Page 8 of Dorchad

The notion of wishing made his lust fade. Whatever she was, the cluet had not brought her back for a bastart like him.

“You dinnae ken me, wench.” He deliberately shook off her hold and left her, closing the door behind him as he stepped out into the passage.

Beinn, Lucia and his brother Sgathan stood outside the door, all looking worried.

“Go to your post, lad,” Dorchad said to the big man, who nodded and trotted off. To the laird’s wife he said, “One moment, my lady.” He then punched his brother the seneschal in the face. “Eejit.”

Sgathan staggered back, regained his footing, and wiped away the blood that trickled from his nose. “I deserved that?”

“And worse, so stay clear of me.” He regarded Lucia. “The cluet dropped the wench into the loch, but happily she swims. She named herself Rebecca McIan, a doctor from a place called Boston.”

“Bloody hell.” The laird’s wife pinched the bridge of her nose. “Who wished for her?”

“I cannae tell you. She’s a wee thing, thin and frail, and deeply frightened. While she’s an outsider, I shallnae permit anyone to torment her,” he said, more for his brother’s benefit than hers. “Doubtless the dark cloth surrounding her before she fell into the water, ’twas the facking dark Fae queen’s rag.”

“Did you see where the cluet went?” Lucia asked.

Dorchad shrugged, and stepped aside as the laird’s wife went into his chamber. That left him alone with Sgathan, who mopped more blood trickling from the lip he’d split. In that moment he despised his twin, for while his features and stature mirrored his own, his bright blue eyes and persuasive ways made him ever popular among the vassals and the clan. He also could speak with ease to anyone. By comparison to his twin Dorchad looked and sounded the villain. Thanks to his menacing features and horrendous voice, he still could not walk through a passage without terrifying some maid or scullery.

Envying his twin was nothing new, for Dorchad had long known himself to be the lesser man. All he could do was scare everyone into obeying him as the laird’s second. No one called him friend; all simply obeyed his orders to keep in his good graces.

“Lady Lucy shall look after your wee thing,” Sgathan said. “You should carry on with the duties you’re neglecting.”

“Such as correcting the seneschal that cannae keep a civil tongue with the laird’s second?” he countered.

“Shall I accompany you to the lists for a curative bout, then, brother?” the seneschal asked, his gaze turning cool and calculating. “You may regret attempting to school me.”

He started to walk past him, stopped to look into his twin’s deceptively pleasant eyes. They had battled a few times as young lads, the fights always ending in a draw with both of them bloodied, but against the world they’d always protected each other. That bond had been tested many times, and never broken. So why did he sense that it was now weakening for some reason he could not fathom?

“Go attend to your duties,” Dorchad told him, and then stalked out.

Osgan waited until dark to climb down from the tree blind he’d built himself. Keeping watch from the shores of the loch surrounding the MacRune’s castle had been an ongoing task of utter futility, at least until today. Seeing a stray arrow change direction in mid-flight and nearly skewer the much-feared Chieftain Dorchad MacRune might be the answer to his many entreaties of the gods. So, too, might the red-haired wench he’d pulled from the loch.

If he were going to ignite a clan war to wipe out Rune’s sons, and permit him to recover the cluet he had buried on their island a century past, he needed them to go to war with the MacAlen, the only clan powerful enough to prevail over them.

Somewhere on that island lay the cluet, the fabled treasure he had stolen from the dark Fae queen while serving as her consort in Elphyne a century past. Expecting it to grant his every wish when he fled back to the mortal realm, Osgan discovered the enchanted cloth would not obey a mere mortal. He then had to evade Rune, the queen’s deadliest assassin, whom she sent to hunt down and kill him.

For a time he wondered if he had made the worst mistake of his life, until one of his former lovers told him how he could become the master of the cluet. He buried the cloth, and then lured away Rune and made the assassin believe he had killed him before crawling into a special Fae hollow to sleep for a hundred years. Upon waking he discovered all his wounds had been healed, and he had been transformed into an immortal capable of commanding the treasure to fulfill all his dreams.

So he would have done, had the half-mortal sons of Rune not built their castle direct atop the cache where Osgan had buried the cluet.

Soon you shall belong to me again, he thought as he went back to where he had tethered his horse.

Riding along a seldom-used trail, Osgan made his way through the forest to the new magistrate’s tollbooth compound. Spring had arrived to add some new warmth to the cold air of the highlands, but patches of snow spiked with new green shoots yet lingered here and there. He’d managed to learn that the MacRune had until the winter solstice to find and return the cluet to the dark Fae queen, or she would destroy them and everyone else in the mortal realm. The queen still believed him slain by Rune, but his hard-won immortality would not save him if she decided to set this world afire.

I stole it from her once and escaped with my life. ’Twill be naught to steal it away from the MacRune.

As he came within sight of the compound Osgan saw the mercenaries paid to protect Beiste Duff and his wife. They crouched in the dirt, tossing dice, with an eruption of groans and a shout when one of them won. Before he came into their view he dismounted, strapped a pack to his back and enveloped himself in a Fae cloak that turned him into a shadow. Leaving the horse to quietly crop grass, he used the trees as cover and circled around the compound. The old charcoal kiln that lay in ruins cleverly concealed a tunnel that long ago had been dug under the wall to permit the magistrate and his family to escape in the event of a siege.

When he emerged from the dusty, cobwebbed tunnel, he retrieved a cache of garments and necessities, and considered going up into the house. All the servants would be busy outside with the laundry today. Lady Duff would be alone in her sewing room, stitching away at one of her erotic tapestries. He hadn’t enjoyed her well-used quim since his failure months ago to murder the MacRune laird at the village market, but his usual desire for facking had oddly diminished since awakening from his century-long sleep. Indeed, the thought of swiving the magistrate’s wife left his ever-ready tadger soft.

I but need a good hard fack before I set my new scheme into motion. Once the cluet belongs to me again, I may enjoy the most beautiful mortals in the entire realm.

After changing his appearance yet again Osgan took the back staircase, avoiding the rooms where the guards were presently violating the unlucky vassals who hadn’t yet left the house. The sounds of slapping flesh kept time with the mercenaries’ grunts and the cries of the maids and sculleries put him more in the mood for love as he approached the open door of Malvina’s sewing room, and saw that she had her back toward it.

A tapestry she had recently completed lay on the table in front of her, and she seemed to be admiring it as she worked her hand against the front of her skirts.

Do you polish your pearl yet again, Lady Duff? It amused him that her appetite for gratification rivaled his own.