“Such a dire wound,” she murmured. “So deep inside ye. It maun ha’ near pierced your heart.”
She touched him. She not only touched him, for the linens rustled as she leaned forward, and he felt her lips on the ugly wound. “Bless. Bless and heal.”
He sprang up and turned to face her. There she lay, half sprawled to reach him, her hair a wild tumble his fingers had made. Temptation beyond measure, yet still she retained an unfathomable innocence. A magic he could not resist.
“Do not touch me,” he told her raggedly. “Ye should no’ touch such ugliness.”
“But I ha’ been touching ye all the night long.”
“No’ there.” That wound represented, for him, something he did not even want to contemplate. A failure. A near defeat.
Here in the privacy, the sanctity, of this chamber, he might share with her the best of him. Not the worst.
He turned back and scrambled into his clothing while she watched. Only when he finished did she gather the sheet and half rise from the bed.
Would she ask him to stay? What would he do if she did? He might bring himself to say no. But if she touched him—if she laid her fingers on him again with such stunning tenderness, he feared he might fall to pieces.
All the same, when he was fully clad, he looked at her standing beside the bed. She barely came up to his chin. A mere wisp of a lass.
How could her hold on him be so powerful?
“Mistress Saerla,” he asked, even though he hated himself for it, “may I return to ye tonight?”
She closed her eyes for an instant as if she too fought a battle. He could not let himself forget that she, just like him, was a warrior.
She opened her eyes and said, “If I say nay, if I deny ye—”
Agony ran him through, pressing deep like that arrow in his back.
“—would ye respect it? Would ye keep away?”
“To be sure,” he told her swiftly, before he could catch the words back. “Wha’ ye give to me here, Saerla, is freely given, or…” He struggled to finish the thought. “It means naught.”
“Aye.” She nodded. “If ye come to my door, Rory MacLeod, I will let ye in.”
Suddenly he could breathe again. He could live through this day, whatever it held, till the sun tumbled from the sky once more.
“But, Master MacLeod, I would ha’ ye think carefully before ye return.” She nodded at his tartan. “About wha’ ye are, and wha’ I am.”
“I scarce ken wha’ ye are,” he admitted. An angel, perhaps, if he believed in such. A witch, if they commanded the light. Hell, he scarcely knew what he was when with her.
She lifted her chin a notch. “I am one o’ the three sisters MacBeith and will always be.”
Not here. Not here in this chamber. Here, she was his.
He did not say so. He but inclined his head to her respectfully, as to a queen. This woman he had tasted. She who had rocked in his arms.
“I will, wi’ yer permission, mistress, return tonight.”
And every night until her sister came to destroy him.
He went out of the chamber and away as swiftly as he could. Not many were about so early, only a few servants. But their heads turned at seeing him hurrying along the corridors.
He headed not for his study but out into the open air.
And there, the glory of Glen Bronach opened before him.
Bonny place, and all he’d ever desired. The love of his heart, if he could be said to have one. But what of the woman inside? Was she not still more beautiful?
