardwick snorted.

She slid a glance at him. “You really don’t like him, do you?”

“I do not like windbags.” He folded his arms. “Such fools annoy me more than a pebble in my shoe.”

He glanced toward the windows, appearing to eye the approaching rain clouds. But not before Cilla caught a twitch at the corner of his mouth.

“I saw that!” She nudged him, relieved to see the recent harsh lines in his face soften, if only for a moment. “You think he’s funny?”

He ignored her, his face once again hard-set and almost expressionless. Much as it’d been ever since he’d returned from his mysterious visit to the Dark One and announced he’d met with failure.

She frowned and reached for his hand, twining their fingers before he could pull away. “You really should have stayed in bed.” She leaned close, dropping her voice. “Uncle Mac said you could have the room as long you needed. He thinks you’re ill from walking his moors at night, believes you took a chill. He doesn’t know that it’s—”

“The Dark One’s warning taste of what awaits me when my time runs out?” Now he did look at her, his dark eyes glinting in the candlelight. His voice held a tinge of bitterness. “And I’ve no’ been using Mac’s kindly proffered quarters to sleep. I’ve been out on the moors with my lads every e’en. We’re still looking for the Viking ghosties.”

“Maybe there aren’t any.”

“Ach, there’s something about, for sure.” He waited as Honoria bustled past, offering scones and shortbread. “Whoe’er they are, they’ve just been lying low. But we’re on to them. As for me”—he dutifully took a piece of shortbread when the housekeeper passed by a second time—“the queasiness or whate’er it is the Dark One inflicted on me will pass. It takes more than a spell of dizziness to slow down a Highlander.”

His gaze flicked to a tartan-covered wing chair not far from where they sat. “I wouldn’t have missed tonight’s performance for all the haggis in Scotland.”

To her delight, he winked. For one brief moment, his face lightened and he looked just as devilishly roguish as before his disappointing visit to the Dark One. Certainly as toe-curlingly handsome, not that now was the time to let her mind wander in that direction.

So she smoothed her skirt and, for the sake of her aunt and uncle, attempted to feign interest in the evening’s entertainment.

His kilt swishing smartly, Wee Hughie paced in front of the fireplace, his chest swelled and his shoulders proud. “I’ve the blood of a thousand kings in my veins,” he boasted, pausing for an effective moment. “My lineage dates back over two thousand years. From the legendary Celtic High King, Conn of the Hundred Battles, dating back to third-century Ireland and the days of the Sidhe, the famed Tuatha De Dan-ann, to”—he cleared his throat meaningfully—“our great warrior king, Robert the Bruce, and many more.”

Picking up his book,
Royal Roots
, he raised the tome high, holding it round for all to see. “Now, with the help of my book or my freelance researching services, you, too, can uncover the truth of your own ancestral story. Perhaps you will find the likes of great kings and nobles. As I’ve done for countless satisfied clients, I can take you step-by-step through the process, showing you—”

A wild skirl of pipes ripped through the library, the Celtic blast shaking the walls and rattling teacups.

“Aaaaagh!” Wee Hughie lurched backward, arms wheeling as the pipe tune—“Paddy’s Leather Breeches”—blared up again, even louder than before.

“Blazing heather!” Honoria jumped, dropping the tray of scones and shortbread.

Colonel Darling waved his pipe in the air. “It’s that bloody pterodactyl! Mark my words!”

“Pterodactyl schmocktyl! That’s my tune!” Uncle Mac laughed, grinning ear to ear.

Next to Cilla, Hardwick pretended not to notice the clamor.

And in the tartan-covered wing chair nearby, a big, burly Highlander with a shock of red hair and a great bushy beard slapped his kilted thigh and nearly convulsed with laughter.

Looking their way, he grinned and winked broadly. Then, as the tune skirled on, getting louder by the minute, he started tapping his foot. Still grinning, he lifted his hands to mimic the motions of a piper’s lively fingers.

Cilla stared at him. Her jaw slipped.

Heart pounding, she whipped around to face Hardwick. He had the good grace to look a touch guilty.

“I know him!” She grabbed his arm, squeezing. “He’s the ghost . . . er . . . the
man
who appeared so suddenly before me in the corridor when I first arrived!”

As if to confirm it, the bushy-bearded ghost stopped his fancy handwork and foot tapping to jump to his feet and cut her a jaunty bow.

“Bran of Barra, my lady.” He touched two fingers to his temple in salute. “The MacNeil of MacNeil, no less.”

“Cilla Swanner.” Cilla replied without thinking. “Of Yardley, Pennsylvania.”

“Another fair American!” He winked, looking most pleased with his observation. He flashed a bold glance at Hardwick. “Can it get any better, my friend? Nae”—he slapped his thigh again—“I say it canna!”

Cilla blinked, not understanding their exchange.

She did look back and forth between the two, vaguely aware of Uncle Mac and Colonel Darling dashing about the library, peeking under chairs and behind curtains as they searched for the source of the music.

At last she remembered something that had been niggling at her. She nudged Hardwick. “Uncle Mac only has the armory rigged with that tune. It’s timed to start at the end of his afternoon naps, remember?”

She raised her voice above the screaming pipes. “What’s playing is the pipe CD Aunt Birdie keeps in her car.”

“Or not.” Hardwick’s gaze slid to his friend.

Sitting again, the burly Highlander had his legs stretched out comfortably on the wing chair’s ottoman, and his arms crossed over his plaid-draped girth.

“What do you mean ‘or not’?” Cilla tugged on Hardwick’s arm.

He flicked a speck of lint off his kilt. Then he slid a telling glance at Wee Hughie.

“It could be that Bran wished to enliven the evening.” He couldn’t quite keep his lips from twitching. “His humor has been known to run away with him.”

“And yours?” She poked him. “Don’t tell me you didn’t have a hand in it.”

“Ach, well . . .” He didn’t try to deny it. “Bran and the lads have been working hard out on the moors. They deserved a bit o’ levity.”

Her eyes rounded. “They?”

He winked. “You don’t really think that’s your aunt’s pipe CD playing so robustly, or do you?”

“More ghosts?” Cilla glanced about, seeing none.

“Ach, you willna be seeing them.” He slid an arm around her, pulling her close. “Some of the lads are a bit shy about showing themselves, but there’s a mean piper or two amongst them. Bran and I gave them the evening off from Mac’s peat fields to do a spot of playing here.”

“To ruin Wee Hughie’s presentation?” Cilla’s own lips quirked.

“His Kilt Inspectors will make it up to him.” He pulled her closer, dropped a kiss to her temple. “I’ll have the lads wind down in a beat. It’s about time they head back out on patrol, anyway. The scent of men guising themselves as Vikings has been heavy on the air of late. Could be we’re closing in on the dastards.”