Haunting Beauty (25 page)

“I’m going to take a shower,” she announced to the quiet that followed Michael’s departure.

Sean had moved to the fireplace and set chunks of what looked like mud bricks on the grate. At her words, he glanced back at her. His gaze glittered over her face like the reflection of sun on choppy waters. It burned a trail down her throat, lingering on her breasts, whispering over her knotted belly. She had an immediate, intimate image of him there, in the shower beside her, arms locked behind her back, slick wet skin pressed to her own. A shiver tickled down her spine and gathered in the pit of her stomach.

“I’ll get the fire started, then,” he said, his voice sinfully deep and soft.

Danni nodded thinking,
Oh, but you already have
. She stood for another awkward moment and then said, “I won’t be long.”

Turning, she went to the bathroom, scooting past the toilet and sink to the small gap between so she could close the door. She locked it even though Sean wasn’t likely to barge in on her, and if he did, she wasn’t entirely sure she’d be sorry. She undressed and stepped into the tiny stall under a pitiful stream that sputtered and spat. But it was hot and there was soap and it was more than she’d hoped for.

She had the sense of time running out but no idea how to stop it. It seemed showers and meals and sleep should be foregone. She should be making decisions and taking actions—but to what end? A whole day had passed and she was no closer to understanding why she was here or what she should be doing.

She had her hair in a full lather of shampoo that smelled surprisingly of lavender when the sound of the water grew louder, more insistent. It roared from the faucet and seemed to crash against the tiled walls, yet Danni could feel the weak drizzle, unchanged as it streamed down her back. Wary, she rinsed the soap from her eyes and looked at the nozzle. But instead of the shower, instead of the speckled tiles and rusted fixtures, she found herself staring at the gray smudge of the sky meeting the ocean.

She turned in place, taking in the fat clouds overhead, the two o’clock sun stretching her shadow out in front of her, the rocky beach. She hadn’t even felt the air turn but turn it had, and now she waited—naked, dripping wet, and bone cold—for whatever would happen next.

The waves churned and frothed at her feet and seagulls cawed as they scurried and soared, looking for tasty snacks in the tide. To her left, she glimpsed a small bay with ships anchored in its harbor.

She heard a rock bounce down the side of the sloping cliff and looked up. On the plateau overhead, she saw the backside of the crumbling ruins. Great mortar blocks mingled with the giant stones cascading to the sea from above. This must be where the castle wall had given out and taken the MacGrath child all those years ago. God, what must it have felt like to plummet down that jagged side to the merciless sea?

The sound of music drew her attention and Danni looked away, glad to be distracted from the horrible images in her head. It seemed to be coming from the other side of the boulders to her right. Still naked, Danni gingerly picked her way over a jagged outcropping, leaning down to hold the edges of the massive rocks as she carefully navigated her way across the natural barrier. The ocean sprayed her with freezing water and she trembled with cold.

She reached an isolated beach and paused to catch her breath. The song she’d heard was louder here, and she saw a rough opening cut into the cliff side.
A doorway
, she thought,
nearly invisible from any other angle
. Looking closer, she noticed something else. Where the water met the rocky wall leading up to the castle’s plateau, there was a low arch, visible only when the tide withdrew.

Frowning, she climbed to the narrow entrance and stepped through.

The dark here was like crushed velvet, thick and soft and yielding. She moved through it in silence, following the melody to a cavern lit by alternating brightness as the tide rushed forward, blocking the sun, then pulled away to let it back in. The ground beneath her bare feet was made of gravel and shells layered over stone. The walls were roughly hewn, carved out by the sea and worn by the grit of the unceasing tide. But as she looked closer, she saw a pattern etched onto every surface, repeated over and over on the walls and ceiling. Even on the boulders that crouched defensively around the churning pool in the middle. Spirals. They were everywhere.

She fingered the pendant at her throat and shivered before cautiously moving on, past the tide pool to the back, where another door opened into the darkness. The song was coming from there. She stepped closer and looked in to see rough-cut stairs making a circular route up.

Surprise made her breathless. She was in a cave beneath the castle. And perhaps the stairs led to a secret passage. A hidden place that offered escape, though at no small peril.

The haunting song grew louder, and Danni backed up, tucking herself into the shadows, though a part of her knew she wasn’t really here. But the instinct drove her as the woman with a voice more beautiful than the stark scenery emerged from the stairwell.

It was Fia. Danni shouldn’t have been surprised.

Fia carried a small lantern and a blanket in her hands. Honey brown hair hung loose and silky to swing against thin shoulders. Her song was in Gaelic, and she sang it with feeling, closing her eyes as the wrenching notes echoed against the cavern walls.

Danni swallowed a lump in her throat.

The song ended, and Fia stood very still for a moment, as if it had drained her strength with its sadness. She stared at the rippling water, nearly black where it lapped the rocks, gray green where it surged out of the arched opening. Her expression filled Danni with unease. The look in her eyes seemed to beg for miracles. As if she hoped for a ship to suddenly appear in that opening and whisk her away. Was that what she wanted?

Unable to help herself, Danni lifted her hand and brushed an errant strand of hair back from her mother’s face. Fia turned, without noticing.

Still naked, still cold, Danni followed her mother to a flat, smooth area where she set down her lantern and spread the blanket.

Fia seemed oblivious to the cold as she stripped her clothes and folded them neatly. Danni saw the mottled greens and yellows of bruises on her back and ribs. She’d seen them before, that first time when Sean had guided her through the vision. What had happened to her? Had she been in an accident? Had she fallen?

Lower, on the pearly white skin of her forearm, Danni saw the rose-shaped birthmark, just like the one on her own arm.

Fia turned away, and with only a moment’s hesitation, she stepped into the pool. Danni followed her in. The water was bracing, icy even, but Fia didn’t seem to mind. She swam and splashed like a mermaid, freed from the boundaries of gravity. Danni watched her, thinking how young, how beautiful her mother was. Lost in the magic and the mystery of this stranger who she longed to know, Danni didn’t hear the footsteps until they stopped just behind her. Frowning, she glanced over her shoulder.

Niall Ballagh stood against the backdrop of the ragged and harsh cavern walls. What was he doing here?

Like Sean, Niall was a big man. Broad of shoulder, lean of hip, long of leg. In the photograph she’d seen, Niall hadn’t seemed so large and solid. But here, now, he was all muscle and sinew, looming and somehow frightening.

In her head, she could hear Sean’s pained and angry words.
He killed my mother. . . .
Was he here to do the same to Danni’s? Stalking her as an overture to the final act?

Fia hadn’t noticed him yet, and he moved in, his gaze riveted on the flashes of pearl skin streaming with water, dipping beneath the surface. He stopped when he reached the flat boulder and sat beside her blanket and clothes, waiting.

Frightened, Danni swam to her mother’s side, wanting to alert her. To warn her.
Momma, there’s a man here and he wants to hurt you
.

As if hearing her daughter, Fia came up for air and turned to see Niall sitting patiently beside the pool.

They stared at one another for a long, bated moment as Danni watched from the freezing water. Neither spoke.

Then slowly, with a deliberation born of intent, Fia moved to the side of the pool and climbed out. Danni followed, dismayed by her nudity even though she knew Niall couldn’t see her. Fia seemed to have no such compunctions. She crossed to stand just in front of him, breasts heaving with ragged inhalations, skin puckering with a thousand shivery goose bumps. The water ran down her body, pooling in the hollow of her throat, tunneling through the valley between her breasts, sluicing over her rounded hips and thighs. Niall’s look should have made all that wet turn to steam. He stood slowly, gracefully, one small step away.

A deep breath from Fia would have brushed Niall’s hard chest in a whispered touch. But neither moved. They only stared at one another, absorbed, transfixed. Fia’s gaze traversed his face, lingering on his strong brow, shadowed eyes, and sculpted mouth with something akin to anguish. Then tears turned her eyes shiny before overflowing to mix with the sea drops that clung to her skin.

Watching them, a burning anger and crippling sense of betrayal filled Danni’s gut. She wanted to launch herself at Niall Ballagh. She wanted to scratch his face, kick and pull and push him away from her mother. In a moment of clarity, she understood that this—the magnetic force that seemed to hold the two captive, not merely Niall himself—was the prelude to doom. She knew without a doubt that Niall was to blame for the tragedy that would take place tomorrow night. Niall had been obsessed with her mother. He’d destroyed his own happiness and family and then moved on to Danni’s.

She thought hard at Fia, tried to move her mother by will alone. She wanted to believe that Fia was too frightened of Niall to even scream. That’s why she stood so still, bare and trembling. That’s why she didn’t tell him to leave.

Danni moved forward, tried to grip Niall’s arm and drag him away. Tears of rage filled her eyes as she shouted at him to leave her mother alone. But it was no use. She wasn’t there. Not for Niall, not for her mother.

Niall made a sound deep in his throat—one of resistance overcome, one of barriers brought tumbling down. And then he breached that tiny gap that held them apart and pulled Fia’s dripping body against him. His hands skimmed her wet skin, sliding over her silky curves then up to cup her face.

“I can’t stay away,” he said, and the words were demand, apology . . . defeat.

Danni felt his agony, his yearning, and it fired her helpless fury. “Try harder,” she shouted. “She’s not yours. My father loves her.
I
love her.”

And Niall would destroy all that.

He trailed his fingers over the flat of her breastbone to the valley between and down to settle on the small rise above her pelvis. He dropped to his knees, his big hands circling her hips, holding her there as he subjugated himself at her feet. Pressing his face to the swell just over the tight mass of red gold curls, he whispered, “I will be this baby’s father in more than seed.” Then, fiercely, “Please, Fia, please let me.”

Danni came back to the shower with a gasp that burned her lungs and made her choke on the sudden spray of water in her face. She coughed, bending with the force of emotion, the need to clear her lungs, her heart.

He’d said
father
. He’d said
baby
.

The implications of that rolled over her like the unharnessed power of the sea. Danni quickly rinsed the soap from her hair and body. She fumbled with the faucet, turning off the water as she sank to the floor of the shower and pulled up her knees.

He’d said
father
. He’d said
baby
.

The words repeated in her head, a screeching echo that shredded her beliefs, her hopes and dreams. Niall Ballagh was the father of the baby Fia carried. Not Cathán. Not her husband.

She stood on trembling legs, pulling a towel from the rack and wrapping it around her. She was cold and shaky and sick to her soul. Sean said that after Fia and the children disappeared, there was talk of an affair, and Danni had defended her. Said she knew, in her heart, that there couldn’t have been another man. The bitter truth burned her like an oily flame.

While Cathán was trying so hard to please Fia, to make her happy—Fia was sleeping with Niall Ballagh, a man who’d killed his own wife.

Danni clenched her fist in hurt and anger. She tucked the towel around her, realizing she’d forgotten clean clothes when she’d come in. With a growl of frustration, she scooped up the pile on the floor and yanked open the door.

Sean looked up from the fireplace with surprise and stared at her. For a moment, she could only stare back. The fire gilded him in warm gold, making the dark of his hair into a glittery cap of silken light. It gleamed with hues of blue black and starlit velvet. His face, wind burned and sun touched, glowed with an inner luminance, turning his eyes into bright green and silver orbs surrounded by sooty lashes and shifting shadows. In that moment, he looked nothing like his father, nothing like the man who would destroy her world, and Danni was more grateful than she could say or even understand.

He stood, graceful even in the small action. She watched his tall body unfold and stretch. Drank in the sight of his broad shoulders, the power of his strong arms flexing, the lithe beauty of his form. He watched her watching him, an unfathomable gleam deep in his shining eyes.

“That was a quick shower,” he said.

It felt like days had passed while she’d waded through that icy pool of betrayal with her mother.

“Are you okay, Danni?” he asked, stepping closer.

She caught his scent. Bracing wind, salty ocean, man. Even after the long day, he smelled good to her. She inhaled, letting him chase away the lingering memory of the cave, the steaming scent of dark secrets. She wanted to bury her face against Sean’s chest and breathe him in, forever.

Tentatively Sean reached a hand out and touched her shoulder. Danni stared into his eyes, helpless to fight the pain eating her from inside out. He seemed confused and yet he knew just what to do. He pulled her into his arms, cradled her head against his chest, and held her while she cried.