Highland Enchantment (Highland Brides) (4 page)

But reality was only a moment behind. Crossing his arms against his chest, he knocked her hands aside, grabbed the tunic and tore it over his head, then yanked his arms down to a crashing cord of satisfying pain.

She had already moved away to crouch by the fire.

Silence settled in. His gut loosened enough to allow him to breathe.

"Surely your..." For a moment he could find no acceptable words to call the man she apparently intended to marry, but he reprimanded himself as a thousand kinds of fool and continued. "Surely your lover would take offense if he knew of this."

"Of what?"

"Of..." Liam gestured breathlessly toward his own naked chest, but she shrugged after the briefest glance, as if there was nothing there of even the mildest interest. But it had not always been such. God, no. He could remember a time... He shut off the thoughts in wild panic. "Take offense to this," he said hoarsely. "You and I."

"My laird knows I am called to heal. He doesn't resent that."

"Truly?" He snorted. "How gallant of him."

"Aye."

"Tis not like the English to be so noble."

"I did not say he was English. Sit down."

He remained as he was. "A lowlander then. I wouldn't have thought your father would allow it."

"Sit," she said again. "I've no wish to see you faint standing up."

"Don't you?"

She glanced up finally, her expression peeved. "You mistake me for the lass I once was," she said, and lifted a mug toward him. "Drink this."

He ignored her order. "So you have changed since you last covered my pallet in nettles?"

She laughed. The sound was short and quick. But did he imagine a singing note of tension.

"Twas over a decade ago that I visited such revenge on you, Liam. I had all but forgotten."

"I have not. And though you may think me a dolt, I am hardly such a fool as to trust your evil concoction."

"Then I shall have Davin hold you still while I pour it down your throat."

He snorted. "As charming as ever, I see," he said, and sat down, for if the truth be told, he just might faint. And
that
the saintly Rachel would never forget. "Does the good earl know of your true temperament?"

"I did not say he was an earl," she said, and prodded the mug into his hand. "Drink it all at once."

Liam gazed into the potion. "A bit of powdered bat wing?"

"Saliva from a black adder's tongue."

He glanced up warily, but she merely put a finger beneath the bottom, pressing it firmly toward his lips. "Tis naught but a bit of white willow and meadowsweet. Truly, Liam, I've never known you to be so gullible."

He scowled. The brew smelled distasteful at best. "And what of your marquess? I suppose he is never fooled by your wit?"

"I know no marquess," she said, and tipped the contents of the mug onto his lips.

Liam shivered as it coursed past his taste buds and down his throat. Finally, the mug empty, he said, "You must not have tried to mend his wounds yet, if he still plans to marry you."

"He's not been so foolish as to be injured," she said, and touched her cloth to the wound on his chest.

His muscles recoiled as she washed away the blood.

"A reopened wound?" she asked.

"Aye." It was all he could manage for a moment. But she soon dropped the rag back into the water, letting him breathe again.

"So your beloved is no great fighter," he deduced after a moment.

The woods were silent for a moment, then, "Why do you want to know, Liam?" she asked softly.

"Simple curiosity." He managed a shrug. "Naught else."

"If I tell you of him will you cease your badgering?"

He nodded.

"Laird Dunlock resides some leagues north of here. He is not a young man, nor is he particularly wealthy. But he is a fine man—kind and wise. It has been some years since he asked for my hand." She touched his chest to smooth ointment carefully onto his wound.

"And you agreed?" Liam could not quite manage to raise his voice above a whisper.

"Why should I not?"

Her fingers were feather-soft against his skin, tantalizing him, reminding him of a thousand moments spent in her company.

"No reason," he said.

She nodded as she reached for a bandage. Placing the end over his wound, she leaned forward to wind it about his chest. The scent of her filled his head, conjuring a host of vintage images of her, laughing with her cousins as they practiced their silly feats of horsemanship, somber as she held an ailing babe against her breast.

Her fingers brushed his shoulder, his arm, the tensed muscles of his chest. Shivers coursed through him. He willed himself to remain still beneath her touch.

"No reason you should not marry," he repeated.

She glanced up, their faces inches apart. "Tis so good to know I have your approval, Liam," she said. Settling back, she took hold of his arm. There was a scratch along his biceps, but it was not deep. "I would stitch this, but I won't be here to remove the sutures, and I cannot trust you to see to it properly."

"So I am not invited to your betrothed's holdings?"

"Nay." She didn't glance up as she worked. "You're not."

"Tis not like you to be so selfish, Rachel."

She tied off the bandage.

Their gazes met. A thousand truths raced through his mind. A thousand pleas. A thousand apologies. But regardless of everything, she was still the haughty daughter of a Highland laird, and he was still a bastard.

"Is there anything else I should see to?" Her voice was throaty, as it would sound in the throes of passion, with her clever hands pressed against the heat of his flesh, and her...

"Aye, there is," he rasped, grappling to get a grip on his emotions, to gain some modicum of control. "But your betrothed might well be offended if I showed you."

She rose swiftly and turned away. Liam squeezed his eyes shut and tried to remain where he was, but there was little hope of that.

He was on his feet in a moment, following her, moving away from the shifting firelight.

At the edge of the river that rushed by them, she knelt to wash her hands then remained there for a moment before she rose and looked across the wide burn.

"I'll not delay you if you feel the need to leave us this night," she said, not turning toward him.

"I thought it was your duty as a healer to insist that I rest and mend. Why the hurry to see me gone?"

She turned now, her face shadowed and limned by the moonlight. "As you said, my laird might well be jealous. I'd hate to see him challenge you simply because you had the poor sense to proposition a pig-farmer's wife and get yourself wounded."

"Dare I hope you're worried for me?" he asked, hoping his tone evidenced some sarcasm.

"Though I don't understand it, my mother is rather fond of you. Twould be an onerous task to tell her that you've been sliced into a thousand ribbons by my own betrothed."

"So he is an accomplished swordsman?"

"Not particularly," she said. "But I've seen your talents in that arena."

"Some men's wit is sharper than any blade," he said.

"Aye, I saw how cleverly you fought off the husband and his brothers."

He managed a shrug. "I cannot help it if maids throw themselves at me."

"And I cannot help it if you get yourself killed because of your own wandering eye," she snapped, and turned away to walk along the shore.

Liam told himself a thousand times that he should go back to camp, collect his haughty gelding, and leave.

In a moment he had caught up to her.

"So this Dunlock," he began. "He has been wed before?"

"Tis none of your concern."

"I just wonder."

She opened her mouth as if to berate him but finally nodded. "Aye, he was widowed some years ago."

"A short mourning," he said.

"What?"

"He asked for your hand some years ago," he said. "Tis unseemly that he should not have spent some time to mourn his wife."

"Tis hardly your place to judge others' morals, Liam," she said, turning on him.

"I simply worry for your well being and—"

"You don't worry for me atall," she countered hotly. "You simply torment me. And why, I wonder. Why do you insist on bedeviling me?"

Because she made him spout miserable poetry in his mind, made him fell sleepless and hot and discontented. Made him think of a hundred places he would like to kiss, to caress. But he was not such a fool as to tell her. So he opened his mouth to lie, but in that moment a flash of something caught his eye.

He turned toward it, thinking for a moment that it was nothing but the gleam of errant moonlight on the waves. But in an instant he caught his breath.

"God's balls," he whispered.

"What is it?"

Liam wrenched his gaze from the shore. "Tis nothing."

She scowled at him then turned her attention slowly back toward the swollen river. "What..."

she began, but her words stopped and she gasped softly as she stared at the silver glimmer beneath the hustling waves.

"Tis nothing," Liam rasped again, but she was already pacing toward it. He dashed after her and grabbed her arm just at the water's edge. "Rachel!"

"What?" They were inches apart, face to face.

Fear gripped him, fear as hard and sharp as a Scotsman's claymore. "Don't touch it."

She stared at him, her eyes wide, her mouth rounded as she turned back toward the river. "Do not touch what? What is it?"

"Tis—tis a bad omen," he stuttered.

She stared at him, at the glimmer beneath the waves, at him, and then she laughed and snatched her arm from his grasp.

"Truly, Liam? A bad omen?" she said, and pulling up her sleeve, reached into the water.

The waves seemed to turn to liquid silver for a moment, and then the glimmer was resting in her hand. Even in the darkness, even the first moment he saw it, he knew what it was. Knew in his heart.

In his gut. In his soul, if he still had one.

"Dragonheart!" Rachel whispered.

Liam squeezed his eyes closed. Fear turned to terror.

"Liam, tis Dragonheart," she said, amazement in her voice. "But..." She shook her head and skimmed a finger over the dragon's ruby breast. "It cannot be. Many months ago James lost it in Beith Burn. However would it come here?"

He said nothing. The knot in his gut had been stretched tight, as if pulled hard by battling warriors.

Rachel turned toward him. "Mayhap it washed downriver. It could be that the Beith connects with this burn somewhere," she said and scowled. "Are you not surprised to see it?"

He wished he could be. Wished it with everything in him. But he knew too much for that, had spent too many years learning the truth.

"Liam," she said, canting her head at him. "Are you not happy to see it? There was a time you would not be parted from it."

"Twas a long time ago," he intoned.

"It seems to have returned to you," she said, and lifted the amulet toward him.

"Tis not for me!" he snapped and jerked back a pace.

She stared at him, her eyes as eerie as the dragon's inexplicable presence. "You're not afraid of a wee bit of metal and stone. Are you, Liam?"

"Nay," he said, but he failed to pull his gaze from it.

"Could it be you've come to believe your own wild tales?"

Wild tales! If only they were. In fact, he had once thought the stories he spewed were just that.

There were, it turned out, few things more frightening than learning one's lies were nothing more than misbegotten truths.

"Its presence here is strange. But I'm certain there's an explanation. Still, if it bothers you I can surely return it to the water," she said, and drew her hand back as if to toss it into the river.

"Nay!" he rasped, and leapt forward. But she had already stopped the movement of her arm and was staring at him. "Nay,” he repeated, and cleared his throat, feeling foolish.

True, the dragon amulet had been crafted long ago by a man known for his mystical powers, and true, strange things happened when it was near. But telling Rachel that he was certain it had come to them under its own power was somehow beyond his ability.

"I don't think it would be wise to be rid of it," he said instead.

"And why might that be?" There was something in her voice. Was it laughter? he wondered, and said nothing.

"Why shouldn't I be rid of it?" she asked.

He gritted his teeth and remained silent. She already thought him a fool, why prove her point?

Finally, with a shrug, she drew her hand back again as if to toss it.

"It has come for you!" he blurted.

Even in the darkness he could see the surprise on her face. Whatever she had expected him to say, it hadn't been that.

"And it knew I would be passing by this way? It knew and thus made certain it was in my path?"

No. He had learned too much to believe there was luck involved in this. Dragonheart had called Rachel to him. But he was hardly prepared to tell her that. "Mayhap," he said instead.

For a moment she seemed shocked beyond words, then, "Mayhap it knew
you
would be passing this way. Mayhap it was you it wanted to be with."

"Nay. It prefers the lassies."

She laughed aloud. "If I did not know you so well, I would almost think you believe it, Liam."

He would give a king's ransom
not
to believe it, but there was no hope of that. Rachel's cousin, Sara, had possessed the amulet for a while. She had lost it, and some months later it had been found by Shona, far from the place where it had disappeared. And during the time that the women held it, there had been nothing but tribulation. Nothing but hardship, terror and death.

Liam shivered at the thought and said nothing.

"If it is clever enough to find me, it must also be clever enough to know I have no time for this,"

Rachel said. "I must be on my way with the first light tomorrow, and you..." She paused. "You shall return to propositioning other men's—"

"Nay!" He spoke without thinking, the denial torn from his lips.

"What?"

"I will not be leaving," he said. "I'll be traveling with you."