Teresa Medeiros - [FairyTale 02] (22 page)

When he spoke, it wasn’t in a clipped English accent, stripped of emotion, but in a lilting burr, rolling with passion. “You’d best leave this courtyard now if you wish to leave it alive, for there’ll be no beheading of dragons or burning of witches as long as a MacCullough is laird and master of Castle Weyrcraig.”

G
WENDOLYN
FROZE in the Dragon’s arms, trying to absorb the shock of hearing a voice she’d thought never to hear again. Too many late nights and too many cheroots might have deepened its timbre to a stranger’s smoky baritone, but its inflections were as familiar to her as the beating of her own heart.

Ross had paled as if he’d seen a ghost, but there was nothing spectral about the muscular arm wrapped around Gwendolyn’s waist.

The hours seemed to swirl backward, returning her to that elusive flicker of time when she had first stood in this very courtyard only a fortnight ago. The Dragon had emerged from his hiding place, his cloak billowing about his broad shoulders, smoke streaming from his nostrils. Gwendolyn had watched, unable to look away, as his face—that beautiful, terrible, impossible face— had melted out of the shadows.

It was a memory her logical mind had refused to trust. A memory denied her until this very moment.

Gwendolyn slowly turned in his arms.

Instantly she saw how foolish she’d been to mistake Bernard MacCullough for a mere mortal. Despite the spark of devilment that lit his emerald green eyes, his face possessed the rugged purity of an archangel’s. His strong brow was softened by a disheveled tumble of dark hair carelessly bound at the nape in a black velvet queue. His uncompromising jaw was compromised by the rueful humor of a mouth sculpted not for piety, but for pagan pleasures certain to tempt even the most virtuous of women.

His face bore no birthmark, no scar, no hideous deformity to mar its compelling planes, yet sun, wind, and dissipation had left their mark upon the boy he had been. Unable to stop herself, Gwendolyn touched her fingertips to the lines that furrowed his brow, the crinkles that fanned out from the corners of his eyes, the harsh grooves carved around his mouth. Instead of diminishing him, those hints of vulnerability only made him more beguiling.

She jerked her hand back, feeling betrayed to the very depths of her soul to discover that her beloved Dragon was no beast, but a beauty. She had always fancied herself smart, but he’d played her for an utter fool.

Unable to bear looking at him, yet unable to tear her gaze away, she began to back out of his arms.

He was no longer the slender boy she remembered. He was lean of hip, but taller and broader than she had ever envisioned him becoming. Although he was still bootless, and his shirt was hanging open over the
impressive expanse of his chest, his dishevelment only seemed to emphasize the power coiled in his taut muscles. The loaded pistol fit into the cradle of his hand as naturally as if he’d been born to wield it.

As she continued to back away from him, seeking to escape the inescapable, he caught her wrist with his free hand, wary now not of the mob, but of her. His eyes darkened as they searched her face. “I couldn’t leave you,” he said, his voice low and urgent. “I had to come back.”

It was almost more than Gwendolyn could stand, hearing the Dragon’s voice emerge from that treacherous mouth of his. “At least I didn’t have to wait fifteen years this time.”

As she tried to twist away, Bernard yanked her against him, betraying a flash of temper. He spoke through clenched teeth, keeping one eye on the gawking villagers. “I’m deeply sorry if my being alive offends you, Miss Wilder, but we’ve more important matters to attend to at the moment. Such as saving our hides.”

“And just what if I’m no longer sure yours is worth saving? What are you going to do then? “ She glanced at the pistol in his hand. “Shoot me?”

She almost wished he would. She hadn’t felt so humiliated since she’d tumbled out of that oak tree to land on his chest. She was beginning to wish she’d smashed him flat, sparing her the agony of falling in love with him, not once, but twice.

Before he could reply, Tupper came stumbling out of
the castle, rubbing his jaw. “Criminy, man, you didn’t have to ambush me. If you’d have just asked nicely, I wouldn’t have tried to stop you from jumping out of the longboat.”

Gwendolyn looked down. Bernard’s stockings and the lower half of his knee breeches were soaked with seawater and clinging to the already sinfully defined muscles of his calves and thighs.

“Dragon!” Every head in the courtyard jerked around as a lithe, dark-haired beauty came flying up the stairs to throw her arms around Tupper’s neck.

“Kitty!” Although a blush stained Tupper’s fair cheeks, he returned her embrace with touching fervency.

“Would that be your Kitty or his? “ Bernard murmured in Gwendolyn’s ear.

“I’m not sure anymore,” Gwendolyn said stiffly, watching Tupper nuzzle Kitty’s hair.

“How can that fellow be the Dragon?” Granny Hay jabbed a finger at Bernard. “I thought
he
was the Dragon.”

“Don’t be a fool,” Auld Tavis croaked, shuffling to the foot of the steps. “Anyone can see that he’s the MacCullough hisself returned from the grave to heap vengeance upon all our heads.”

At the old man’s dour pronouncement, several of the villagers sketched hasty crosses on their breasts while others began to retreat toward the courtyard gates. Until that moment, Gwendolyn had failed to fully
comprehend why the villagers had been so taken aback by the Dragon’s appearance. She, too, was shaken to realize that he had grown into the very image of his father.

“Ye’re the fool, auld man!” Ailbert shoved Tavis back into the crowd. “ Ye were with the rest of us when we climbed this very hill the mornin’ after Cumberland’s attack. The MacCullough was barely clingin’ to life even then.”

Gwendolyn stole a look at Bernard’s face. Its rugged planes had been wiped clean of all expression. The effect was chilling.

“The MacCullough couldn’t be alive.” Ailbert wheeled on the villagers, the passion in his voice mounting as if he sought to convince not only them, but himself. “We saw him draw his last breath! Heard him utter his last words!”

“May the dragon’s wings spell yer doom.” Bernard’s rich voice poured over the villagers, mesmerizing them where they stood.

And his fiery breath seal yer tomb.
May vengeance be upon yer heads
‘Til innocent blood be shed.

He finished his recitation with an indifferent shrug of his broad shoulders. “Although my father always thought of himself as more of a scholar than a poet, it wasn’t a bad effort.” His glittering gaze swept the
courtyard. “Especially when you consider that his life’s blood was seeping from his heart at the time he composed it.”

“Not the father, but the son,” Granny Hay breathed, clutching at the tarnished crucifix she hid beneath her shift.

“But we found yer body, too, lad,” Ailbert whispered. “All burned up in the corner o’ the great hall. I wrapped it in a shroud myself, draped it o’er the back o’ yer pony…. How… ?”

“Yes, how? “ Gwendolyn demanded fiercely.

Bernard shot her a loaded glance before stepping forward.

“I suspect the body you found was one of Cumberland’s scouts, mistakenly killed by the blast. By the time you discovered it, I was long gone. Taken prisoner by the English.”

With those five simple words, Bernard described a fate beyond any of their imaginings. Gwendolyn tried not to envision what that innocent, bright-eyed boy must have endured at the hands of his father’s enemies.

“It’s a miracle!” Shoving aside anyone unfortunate enough to be in her path, Ailbert’s wife came barreling up the steps. Throwing herself on her knees at Bernard’s feet, she snatched up his hand and began to press adoring kisses on the back of it. “At long last, God has rewarded us for our patience! Our laird has come back to us!”

As Bernard retrieved his hand and wiped it on his breeches, she backed away, all but genuflecting. Although
her performance set off a chain of agitated murmurs and halfhearted cheers, most of the villagers still looked more petrified than pleased. Except, Gwendolyn noted with a cynical snort, her older sisters. Glynnis’s eyes held the unmistakable glint of avarice while Nessa was eyeing Bernard as if he were the most succulent of beef briskets and she’d had nothing but potatoes to warm her belly for a very long time.

“He’s lying!” Ross stepped in front of his mother, his broad face ruddy with emotion. “Everyone knows the English took no prisoners. Not at Culloden and not here! He’s an imposter, aye, that’s what he is!” He gave Gwendolyn a contemptuous look. “And that whore over there is in league with him.”

One minute Ross was sneering up at her; the next he was plastered against the courtyard wall, the mouth of Bernard’s pistol jammed into the soft flesh beneath his jaw. Bernard’s voice was low, but clearly audible to every soul in the courtyard. “It astonishes me that in fifteen years you still haven’t learned how to address a lady. How many times do I have to warn you that I never forget an injustice done to one of my own? “

Ross’s eyes widened as he gazed up into the implacable face of the man who had been born to have absolute dominion over his fate. “ I never meant… I’m turribly sorry, sir…. F-f-forgive me… m-m’laird,” he stammered much as he had on that summer day so long ago.

It shook Gwendolyn to realize that Bernard must remember that day as keenly as she did. But why shouldn’t he? It had been his last day of freedom. The last day he
had roamed these Highland hills as master of his own destiny.

A dagger of grief twisted in Gwendolyn’s heart. As long as he had been a man without a past, she had been able to believe that they could share a future. But now that was impossible. The castle might have been spared the wrath of the mob’s torches, but her precious Dragon had died a fiery death, burned to ashes along with the rest of her dreams.

Ignoring Tupper’s and Kitty’s quizzical stares, she slipped down the steps and tapped Bernard on the shoulder. He slowly turned, allowing an ashen-faced Ross to scramble away.

Gwendolyn was caught off guard by the way he towered over her. She forced herself to meet his wary gaze, although she was more than a little afraid of catching a disarming glimpse of the boy she had once adored.

“There’s no need for you to defend me,
m’laird,”
she said. “I’m not yours and I never will be.”

Leaving the echo of her voice hanging in the stunned silence, Gwendolyn shoved her way through the crowd and out the gate, seeking to get as far away from him as her determined strides could carry her.

Gwendolyn sat on a rock, watching the tide come in. The waves were more subdued here, whispering instead of roaring. The chill spray misted her skin, but she was too numb to care. She wasn’t even sure how she
had ended up on this lonely stretch of beach. As soon as she had left the courtyard, she had broken into a run, only to realize that she had nowhere to run to. The village was as foreign to her as the castle had once been. She didn’t seem to belong anywhere anymore.

So she had veered away from the main road and followed a winding footpath around the castle and down the cliff. Once she’d reached the rocky strip of sand, she had walked for a long time, trying to escape the shadow of the castle.

It was no longer a dragon’s lair, but simply a crumbling ruin. Soon the gray light of dawn would creep over its burned-out chambers and shattered towers, ruthlessly exposing their ugliness. The night would be over, giving Gwendolyn no choice but to awaken from the beautiful dream she’d been living for the past fortnight.

She was gazing up at the cold and uncaring moon when she heard a soft footfall behind her. “You still haven’t learned how to properly thank someone for rescuing you, have you?”

Gwendolyn rose and slowly turned to find Bernard MacCullough standing barefoot in the sand a few feet away. The wind tugged at his shirt and ruffled his dark hair.

“I’m surprised you didn’t just let the villagers burn me,” she replied. “Then you’d have been spared all of this awkwardness.”