Taming the Heiress (22 page)

Moonlight on the whispering sea, the surf rinsing at her feet, and Dougal's arms around her would become memories to carry her through the rest of her life, Meg thought. Years from now, she would treasure this night and one other, and she would always remember him like this—her kelpie, so strong and beautiful, tender and kind, and hers alone.

Soon she must never see Dougal again. Once she resumed her existence as Lady Strathlin, she was sure that her future husband would not allow his wife—no matter her fortune or her desire—to return to Caransay alone, free, without threat.

She sucked in a quick breath against the pain of that and ducked her head against his chest.

"Love," Dougal said, "what is it?" He traced his fingers over her hair. They had dressed again and sat together on the sand, leaned against the rocky wall that still held the warmth of the day's sun, his arm wrapped over her shoulders. The water shushed and the moon sparkled over mild waves, and the exquisite joy of Norrie's fiddle sounded in the distance.

"Nothing. Just thoughts." She looked up, her cheek resting on his shoulder, her palm quiet on his chest. "Dougal, what was it you began to tell me the other day, in the cave?"

She saw him smile a little. "We have a little time now before they come looking for us, I suppose."

"They will not come looking for us," she said. "Grandmother and Mother Elga would not let them bother us if they know that we left together."

"Why? Two unmarried young people out alone in the moonlight... There is no predicting what they will do." He smiled and kissed her hair.

"Mother Elga and Grandmother Thora want us to go out in the moonlight together," she said. "They have wanted it all along, ever since they met you."

"That I find hard to believe."

"Tell me your story, Dougal Stewart, and I will tell you mine, and then you will understand."

He looked askance at her for a moment, then shrugged. "Very well. Seven years ago, just before sunset one evening, I raced a rowboat against another fellow. Both of us were fairly drunk at the time, after a wake for a fine old man whose wife made some very good whisky—George MacDonald of Tobermory."

"We knew him. A good man, indeed. Why were you there?"

"I had been studying the Caran Reef, taking measurements of the rocks, calculating the wave force, and so on. We were sure, even then, that a lighthouse was needed somewhere along the reef. Several of us had been on Mull for weeks, so we were at the wake. We were damn fools that night, and when some of my men boasted of our daring, my friend and I had no choice but to prove them right. He got sick over the side, poor lad, but I kept going, seeing my chance to win. And I soon found myself going down the throat of a sudden squall that turned evil very quickly. I could not get away. A wave washed me overboard, and I took a blow to the head and nearly drowned. I was saved—" He stopped suddenly. "Well, you would find that too wild to believe."

"What saved you?"

"I suppose it was a wave, washing me onto the great rock of Sgeir Caran," he answered. "But for a moment, I thought that a pair of beautiful horses carried me over the water." He shook his head as if bewildered.

"Horses! You mean you saw... sea kelpies?"

He shrugged. "Imagined them, more like. But when I landed on the rock and saw you... well. Again my imagination was in full force. I had taken a blow to the head that night."

"Then you were shipwrecked on Sgeir Caran," she breathed.

He nodded, rubbing his fingers along her shoulder. "Aye. So you see, there were no schemes to have some fun with the young and innocent girl who sat waiting on the rock."

She nodded. "I am so sorry that I believed that of you. But... well, I saw the men fetch you in the morning."

"So you concluded that it was arranged. I understand."

"Who were they?"

"Alan Clarke and another fellow," he said. "I've known Alan for years. He was the one I raced against. When I did not come back and the storm blew in, they gave me up for lost. But Alan refused to accept that. He and the other fellow rowed out to look for me once the weather calmed. At dawn that day, they saw me standing on the sea rock. Alan, as you know, is a bull of a man and powerful at the oars. If he had not been sick that night, I would have lost that race. And then I never would have ended up on Sgeir Caran—or found you there."

"So we owe Mr. Clarke a debt."

He smiled. "We do."

"Dougal, do they—did you ever tell them—"

"About us?" As he spoke, he smoothed his fingers over the shell of her ear, and shivers cascaded through her. "I have never said a word of it to anyone. It was too precious a secret. And I thought—" He paused, half laughed, then shook his head.

"What?" she asked, looking up at him.

"You will think me mad," he said. "I thought you were not even real, that you were... a sea fairy. I was hazed with drink and from a knock to the head, as well. I believed that you were magical... or that I had imagined you."

She stared up at him. "You thought I was a sea fairy?"

"Aye, or a selkie, or some kind of magical sea creature. A kelpie perhaps, or a mermaid, come into human form." He shrugged. "I can offer you no better explanation than that. You were so beautiful, so gentle and kind, and it was a miracle to find you there in the midst of that wild a storm, and... What is it?"

Meg began to laugh from sheer relief and joy in the irony of the situation. "You thought I was a sea fairy," she said, "and I thought you were the great kelpie himself, the
each-uisge
of Sgeir Caran!"

He blinked at her. "The what? The kelpie legend that I've heard about?"

She nodded. "My grandmothers are convinced that I should be with you... well, forever."

Dougal tipped his head in bewilderment. "They think I am the kelpie of Sgeir Caran?"

She shrugged. "Thora is not so sure, but Elga is certain of it. You've more than proven it in her mind."

"How?"

"Norrie told her that you rose up out of the sea when we went out to the rock the day you were diving. And you wanted to take the children from her that day you met us on the beach. Stop laughing," she told him. "And you rescued Iain and sent the shark away."

"I seem to have misrepresented myself," he said, and chuckled.

"And my grandmothers think—" she paused.

"Come now. Tell me," he coaxed. "I have not told you anything less ridiculous than you could confess to me."

"They think you are already my husband," she blurted.

He leaned back, folded his arms. "Now this I must hear."

"Mother Elga and Grandmother Thora sent me out to the rock that night," she explained. "It is an old tradition on Caransay for a maiden to spend a night out there, once every hundred years, to wait for the great kelpie to arrive and make her his... well, bride. They told me I must submit to him, and gave me a whisky potion to ease my fears and make me... bold."

"Aye, well," he said, "you were bold enough."

She poked him playfully. "Our legend says that when the great kelpie of Sgeir Caran claims his bride, he will bestow good fortune on her and the people of Caransay. We needed good fortune then, for the previous leaseholder of the island was about to evict everyone and replace the tenants with sheep farmers and bring in English flocks. So I went to the rock to make the appeal to the... and there you were."

"And a lucky man, to be mistaken for the kelpie," he drawled, laughing as she pushed at him. "Your grandmothers never told you that the kelpie might be nearly drowned, did they?"

She giggled, and they settled together, his arm around her shoulders. "I was hazed, as you were, by the herbal potion my grandmothers had given me," she went on. "So I believed you were magical. And besides, you had no clothing. You did not look like a man washed up from a shipwreck." She plucked at his shirt.

"I took off my clothes to keep from sinking. I'd rather wash up naked on some beach for all the islanders to see, than die clothed and decent for the fishes."

"I was lucky to find a beautiful naked man ready to do all my will, instead of a slimy, wretched sea monster ready to give me nightmares." She smiled as he laughed.

"Aye, you were lucky," he said, and he kissed her. "Did the kelpie bestow good fortune on you afterward? Or, now that he's back, are you waiting to find out?"

She smiled at his jest, but inside she trembled. The whole truth hovered on her lips, but there was too much she could not tell him, here and now, about Iain, herself, and now Frederick. Wanting desperately to tell him, she resisted, unable to spoil this magical night for both of them.

She shrugged. "We were not evicted, as it turned out."

"Lady Strathlin bought the island's lease? Very good luck, indeed. You had the blessing of the kelpie after all."

Gulping, she could only nod.

Growing quiet, he traced circles on her shoulder. "Girl," he murmured, "you are so good, so honest and pure in your character. And I am deeply sorry that you believed I was a wretched monster for so many years." He kissed the top of her head. "You have such integrity and strength."

She shook her head, torn by guilt. "I am not what you think."

"I never want you to feel ashamed of what we did that night or what we have done now. Listen to me. That night was very powerful. I do not believe what we did was wrong. We saved each other that night. And I will take the responsibility for it upon my shoulders. You were an innocent then, and to me you are innocent still, no matter what has happened between us." He touched her hair, kissed her brow.

She ducked her head against his chest.

"Meg MacNeill, look at me." He tilted her chin upward and kissed her mouth gently. "Meg, I want to marry you."

She gasped and felt tears begin to gather in her eyes. "Do not... feel that you have an obligation to me."

"I do have an obligation to you. But that is not why I am asking this. I want to marry you, if you will have me. Let me take care of you and your family."

She sat up, heart pounding, and shook her head. "I cannot—we cannot. It is not necessary for you to do this."

"Let me help you." He sat up with her, kept a hand on her back. "Life is hard in the Hebrides. I know that. I can help you and your family. I have... a respectable income."

"No," she said, getting to her feet. He stood with her. "Please, no."

"I thought—"

"I am grateful for the offer, but I... I cannot marry you."

He turned away, rubbed a hand over his face as if to summon patience, turned back. "Meg, I have wronged you. I have a conscience, woman. Allow me to make this up to you."

"I beg you, do not pity me or feel a sense of duty. I could not bear it," she finished, and whirled to walk past him.

He grabbed her arm, turned her back. "I did not ask you to marry me out of a sense of obligation, you darling wee fool. I love you."

Her heart bounded. A fierce ache of longing within her became deep remorse, then bitter pain at the irony. Here was all she had ever wanted—his heart, his love, his desire—and yet she was powerless to accept or to explain. She stared at him in anguished silence.

"I love you, Meg MacNeill," he murmured. "I want to be with you. I think I have loved you for seven years but did not know it until now. The night we met, you were my salvation. I owed you my life that night, and yet afterward I hurt you without knowing it."

"We saved each other that night," she said fervently. "There is nothing owed. You are forgiven, if that is what you seek."

"Listen to me," he said, his grip fierce on her arm. She felt caught as if by a spell. In the moonlight, his voice dropped to hoarseness blended with the sea. "You are not the only one with a dream."

She watched him through tears. "Mine cannot come true." The awful finality of that seemed to twist inside of her.

Suddenly he let go of her. "Aye, then," he said, and she heard a cold edge now in his voice. "Do what you will. I have made the offer, and it stands. I told you I never give up." He watched her. "And I have great patience."

Spinning on her heel, she half ran over the sand, her heart sinking with each step. She felt her heart and soul beating against the cage that had been locked around her by wealth and secrets.

The deepest hurt of all was that he had let her go, somehow. Yet she had given him no choice, no hope for their future.

She had never even told him that she loved him.

* * *

He saw blue sky and clouds through a depth of water as clear as crystal. Golden shadows rippled over the mountainous base of the rock as daylight streamed through the water currents. As he looked up, a pair of dolphins swam past overhead.

Good, Dougal thought. Where there were dolphins there would be no sharks, and he did not want to meet those fellows ever again. He turned, awkward in his gear and suit, and pointed upward.

Standing near him, Evan looked like a sea beast, his tentacle-like hoses undulating. He raised a gauntleted hand to acknowledge the sight of the dolphins overhead and turned back to the undersea hill.

Dougal made his way over the rock with strange, slow clumsiness. Noises assailed him even through the brass-and-copper helmet, dominated by the sound of his own breathing as air whooshed in and out of the hoses and valves connected to his helmet. Every puff of air pumped down the length of nearly two hundred feet of hosing, smelling sharply of rubber, became his next breath. With each exhalation, he heard the click and suck of air drawn through the exit valve. Through the helmet, he heard the shushing waves and the sound of the wooden platform knocking against the rock, stirred by currents. The water was never still, never quiet, the sea too powerful here to be tranquil.