Teresa Medeiros (18 page)

Colin swung toward her and thundered, “Do I have to remind you that I am laird of this castle?”

Several of the men flinched at the earth-trembling volume of his voice, but Tabitha simply gave him one of her most infuriating smiles. “And I’m Chairman of the Board, which, according to Robert’s Rules of Order,
grants me the authority to govern this meeting as I see fit.”

He glared at her in stony silence.

She pointed the gavel at him. “You may speak.”

His powerful hands clenched and unclenched as if fixed around her throat. “As most of you know, this council is naught but a formality. I value your wisdom, but ’tis I, as Laird of Ravenshaw, who will make the final decision.” He nodded toward the old men. “I’ll seek out the MacDuff as you advise.” Before they could so much as nod their satisfaction, he turned toward the boys. “But I’ve no intention of waiting for Roger to return and pick our bones clean. Once we’ve made our alliance with the MacDuff, we’ll take the battle to Brisbane.”

Led by the exuberant Chauncey, the boys erupted in hoarse cheers. Tabitha raised her voice in a vain attempt to be heard above the din. “A motion has been made. All in favor say ‘Aye.’ Those opposed—”

“Bring me the map of Brisbane’s lands,” Colin commanded, neatly cutting her off.

“Aye, my lord.” Ewan hastened to spread a parchment on the table before his master. Colin leaned forward until his nose practically touched the map.

Wisely deciding her role as self-appointed Chairman of the Board of Ravenshaw Enterprises had just been usurped by its president and CEO, Tabitha came around the table to peer over Colin’s shoulder. The map was covered with incomprehensible scrawls and calligraphy so cramped it appeared to have been inked by nearsighted elves. She absently drew her glasses from her skirt pocket and slipped them on.

Her brow furrowed as she studied the map. She assumed the strange hush that had fallen over the men was the result of a similar concentration.

But when the silence stretched to near snapping point, she glanced up to find them staring at her nose. She reached up, thinking to rub away a smudge of dirt, only to encounter the wire bridge of her glasses. As Colin turned to see what had captured his men’s fickle attention, apprehension blossomed in Tabitha’s belly.

He straightened, cocking his head first one way, then the other, as if studying her from all angles might explain the inexplicable. His fingers brushed her temples as he drew the glasses off of her. She couldn’t have felt any more vulnerable had he stripped her naked in front of his men.

She held her breath, anticipating questions she didn’t dare answer. But he simply held the glasses up to the sunlight, smudging the lenses with his broad thumbs, then slipped them over his own eyes, holding them in place as if not trusting the strength of the earpieces.

As he blinked in wonder at his surroundings, Tabitha’s breath caught in a strange little hiccup. Oddly enough, the glasses enhanced his rugged masculine appeal instead of detracting from it. She couldn’t decide if he looked more like a gorgeous accountant or a brainy
GQ
model. His men watched warily as he leaned over the map.

“Arjon,” he said, stabbing a finger toward an incomprehensible squiggle, “what river is this?”

Arjon leaned closer. “That would be the Tweed.”

Colin broke into a dazzling grin. “Just as I thought. And this patch of hills?”

“The Combies.” Arjon went on naming landmark after landmark until Colin was nearly shouting them in unison with him.

Suddenly Tabitha understood why he was always glowering at her or slaying her with that daunting Clint
Eastwood squint. He was probably more nearsighted than she was!

“Miraculous,” he breathed, shaking his head. “I never dreamed such marvels existed. Not even the Sultan of Egypt possessed such a treasure.” He shifted his gaze to his friend’s face, recoiling in mock horror. “Why, Arjon, you’re much uglier than I realized!”

The men, including Arjon, burst out laughing. Tabitha might have laughed, too, but as Colin turned the full force of those magnificent golden eyes on her, she realized too late that the joke was on her.

“And you, my lady,” he said softly, tracing her perfectly ordinary features with his bemused gaze, “are even more beautiful.” Almost as if his confession disturbed him as deeply as it had her, he drew off the glasses and held them out to her. “However wondrous, I mustn’t grow too attached to these. I believe they belong to you.”

Tabitha backed away from him, nearly stumbling over her own feet. “You keep them. Really. I don’t need them anymore.”

She could see far too clearly without them. She could see the sunlight glinting off Colin’s glossy, dark hair, the beguiling crinkles around his eyes, the rueful smile curling the very corner of his mouth that she ached to kiss.

“Please keep them. They’re just two pieces of warped glass I use in my magic act. Nothing but a petty trick.” A trick indeed, Tabitha thought. A cruel trick of both time and fate. Colin’s smile faded as she continued to retreat. “Consider them a gift. A token of my appreciation for your many kindnesses.”

Before she could blurt out anything even more damning, she turned and fled up the hill, her vision distorted by tears.

• • •

Tabitha tossed and turned on the narrow cot, envying Colin both his nest of pillows and his serene sleep. Even with the furs arranged beneath her, she might as well have been resting on a bed of rocks. Desperation poked and prodded her, making even the pretense of sleep impossible.

The night was as restless as she was. The wind prowled around the tent like a fretful dragon, whipping branches against its billowing walls and moaning a doleful refrain.

After fleeing the council meeting, she’d spent the afternoon combing the tent for the amulet. It was more imperative than ever that she return to the century where she belonged. Not just for her parents’ sake, but for her own. This century was far too untidy for her tastes—both in its dangers and its passions. She had to return to her family, to her career, to an apartment that even now seemed more sterile than cozy, while she still had the will to do so.

But her frantic hunt had yielded nothing. Colin had apparently secured the necklace on his person. And that was one area she wasn’t about to search.

She threw herself to her side, stealing a guilty glance at him. He reclined on his back with Lucy curled in the crook of his elbow. They both appeared blissfully untroubled by the rising wind or her mounting misery. Colin’s lips were slightly parted. She wondered if he would wake up if she gently pressed her mouth against them. Stifling a groan, she rolled to her back.

How humiliating to discover that despite her lofty IQ, she was no more immune to a buff set of biceps and a sooty pair of lashes than any other woman!

It’s just a crush, she assured herself firmly, no different from the one she’d had on Steve Kaufman in the
tenth grade. Time had eventually eased even her wistful pining for him.

Once she returned to the twenty-first century, she’d have plenty of time to get over Colin. A lifetime to be precise, a lifetime of knowing she’d been attracted to a man who’d been dead for over seven hundred years, yet made every man she’d ever met seem like nothing more than an insipid phantom.

Tabitha dragged one of the furs over her head, preferring the stifling heat to the temptation of gazing in calf-like adoration at Colin’s sleeping face.

She might have happily smothered herself if an eerie wail hadn’t pierced the droning of the wind. Throwing back the furs, Tabitha sat straight up, struggling to hear over the erratic throb of her heart in her ears.

Then it came again—an infant’s unmistakable cry, borne on the wind like a banshee’s lament.

Her first instinct was to leap off the cot into Colin’s arms. But she was a card-carrying member of Mensa, not some quivering damsel in distress. She did not believe in knights in shining armor capable of protecting her from all harm, nor did she believe in ghosts. Colin was just a man like any other and there had to be some mundane scientific explanation for the unearthly sound.

She slipped off the cot, determined to get to the bottom of this before Colin was awakened by what he believed to be the ghostly echo of his sister’s cry.

The castle loomed over Tabitha like some ancient tomb shadowed by mystery and menace.

She picked her way over the shattered stones that littered the courtyard, cursing herself with each painful step for not wearing her slippers. The wind sent clouds scudding across the moon in tattered shreds, veiling the
fitful moonlight. Tabitha looked longingly over her shoulder toward the tent where Colin lay sleeping.

But another haunting cry beckoned her forward. Groaning with effort, she wrestled open the tower’s heavy wooden door and slipped inside.

The instant the door drifted shut behind her, the crying stopped. Tabitha stood frozen in the inky blackness, the sudden silence more threatening than any spectral shriek.

“What did you expect?” she muttered through her chattering teeth. “That Colin’s sister was going to jump out at you wearing a white bedsheet and yell ‘Boo!’ ”

The wind obliged her expectations by seizing a shutter set high in the stone wall and slamming it open with a deafening crash. Tabitha jumped. Moonlight now came streaming through the narrow window, revealing a set of stone steps that seemed to wind into infinity.

She peered upward into the gathering shadows. “Can’t be any worse than the Haunted House at Disney World.” Her voice faded to a dubious whisper. “Can it?”

She began to climb, trying not to notice the grim blots that stained many of the steps. Apprehension had her huffing and puffing by the time she reached the first landing. She paused and cocked her head to listen, praying she had only imagined the furtive whisper of a footfall behind her. The rasp of her breathing echoed in the narrow stairwell until she would have almost sworn some unseen thing was panting in time with her, mocking her growing panic.

She climbed faster, feeling more like the pursued than the pursuer. She no longer knew if she was rushing toward whatever lay in wait at the top of the stairs or fleeing from some terrible threat that lurked behind her. Her uncertainty mirrored her emotional predicament.
She was living in the present, yet trapped somewhere between the future and the past.

She ran toward the second landing, hoping to take shelter in its shadows. But when she looked over her shoulder, she crashed into something warm and solid. A scream tore from her throat. She might have gone on screaming forever if it weren’t for the powerful hand that clamped itself firmly over her mouth.

CHAPTER
15

T
abitha’s assailant was no ethereal wisp or shadowy phantom. He was not spirit, but flesh—an ingenious melding of muscle and sinew strong enough to pin her against the wall without causing her even a twinge of pain. The rasp of his breathing mingled with her own. She smelled woodsmoke in his hair, tasted sweat and leather on the palm pressed against her lips. As the fear melted from her bones, she sagged against him, exulting in the very mortality that made them both vulnerable.

“Stop shrieking, lass.” Colin’s harsh voice came out of the darkness, coupled with the feral gleam of his eyes. “Before you wake both the living and the dead.”

She managed a shaky nod. He slowly withdrew his hand, his fingertips lingering against her bottom lip for an immeasurable second. Instead of stepping away from her, he braced his palms against the wall on each side of her shoulders, managing to loom over her despite their similar heights. He kept one knee cocked between her own, which would put her in a very awkward position indeed if she attempted a step in any direction.

“How …?” she croaked, then paused to clear her
throat. “I left you sleeping in the tent. How did you get into the castle … up the stairs?”

“I took the secret passageway from the garden.”

“Then you must have heard it,” she said, excited to learn she wasn’t the only one going mad. “The crying!”

“I heard naught. Naught but the wailing of the wind and the sound of you creeping out of the tent and breaking the oath you made to me.”

Tabitha would have almost sworn she heard a note of hurt in that fierce, proud voice. She wanted to see his expression, but the moonlight pooled on the stairs below them, refusing to brave the shadows. “I slipped out of the tent because I heard a baby crying.”

“You should be ashamed, lass!” The raw bitterness in his voice stunned her. “Defiling my poor dead sister’s memory to shield your own greed! Do you think I’m as gullible and superstitious as those women in the village? I suppose next you’ll be trying to convince me the shade of my father is rising from his grave and the sky is teeming with witches.”

The word sent a faint tremor through her. A tremor she knew he must have felt, given their proximity. If they got any closer, her teeth were going to start chattering again. “If you don’t believe I heard crying, then why do you think I was wandering around this godforsaken ruin in the dead of night? For my aerobic benefit?”

“To rob me blind, of course. ’Twas a temptation you could not resist, I suppose. Knowing all the wealth of Ravenshaw sat moldering behind these castle walls, ripe for the picking. I knew you were the sort of woman to prey upon a man’s weakness the first time I laid eyes on you.”