The Highlander (29 page)

“You have a great many other titles,” she reminded him wryly.

“She doesna seem to be interested in those, either.” A fact he found he admired about Mena, though he'd gladly use them to get what he wanted from her if he thought it would help.

The woman shrugged. “Then be Liam Mackenzie,” she said simply. “The man.”

“I … doona ken who that is.”

“If she's a good woman, she'll help you find out.”

He could only shake his head as his heart became heavier and heavier in his chest. “She's been mistreated and she knows I'm a violent man. She's terrified of me…”

“And yet?” Mary prompted.

“She
yelled
at me,” he said incredulously. “It's been decades since anyone dared … she told me I couldna issue her orders, and that she was a woman with free and independent will. She called me an overbearing brute.”

“Oh, Lord.” She hid a laughing smile behind her fan. “What did ye say to that?”

“I kissed her. And she kissed me back.”

“Marry her, Liam,” she ordered, snapping the lace fan closed. “As soon as you can. Tomorrow if possible.”

“She'd not have me,” he said, rather dazedly.

“Doona be ridiculous, any woman would have you.” Mary regarded him curiously over a sip of her tea.

“Not her. She has secrets, painful ones. She avoids me, I think. But sometimes … she looks at me like…” Like she desired him. Like she understood him.

“Every woman has her secrets.” With an impatient sigh, Mary set her teacup next to his none too gently and rapped him on the knuckles with her closed fan to get his attention. “It
still
shocks me that this comes as a surprise to most men, adorable idiots that ye are, but doona ye ken a woman who is not after you for yer title and yer fortune needs to be wooed?”

“Wooed?” The word tasted as foreign in his mouth as the idea was to his thoughts. “Ye mean, gifts and jewelry—”

“Nay, dammit.” She pressed a beleaguered and dramatic hand to her forehead. “The most precious thing you can give a woman, a
worthy
woman, is intimacy, time, truth, safety, and friendship.”

“Friendship?” He lifted his own hand to his temple, pressing at the place where his head was starting to pound.

“Talk to her.
Know
her and let her know ye, as well. Intimacy is not only in the bedroom, ye know. To love each other, ye must first
like
each other. Do ye like her?”

Liam considered that. He liked the way she treated and talked with his children. He liked the way that, for such a practical woman, she was rather idealistic. He liked the way she ate, with as much relish as manners. He liked how she did her hair and the way she wrinkled her nose, the books she read, even the ones he didn't understand. He liked that he could spill his secrets to her in the dark, and she never shamed him. That she treated him with sympathy that never smacked of pity.

He liked what his heart did when he heard the clip of her shoes against the floors of his keep. In fact, he couldn't think of one thing that he
didn't
like about her.

Her secrets, he supposed. Whatever put the shadows behind her eyes and caused her to fear him.

“Aye,” he admitted. “I like her.”

“Then ye must go to her, claim her, right away.” She stood, as though ready to shoo him from her house.

“Ye make it sound so easy.” He stood as well, feeling large and encumbered in her dainty room.

“Nothing worthwhile is easy,” she quipped. “Ye helped to dismantle the East India Company. Ye've stormed castles and replaced entire regimes. Should she resist ye, lay siege to her defenses and scale her walls,
Lieutenant Colonel,
it's not as if ye doona ken how to do that.”

That drew a dry sound of amusement from him. “I canna go
now,
I have a weeklong summit to reside over here in Dingwall. It's an obligation to my kin and clan I canna ignore.”

“Then ye have a week to figure out how ye're going to win her heart, Laird Mackenzie, I suggest ye use it wisely.”

*   *   *

Russell had been right about the rain, Mena thought as she stood on the roof of Ravencroft Keep's northwest parapet and surveyed the festivities below her. The chilly October breeze whispered of moisture, but not a drop had fallen.

The Mackenzie laird had returned from Dingwall two days ago and, it seemed, had brought most of the Highlands home with him for the Samhain celebration. Mena hadn't the opportunity to see or speak to Ravencroft alone as he was always surrounded by guests or on some errand or another. Today he'd taken the children and the visiting lairds Monroe and Fraser with their families to the village of Fearnloch, leaving Mena to her own devices.

She'd spent the day helping poor harried Jani and the housekeeper, Mrs. Grady, with menial tasks to ease the burden of the household staff. Soon, though, she found herself more in the way than accommodating, and she sought a moment of solitude before the commencement of the evening's revelry.

Ravencroft had come alive with Highlanders, rustic and noble alike. Many of them slept indoors in any one of the lavish guest rooms, but more still pitched grand and colorful tents on the grounds, heating them with pungent peat fires and enough Scotch and ale to drown an entire ship of pirates.

Mena had Jani familiarize her with the plaids and flags proudly displayed on the tents and tartans of the people. Guests from the neighboring MacDonnell and MacBean clans feasted with the MacKinnon of Skye and the MacNeil of the Outer Hebrides. Campbells threaded among them, as did a few Ross and Frasier clansmen, as well.

Mena didn't own a Halloween costume, but she did don her black cloak with the fox-fur collar for the occasion, and settled it over her finest green silk dress.

With its looming red stone grandeur, extensive grounds, and spires that pierced the gothic gray skies, Ravencroft Keep was the perfect setting for the macabre holiday. Though, from what Mena could see from her vantage, the costumed carousers were much too cheerful to be considered ghoulish in the least.

Mena had been afraid of heights, once upon a time, but locked away in her tiny white room in Belle Glen, she'd gained more than a passing appreciation for the open sky. She'd yearned for it in the cruel hours of darkness. During times she'd been confined alone for the entirety of the day, she'd watched the sun move a tiny circle across the floor from a little porthole window that was too high to see out of. Those days she'd yearned for the beauty of a sunset, or a glimpse of a moonlit night.

Now Mena breathed in the fragrant evening air as she watched the sun dip below the trees and the isles beyond, wishing she could be the raven she'd spied soaring over the fires that dotted the autumn terrain of Wester Ross. Starting in the east, the sky had become black, the closest stars appearing as pinpricks on the eternal canvas of the Highland firmament. As she followed the arc of the dusky sky to the west, Mena observed the ribbon of azure still illuminating the horizon above the shadow of the Hebrides. The stars had only become a suggestion of light and Mena planned on remaining until the night sky shimmered with constellations as she'd only seen it do here in the Highlands.

The trees and stones of the keep sheltered those below from the biting wind, but where she stood on the balustrade, it teased wisps of her hair and the hem of her dress. Feeling silly and fanciful, Mena held open the seams of her cloak and let the breezes billow it out from her spread arms, imagining that she truly had wings.

The bitter chill sent a delicious thrill through her, and Mena let out a delighted gasp as she looked below her, the dizzying height intensifying her reckless sensation of freedom. If her body couldn't fly, at least her soul might, and she released it into the wind with a contented sigh.

Once the cold turned from invigorating to uncomfortable, she lowered herself to perch on the waist-high stone wall and play voyeur to the night.

The crash of the heavy tower door against the stone wall nearly shocked her out of her skin, and she almost flung herself backward onto the parapet's walkway.

Mena's heart threatened to leap out of her chest as Ravencroft stood framed by the stone arch, his shoulders heaving as though he'd run a great distance. He looked like some pagan deity, long ebony hair loose around his wide shoulders, but for two braids swinging from right above his temple. A linen shirt, dark vest, and kilt peeked from where his own cloak parted.

Onyx eyes gleamed at her, lit from below by the growing number of fires. His heavy boots made gravelly sounds as he stalked closer.

She should stand and curtsy, or turn and flee, but the abject relief in his eyes held her quite transfixed.

“I saw yer shadow on the roof,” he said as though out of breath. “Holding yer cloak out like ye meant to fly away, and I thought—”

Mena gasped and berated herself for her utter stupidity. She hadn't expected anyone to see her up here as the eastern sky behind her was dark. Apparently she'd still cast some sort of shadow, and anyone looking up at just the right moment might be worried that she'd fall from the roof.

Or jump, as the previous Lady Ravencroft had done.

Liam was out of breath now because he'd raced from the grounds below up to the towers to save her life.

“My Laird Ravencroft, I'm so very sorry,” she began earnestly. “I didn't at all mean to cause you distress, you must believe me … I would never … that is … I wasn't thinking…”

He stopped an arm's length from where she sat, twisting to face him. Shadows played off his flexing jaw as his gaze touched her from the top of her hair all the way down to the hem of her skirts as they rippled beneath her swinging feet from where she perched.

“Please forgive me,” she begged, searching his savage features for a sense of how angry she'd made him.

To her utter astonishment, his expression relaxed and his shoulders sagged, though the intensity never left his dark eyes.

“Lass, I'd forgive ye just about anything in that dress.”

Flushing, Mena pulled the edges of her cloak around her, sinking her neck into the fur collar and covering the deep cleft of her décolletage.

The laird frowned, but said nothing.

Unable to look at him and still maintain her breath, Mena turned back to the tableau beneath them, a pang of happiness tugging at her heart when she spied Andrew romping about the grounds with little Rune yapping at his heels.

“May I join ye?” Ravencroft murmured from beside her, his breath a warm puff of white against the growing chill of the evening.

“It's your castle,” she replied. She wished he wouldn't, and yet she didn't want him to leave. The last time she'd been alone with him she'd allowed him the most illicit liberties. Liam Mackenzie turned her into someone who was not herself. Every moment in his presence was fraught with intensity and heart-stopping emotion.

Mena didn't watch as he kicked his leg over the wall, and then the other, settling in next to her close enough that her shoulder pressed against his arm. She'd have to scoot away from him in order to maintain a respectable distance, and though the rules of conduct dictated that she should, it would still be unaccountably rude.

Either way she couldn't win, and Mena had the distinct impression that he'd put her in that position on purpose.

Glancing at him sharply from under her lashes, she found she could not look away. What must it be like, she wondered, to sit atop such a grand castle and lord over all that was below him? Every soul in the village, every grain in the field, every beast in the pasture all relied upon his land, his will, his honor, and his word. No wonder Ravencroft surveyed the scene with a look of fierce possession, as stolid and stony as a gargoyle, and every bit as formidable.

“This must be how the world looked in the beginning,” he observed in a voice as smooth as silk and hard as iron.

She knew exactly what he meant. What had life been like when the pleasures of night and the seduction of fire could culminate in orgiastic revelry that wasn't impeded by the structures of society?

“Perhaps this is what it will look like at the end,” she hypothesized, feeling strangely reckless as though the spirit of the holiday was somehow contagious.

“What
are
ye doing up here, Miss Lockhart?” he asked, without looking down at her. “Why are ye not with the others at the feast?”

Just as quickly as heat had abandoned her face, it crept back from beneath her cloak. “You'll think me ridiculous.”

“Never.” The sound escaped on an exhale of his, too soft to be a word, too deep to be a sigh.

“I find myself here often,” she confessed. “One of my favorite things in the world is to watch day turn into night. First the brilliance of the sunset, then the quiet blues of twilight, and then this final moment.” She tilted her head back to look above her, feeling the muscles in her throat slightly stretch in a pleasant way. “It's as though the sky disappears and some sort of heavenly curtain is pulled back, unveiling the stars. Some people find the night sky melancholy, but I've always thought of the stars as familiar as old friends, always right where they're supposed to be. It gives me a sense of the same, I think.” Mena lowered her chin, and glanced to the side where Ravencroft stared at her neck with the oddest of expressions before he lifted his unreadable eyes to hers.

“I told you.” She lowered her lashes, feeling self-conscious and very small next to him. “It's silly. Tedious, even.”

“Nay, I ken just what ye mean, lass.” Ravencroft leaned forward, his own neck arched to turn his face to the sky. “I feel as though I've been everywhere in this world. There were days at war, or on a ship, where I would think that maybe home was nothing more than a memory, or a dream. I would wake at night afraid that I'd forgotten where I hied from or who I truly was. I thought I'd lose Liam Mackenzie to the Demon Highlander. It was then I began to study the constellations.”