The Raven's Wish (15 page)

"Your own castle?"

He looked away, out over the dark hills. "I am laird, there," he said softly. "Laird of Dulsie, in Kintail." He rubbed his jaw. "So I have heard of the fairies who live in the hills. They play their music at night, and any human who hears may be lured inside, to dance forever." He cocked a brow at her.

She nodded. "A night is a hundred years. And the singing of the fairies is so beautiful, it cannot be resisted."

Looking at her, he tilted his head. "Your voice," he said softly, "could lure the fairies out of their hill."

"Hush! They are very jealous," she whispered.

His smile was an elusive, joyful thing in starlight, the smile of an elven king, clever and charming. When it faded, she longed to see it again. The weight of his arm pressed gently against her shoulder. He smelled of smoke and wind.

"And if we should fall asleep on this fairy knoll, would we be taken, as usually happens in such tales?" he asked. "What story is told of this place?"

She looked down. "Just that the fairies are here."

"Just that? Come now, I have lately been with your cousins. Surely you tell a tale as good as any of them."

She opened her mouth to speak, then stopped, afraid that he would laugh if she told him what she had believed as a child. She shook her head silently.

"There is something. Tell me." When she remained silent, he leaned over. His voice hummed through her chest, soft and deep, as much a lure as the fairies themselves. "Tell me, Elspeth Fraser."

She took a breath, hesitating, for the tale was precious to her. Yet his solid, warm presence was somehow comforting, patient and non-condemning. She wanted to tell him.

"When I was a small child," she said, "Robert would sometimes spend time here. We had the same mother, though he lived with his Gordon kin." She saw him nod. "He told me that our mother went into this hill and disappeared after I was born."

"He told you that she was taken?"

She shook her head. "He said that she returned to her real home through here. He said that she was a fairy lady, who left her baby daughter and little son and returned to her own kind."

"Ah." He did not laugh. "Robert was very young. He told you his own fantasy."

"But when I was small, I thought it true. Robert said that our mother sang sweetly, which was proof of her fairy magic."

"Then you have your mother's voice."

She shrugged. "I never knew her. But I did come here when I was young, hoping to hear her. Robert laughed at me when he found out." She looked down, feeling a twinge of that old hurt. "I never heard a sound but the birds and the wind, and yet...." She felt a little embarrassed, but went on. "I used to imagine that her voice was in the wind, singing for me." A blush heated her cheeks; she had never spoken to anyone of her wish to hear her mother's voice out of the fairy hill.

"You wanted some part of your mother—even if it was only the sound of her voice."

She nodded, and tears stung her eyes, startling her. She blinked them away. Surprised that she had told a childhood secret to Duncan, she realized that she felt deeply at ease with him. She knew, somehow, that he would guard her inner thoughts.

"If your mother were in this fairy hill, she would be happy to know that you sing as well as any of her kind."

"Do you think so?"

"I do," he said. "As well or better than any of her kind."

Elspeth leaned forward to stop his mouth at the boast. He took her hand, laughing softly. "Would you silence me?" he teased. "Surely I may say that much."

"They are old beliefs, and perhaps foolish. I have never seen a fairy, in truth."

He brushed a strand of curling hair away from her brow. "Have you not?" he asked. In the deep light, his eyes were the dark blue of the night sky.

Suddenly she remembered her first sight of Duncan Macrae. She had seen him—or a vision of him—riding the crest of a hill. He had resembled one of the
daoine sìth
. Now, in the shadows, he looked like a magical king, tall and strong and darkly beautiful.

The haunting memory of the other vision glimmered suddenly. She squeezed her eyes shut, willing the awful image to be gone. She did not want to see it, not here. Not now.

Keeping her hand tucked in the warm cocoon of his fingers, Duncan looked toward the castle, where tiny sparks of torchlight glowed. He tugged gently on her hand and rose to his feet, pulling her up. His other arm came around her back. "Come, Elspeth. I will take you back to Glenran."

Elspeth looked up. Deep inside, in that instant, some vulnerable center opened in her. He stood over her, black cloak whipping like the spread of dark wings, his eyes a match to the night. She stared up, her gaze as open as a flower.

He tipped her chin up with a finger. Shivers coursed through her body. She stood there, not powerless to stop him, only unwilling; she suddenly wanted his touch, his closeness. Her own need held her there. The small voice that might have cautioned her to stay away from this man was silent.

He lowered his head. Hesitantly she moved forward. He touched his lips to hers. His eyelids drifted shut and he touched his mouth to hers again, a warm and gentle pressure. Sliding an arm around his neck, she felt his hair, smooth and cool, stream through her fingers. Her heartbeat seemed to expand, drumming through her blood, through her belly, into her knees.

When his tongue etched a delicate path along her upper lip, she arched her throat, her small gasp lost beneath the cover of his mouth. Each kiss became deeper and fuller than the last, heady and sweet. She drank them in like fine subtle wine.

Drawing a breath, she wrapped her arms around him, feeling the rapid pound of his heart against her breasts. He touched his lips to her cheek, to the underside of her jaw, tracing a gentle path. The sensation curled through her entire body.

His fingertips lighted on the bare skin of her throat, moving softly downward, tracing gentle arcs as the heel of his hand brushed the top of her breast. She shuddered, pressing forward, feeling uncertain, wanting more.

He kissed her again. She threaded her fingers into his hair, exploring, and found the firm shape of his ear, the angle of his jaw, the strength of his shoulders. She kept her eyes closed and only felt, keenly and without thought, the warm, moist comfort of his lips; the feather touches over her throat, her jaw, in her hair; the harsh of his beard against her cheek.

"Elspeth," he murmured, his breath soft on her brow. "I had not thought that this would happen."

"Nor did I," she said, trying to pull her ragged thoughts into coherence. Her heart surged, fear overcoming wonder. "Leave now, Duncan. Please. Leave me, leave the Highlands."

He took her face in his hands. She felt the pulse of his heart in his fingertips. "Elspeth Fraser," he said softly. "Deal truthfully with me."

She nodded slowly.

"That day at the stream—"

"Hush you," she said. Her fingers trembled as she touched them to his cheek. A swoop of dread rushed through her. "Do not speak of that."

"Listen to me. Was that vision a ruse to send me away? Surely you knew that I was coming here."

She hesitated, and took her hand from his face. Her breath slowed, and she set her chin high. "It was a vision," she said.

He sighed. "I want to know what you saw." He moved his hand to her arm.

She wanted very much to tell him, to purge the raw, hurtful image that burned like a poison in her brain. But she was afraid, as if speaking of it would engrave the vision indelibly into his future and make it irreversibly real.

She shook her head. "I will not tell you."

Then, swift and sure, his hand grasped the back of her head, his fingers clutching into her thick hair, pulling back her head, not hurting her, but firm, as if he controlled a wave of anger.

"You spoke of death, and a raven. You have warned me to leave or face tragedy. I have listened to it all. And now I want the truth from you."

"Leave me be on this," she whispered.

"I cannot. Speak, and I will listen, and the thing will be done between us. Seers, in my experience, are usually eager to spread their wisdom. You, however, are not."

"In your experience?"

"I have heard something of my future, from a crone who lived in Kintail when I was a boy," he said. "None of it ever frightened me. None of it has ever happened. Now speak."

"What did she tell you?"

He huffed out a breath of exasperation and released her hair. "Chaff and rubbish. I have forgotten."

She looked away. "Perhaps I have, too."

"You have not." He looked at her thoughtfully. "At the stream, that day, you looked at me as if—" he stopped.

Elspeth glanced up at him. "As if what?" she asked.

His fingers traced a gentle line along her jaw. Her knees gave slightly, and her breath quickened.

"You looked at me as if you loved me beyond any other," he said. "As if your heart were mine alone. I want to know why. Tell me what you saw."

Her heart seemed to tumble to her toes and bound back up again. She wanted to reach out to him, but squeezed her fingers tight against her sides.

"What was it, Elspeth Fraser?" His voice was deep, compelling.

"You will face the heading block if you stay here. That is what I saw for you." The words tumbled out on a half-sob, a poor gift to return for his lush kisses, for his gentle touch.

He stared at her. A wind lifted at his hair, but he stood still as granite.

"Leave here," she said wearily. "Go to Dulsie, or go to Edinburgh, but leave this place."

"Whatever you saw, girl, it will not affect me, because I do not believe it."

She sighed and drew her plaid around her, then slowly walked away from him, down the slope toward Glenran.

She had felt something between them, just as he had, ever since that first moment at the stream. Her life was fastening to his, inexorably, like a weaving of silver threads. Each word, each look, each touch was another filament in the bond. Aware that it was happening, she felt powerless against its progress.

And yet she feared now that such a bond would destroy them both. She walked on, without looking back.

Chapter 9

O winna ye pity me, fair maid?

O winna ye pity me?

O winna ye pity my poor steed,

Stands trembling at yon tree?

~"The Broom of Cowdenknows"

"Here, Lasair, dip in the water," Duncan said patiently. "The cold will do you good. Stay there, now," he said, and pushed down on his horse's leg when Lasair pulled his tender hoof out of the cold, shallow burn.

Duncan sighed loudly. "Try to keep in the water for at least a moment, my friend. I have no remedy but this for you." The horse cocked one ear in confusion and snorted testily, but complied. Patting Lasair's shoulder, Duncan urged the horse's nose downward for a drink.

Having spent the morning composing a carefully worded letter to the chief of the MacDonalds, which he had then presented to Robert Gordon, Duncan had witnessed Robert's signature. After Hugh had summoned a running gillie to deliver the letter to the MacDonalds, Duncan had saddled Lasair and had ridden out alone.

A hard gallop over moorland had cleared his mind and lightened his mood, but before long his horse had caught a stone in the soft inner part of the hoof. The bruised area, Duncan knew, had to be quite painful. The limping horse would have to be led back to Glenran.

"There,
mo caraid
, my friend, the water helps, I think," he murmured. He realized then that he had spoken aloud in Gaelic, as easily and naturally as he once had as a child, with no careful thought preceding the words. He smiled ruefully, recalling how Alasdair Fraser had urged him to allow the Highland part of his character greater freedom.

Briefly he imagined Alasdair at Dulsie Castle, seated around the table in the hall with Duncan's own family. Mairi, who was Duncan's sister and Alasdair's wife, would be there with their children, as would his grandmother and his young sister Kirsty. Three years had passed since he had seen Mairi, who had once accompanied Alasdair on a visit to Edinburgh. Kirsty had been little more than a babe, willful and pretty, when he had left; he doubted she much remembered him now.

He had not seen his grandmother since the day he had left Dulsie without her blessing. He sighed again, remembering how much he had loved her as a boy. Now he wondered how much she had aged, and if her health had withstood the years; and he wondered if she was still so very angry with him.

Smoothing a hand over Lasair's glossy black withers, he waited a few minutes longer while the horse's hoof soaked. Then he picked up the reins and tugged gently to lead the horse out of the shallow stream and slowly up the shoulder of a broad hill.

Reaching the top, he saw a wide view of the great loch off to the east, its surface gleaming like dull pewter beneath the overcast sky. Pushing back the hair that whipped over his brow, Duncan turned for Glenran, barely visible in the far distance.

Then he stopped, laying a hand on the horse's neck, and swore softly. On the moor below, he saw a cluster of Highlanders on horseback. Narrowing his eyes, keeping still, he watched cautiously, wondering if these men could be MacDonalds.