A Kind of Magic (19 page)

She had dived into the cold water by the time he got there but Rowan did take the hint. He stripped off his kilt and plunged in after her. The water was freezing, nearly as cold as the sea the day before, but like the day before he was powerfully motivated to ignore any discomfort. There was someone he was determined to get to, another rescue of a sort to perform. If he were trying to save a life, it was his own, by grasping hold of something, someone, he suddenly realized he wanted very much.

She was a good swimmer, was his Maddie, as good as he was, and it turned into a chase. One that he won when he hid himself in some rushes growing near the shore and waited for her to come by. She laughed when he grabbed her around the waist and tossed her up on the shore, that was a good sign. Rowan followed after and she watched him come out of the water as she lay on the grass propped up on her elbows.

He liked how she looked, wearing nothing but bands of cloth around her breasts and loins and the necklace that she never seemed to take off. The wet cloth was very nearly transparent. In a few moments he intended to have her bare but for the necklace. He had it in mind to count the freckles that covered her from head to toe one by one, count them and kiss them and lick all the cool water from her fine, fresh skin.

110

A Kind of Magic

He glanced for a moment at the nearby heap of his discarded clothing but abandoned the idea of using his dagger to divest Maddie of what little modesty she had left. He wasn’t interested in frightening the woman to satisfy his impatience.

Maddie watched the naked man approach in a combination of panic and anticipation. She couldn’t look away, she couldn’t stop the bold, inviting smile that pulled at her lips. She had no control over the heat growing deep inside her, over the pleasant, aching heaviness of her breasts. She felt totally out of control and for once she didn’t mind.

Rowan Murray, his skin sleek with water, his hair slicked back away from his long, strong face, was suddenly the center of her world. When he smiled as he knelt beside her, she gasped with delight. It took her breath away, and a moment later he gave it back when he kissed her. Her lips clung to his and drank him in, opened beneath the gentle urging of his tongue and let him explore with a growing sense of wonder and longing.

The kiss went on and on, her eyes closed, her head somehow coming to rest on the strong support of his arm. Maddie lost track of where she was and just about everything else until a strong tug on one of her bra straps brought her back to some awareness of the world.

“What the—oh. Let me.”

Her bra was a practical, functional garment made of cotton, elastic and plastic boning with wide straps that fastened with a row of four metal hooks and eyes. It took a lot of engineering to comfortably support her size D cups. While a medieval male had no practice at undressing a twenty-first-century woman, it only took her a few seconds to liberate herself of the brassiere.

Rowan watched how she took off the offending rag so he would know how to rid her of the thing in the future. “Good,” he whispered huskily when she was free of it, and buried his face in the deep cleft between her breasts.

Maddie felt his lips on the side of her breast then the long, slow, slide of his tongue as his mouth traveled up to settle over one hard nipple. She threw back her head, eyes closed, totally immersed in sensation. While his mouth claimed her breast, his hands stroked over the rest of her, caressing, exploring, teasing, even.

It was nice. So nice that she forgot to be frightened, forgot to feel awkward and ungainly. She liked the way she felt when he touched her, loved the way he felt when she touched him. He was all hard muscle—she liked his masculine scent and fuzzy chest. The scratch of his unshaved cheeks against her softer skin was pure sensuality, like the slightly rough texture of a cat’s tongue, only sexier. If all this touching and tasting and sharing was what sex was all about, she didn’t know why she’d always found the prospect of it so daunting. It was intimate, it was sharing, it was the ultimate in vulnerability—and it was
nice
.

She touched him, a lot, in all sorts of places. She couldn’t manage to do it with her eyes open, she wasn’t ready for that just yet, but she liked finding out about his body in 111

Susan Sizemore

a purely tactile way. She like the firm ripple of muscle beneath his skin. She liked all the different textures that made up Rowan Murray, from silky smooth to hard and rough.

She liked the taste of him as well when she ventured to kiss him on the mouth and throat and his small, hard nipples.

All the time she tentatively explored Rowan, Rowan kept kissing her. He kissed her mouth, her face, throat, breasts, belly, thighs. He kissed her in places she hadn’t been absolutely sure she had until his lips found them and left her squirming and arching and begging for more. She wasn’t sure where her underwear had gotten to and she certainly didn’t mind its absence. What she liked was how she felt as she opened herself to Rowan’s exploring fingers and mouth. She whimpered when he pulled away then he kissed her mouth again and she tasted herself as their tongues played urgently over each other.

While they kissed, his fingers slid over her shoulders, her throat, between her breasts and back up. They tangled in the chain around her throat.

Maddie screamed.

She arched away from the hands on her throat and kept screaming as she curled around herself, blind with agony and fear.

There was nothing Rowan could do.

He heard the shuffling movements and the wet snuffling of the Questing Beast coming from the trees even over Maddie’s cry of pain. He dove for his sword while he fought both his need and his urge to help the woman writhing in pain on the ground.

He wanted to help her but first he had to protect her from the monster that had come hunting them.

He cursed his carelessness, he cursed his shunning of responsibility for the sake of pleasure. If he’d remembered that he’d come to the hills to hunt this thing, it wouldn’t have found them first, found him unprepared.

Naked, half rattled by desire, he put himself between Maddie and the beast and raised his sword.

112

A Kind of Magic

“Do you want to tell me just what the hell happened?”

Rowan pointed at the dead animal as Maddie scrambled to her feet. He tossed her clothes to her. “Hurry. The fair folk sent the beast. You passed out while I fought it.”

Maddie put a hand to her aching neck. “Fair folk, my butt. What did you do to me?”

“They’re looking for you.” He grabbed her arm. She shook it off. “Get dressed, woman! We have to ride!”

Maddie noticed that he had his kilt back on. She didn’t know how long she’d been out. Long enough for him to dispatch another one of those strange animals, she saw, and roll himself back into his Highland garb. She did know that she wasn’t going to stand here buck-naked while she argued with him. So she turned her back on him and got dressed. Her throat felt burned, her head ached. Worst of all was the humiliation of knowing Rowan hadn’t wanted her, he’d just wanted to make a point.

When she was done, she turned back and found that he was already on his horse.

He looked around as if he were anxious about something. “Come on. We must go.”

She knew he was capable of practical jokes. She hadn’t thought he’d hurt her though. “What did you do?” she demanded. “Hit me on the head? Choke me with the necklace?”

He looked outraged. “I just saved your life.” He glared down at her. “Do I have to tie you to the horse, Maddie?”

“I’m not going anywhere with you, you scumbag. All right, I hit you on the head, I kneed you in the groin and you wanted to get even.” She braced her legs apart and pointed an accusing finger at him. “I did what I did because I said no and you wouldn’t stop.” She pointed at the ground, to the trampled spot in the heather where they’d lain together. “What we were doing was consensual. I thought it was. I thought you wanted me but you were just setting me up. You had no business doing anything like—” She stopped talking and began to back quickly away when Rowan got down off his mount and stalked purposefully toward her. “What are you doing?”

He spoke slowly and very firmly. “Be silent.” He grabbed her by the shoulders and his icy gaze bored into hers. “You are being hunted.”

“What?”

“The fair folk want you back. You belong to me.”

“I do not!”

“Silence.” He looked around as if he really believed there was someone hunting them.

113

Susan Sizemore

“Stop trying to frighten me. Stop trying to make me think you’re protecting me from imaginary little men.”

“They aren’t little, they aren’t all manlike. There are monsters among them, Maddie. They’ll not have you.”

His words sent a shiver through her. She fought the sudden fear. She fought believing him. This was just some sort of cruel joke. When he touched a finger to her necklace, she asked, “How did you know it would do that? Why did you hurt me?”

Much to her annoyance, she heard the hurt in her voice. She was fighting tears as well.

She hated that he’d brought out this sort of wimpy behavior in her. “Let go of me.”

He didn’t. He pulled her over to her horse and forced her to mount. He swung up onto his horse but grabbed her reins before she could try to ride away from him.

“Where are we going?” she demanded as they sped farther from the lake.

He didn’t answer for a long time. When he finally looked back at her, all he said was, “The White Lady.”

* * * * *

“How could she think I tried to hurt her?”

“Did you?”

Rowan stopped pacing back and forth in front of the White Lady. He gaped at the woman’s cool question. He’d dragged Maddie here for shelter and to seek counsel from the person who’d brought them together. She’d greeted them with a calm nod as he’d pushed Maddie through the doorway and hurried to close it behind her. He’d meant to tell the White Lady of the danger they’d faced earlier in the day when the Questing Beast attacked and he sensed the presence of fair folk Hunters coming toward them.

Instead he’d blurted out the grievance he’d nursed through the whole ride and climb up the narrow path to the little house. He was as shocked at his own words as he was by the White Lady’s response. All he could do was sputter like a fish gasping in the air.

While he was speechless, Maddie said, “That’s the only logical explanation.”

Rowan couldn’t bring himself to look into his wife’s accusing face, just the sound of her words was hard enough to take. He spoke to the White Lady instead, though the words were meant for Maddie. “She doesn’t trust me.”

Did she not hear the plea for trust that he hated to have to voice? And why did it matter to him that she trust him? He didn’t know the why, just that it did.

“Why should I?” Maddie didn’t know why she addressed her comments to this stranger but it seemed easier than actually talking to her erstwhile husband.

She didn’t want to talk to Rowan, she wanted to get away from him. While they’d ridden at a mad gallop across the rocky countryside, she’d come to the conclusion that she wanted to be away from the whole mad, over-imaginative world. She had to get her mind off Rowan Murray and back on finding a way home.

114

A Kind of Magic

She ran a finger along the circle of slightly burned skin beneath the ever-present necklace. “He did something to this. It was in retaliation for—” She felt her skin blaze with a furious blush. “Well, never mind why he did it.”

“I did nothing.”

The White Lady was seated across her hearth from them. A pot boiled on the fire, filling the house with the aroma of something pleasant. She calmly folded her hands in her lap, looked from Maddie to Rowan then said, “Why don’t you explain to her why she can trust you, laird of the Mermaid’s Children?”

“Mermaid’s Children?” Maddie asked with a skeptical, exasperated glance at Rowan. “You people don’t believe in mermaids too, do you?”

“It’s just symbolism,” the White Lady explained with a wave of one elegant hand that drew Maddie’s attention back to her. The beautiful white-haired woman smiled reassuringly, “We wise folk are supposed to talk like that.”

“Oh.” Maddie sighed in relief. Maybe she’d finally found someone with a realistic outlook on the world. “Symbolism I can deal with.”

Rowan looked at the White Lady in confusion. “What do you mean symbolism?

The Murrays are descended from a vain selkie who left the sea to wed a warrior who offered her a silver mirror and comb in exchange for her magical sealskin.”

“Right,” was Maddie’s tart reply. “He believes in fairies too,” she told the other woman.

The White Lady’s pale brows rose. “Does he?”

“Of course I do.”

“He uses it as an excuse for all sorts of nonsense.”

“I see.” The White Lady looked at Maddie sympathetically. She moved over and patted the space on the bench beside her.

“And magic,” Maddie said as she moved to sit next to the White Lady.

“Magic. I see.” The White Lady touched her on the knee. “You find magic disturbing, don’t you?”

“Of course not!” Maddie declared too quickly. “I just find it—ridiculous.”

“How can you let her talk like that?” Rowan demanded of the wisewoman. “How can you let her belittle all you are in your own house?”

The White Lady gave him a stern look but her tone was mild. “We’re discussing Maddie’s beliefs, Rowan, not mine or yours. I’m being polite to my guest.”

Rowan had never known the White Lady to be polite to anyone before. Her way was to command, not accommodate. He didn’t know what had gotten into her now. He thought it better to keep quiet about it rather than have her temper turned on him when he had deep problems he needed her help with. He decided to sit down opposite the women and nurse his grievances with both Maddie and himself while they talked for a while.

115

Susan Sizemore

When the White Lady—who she only knew was the White Lady because that was who Rowan had said he was taking her to and the woman was a platinum blonde—