He got to his feet and picked up his whiskey glass to drain what was left. “Ah, so what ye’re sayin’ is that ye’d be doin’ me a favor if ye stayed?” He began to approach her. “Ye’d be makin’ it easier for me to kill me killer? It wouldnae have anythin’ at all to do with the fact that ye’re startin’ to like it here. Startin’ to like what I can do for ye, if ye were to stay. Feelin’ like ye might want to surrender more than ye did the other night.”
“You’re being impossible,” she spluttered. “I just want to make sure Freya doesn’t grow up without her father. There’s… there’s absolutely nothing else to it, and don’t forget that I can always un-surrender myself. I’m not surrendering right now, am I? No, exactly. So, you can take your… come-to-bed eyes anddirect them elsewhere, because I’m trying to have a serious conversation that, clearly, you’re not prepared to have.”
She reached for the door handle, but he got there ahead of her, his hand braced against the door, holding it closed with ease, pinning her between his body and the wood.
“Where else would I look with me ‘come-to-bed’ eyes?” he replied in a silky voice, rather liking the new turn of phrase.
It didn’t serve him well to give too much away in his expressions or manner, but when it came to her, he was secretly glad that she could readthatat least.
Even if I cannae have ye without makin’ ye me wife first.
“I came here to tell you that I have a plan,” she said, her voice thick as she held his gaze, her chest heaving in a torturous rhythm that made him long to rip her bodice away and close his mouth over her nipples.
He could easily clear the desk to give her another taste of what he could do to her if she needed a little more persuading. Then again, with his blood up, there was every chance that he might take it too far.
“That’s all,” she concluded, pointedly turning the door handle. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a child to take care of.”
He didn’t release his hold on the door. “What sort of plan?”
“I’ll tell you when the time is right,” she replied. “Once I’ve ironed out a few creases.”
He frowned. “I daenae like secrets, lass.”
“It’s not a secret, it’s just a work in progress,” she said, her breath hitching as his fingertips caught hold of that blood-drop pendant at her throat.
Against the warmth of his skin, it felt like ice, a strange vibration shivering into his hand.
“Who gave ye this?” he questioned.
“Mrs. Crimm—I mean, Eileen,” she said as her hand came up to cover the pendant, holding it in her fist so he couldn’t get to it. “It’s… how I leave, if that’s what I choose. But right now, I’m choosing not to.”
He took a step back, unnerved by that odd piece of jewelry.
Indeed, he wasn’t afraid of many things, but he was afraid of what that necklace could do. Warriors could calmly face a thousand men in battle and not feel a single shiver of nerves, but when faced with one witch? Magic, or whatever those powerful forces were, was something that even the most powerful man knew not to toy with.
“Right now, I’m choosing not to.”
He concentrated on those words as he gestured that she could depart, and as she left, he couldn’t help wishing he’d refused the invitation to the cèilidh at Castle Culloch. Glancing down at his fingertips, where they’d touched that pendant, he could still feel the vibration tingling along his forearm, shivering toward his heart.
“When ye’ve ‘ironed out the creases’, lass,” he said to her back, “let me ken.”
She twisted her head to look back over her shoulder at him. “I intend to.” A small, hopeful smile graced her lips. “Otherwise, how the hell am I supposed to save you?”
“What do you think?” Nancy stared down at the list she’d made over the past couple of days, breaking more quills than she cared to admit and, frankly, embarrassed that, as a reporter, she didn’t have a pen in her handbag to make writing her notes a little easier.
She was in the castle library, with Freya strapped to her back, fast asleep, and Isla to keep her company. Her co-conspirators in this plan to change history.
Isla had been horrified when Nancy had revealed the missing details of the tapestry that had brought her here, flying into a panic in much the same way Nancy had when she’d realized that she was the bride depicted. But after calming the older woman and explaining her plan to solve the mystery before thekiller could even strike, Isla had turned out to be an excellent, supremely organized associate.
“I think it’s a longer list than I’d like,” she replied with a grimace, her gaze trailing down the names of potential suspects they had managed to gather over the past few days. “It’s nae as if we can have so many arrested without a good reason, and we have nay control at all over Clan MacLeach.”
The name at the top of the list was Freya’s grandfather and Hunter’s former father-in-law, Laird MacLeach.
“I just wish Jane would write,” Nancy lamented.
During her time at Castle Culloch, she’d learned that there was a sort of tear in time and space in the sea cave below the castle. A recess in the stone with a box inside, where Jane put all of the things she wanted her former colleague in the future to know about, and where the note Nancy had found about a painting had come from. However, it also sent thingsbackin time on certain days of the year.
Jane had promised that she would leave a note asking for information regarding the Hawk’s killer.“But it’s not an exact science. Sometimes, replies show up months later. It’s not like sending a text, though I often wish it were. Any information there is about him might not reach us in time.”
