The Curse of Clan Ross (17 page)

He’d given her air. And light. And water. Could he take them from her again?

Where would he send her when he finished with her?  And just what was it he wanted to finish?  Luring her to his bed?  Or was she just a pleasant distraction until his friends and clan were allowed back into his home?

If he sent her to the MacKays, would she just find more trouble, maybe even find herself tied to a stake?  Would Ivar protect her?

The image of her ending up in his old friend’s arms was not a possibility he could dare to imagine at the moment without turning about and hunting his friend all the way to his treacherous lair. Actually, the image of her in anyone else’s arms did not sit well.

Any woman can be replaced by another. Wasn’t he just wishing Ivar would realize that?  Maybe, after he’d tired of the woman, Monty would believe it himself.

The woman, not the faery. She was flesh and blood, not wing and spirit. He had not vowed to kill a woman.

There. He felt better. His gorge had settled.

She had come to bring Morna and Ivar together, but she was only a woman, and as such could be stopped. If she had been a faery, she may have had a chance against him. Just to be wary, however, he’d not leave her alone for a moment.

Damn, but she’s alone now.

He was just leaning forward, to urge his horse home when the muffling blanket of darkness was sliced by a bloody scream—a scream he feared had come from his own hearth. No woman in her right mind would have been capable of such an unholy wail, which meant...

“Jillian!”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Jilly finished telling the local Muir twins the history of her twenty-four years of life, leaving out nothing, including her frustrations with the other Muir twins. She was embarrassed by how little time it had taken.

Mhairi and Margot had listened patiently, squeezing her hand when she’d found her grandmother’s behavior a bit too difficult to explain. Although the old woman had detested the Ross name and Scotland as a whole, she had given strange reasons for teaching Jilly to speak and understand Gaelic. “So ye can hear yer enemies plotting,” she’d argued. To teach her such a thing and then forbid her from ever setting foot in the country made even less sense when Jilly tried to explain it to the Medieval Muirs. But how grateful she was to be able to speak about and understand it now, after falling victim to the modern-day twins.

“But how had she known?” She turned to her new friends. “How did she know what would happen to me?”

“Mayhap she had also been a victim of the curse, lass.” Mhairi shook her head. “’Tis sad to think it will go on affecting so many generations.”

“Or she could have taken a peek into the future.” Margot shot her sister a look that was pure conspiracy. “If some can go backward, Mhairi, can some not go forward?”

“That, sister, is a discussion for another time. Poor Jillian has enough to fret over.” Mhairi patted Jillian’s head as older, veinier hands had done before.

“That’s something I’m pretty worried about, actually.” Jilly leaned forward and plopped an elbow on the huge table, putting a little distance between her back and the heat of the freshly stirred fire. “I think getting Ivar and Morna into the future is what I am expected to do. In the future, Morna’s husband will already be dead and she’ll be free to marry Ivar. My problem is they say that Morna died of a broken heart. I have to make sure I help them before that happens, but Laird Ross won’t let me out of here. Can you help me?”

“We’ll do what we can, Jillian, but we’re being watched.” Margot giggled. “Laird Ross’s man had a bit too much to drink—”

“—and drank the wrong thing, of course,” Mhairi chimed in.

“Oh, you two are definitely Muirs.” Jilly didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“Tell us about the others. Lorraine and Loretta?” Margot was squirming in her chair. “It’s nice to know the family will thrive, is it not, sister?”

“They have nothing but secrets up their sleeves, never give a straight answer, and though they must be close to ninety years old, they act like they’re fourteen.” Jilly tried to think of something nice to say, but couldn’t. “Why would they meddle in a curse that had nothing to do with them?”

The sisters looked at each other in that disturbingly familiar way, then turned back to her.

“It was all our fault, ye see,” Margot confessed too cheerfully. “And we’ll make sure our family passes on the duty of seeing the prophecy through.”

Funny how this conversation made Jilly feel like she was home again. Dear Lord, did she actually miss the Muirs?  

Hmph, how could she?  They were sitting next to her, by the fire, recapping like a trio of ghost busters—or shade sniffers—after a busy day at the office.

Jilly suspected there was another shoe scheduled to drop, as shoes tended to do around Muirs, so she braced herself.

“Isobelle is not a witch.” Mhairi took a deep breath, a cleansing breath, like someone clearing her conscience.

“Come again?” It was a very, very big shoe...and Jilly’s head felt like the bullseye. Her brain literally ached.

“Isobelle is not a witch,” Mhairi repeated.

Then just how had Jillian Rose MacKay gotten to the fifteenth century?

“But we are,” they said in unison.

The hall door flew open, banged against the wall once, then slammed shut.

Standing there in the dance of shadows and firelight stood the fierce, wind-blown laird of Castle Ross. His chest heaved with exertion and Jilly took her lead from the sisters; she sat seemingly unruffled by his entrance, his physique, or the promise of retribution in his eyes.

Power in numbers.

But then again, the Muirs had an altogether different power, or so Mhairi had just confided. No wonder Montgomery had not been surprised when she’d asked about the Muir sisters. No wonder he’d wanted to deny how she had come to be here.

“She’s right as rain in Scotland, Laird Ross,” said one sister.

“Unharmed. Completely unharmed,” said the other.

“No thanks to the two of ye, I’m sure.” He advanced, hands on his hips, eyes on Jilly.

“Actually, they came to my rescue.” She might need a lot of supernatural help to do her good deed and get home again. Better to stay on their good side.

“Laird,” he said.

“What?”

“He wants ye to call him ‘Laird’, lass.” Mhairi patted her hand and grinned.

“Why?” Jilly looked him up and down as he came nearer. “I don’t belong to his clan.”

“Ah.” Margot sighed. “But he wishes for it, I’m sure.”

“Enough.” His glare held much less bite as he walked around to set one hip on the table next to Jilly’s elbow. He swung his lower leg and nudged her. “What is this about rescuing, Jillian?”

“She prefers to be called Jilly, yer lairdship.”

“She does not.” He sounded so sure of himself.

“Aye, ‘tis a fact she’s just told us. Her grandmother called her Jilly Bean. It is a sweet endearment to her, Laird Ross.” Mhairi sounded as if she were about to giggle. Like Loretta.

“She prefers for
me
to call her Jillian. Isn’t that right, Jillian?”
 

There he went, making her name sound like a decadent chocolate pronounced with a French accent. She cleared her throat.

“As matter of fact, I don’t mind it so much when he says it.”

Good Lord, she was blushing, she could feel it. The fire warmed her bum, and her blush heated the rest of her. A walk outside was exactly what she needed before she went to bed.

“Jillian can tell me of her rescue. Ye two will sneak yerselves home, do ye hear?  I don’t ken how ye find yer way into my hall, but find yer way out of it. Without being seen. The way I rode in here, the entire clan will be watching from their windows.”

“Oh?” Margot said. “And just what had ye making such a stir, Laird Ross?”

He glared down at the woman, then shook his head when she continued to smile up at him.

“I was on the other side of the glen when I heard her scream, Margot. I nearly killed my best horse to race here in the dark.”

“It wasn’t just me screaming. Sir,” Jilly added when he scowled.

“It was Sorcha Murray, as well,” Mhairi chirped, on the edge of laughter once more. “She came in here high and mighty as ye please, with ye safely away, of course. Calling out to Isobelle’s ghost, thanking her for scaring away all yer marriage prospects—”

Mhairi’s long fingers couldn’t stifle her laughter, but Margot finished the telling.

“Then she invited Isobelle to make herself scarce, if she didn’t mind, so ye would...uh, be free to...”

“Nevermind,” Montgomery said.

Margot looked relieved by the interruption. Mhairi smiled brighter in the dying light.

Jilly closed her eyes, not wanting to understand. When she opened them, the sisters were gone. She looked to Laird Ross to see if he had noticed just how they’d left. He merely looked relieved, so apparently they hadn’t vanished into thin air, or stepped into the fully functioning fireplace.

Monty’s impulse was to swing the lass up into his arms and show her just how pleased he was to find her safe, but he settled for nudging her with his swinging leg.

“Ye may walk above, along the battlements if ye like.”

Jillian bit her lip, then released it, frowning. “Alone?”

“Nay. I’ll escort ye.”

“Good. I mean, thank you.” She raised her chin. “That would be great.”`

Was she afraid?  For a certainty she was stubborn. Did he dare hope she was lonely?

“Unless ye’d rather be on yer own, Jillian.” Monty shrugged and looked to the fire behind her. “If ye’re partial to solitude—”

“No!  No, I’m not. I mean, thanks, but that’s all right. You can tag along.” Her gaze fell to her fingers as they smoothed at a knot in the table’s surface. “Just in case...just in case I get lost or something.”

Not for the first time, he supposed he should have fostered some border lads, to keep a better ken of the oddities of the English tongue. She wanted him along. He understood that. This tagging business might prove to be something pleasant, surely not something she would allow just any man to do.

Now she was staring at his knee. Her hand twitched, as if she were tempted to touch it—as she’d touched his chest earlier. Did she want convincing he was real?  Odd. Whenever she was out of his sight, he’d been hard pressed to believe the same of her.

She snatched her hands back to her lap, the coward.

His chest began to swell of its own accord, but he contained it, along with swelling in other parts of himself. She pretended indifference; he would as well.

Monty’s home seemed to move beneath him a bit.

His breathing had faltered, he realized. One great breath and his vision steadied. The next deep breath was filled with the scent of fire-warmed Jillian and he pulled it in, reluctant to let it escape, wanting it on his tongue as long as it was there for the tasting.

Did she crush blossoms beneath her very arms?

Get a hold of yerself, mon, or ye’ll be falling at her silly green feet.

Monty mounted the stairs behind her, amused at the way she would hurry ahead of him, as if she thought shaking her rump a wee bit faster might discourage him in some way. He’d have killed anyone for dressing his future daughters in trews, but at the moment, they were a blessing to behold. She must be a poor lass indeed to be wearing such worn clothing. She obviously knew not how to ply a needle enough to mend it. The strange blue fabric had holes in mighty odd places and he caught himself watching for the sunny patches of skin that could be seen now and again when she stepped just so. Her knee was especially enchanting. Her thigh he had to ignore or go mad.

She spun on him, catching him mid-grin and none too happy about it.

“Must you follow so closely?”

He answered with another grin. At least she’d lowered her voice as they were now upon the battlements and their voices would carry in the misty darkness.

She huffed her frustration out through her nose, pushing away a thin wisp of earthly cloud that had boldly climbed high this night. When her eyes widened and her cheeks pillowed into a smile, he knew he was in for something devious.

“If you are going to walk so close, you must tell me about Ivar MacKay.”

He did some snorting of his own. That man’s name had been too much in his dealings this day and he was wont to be rid of it.

“No.”

“Then you can’t walk with me.”

Foolish lass. He’d do as he pleased.

He reached over and took her hand, linking it in his elbow as he turned and headed down the wall walk. She would have to stroll with him or surrender her limb. Thankfully, she understood and trotted along next to him until he slowed.

“Did you know him well?”

Ah, she hadn’t understood at all. But what harm would be done in talking a wee while?  At least neither Morna, Isobelle, nor Ivar himself were here to argue the details with him.

“He was as a brother to me.”

Her free hand clasped around his upper arm, as far as the wee thing could reach, in a gesture that was pure sympathy.

“I’m so sorry. How awful for you.”

She peeled her hand from him and blushed before turning to look out upon the clouds building slowly beneath them, removing them from the world he knew. If his clansmen looked up, they would detect nothing above the wall. With her dark hair, she nearly blended into the blackness so well she could neatly get away from him if he didn’t watch closely.

“When they tell the story, in the future mind you, they say Ivar and Morna were separated because of her duty to marry a Gordon.”

“And they’d be right.” He didn’t bother stopping her from speaking her mad little mind. Future indeed. But he was in no mood for further fashing tonight. His senses were centered on the steps they would take when they went back inside. He knew she would go to his bedchamber; it was where she had slept before. He would tell her just whose bed it was after they were both in it.

“In the f…where I come from, there is a story, a tragedy really, called
Romeo and Juliet.
It is the tale of two young people who fall in love, only they come from feuding families. There are a whole bunch of complications, but they manage to
marry secretly. Then, when they are forced apart, they decide to die rather than live without each other.”