A Highlander's Temptation Read online

“Lady, I do not believe that is wise.” Darroc stared at her, his own insides quivering at her proposal.

  Everyone knew her race had hearts of stone and cold iron for backbones, but she was a lass. Even if being in the same room with her cost him dearly, he wouldn’t have it on his conscience to allow such foolery.

  He shook his head. “You do not know what you’re saying. The wound is—”

  “I have tended more grievous injuries.” She set Mina aside and clasped her hands, linking her fingers with purpose. “Now it would seem I must see to my own.”

  Darroc frowned.

  She angled her head, unbending.

  “Is that Moraig’s healing basket?” Her gaze went to the table where the hen wife had left her leeching goods.

  Darroc clamped his jaw.

  “I will not shame the woman.” She looked back at him, misunderstanding his silence. “She will think the work is her own.”

  “I am thinking of you, my lady.” Darroc’s heart galloped at the notion of her cutting into her own flesh.

  The image tied his guts in a knot.

  “Then please bring me the stitching tools.” Her voice held an edge of iron.

  “As you wish.” He bit out the words.

  Then he went to do her bidding, silently vowing to snatch the blade from her if she so much as flinched. But when he returned to the bed and handed her the basket, he saw by the hard set of her face that she could likely slice off her entire leg and sew it back on without cringing.

  He had a sinking feeling as to why.

  “You are a bold-hearted woman, Lady Arabella.” He spoke before he could stop himself, needing to know. “There are many MacKenzies in Kintail. Which family of that race do you call your own?”

  “My family is Kintail.” She looked up from the basket, the pride on her face as damning as her words. “I am the eldest daughter of Duncan MacKenzie. He is the Black Stag of Kintail, chief of our clan.”

  Darroc nodded, his worst dread confirmed.

  Something inside him clenched and twisted until he was sure he couldn’t draw another breath.

  His hated enemy’s daughter returned her attention to Mad Moraig’s healing basket, oblivious. “Do you mind leaving me now?” The words were sweet, even calm. “I would be alone when I tend myself.”

  He still couldn’t speak.

  She glanced up at him, waiting.

  “I will leave you, aye.” He found his voice at last, the words emerging in a strange, hollow tone he didn’t recognize as his own.

  He crossed the room, glad to be gone from her. A thousand screaming demons buzzed in his head and he only wanted to get away.

  He needed air.

  A hefty swig of mind-numbing uisge beatha.

  But he paused at the door to glance back at her. “I will look in on you later,” he said, honor demanding the courtesy. “I’ll keep Moraig occupied the while.”

  To his horror, she smiled. “You are kind, my lord. I thank you.”

  He almost choked.

  She simply nodded, dismissing him.

  And looking as serene as if she were about to sit down to a meal of honeyed cakes and mead and not preparing herself to begin her grisly task.

  Chills spiking through him, he escaped onto the landing and closed the door. Not that such a flimsy barrier made a difference. He could still feel her all around him, see her sapphire eyes watching him so innocently, so totally unaware of the storm she’d unleashed.

  He shoved a hand through his hair, striving to gather his wits.

  The saints knew he needed them.

  But as he hurried down the tower stairs, he knew things were going to go badly for him. Arabella MacKenzie had stolen more than his ability to think clearly.

  She’d dug her fine Kintail-born talons into him and he wasn’t sure how to break free.

  He just knew he had to.

  Anything else was unthinkable.

  Chapter Six

  Days later, across the glittering expanse of the Hebridean Sea, Linnet stood before the window of her herbarium, breathing deeply. She loved the little stone workshop set against her herb garden’s seaward wall. Ever sensitive to still and gentle places, she’d claimed the garden and its workshop as her own almost immediately upon arriving at Eilean Creag as a young bride so many years ago.

  Thick-walled, low-ceilinged, and brimming with treasures for those with a hand for herbs and healing, the dimly lit herbarium soon became her sanctuary.

  It was here that she spent her sweetest hours.

  She found peace inside the herbarium, beneath the smoke-blackened rafters, each beam crowded with bundles of dried herbs and flowers.

  Someone—Duncan himself, she suspected—made certain that a small brazier always crackled in a corner, the brazier’s few lumps of burning peat taking off the worst of a day’s chill. Equally pleasing, the single, deep-set window where she now stood let in just the right amount of tangy sea air to keep her alert when she worked on her medicinal tinctures, poultices, and salves.

  Though, in truth, she didn’t always come here to work.

  Sometimes she just appreciated the pungent, homey smells. The comforting blend of dried herbs, peat smoke, the sea, and—she couldn’t deny—the earthy richness of the hard-packed dirt floor.

  Other times she simply let the quiet surround her. The well-filled shelves and work tables were her friends. Each flagon, jar, or earthenware pot held a memory. As did her carefully tended pestles, mortars, and wooden mixing bowls. They all told stories that warmed her heart. Even the precious set of metal scales, dented and grimed when she’d first discovered it in a corner cupboard. Now the scale set gleamed bright and never bore a speck of dust.

  Then there were times this place embraced her, softly.

  Today was one of those days.

  So she flattened her hands against the smooth surface of her work table, enjoying the connection to all the MacKenzie women before her who might have stood in this very spot.

  They, too, would have used their skill and knowledge to the good of the clan. Women like her who toiled daily, making their own cures, creams, and powders. Perhaps they also used their time here to savor the silence and solitude.

  Linnet hoped it was so.

  “Beannachd leat.” She spoke the words with a smile, as she always did. “Blessings be with you.”

  She never failed to offer the greeting to those long-ago kinswomen. She was certain they heard and it was important that they knew she wished them well.

  Unfortunately—for she was a bit tired this day—it was also important that she do some work.

  But not before she treated herself to a glimpse out the window. For once, no soft mists floated across the loch, hiding the great hills and turning the water a deep, slate-colored gray.

  The sky was high and blue, without a trace of cloud. And although a freshening wind stirred up little white-caps, the sun shone brilliantly. The whole glory of Kintail stretched before her, ancient and magnificent.

  Her breath caught, the beauty piercing her.

  For a beat, she felt quite spoiled and indulged, so blessed to call this place her home.

  “Ah, well…”—she spoke to the view, not feeling a bit ridiculous doing so—“I see I shouldn’t have praised you so lavishly.”

  On the far side of Loch Duich, where the hills rose so stark and rugged, a dark bank of heavy rain clouds gathered and swirling mist already wreathed the highest peaks. Linnet frowned, at first thinking she’d imagined the swift change in weather.

  The day had been so cold and sunny.

  But as she stared, long swells began rolling across the loch, chased by rainy squalls until they crashed against the rocky base of the cliffs. Even at a distance, she could see how each new wave sent up spumes of glistening white spray.

  She almost laughed.

  She should have known the sun-bathed afternoon wouldn’t last.

  Not that she really cared.

  She loved Kintail in all weathers. As d
id every soul she knew who dwelled here. A fierce love of land was a Highland tradition, unspoiled. And she was no different from any other of her race.

  Though at times, she’d swear she loved these hills even more.

  So with her heart full, she reached for an earthenware bowl and tipped its contents—freshly harvested sphagnum moss—onto her work table.

  Outside the window, the branches of her crabapple tree rattled in the rising wind. Already the bright sky she’d so admired was darkening and she could hear the higher waves smacking against the garden’s seaward wall, just behind the herbarium.

  Well used to such sudden Highland storms, she puffed a strand of hair off her face and began sorting her bog mosses. First she divided the moist, springy clumps by color. This batch—collected by one of her husband’s youngest squires—proved particularly varied, including fine mosses of bright green, deep brown, and rich blood-red.

  She pressed a finger into a plump bit of the blood-red moss, pleased by its bounce and rich color.

  Long experience told her that the red sphagnum, when boiled and steeped in water, made a wonderful soak for weary feet. Her lips twitched on the thought. As a certain ill-humored someone had been prowling the battlements of late, oftentimes even missing his dinner, she considered the possibility that a surprise late-night foot bath might improve his mood. So she set these mosses aside and concentrated first on the green and brown ones.

  These more common varieties would make excellent wound dressings once she’d picked away all the embedded bits of dirt, leaves, and twigs. A task she always saw to herself, not trusting anyone else to clean the precious medicinal moss as thoroughly as she did.

  Even so, she’d let the squire carry the prepared mosses up to the workshop’s drying loft. Much as she tried to ignore the discomfort, her knees weren’t the best in recent years. She knew better than to scramble up a ladder in the darkest corner of the herbarium.

  And it was dark.

  A glance out the window proved it.

  Shimmering curtains of rain now obscured the view. Her beloved hills were gone, the awe-inspiring peaks and corries hidden by gloom. Even the air had chilled, turning so icy she wouldn’t have been surprised to see her breath emerge as white puffs.

  “Ah, well…” She tightened her shawl around her shoulders and picked up another wet clump of red sphagnum, adding it to her pile.

  She also fought back a smile.

  The rushing wind and rain would drive Duncan down from the battlements. Unlike her—she did enjoy a good storm—her formidable husband preferred the comfort of his hearthside in such wild weathers.

  Knowing he’d deny any such hint of softness, her smile deepened and she reached for the one remaining bit of red moss. But before her fingers could grasp it, the color changed. No longer the deep blood-crimson of wine, the sphagnum shone with an emerald brilliance she was certain hadn’t been in the squire’s gathered assortment.

  The green peat mosses spread across her work table were a lighter, less rich shade.

  At least, they had been.

  Now each clump of sphagnum winked back at her, dark green and unfamiliar. Her little pile of red sphagnum had vanished completely.

  Linnet blinked. She pressed a hand to her breast as the work table also disappeared and a smaller table loomed in its place.

  This table, too, held peat mosses.

  But these were dried and filled a wicker creel.

  Linnet’s heart began a fast, frantic hammering. Somewhere—too close to her ears to be outside—the shrieking wind and hissing rain became a high-pitched, deafening buzz.

  It was a sound she knew well.

  Even as she recognized the familiar herald of her visions, Arabella’s face and shoulders appeared, hovering above the wicker creel. More beautiful than Linnet had ever seen her, Arabella’s remarkable eyes glistened and her lips were curved in the sweetest smile.

  But a strange luminosity surrounded her and her skin was whiter than milk.

  Deathly white.

  Linnet’s chest squeezed as whirling gray mist swept in through the window to whip around and disperse the image. The fast-spinning mist quickly blotted everything but the little oaken table set with a single wax candle and the basket of dried moss.

  Wound dressing moss.

  The basket began to glow, the innocent clumps of healing sphagnum getting brighter and brighter until their meaning burst through the darkness swirling around her.

  Arabella was in danger.

  Injured or… worse.

  “No-o-o!” Linnet’s legs buckled and she sagged to her knees, some always coherent part of her making her grab for the edge of the work table.

  She clung tight, grateful the sturdy table was there even though she couldn’t see it. The buzzing in her ears reached a fever pitch and she gripped the table harder. But it wasn’t her own work table that she held so fiercely.

  It was the little oaken table.

  And, she could see now, the hands clutching its edge weren’t her own.

  They were age-spotted and knotty, the fingers thin and withered as claws.

  Linnet’s breath froze.

  Chills sped up and down her spine. She began to tremble and the fine hairs on her nape lifted. Though she knew she was kneeling, she could no longer feel the cold, earthen floor beneath her.

  Nothing around her existed.

  The ancient hands intensified in clarity.

  She could see them clearly. The mottled, papery skin shone so brightly there could be no question that the hands were of great significance.

  Linnet shook her head, trying to break the taibh—the frightful vision she didn’t want to see—but even as she squeezed shut her eyes, rebelling, a deeper part of her soul knew she couldn’t banish the image.

  As a taibhsear blessed—or cursed—with second sight, trying to deny what her gift wanted her to see could spell terrible disaster.

  But when the hands moved to dip clawlike fingers into the glowing basket of wound dressing moss, pure dread flooded Linnet’s heart. The swirling darkness lightened a bit, giving her a look at the owner of the hands. It was a bent-legged old woman, garbed in black and with a whirr of iron-gray hair.

  Devorgilla.

  Relief shot through Linnet until the crone turned and hobbled right past her to vanish into the swirling mist.

  The old woman wasn’t Devorgilla.

  She was a stranger. But her watery blue eyes had been kind. And her ancient hands, though shaky, had clutched great masses of dried sphagnum. Wound dressing she wouldn’t have needed if Arabella were…

  Linnet couldn’t finish the thought.

  The buzzing in her ears was growing even louder, the whirling mist darker. The little oaken table was gone now, though the single candle remained, its golden flame flickering and dancing.

  Linnet bit her lip, tasting blood.

  Something sharp and hard dug into her knee—perhaps a pebble she’d fished out of her peat mosses—and she gasped, though she couldn’t hear her own cry.

  She did hear the crackle and hiss of the candle flame.

  Almost a roar now, the noise rose above the horrible buzzing, getting louder and louder as the golden flames grew and spread into a large and glowing heart.

  Linnet’s own heart stopped and then slammed against her ribs.

  Arabella was inside the golden heart.

  Whole, beaming, and naked save for a swath of unknown plaid.

  Linnet stared.

  Arabella was so close she could almost touch her. And she looked so blissfully happy.

  So in love.

  At once, the terrible buzzing stopped, replaced by the loud and joyous ringing of bells. The sound filled Linnet’s ears and welled inside her. Then the pealing rose to a crescendo when a tall, powerfully built man stepped into the flaming heart. He took Arabella in his arms, pulling her close with such fierce protectiveness that Linnet’s own tears kept her from seeing the man’s face.

  Then the bell ringin
g stopped and the image vanished as if it’d never been. The dark mists glittered brightly and then spiraled away, leaving Linnet slumped against her work table.

  She took several long, deep breaths and lifted a hand to knuckle her eyes.

  Slowly her world came back into focus.

  Then from somewhere behind her she heard a loud bang and a crash.

  “Saints, Maria, and Joseph!” The roared curse could only be Duncan.

  Linnet tightened her grip on the table—she was still too weak to stand—and twisted around, not surprised to see him towering just inside the threshold.

  There was only Duncan.

  Her heart’s mate and father to her girls.

  Fists clenched at his sides, he stared at her, horror all over him. His face was grim, blacker even than the storm that was no more.

  Behind him, the workshop door swung on its hinges, testimony to his furious entrance. A three-legged stool lay toppled on its side, the large earthenware pot it’d held smashed in jagged, irreparable shards.

  Linnet sighed.

  She’d planned to steep the red sphagnum in that pot.

  “By the Rood!” Duncan kicked aside the stool and strode across the pot shards toward her. “You’ve been seized by your taibhsearachd again! And”—his brows snapped together—“you’ve been crying! Are you unwell?”

  “I am fine. But—” Linnet’s voice cracked. Her throat was still too thick for words.

  Before she could swallow and try again, Duncan was upon her.

  “What did you see?” He pulled her to her feet, dragging her against his iron-hard chest. His heart thundered so loudly she could hear every hammering beat.

  He drew back to look at her, his midnight blue eyes almost black with worry. “Was it Arabella?”

  The dread in his voice cut to her soul.

  “Yes.” Linnet couldn’t lie. “She’s been… she is—”

  “What?” The blood drained from Duncan’s face. “What has happened to her?”

  “She is well… now. But—”

  “Now?” Duncan turned even whiter. “What do you mean now?”

  Linnet leaned into him, not knowing where to begin.

  Searching for the right words, she stared past his shoulder out the window. The world was still now, windless and quiet. Mist still clung to the hills, but the sky was once again a dazzling, cloudless blue and the low evening sun turned the loch’s smooth, gleaming waters to a mirror of pure molten gold.