Draycott Everlasting Page 7

  There could never be enough testing. The king was a suspicious man, and his courtiers were far worse. A Highlander would never be welcomed in an English court. Only his sword was needed—and then only when the king chose his next victim.

  Something bleak filled MacLeod’s eyes.

  No matter. He would wring the truth from the spy before dawn streaked the eastern sky or he would forsake his honor as a knight. She would soon learn the price of treachery.

  “These lands are my demesne, woman. You hold this lie at your peril.”

  “Glenbrae House is mine.” Her eyes flashed in fury and outrage. “I’ll fight you in court if I have to. My purchase was made without liens or limits on the date you see on that sheet of parchment you’re crushing.”

  Clever, she was. Bold as a Saracen, too. MacLeod turned to the window, his mind raging. So she did not accede.

  Very well. MacLeod had faced treachery too many times to quail before it now.

  Outside, the wind gusted. Darkness swallowed the hillside while rain slid down the fine, leaded panes.

  As he watched, the drops blurred and the room grew hot. “End these tricks, witch.” He released her throat; the parchment slipped from his fingers. His hands were shaking, and he shaped them into fists. “You’ll nae win against me.”

  Suddenly the walls began to spin. MacLeod fought a gray tide of dizziness, feeling the floor pitch.

  But his struggle was in vain. She was a worthy foe, this woman with green cat’s eyes and hair like windblown silk. Her power was great.

  Crusader, he was, sworn enemy of all evil. Why did duty and honor suddenly seem so distant and unimportant?

  “Are you…all right?”

  Her husky whisper fascinated him. The Scotsman swayed, unable to stand, unable to bear the worry in her voice. Darkness clawed at his reason, opening soft arms of treachery.

  And then for Ronan MacLeod, reason was no more. Pain was no more. All the world lurched and slid away into shadow.

  “HE JUST COLLAPSED,” Hope said breathlessly, one arm beneath MacLeod’s shoulders as Gabrielle and Jeffrey appeared, soaked, in the hall.

  “Who is he?”

  “Never mind who. What is he?” Jeffrey asked suspiciously.

  “Just help me get him into bed,” Hope said.

  “Where do you want to take him?”

  “To the Blue Room, I guess.” Hope struggled beneath the man’s weight. “He weighs a ton, and I’m going to need your help.”

  “Where did he come from?” Jeffrey grunted as he shouldered his share of the stranger’s weight.

  “From the orchard, as near as I could see. And before that, from the cliffs to the north.”

  “He could have been killed,” Jeffrey muttered.

  “That’s what I thought. But I was having my own problems at the time—the roof gave way and I nearly broke my neck.”

  Gabrielle scowled. “You should not go alone to the roof. It is too dangerous.”

  “But nothing happened. He came riding out of the storm and caught me.”

  “Riding? Riding on a horse?” Jeffrey glanced uncertainly at the stranger.

  “Saddle, bridle and all. And his timing was perfect,” Hope said.

  There was a sudden whirring at the door and something swept past her shoulder. “There you are, Banquo.” A gray parrot soared into the room, long wings spread. “I thought you’d been caught out in the storm.”

  “It would serve him right,” Jeffrey muttered. “Always shrieking nonsense.”

  The gray parrot tilted his head and fanned out his thoroughly sodden feathers. “Thunder and lightning. Thunder and lightning.”

  “You’re got that much right,” Jeffrey muttered. “Though I still contemplate a nice bowl of parrot stew.”

  “Shame on you,” Gabrielle scolded. “Banquo is one of the family, and you’d better remember that. He’s been here at Glenbrae as long as Hope has.”

  “Maybe that’s why he’s so arrogant.” Jeffrey shot a dark look at the parrot. “You’re not out of the woods yet, Banquo.” Then his eyes narrowed as he studied the stranger. “Any explanation for all this chain mail?”

  Panting, Hope helped Jeffrey negotiate the landing in the new section of the house. She refused to consider taking the steep old tower stairs with so much weight to carry. “Beats me. All I know is he saved my life.” She frowned, remembering the man’s strange accusations. “Even though he was acting very odd before he passed out….”

  “If you ask me, anyone who rides around in a storm wearing chain mail and plate armor has to be more than a little dim,” Jeffrey muttered.

  Hope still couldn’t forget that the unknown rider had saved her life. She wished she had more answers. He had been angry and imperious, but his confusion had been equally clear. “What were the roads like?”

  “Don’t ask. The electricity is out all the way to Glenbrae. There were no lights and no other traffic.” Jeffrey laughed darkly. “The car stalled twice in the mud and we were damned lucky to make it back in one piece. But enough of our woes. Why were you on the roof?”

  “Trying to keep the attic from flooding. Not that I was very successful.” Hope caught a breath as they reached the top of the stairs. MacLeod twisted and muttered hoarsely, but did not wake. “The corner of the eaves gave way and that’s when Sir Galahad appeared—horse, gauntlets and all.” Staggering, she took the last wobbly steps into the blue bedroom. It was one of her favorite rooms, with high oriel windows overlooking the orchards. Banquo flew off to preen his feathers on the sill as they deposited their burden facedown on the bed.

  “Did he tell you his name?”

  “We didn’t get around to detailed introductions,” Hope said, tugging at the man’s loose black garment. “All he said was that he was a MacLeod. Hardly surprising, in this part of Scotland.” She didn’t even want to think about his insistence that Glenbrae House was his. She stared at the wet cloth clinging to his muscled shoulders. “Bring the candle closer, will you, Gabrielle? I can barely see.”

  Light flickered, gilding the stranger’s body as Hope pulled away the black outer garment.

  “The man has a strange fashion sense, that’s for certain.” Jeffrey shook his head at the heavy armor beneath the long tunic. “You’re going to need help getting all that metal stuff off him. Amazing how authentic they can make this fake stuff, right down to the dents and rust. Do you have any idea how heavy armor was?”

  “I think we’re going to find out,” Hope muttered. Together they tugged the metal plates over the man’s torso. Both of them were sweating by the time the job was done.

  “Big, isn’t he?”

  “Too big,” Hope murmured.

  “But with a very nice body,” Gabrielle added, peeking over Hope’s shoulder.

  Hope hid a smile as Jeffrey’s scowl deepened. In all honesty, she had to agree with Gabrielle. Their sleeping visitor filled the bed, and even then his feet hung over the edge. Hope was about to start on his shoes—some kind of free-form leather boots—when her gaze rose to his back.

  Candlelight outlined rows of ridged muscles and black hair that waved along his shoulders. But Hope’s breath caught as she looked lower.

  There the marks began. Old wounds covered his neck and shoulders, slashes that might have come from a knife or a broader blade. Hope counted six scars alone between his shoulder blades.

  “My God, the man is a walking checkerboard,” Jeffrey whispered. “Maybe he’s a soldier home from some kind of secret mission.”

  “Riding a horse?” Hope countered unsteadily.

  Jeffrey shrugged. “Hey, you never know.”

  “He saved my life. I know that much.” As Hope stared at the old scars, the room blurred, and she turned away, unable to bear the sight of the jagged marks. “I’ll leave him to you, Jeffrey. You can take off the rest of that metal stuff and put him under the covers. Irritating or not, he deserves a good night’s rest.”

  “I’m glad he’s already asleep. I wouldn’
t want to tangle with him while he was awake.” Jeffrey clicked his tongue. “But I still don’t understand what he was doing out in the storm in complete medieval armor.”

  Hope didn’t know either. And by the look of the man dead asleep on the bed, she wasn’t going to find out until morning.

  Lightning flickered over the steel-gray hills. Wind gusted down the glen, rushing through the orchard and wrapping around the old house.

  Hope finally drifted into sleep, dimly aware of disturbing dreams, while in a room nearby, the stranger twisted and threw pillow and covers from the bed.

  Downstairs in the kitchen, Banquo settled on his perch and hopped from foot to foot. “Mark, King of Scotland,” he muttered, one eye on the dark window. “Mark the night.” With a shrill cry, he tucked his head beneath one wing and spoke no more.

  And in the rushing darkness at the foot of the glen, a light flashed twice, then abruptly disappeared.

  HONORIA GLARED at the rain streaking the windows. “It’s begun, hasn’t it, Pet?”

  Her sister rocked on before the fire, strangely calm. “Almost certainly. I can’t remember a storm of this magnitude anytime in the past fifty years. Maybe even in this century.” Perpetua’s eyes narrowed. “Done well and fine, it is. The MacLeod has finally come back to Glenbrae. And now the rest begins.”

  “What do you see, Pet?” Morwenna’s face glowed with excitement in the firelight.

  “Clear, it is. How it begins—and how it will end.” Rain struck the windows, as if to underscore her words. Her eyes slid half closed as she focused on inner visions. Drawing a deep breath, she began to chant.

  “Fire at morning, fire in rain.

  Night cannot hold, nor forest gain.

  The page is turned, the mystery clear.

  The ghost of Banquo no more to fear.”

  Morwenna heaved a sigh of delight. “I do so love a good mystery. We’ll have one now, all of us. The King’s Wolf is back and he’ll set everything topsy-turvy.” She hugged her arms to her chest. “I can barely wait. And your poetry is wonderful, Pet.”

  Perpetua closed her eyes and chuckled. “Aye, the MacLeod is back. He’s brought the poetry with him. He’s her miracle, sure enough. Now Hope O’Hara’s going to have to figure out what to do with him.”

  AS DAWN TOUCHED the glen’s eastern slopes, Ronan MacLeod thought neither of destiny nor mystery. Instead he was remembering a pair of upturned eyes and a full, expressive mouth. They would be soft, those lips, sweet with a hint of raspberries. They would open, clinging to him as she sighed and urged him closer to…

  Scowling, MacLeod stood up sharply.

  The floor spun and his legs shook. By the Holy Bones, he was mad. He had a queer memory with images that did shake his very reason. First was a storm from hell itself and then a leap that had carried him from the cliffs into bleakest death.

  But instead of death he had found a woman, her face like dawn and her smell a thing of springtime and youthful dreams.

  More poetry, the Crusader thought in disgust. There was no woman, only a nightmare wrought by his exhaustion.

  Stark naked, he stretched and studied the curious piece of furniture beneath him. He would have called it a bed, but it had far too much padding, even with half the drapings tossed aside. In the future he resolved to sleep on the floor. Such softness was for women and sick old men.

  He wound his long length of patterned wool about his waist, belting it tightly. By habit he slid his sword into its leather sheath, then strode out into the hall, looking for the garderobe.

  No one was about. All was gray in the quiet of predawn.

  By honor, why was the house yet so still? Where were the servants stirring at the fire and horses neighing in the forecourt?

  Then MacLeod froze, feeling the same uneasiness as he had felt in the storm.

  Something was wrong.

  He found his way to the tower stairs at the end of the house and stared down into the gloom. The tower was the same, as were the broad stone steps leading downward.

  But as MacLeod reached out with his left hand, he swayed and nearly fell. By all the saints, who had moved the stair rope? It always hung on the left, giving him full use of his right hand, which was his sword hand. Whoever had ordered this change would soon answer to him.

  He searched in the gloom and found a rope strung down the opposite side of the stone staircase. But instinct whispered that this was no simple mistake.

  He ran a hand over his forehead and felt his fingers tremble. A sense of treachery wrapped around him. Had his nightmares been real after all?

  He strode down the hallway and jerked open the first door, watching shadows flicker over odd pieces of furniture in unfamiliar colors. Square wall designs glinted, covering patterns of cloth in stitches he had never seen. Books lay everywhere on neat shelves, more leather and paper than MacLeod had ever seen in one place before. Beneath the books, fragile bowls of colored glass held flowers for which he knew no names.

  All unfamiliar.

  Darkness clawed at his reason.

  To the next room he went, and thence to three others, and each room told the same tale. Strange, all strange. Colors and shapes confounded his senses. Objects fought against his very reason. Was it to hell he’d come or a haven meant for madmen?

  He stood in the last doorway, one shoulder pressed against the cold wood. Even the smells were wrong. No woodsmoke drifted. No herbs and dried rushes covered the floor.

  Strange, all strange.

  He closed his eyes, making the sign of the cross for protection.

  The house seemed to mock him, for it was the same yet not the same. Dizziness twisted his mind, and he knew if he moved from the door, he would fall.

  Seven centuries gone past?

  No, it was purest madness. But the evidence was before him now, glinting in every shadowed room. How could he fight the terrible proof of his eyes? This was the same house he had left before the storm—yet now its differences were stark.

  Rain struck the roof. MacLeod stiffened as fingers softly brushed his arm. He wanted no more contact or dialogue with the spy. How had she wrought such changes here in a single night? Glenbrae House had been his first home in decades, a place where he had hoped to find contentment.

  Now all hope of that was vanished.

  “I’m sorry. Truly I am.”

  She was a flawless performer, MacLeod thought. There seemed to be genuine regret in her voice.

  “Sorry for what?” he said bitterly. “That you have failed in your mission to shake my hold on reason?” He laughed tightly. “Edward makes no reward to those who fail him, as you will learn soon enough.”

  “You really believe that Edward is still king, don’t you?” she whispered.

  MacLeod stared off into the gray clouds where lightning flickered coldly. “So he was when last I saw him, in the flesh at his court but two weeks ago.”

  There was a soft catch in her throat. “I…don’t know what to say.”

  In truth there was nothing left to say, the Crusader thought grimly. Either the woman lied or he had lost all reason, and he refused to accept the second possibility. “The bailiff sent you here to cozen me.”

  “There is no bailiff at Glenbrae House.”

  MacLeod laughed darkly. “Then perhaps the king selected you as my wife. He has threatened often enough that he might, if I did not choose on my own. Have you come from the court to tie the knot about me?”

  Her voice hardened. “I don’t know any kings. Even if I did, I would marry for no reason but my heart’s desire.”

  “Spoken like a woman.” MacLeod sank back against the door frame. The rain seemed to streak inside his eyes, blinding him. No, this tale of hers could not be true. She had been sent to befuddle him with her heady scent and expressive eyes, a seasoned spy in Edward’s employ.

  But what if her words were true…?

  Then all the world he knew was gone. All the people he trusted were turned to dust. And he had no home left,
no king to serve and no village to protect.

  The thought was a dagger to his flesh.

  “What magic have you worked?” he whispered hoarsely, burying his fingers in her hair and hauling her against his chest. “Speak me the truth now, witch, before I squeeze the last breath from your lips.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  HOPE SAW THE ALARM harden his mouth and fill his eyes, overshadowing the anger. She had come from her room, wakened by the sound of slamming doors and muttered oaths, only to find her visitor struggling to stay upright. If not for the fear in his eyes, she would have sworn she was dealing with a madman.

  “Tell me,” MacLeod repeated roughly.

  But his fear held her, tempering her own anger. “I’m no witch. I doubt such creatures exist. I almost died in the storm, remember? If I could make magic, I would have used it, believe me.”

  “Perhaps weakness was your greatest trick.”

  Sticks and gravel rattled at the window. The house creaked around them, rocked by lashing winds.

  Hope stared deep into his eyes, looking past the worry and the anger, willing him to believe her. “These things I have said are true. Hurting me won’t change that.”

  He looked down at his hands, now locked around her wrists. “Hurting you was not my purpose.” He closed his eyes, a shudder working through his body. “Nothing I do is as I plan. Why is it all so different?”

  “Different in what way?”

  He made an angry, impatient sound. “In every way. The colors are too bright. The smells are flat, too sweet. You have glass everywhere, too many books. And the colored walls…” He fought for control. Then, very gently, he ran his hands over her wrists. “I ask your forgiveness for any harm I have given. It shames me, and I will undertake penance for giving you pain.”

  He was deadly serious, Hope saw. “I’ll be fine. Just don’t plan on trying anything like that again.”