Page 68 of Dark Seduction

Claire looked at him and their gazes locked. Malcolm’s iron will could be exasperating, but she was terribly proud of him. He was a hero in every sense of the word.

I’m going to fall in love with him if I don’t stop this, she thought. And maybe it was already too late. Then she realized Royce was staring. “Can you read minds, too?”

His pleasant expression had vanished. “Aye, but I willna read yers. I dinna have to. Ye be fallin’ in love with my nephew.”

Claire paled. Did Royce suddenly disapprove? “Malcolm and I are impossibly different. He doesn’t understand me and I am certain he never will. Obviously you know we spent last night together. That doesn’t mean I am falling for him.” Well, if he read her mind now, he’d know that she was. She added, “I have no intention of falling in love with a fifteenth-century knight.”

“Every woman falls in love with him after sharing his bed.”

Claire tensed.

“I dinna wish to be rude. But he be the Maclean, he be pleasing to the eye, an’ he can pleasure a woman well enough. He will never love in return an’ he will never marry.”

That was a warning if Claire had ever heard one, and she was angry. “So you are his keeper?”

“He be my brother’s son,” Royce said flatly. “I will make sure he doesna repeat my brother’s mistakes.”

And Claire thought about Mairead, who had been raped by her husband’s enemy while still a bride and had then had Moray’s child. She thought about Brogan, who had hunted his enemy but failed to destroy him. Instead, he had died in a very human battle. And Mairead had retreated from the world to live as a nun when her legitimate son was only nine. She had also rejected Aidan, the child of her rape. She could barely begin to imagine the suffering of husband and wife.

“Claire, dinna mistake my meaning. Ye be a fine, strong woman. An’ if Malcolm were just a laird, even though ye bring no dowry, I’d bless the union.”

“You are getting ahead of yourself!” Claire cried, but she was pretty sure she was getting his meaning.

He reached across his saddle and seized her wrist. “The Masters who marry—or love—always regret it,” Royce said. His gray gaze had become as dark as thunderclouds. “Look at the fate o’ my brother an’ his wife. There be a reason a Master lives alone, fights alone, dies alone.”

Claire pulled away. “How sad,” she whispered, still angry, but far less so. Because Royce was right. A Master by his very nature had the vilest and most powerful enemies in the land. A wife and a family were an invitation to tragedy. She thought about Malcolm’s bastard son. “What about children?”

His harsh expression remained. “We need sons. They be the next generation o’ Masters, if they’re chosen.”

“A child makes a man as vulnerable—more vulnerable—than a wife.”

“Aye, but we have nay choice. Malcolm has Brogan protected day an’ night. If he wished, he could send Brogan to Iona. Children have been raised there.”

She absorbed that. “Is this why you are alone? Because your oh-so-cool head rules your heart?”

He became dangerously cold. “I was married once, long ago, before the Choosing. My wife be dead.”

Claire saw she had hit a raw spot. “I am sorry, Royce. Look, how I feel doesn’t matter, because I am going home after we find the page and it is safe for me to do so. It never occurred to me to stay here.”

“It may never be safe fer ye to go back.”

Claire stared, shaken. “I hope you’re wrong!” Why would he think such a thing?

“Most women wouldna have the power to leave him,” he said skeptically.

“I’m not most women. We come from different worlds, in case you haven’t noticed. And I have to go back to avenge my mother. I also have family there. I worry about them.”

“Ye should.” Royce’s gray gaze drifted to her throat. “The stone bothers me.”

“It seems to bother—or fascinate—everyone.”

“Ye wear a Highland charm. I can feel its power—I felt it the first time we met. Why were ye, a lass from York City in the future, given such a stone? I ken the stone was yer mother’s, so who gave it to her? Were ye meant to be sent here? Do the Ancients wish to see if Malcolm will make the mistakes his father did? Because there be some reason ye be here, Claire. I can feel it. Ye became far too close to Malcolm, far too soon an’ too easily.”

Claire was shaken. In the back of her mind, she had almost been thinking that her fate was Dunroch—and Malcolm. Damn it, she had secretly wondered if she was the love of his life. But that was the romantic in her, who had seen every single version of Pride and Prejudice and who, once in a while, locked herself in her room to read a really juicy romance novel. But Royce was right. There had been a connection from the moment he’d seized her in her store. And from that moment, everything had happened so damn fast.

MacNeil had said that the Ancients didn’t mind her presence on Iona. The Ancients shouldn’t even know about her!

Malcolm thought her a test for his soul. Royce thought her a test of his loyalty to the Brotherhood and his determination to uphold his vows. But wasn’t it one and the same thing? Either way, she didn’t want to be any kind of test.