The Legend Mackinnon (34 page)

“Maybe some ancient tool the Claren Keys used back then, or some talisman.” Cailean shook her head, feeling the familiar frustration taking over again. “I don’t know. Neither does Rory. But I know it is up to us to find it. The fact that we are all here together, on the same ground where it all began, is proof enough that I am right.”

“So, where do we search? Have you found any clues?”

Cailean looked to Delaney. She’d remained silent during the exchange, but it was clear she was just as riveted. She sent a quick glance at Rory and debated on how much to tell them.

She was saved the decision when Duncan let loose a thundering growl and turned on the cluster of women. “She claims to own Stonelachen?”

Delaney jumped. “Don’t do that,” she said, as Duncan stormed across the room toward her. “What in the blazes is Stonelachen?”

Duncan froze and sent a look over his shoulder to his
brother. “What madness is this? Did ye or did ye not just get done tellin’ me that—”

“I didna get done tellin’ ye anything,” Rory said. “As usual, ye went stormin’ off before I could finish.”

“What is Stonelachen?” Delaney repeated. “Cailean?”

Cailean rose, her attention focused exclusively on Rory. “They all have to know.”

“What of our promise, Cailean?”

There was complete silence in the room. “Our promise stands. We will do this together. But we need help.”

“Duncan can help, if necessary. He knows her secrets even better than I. But I’ll no’ have them in Stonelachen, Cailean.”

Cailean took the blow without flinching. She stood taller, her expression carefully smooth. “We have no choice, Rory. We are all part of the quest now. It must be that way.” She held his gaze, ignoring all the eyes she could feel trained on them. “You will have to trust me.”

Rory remained silent for some time, his gaze steady. “Trust is a commodity I have not afforded myself for quite some time.” He briefly shifted his gaze to Duncan, then zeroed it back on her “I would lay down my life without hesitation, were it possible, for my brother. And for reasons even I am not certain of, I would likely do the same for you.”

There was an audible gasp from Maggie. Cailean’s heart began a hard, painful hammering in her chest.

“Rory,—” Delaney’s speech was abruptly silenced with one raised hand from Rory.

“That may not be the trust you seek, but I’m afraid it is all I can offer you. I’m doin’ my best, Cailean.”

Shaken, Cailean took a moment to steady her voice. “We have no choice in this, Rory.”

“We have spoken on choices before.”

“I cannot give you proof, but I know that we will each play a part in the final resolution.” She walked slowly,
steadily toward him, shutting out the others in the room as surely as if she’d closed a door in their faces. “There have been Clarens in Stonelachen before.”

“And tragedy befell the MacKinnons because of it.”

“I survived it.”

“You are a Key. And there is no proof that your intrusion won’t result in more of the same.”

“Intrusion? Is that how you view my visit there with you?” His eyes flared and her pulse sped up as if injected with a potent drug, still he did not answer. “If you cannot give me your trust, at least give me the truth. If you could reverse time, would you choose to have kept me from Stonelachen? Would you erase the time I spent there?”

“No.” He’d said it clearly, without hesitation. That was something, she told herself. It was a start.

“I
am
the Key, Rory.” She lifted her hand to his cheek, his eyes blazed into hers. “If we are to lift the curse, it is time for Stonelachen to welcome both Clarens and MacKinnons alike.”

“Have you had a vision of this?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I haven’t had a vision since the one in the graveyard, yet I know things. It’s just there, in my head. Perhaps you were right. Perhaps I do have powers that extend beyond the sight. Perhaps I am the only one that can free you.”

“I believe that you are. Just as I believe that we must do this alone.”

“You are willing to bring Duncan into it.”

“He is a MacKinnon. He knows Stonelachen already. He can pose no threat.”

“You don’t know that. We have no idea what forces are at work here. We would not all have been pulled here to simply break your curse.”

“You were pulled here by a crazy old man who couldn’t come to terms with the death of his wife.”

Cailean dropped her hand. “Are you saying you don’t
believe in the legend then? That you and you alone are the sufferer here? What about your brother? Doesn’t the mere fact that he still haunts the earth tell you anything?”

Rory shut his eyes and dropped his chin. “I no longer know what to think.”

She framed his face with her palms. “Would you deny your future descendants the freedom to love as they choose? Would you choose to use me simply to gain your own mortality and ignore the possibilities for the rest?”

He opened his eyes and looked deeply into hers. “Nay. I canno’.” He covered her hands with his. “We will do this as you request.”

Her heart swelled. “You have more trust in you than you think.”

“I would like nothing more than for that to be the truth.”

She went to move away, suddenly quite aware of their little audience. Rory, however, had other ideas.

He pulled her into his arms and kissed her. It was neither hard, nor fast, but a deliberate, time-consuming seduction.

“Why?” was all she could manage when he ended the kiss.

“I just needed to assure myself that I am not the only prisoner here.”

C
ailean looked up from the journal she was rereading when the door to her hotel room opened quietly. She didn’t have to look at the clock on the nightstand to know it was close to dawn.

“I didn’t think you’d be awake,” Rory said as he closed the door.

“I didn’t think you were coming back tonight,” she replied. Maggie and Duncan had decided to stay at the hotel for the night and Delaney had left for her hotel with a stack of Lachlan’s journals. Rory and Duncan had left shortly after to go off alone and she hadn’t known what to expect after that. He’d silently accepted the room key she’d handed him before leaving. “Did you enjoy your reunion with Duncan?”

“Aye.” He started to speak, but then stopped and shook his head, a marveling smile crossing his lips. “Aye,” he repeated more softly.

“I’m happy for you, Rory. I’m so glad they decided to come here.”

Rory’s smile widened. “Duncan’s account of his first plane flight is not to be missed.”

Cailean smiled. “Maggie visited me after you both left. Her account was also not to be missed.”

“I can well imagine.” He crossed the room and slipped out of his coat. “What are you up to there?” He nodded toward the journals in her lap.

Cailean felt a slow heat seep into her veins at the sight of him moving about the room. It was a dangerous thing, getting used to having him around. “Maggie and I were trying to figure out if perhaps we missed something Lachlan said about Stonelachen or the Key.”

“Find anything?”

She shook her head. “If he knew about it, he didn’t write it down in here. In fact, he says nothing about the land or the graveyard. He obviously spent a great deal of time tracking that down, but it doesn’t show up at all.”

Rory came to stand at the foot of the bed. “Odd, don’t you think? For a man obsessed with recording every detail of his research?”

Cailean couldn’t think. Rory was unbuttoning his shirt. His hair was damp from the constant drizzle outside and he just looked so damn sexy.

He looked up and caught her staring. “Something wrong?”

No, she thought. Not a thing. She managed to shake her head.

He paused, his hand on the next button. “Did you not mean for me to be here with you tonight?”

“I gave you the key, didn’t I?”

He held her gaze for a long moment, then said, “Do you want me here, Cailean.”

She closed the journal and laid it aside. “Yes.”

His fingers resumed their task and Cailean’s attention was held in rapt fascination as she watched him undress. In the dim lamplight he was nothing short of exquisite.

He didn’t move away from the end of the narrow bed. “Your turn,” he said.

She’d been naked with him already, unselfconsciously so. But this was different. This was … erotic. She discovered she liked it. A lot. There was a dark thrill in teasing him, taunting him.

She slowly unbuttoned the soft sleepshirt she wore. Not exactly a sexy peignoir, but you wouldn’t know by his intensifying expression.

“You’re a vision, you are.” His voice was deep, dark and arousing. “You should be made love to under the moon and stars.”

She thought of the mountaintop where they’d first made love and wondered what it would be like to make love with him under a summer moon. Pain pinched at her heart and she once again turned away from thoughts of the future. Right now the future was this night. This night was a certainty.

He reached down and gripped the covers, stripping them from the bed in one hard tug. He crawled onto the bed and straight up over her body. Her shirt disappeared under his hands and her head tilted back as he feasted at her breasts. She reached for him, pulling him to her, unable to wait. She slid down and wrapped her legs around his waist, pulling him insistently inside her, moving under him in a demanding rhythm.

“I do believe I will see stars after all,” he said roughly, then took her hips and fulfilled every need she’d ever thought to have and few more she hadn’t known about.

C
ailean nestled against him, tucking her legs into his. She pressed her face to his chest and sighed as he stroked his fingers through her hair.

“I’ve wanted to do this since I first saw you,” he said.

“You almost did,” she said, the words muffled against his warm skin.

He actually chuckled and her throat tightened at the wonderfully warm sound.

“Not that, although it was a close second,” he said. “I meant this.” He dug his fingers deeper into her hair and massaged her scalp. “Your hair. It beckons me.”

“You should have said something.”

“One thing I’ve learned is patience.” He continued his ministrations, sending tingles along her scalp and down her neck with each stroke. “Besides, I wanted it almost too badly.”

Cailean lifted her head to look at him. “Is that such a bad thing?”

“Wanting? Needing? In most every case, yes.”

“And this case?” She needed to hear him say it. Her heart was already dangling from a high precipice and she knew her hold was tentative at best. She wanted, needed, to hear she wasn’t the only one hanging by a thread.

“In this case I had no choice.”

Cailean tried not to tense, but she knew Rory sensed it. “Because you need me to reverse the spell?”

“Because I need you … period.”

She wanted to revel in this, but the dark cloud that sent a shadow over her senses was getting harder and harder to ignore. Feelings of doom she didn’t want to acknowledge were becoming stronger and she knew it wouldn’t be long before she’d have to face them.

She closed her eyes, willing the darkness to the corners for one more night. Tomorrow they would all go to Stonelachen to begin their hunt for Lachlan’s key. Once that quest was begun, she had a terrible feeling that the darkness would consume them both.

“What’s wrong, Cailean? What do you see? We are partners, you must tell me.”

She stiffened at his tone. “Is it simply the information you seek? Because my feelings aren’t that conclusive. Partner.”

He pulled her head back, not ungently, and lowered his face to hers. His eyes were black and fierce in the dim lighting. “That is not what I meant, and you know it. Partner isn’t merely a word describing a business transaction. If you can think that after this night and what we just shared—”

“What did we share, Rory?”

“We are well and truly joined now, Cailean. There is no escaping it. Destiny? Fate? Perhaps. I do not know. I only know that for what time I have remaining, we will spend it together.”

Her heart, flying high at his declaration of commitment, took a sharp dive as the final words sunk in. “Time remaining?”

“Until we reverse the curse.”

“Your curse is immortality. If we reverse it, then you become mortal. To live out your days here, aging like the rest of us. You aren’t that old, or weren’t when she did this to you. You have many, many—” He quieted her with a finger to her lips.

“I’ve already lived my lifetime. Too many of them. Cailean, I am done here.”

She sat up, horrified. “You can’t be saying what I think you’re saying.” She scrambled from the bed, her heart pounding so hard she thought she might be sick or faint or both. “I won’t let you do it, Rory. I won’t.” She pressed a fist to her mouth as her stomach wrenched.

He left the bed and came to her. She backed away, beating on his chest. “How could you do that?” she demanded. “How could you make me feel like this and tell me you feel bonded to me and—” She broke off, choking on a sob. She still fought him off. “I won’t reverse it,” she finally managed. “It would be like being an accessory to murder.”