The Raven's Wish (35 page)

"The MacDonalds were the reivers, the murderers that night," he said. "I want you to know that."

She nodded. He lifted a hand then to touch her hair, sliding his fingers down its soft silk. "Now what will you do with this pain?" he asked. "It has no use for you."

She turned her head and pressed her cheek against his hand.

"I would take it from you if I could," she said.

He laughed, a harsh grate of breath. "Take it? I would not give this burden to anyone. It is too bitter. It has been mine to carry all my adult life." He sighed. "I did what I could to avenge them, but it was not enough."

She spun around, and laid her hands on his chest. "Not enough? You could not help their deaths." She rubbed her fingers over his chest. "Let it go, Duncan."

"I never saw the murderers' faces. I did not wound even one of them, that night. They all got away." He felt a return of that old fury, never satisfied. As it roiled in him, heavy and dark, he craved, suddenly, a release from its weight. He drew a long breath and blew it out. He placed a hand over hers, on his heart, and felt the steady thump through their fingers.

"Duncan," she whispered, "Your father and brothers only needed vengeance once. Do not carry this grief around in you."

He sighed at the simplicity of her wisdom. Raising his hand to her cheek, he slid his fingers into her soft hair. "I avenged their deaths many times over, until I left Dulsie, and I never felt the satisfaction of it."

"Let go of your anger. It chains you to that day, like iron fetters," she said. "I know what it is to carry a burden like this. It is hard to make yourself set the weight down, and be done with it."

He watched her, so earnest, her clear gaze filled with love. "What burden do you carry, then?" he asked softly.

"I have seen your death," she whispered. He began to speak, but she placed a finger against his lips and went on. "And before that, I have seen the deaths of others. My uncle, my aunt. Eiric's young mother. Each time I felt crushed by the knowledge, unable to speak of what I had seen, unable to help them, or to stop what God had decreed for them."

"But you spoke of my death," he said, a smile lightening his tone, "and felt no urge to be silent."

"I have been silent, more than you know," she said.

He smoothed her hair, slid his hand down to her slender shoulder, kneading his fingers there. "Those death-visions you have had," he said slowly, "they have all come true?"

"All, so far, but yours."

He pulled her closer. She rested her head against his shoulder, and he held her. "To see such a thing and not speak of it—except to the queen's lawyer—that is a heavy burden,
mo càran
." She nodded silently, and he sighed and held her tightly.

Fear rose in him, a cold spiralling chill. Elspeth's visions had always come true. And now that he had broken the bond, he had begun to move toward what she had seen for him.

He did not know what to think, now. For weeks, months he had disbelieved, even scoffed at what she had told him. And now he was on the verge of a precipice that could very well take him to the heading block. He was loathe to tell her; he wondered if she had realized it yet.

He remembered, then, his own dreams, Elspeth drowning in the sea. In the sea loch. He had actually experienced something of what she, as a seer, had felt and seen many times in her life.

Those dreams had been powerful, more vivid than any he had ever had. Afer the third dream, he had ridden directly to where she had been. He could not deny, any longer, that there could be truth in what she had seen for his future.

But it was too late to accept her seer's warning. If he had listened earlier, would he have broken the bond, so carelessly and impulsively? He shook his head at his own intense thoughts, and sighed into her hair, blowing the fine strands. Her arms circled around his back. With complete certainty, he knew that he would have broken the bond, again and again, in order to rescue Elspeth. He would have done anything to have her now as he had her, safe in his arms.

But he wondered if he had the courage to live with the price, and with the knowledge that his death approached now.

He squeezed his eyes shut, and felt a sudden, fierce urge wash through him, rinsing through like a heavy wave of the sea, taking with it the pain, taking with it the fears of death, of the past. He only wanted to taste and feel and immerse himself in this moment, in the love she offered him so freely.

"No more pain,
mo càran
," he murmured against her hair. "No more talk of death, and forebodings." He slid his hand over her back, over her shoulders, and caught a handful of her hair, pulling gently until she tilted her head back. "We are both so tired that we have forgotten the great gift we have been given."

"Gift?"

He kissed her cheek. "We have found love between us. And that should replace all this fear, all this talk of doom." He slid his mouth along her skin.

Her tiny answering sob was lost into his mouth as he kissed her lips. Tightening her arms around him, she kissed him fiercely, pulling his head down to hers, her lips wet with the tears that glazed her cheeks.

He groaned softly against her lips, and her mouth opened for him. He explored her lips, the delicate line of her teeth, the soft inner heat. His loins swelled with a sudden, deep need that no kiss could soothe, igniting a spinning heat that was barely controlled in him.

Sweeping her up in his arms, he reached the bed with a few quick steps. She was avid now, greedy, her mouth on his, her tongue thrusting, her hands all along his neck, his shoulders, his chest. When he lay her on the bed, she pulled at his shirt insistently. He undid the leather thong that snugged his trews at the waist, and she tugged at his garments with him, until he stretched out fully nude beside her. Gathering her into his arms, he smoothed his hands down her back, her buttocks, her thighs.

She slid her hands along the planes of his body, a quick light touch, until she reached the flat muscles of his belly. Fanning her fingers there, she paused. He burgeoned and grew harder, waiting for those still fingers to move, wanting her gentle touch.

"Ah, girl," he said, and rolled her to her back. "This is what we need, you and I. This sweetness...." He traced his finger along the length of her torso, between her breasts, feeling the incredible softness of her skin, sliding his hand over the hard cage of bone below her breasts, sliding down over her firm belly, her pubis, feathered, downy, waiting.

She arched and moaned, and her hand on his abdomen moved down to lightly fondle him until he sucked in his breath and moved his hips away, not ready yet, too ready.

He kissed her deeply, and swept his hand down her legs, catching the thin linen in his fingers, sliding the cloth up her thighs, over her hips, over her breasts until he pulled it from her. Flesh on flesh now, cool and soft, her body pressed to his.

Rolling, she slid over him, catching him between her legs. Sighing like the sea, she kissed him, the taste of her salt again on his lips, and he held her head in his two hands and opened his mouth to hers, sharing that warmth, that moist heat.

She arched her back and he swept his hands over her breasts until the tips were tight buds beneath his palms, and then he took one and then the other into his mouth. She cried out and flung herself forward, her hair waving over him like cool silk, like fine-spun gold reddened with fire.

Following a deep, soothing rhythm, she moved over him, her breasts skimming over his chest. He curled forward and caught a tip with his mouth, soft and yet hard, warm and firm in his lips.

Then he rolled her over and laid her back, shifting over her, feeling her move and open her legs beneath him, and he entered, sweetly plunging into that welcoming heat. Enclosed, he moved in rhythmic pursuit of a feeling, an intense vortex, far more than physical. Here in her arms, nurtured inside her flesh, he could renew; he could accept love over death, he could find life. Something washed over him like the sea and seemed to take away the hurt of years. The warm gift of her body, of her love, began to heal him. He felt lighter, brighter, filled with peace.

She arched beneath him, and he groaned softly, pulling her closer, the heat and softness within so intense that he could not form words, could not see a thought to its end. He only felt: the heat, the moistness, the exquisite infinity within her.

She cried out and he held her hips fast against him, and thrust into her, giving himself into her like flame blends into flame. He felt as if the edges that defined his body from hers began to dissolve. One being was created and existed while the stroking rhythm of heart and breath and pounding blood overtook them and bound them together and then released them.

He sighed, and slowed, and rolled away, laying on his side to draw her head to his chest, stroking her back, feeling her heartbeat and his own through her slender body. She kissed his shoulder, and he kissed her head, and looked toward the window.

The sunset had faded into indigo, and the stars winked, cold and bright. And for some reason he thought of the fairy wife of one long-ago Macrae laird, and he knew that same magic had been spun in his own life, by the loving spirit who lay in his arms.

He only hoped that the bond, the silvery web that netted their hearts, would be strong enough to pull him home again once he left here.

* * *

"I want to go back to sleep. I am so tired, my bones hurt," Elspeth said, and groaned. "My feet hurt. My back and my neck and my—"

"Hold, hold," Duncan said. He chuckled softly in the deep shadows. He had slept for a long time, and had risen from the bed a short while ago to shut the window; he had forgotten it earlier, and a brisk wind had awakened him.

Noticing that dawn edged the sky, he had come back to bed to climb into the warm cocoon of the deep, soft feather mattress, with its fat pillows, fur coverlets and plaid curtain hangings. Elspeth had woken up when he sank into the bed.

"Come here," he said, "and I will ease your hurts." She rolled ungracefully, dropping her arm across his chest with a loud sigh.

"You cannot ease these hurts," she said, "they are too much. I am one ache, from head to foot. I have lived my entire lifetime in two days. I feel like I am a hundred years old. Let me sleep."

He rubbed her neck and shoulders, making small circles with his fingertips. "You do not look a hundred to me," he murmured. "You are young and strong, and clever enough to escape from the doom of a tidal rock."

"That was a long swim. No wonder I ache," she answered, and stretched her neck so that he could knead her stiff muscles. "How old is your grandmother?" she asked.

"I do not know. A hundred." At her quick gasp, he laughed. "Seventy, perhaps."

"She is formidable, and yet somehow adorable. So tiny and white, like a fairy."

"She is all of that," he said. His hand moved down to rub at her lower back, the curves of her waist and buttocks soft and wonderful beneath his hands. "And she told me that she does not expect to see either of us until late in the day. You shall get all the sleep you want."

"Shall we sleep all the day, then?" Her sleepy voice was infused with humor.

"Not all, I think, though we should keep to our bed," he murmured, and spread his fingers over her face to tilt her lips to his in the darkness.

"Duncan," she said a moment later. "Did you quarrel with Innis Macrae, when you left here?"

"I thought we were done with that," he said softly.

"I want to know the whole of it, why you left, why you stayed away so long."

"There were five of us, the Macrae brothers of Dulsie," he said. "I look at your cousins, and I am reminded of how we were. That must be why I like being with your cousins, feeling a part of a close group like that again. I was the youngest. It is astounding to me, somehow, that they are all gone now, but for me." He lay back on the pillows and rubbed at his face. "We were a scourge, my brothers and I, after the MacDonald raid. Uncontrollable, wild. My mother was sick with grief, and had no authority over us. My grandmother was a strong, willful woman, and she let us all know what she thought of our raiding."

She laid a hand on his chest, a comforting warmth. "I was barely past boyhood. The Highland way is honor and pride, but my brothers and I thought we should demonstrate that by strength at any cost. We returned savagery for savagery. We were relentless, and we were wrong, but it took me years to learn that."

"You were clever at those raids, I heard, and a legend after a while. Ruari told me that. His mother frightened her children with tales of the wild Macraes."

He smiled ruefully. "We took a great deal of MacDonald cattle, and hid it well. We killed only those men who confronted us—we did not murder them in their sleep, and we did not do harm to women or to children. We were after men only. After months of this, another of my brothers was killed. I quarreled with my grandmother when she insisted that we stop. The Macrae chief, and the chief of the Mackenzies, with whom our clan is allied, sent word to cease. So I left Dulsie in anger.

"My mother had died of her grief, and I went south to tell her family—she had been a border girl, sent by the king's council to wed a Highland laird. My mother's cousins took me in. They were border reivers, among the cleverest of the lot, and so I carried on there in much the same way." He flexed his shoulder, feeling an uncomfortable stiffness in his wounded arm. "I learned more about reiving and burning and murdering than a man should ever know, in the time I spent with the Kerrs."

Her hand came up to stroke his chin, rasping her nails over his beard. Her fingertips played with his earlobe, with the golden circlet there. "How did you come to wear an earring?"

"My cousins and I decided to become pirates one night. We stumbled, drunk and full of ourselves, into a tavern where an old woman did our ears for us. But we sobered, and never went to sea. We liked reiving too much. Did you know that a sailor wears a bit of gold in his ear, so that if his body is washed up on some shore, he at least can supply the price of his coffin?"