It was the image he’d projected to the rest of the world. It was the image he had developed to protect himself from the painful memories that shadowed him of the dirty beaten boy who had survived abuse and a violent adolescence. But it was an image based on illusion, built on sand, crumbling grain by grain under his feet. One day, when it eroded, he would sink into a dungeon of self-despair.
“What am I to do with you now, lass?” he thought aloud, turning to look at her.
“Love me,” she said, breaking into an appealing grin.
“Don’t say that. Your father will rise from the grave.”
“Love me.” She twined her slender arms around his neck. Her small body sought the warm strength of his. “Love me,” she whispered in his ear.
Her sweet breath stirred dangerous sensations along his nerve endings. A groan of denial caught in his throat. Her simple plea broke down the self-defensive composure of a lifetime. Duncan told himself he was going to push her away and walk out of this cabin.
A moment later he was pressing her down onto the bunk and kissing her into breathless silence. She tasted sweet like heather honey. She trusted him, and the eager yearning in her eyes filled him with ambivalence, with guilt and with a sexual hunger that shuddered down his neck into the base of his spine.
“Beg me to stop.” His voice was a tortured groan against her mouth. “Lass, do you not understand what I want to do to you?”
His lips drifted down her delicate jawline to her throat, his teeth grazing her skin with a tender sensuality that sent a violent jolt of pleasure down to her toes. She could hear his voice, but the dark tones only dropped like stones and sank unheeded into the deep well of her dazed awareness. When his mouth sought the peak of her breast and laved it through her silk chemise, she gasped in shock that swiftly intensified to enjoyment.
“Tell me what you want to do. my lord,” she whispered, shivering with pleasure.
He closed his eyes, pressing his face between the cleft of her breasts. “There are dark enough thoughts running through my mind without your encouraging them.”
“Aye, but I like what you’ve done to me so far,” she admitted with another reflexive shiver.
He ran his large hand down her hip and rubbed his palm against the mound of her womanhood, his voice rough with restraint. Feverish heat washed over his body. Just touching her there made him shake. “Well, there’s this for a start. And then I would undress you, and kiss you everywhere.”
“Everywhere?” she said with an underlying catch of laughter in her throat.
He had to smile; her sexual curiosity was more arousing than the wiles of all the courtesans he’d known combined. He empathized with MacFay’s rage at being denied her. She was the sort of woman who, without even trying, fueled obsessions and started wars.
“Yes, everywhere. I’d kiss and touch you everywhere,” he said hoarsely as his fingers brushed downward and sank into the slit of her drawers. Soft dewy flesh hidden beneath a tangled fleece of curls. Now it was his turn to shiver, temptation spinning its web tighter and tighter around his willpower. He was a pulsebeat from taking her and damning the consequences.
“Oh.” Marsali arched instinctively into his hand, her eyes widening in surprise. She felt both curious and overwhelmed by her body’s powerful response, not certain where it would lead. The raw passion in Duncan’s unwavering stare disconcerted her. Confused, she buried her face in the sturdy musculature of his chest, breathing in his rich male scent, which mingled with the sweet pungence of the herbs hanging above and made her feel lightheaded. She liked the inescapable weight of his body against hers, the dominant strength that pinned her to the bunk, the gentle play of his fingers that sent pleasure streaking inside her.
Duncan clenched his jaw, consumed by a powerful commingling of affection and a lust that turned his mind molten. When she climaxed under his hand, her soft cries of pleasure absorbed by his shoulder, he thought his heart would burst with his own excitement. He imagined burying himself inside her, thrusting until his own need was relieved. His entire body ached with animal instinct, to mate, mark her, overpower.
“If you could read my mind now, Marsali,” he said, gripping her to him, “you would know why I am bad for you.”
She drew her head back from his shoulder, unaware of the violent impulses he was battling. She felt warm, sated and forgiving, savoring the closeness between them. She gazed off pensively into the distance, a smile playing on her lips.
“What are you thinking?” Duncan asked quietly.
She drew her gaze back to his face. “I was just thinking about the Old Testament story of Moses. He reminds me of you. Have you ever read the Bible, my lord?” she asked unexpectedly.
Duncan blinked. He couldn’t have heard her correctly. “What?”
“The Bible. It shows how God seems to use the most imperfect people to achieve His ends. You were very bad before and now you have a chance to redeem yourself.”
“Are you drunk, Marsali?”
“I can’t imagine why you would think that.”
“Because only someone very drunk would think that God sent me into this cabin to redeem myself when I’m a heartbeat from taking your innocence. That doesn’t sound very biblical to me.”
“I meant He sent you to the castle for a higher purpose.” She sounded as perplexed as she had been pleased a moment ago. “I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing.”
“Obviously,” he said dryly. “I’m talking about sex, which is what men usually think about, although I’d have to say that after what just happened between us, it does seem a logical topic of conversation.”
“Perhaps you ought to read the Bible,” she whispered, staring into his eyes. “It would give you something else to think about.”
He shook his head in bemused chagrin and pulled her back into his arms. She sighed, snuggling against his lap, never guessing the agony her innocent wriggling caused him, his selfish wee fairy. The gray-gold shadows of candlelight imparted a dreamlike glow to the cabin.
Contentment stole over him. Not sexual. Dear God. He was a seething cauldron of thwarted passion. No. It was a deeper satisfaction. Holding her. As if a cloud had lifted from his soul. Lust, its empty aftermath, he had experienced too many times. But never this
…
this strange combination of wrenching desire and heartwarming rightness.
“Where do we go from here?” he asked in a troubled voice.
She went very still, peering over his shoulder at the
porthole. Through the tangle of dismay and desire hazing his thoughts, Duncan could hear the hawk shifting nervously on his perch. If he could have abducted Marsali at that moment and gotten away with it, he would have done so.
Then she whispered in his ear. “I don’t know where we’re going to go from here, my lord, but I’ll tell you one thing: It had better be a pretty fast journey. That’s my uncle and cousin coming down the deck now.”
Duncan’s blood froze. “I thought you said they were off working their magic.”
“They were,” Marsali said with a little shiver of apprehension as the door crashed open. “But that’s the trouble with magic. It either happens or it doesn’t. You can’t depend on it.”
Chapter
21
D
uncan had forgotten the bucket he’d managed to dislodge from his foot. As he sprang up from the bunk he stepped into it again, lost his equilibrium, swayed, and went crashing back down onto Marsali. She shouted before she could stop herself. When Colum and Fiona burst into the cabin, it was to see Duncan lying flat on his back with Marsali squashed beneath him, shouting and flailing her arms like a windmill.
Fiona jumped to the obvious conclusion and launched herself at Duncan’s legs in a frenzy of outraged concern for her cousin. Between Fiona pounding her fists on his thighs and Marsali swatting his ears, Duncan thought he might be killed.
The wizard hadn’t said a word. He just stood in the center of the floor with the strangest look on his face. Duncan could have sworn he saw a glint of satisfaction in those eyes.
“Move off me, my lord,” Marsali whispered in a frantic voice. “This doesn’t look very nice.”
“Damn it, Marsali. I’m trying to move, but this girl is sitting on my legs, and either she gets off me, or I’m going to have to remove her by force, which is only g
oing to upset your uncle more.”
“Get off the chieftain’s legs, Fiona.” The words escaped
Marsali between pained little groans. “The chieftain is as heavy as a mountain, and you’re not exactly helping matters.”
Fiona reluctantly rolled off Duncan and scrambled up onto the bunk to cluck
in sympathy over her cousin. “I
can’t believe he would behave like this, the brute. Thank goodness I worked a wilting spell on him earlier, or I suppose it might have been worse.”
Duncan pushed himself into a standing position, bending briefly to yank the bucket off his foot. It flew across the cabin and clattered at Colum’s feet. Marsali glanced from one man to another, covertly tugging the quilt over herself.
“Well,” Colum said at last, lifting his hand in disdain to wave Marsali’s wine-stained white gown under Duncan’s nose. “Passion is one thing, my lord, but did you have to announce it to the world by undressing my niece on the deck?”
“I didn’t undress her.” Duncan shot Marsali a look fraught with frustration. “She undressed herself,” he added, which, as a revelation, didn’t do much to help.
Marsali nodded meekly. “It’s true, Uncle Colum. I took off the gown because I was angry at him for telling me to wed and then not wed the MacFay.”
“Jamie MacFay?” Fiona said, sitting up with a frown. “The chieftain was going to make you wed that big crude creature?” She gave her father a smug look. “Well, well. It doesn’t appear that your wonderful love spell worked this time, Dad. I told you to let me help.”
Marsali narrowed her eyes, sensing the undercurrent of conspiracy in the air. “What love spell?” she asked slowly. “Fiona, are you saying that Uncle Colum tried to match me up by magic to the MacFay?”
Colum glared a warning at Fiona from under his heavy white eyebrows. “No, she isn’t,” he said in a clipped voice. “Besides, it’s not my behavior that is in question. I would like to know what you and the chieftain were doing on that bunk when I came in.”
There was silence.
“Well…
” Marsali swallowed and glanced over at Duncan, who was absolutely no help at all as he stood leaning against the bulkhead with his hand over his eyes. “To tell
the truth, Uncle Colum, at the moment you arrived, we were discussing the Bible.”
Duncan lowered his hand, staring in amused disbelief at her sitting half naked on the bunk and defending a basically indefensible situation.
“You were discussing the Bible?” Colum repeated in skeptical tones.
“Yes—actually,
I
was discussing the Bible. I was telling the chieftain that perhaps God intended to use him much like Moses.”
“Moses?” Colum said in astonishment.
Marsali frowned. “Well, Moses lost his temper and committed murder, but God still ended up using him for glory.” She paused. “God is good at doing things like that.”
“You were shouting like a Viking warlord when I opened the door,” Colum pointed out. “You were not reciting Scripture that I recall.”
“That’s true, Uncle Colum, but the chieftain had gotten his foot stuck in a bucket, and when he fell I felt like a brace of oxen had landed on my chest. You would have shouted too.”
“I
would have shouted,” Fiona agreed.
Colum glanced down at the bucket, an array of unreadable emotions crossing his gaunt face. Slowly his gaze lifted to Duncan, calm and assessing. “I have tripped over that damn bucket many times myself,” he said in an almost conversational tone. “It is a wonder I have not broken a leg before now.”
Marsali studied him in suspicion. Only an idiot would have taken her story at face value, and her uncle was the shrewdest man she had ever met, intimidated by no one, not blinking an eye without first calculating the move. He was up to something, the crafty old codger, and intuition warned her she’d better get to the bottom of it.
Duncan, on the other hand, was only too glad to accept the wizard’s pardon, undeserved though it might be. It had been the most peculiar and perplexing night of his life. “I am going back to the castle, Marsali,” he announced, trying to salvage what was left of his power. “I want you to ride back with me. MacFay is undoubtedly still in the area.”
Marsali hesitated. Part of her was not prepared to forgive
him for manipulating her; he had injured her pride. But another part, that unpredictable part that had responded to him only a few minutes ago, would have walked off the edge of the cliff with him if he’d asked her. Besides, even when they were fighting, she had more fun with him than anyone else in the world.
She stood up, raising her chin to a haughty angle. Duncan was impressed at how dignified she managed to appear with the quilt draped over her shoulders like a royal robe. “I’m not going back to the castle, my lord.”
“Tomorrow then.”
She shrugged. “I may not ever return to the castle after what happened there tonight.”
Duncan could hardly make a scene, not with her uncle standing between them and that raven-haired girl just waiting for another excuse to launch an attack. He hadn’t become a world-renowned general without recognizing when to beat a retreat. At least Marsali should be safe with her family for the night. He doubted Jamie had the intelligence to outwit the old wizard.
“Very well,” he said tersely. “But the matter of your future is to be decided within the week, Marsali. One way or another. We haven’t resolved a thing tonight.”
T
he echo of Duncan’s footsteps on the deck above resounded like an angry heartbeat in the deep silence of Colum’s cabin. Marsali retrieved the white gown from her uncle’s hand and donned it, looking expectantly from her uncle to Fiona, who had h
ung her head to hide her guilt-
stricken face. When Marsali was dressed, she snatched her uncle’s wand and slowly backed into the center of the room.
“All right. He’s gone. It’s just family now, and I know something is going on. What did Fiona mean by a love spell, Uncle Colum?”
Colum gave Fiona a vexed look, then knelt to pick up the bucket. “You are to leave this on deck from now on, Fiona. Not in the middle of the stairs where I will break my neck, mind you. Not by the door—”
“I’m going to hold your wand hostage, Uncle Colum.” Marsali whirled back to the other girl, her eyes smoldering
with anger. “And if you don’t tell me, Fiona, I’m going to do something terrible to you.”
“What kind of terrible?” Fiona whispered, squeezing herself back against the bunk, awash in wonderful dread.
Marsali felt the wand twitching between her fingers. “I don’t know yet—the most terrible thing you can think of.”
Fiona moistened her lips. “More terrible than what you did to Georgie last Samhain eve?”
“Aye.” Marsali’s voice sounded strangely husky to her own ears, and something was happening to her body as she held the wand; uncontrollable quivers of energy rippled through her. She stared down at her hands in awe: She could actually see the blood in her veins pulsing with power. The wand was alive in her hand, vibrating with vital spirit.
“Go to your cabin, Fiona,” Colum said, his voice like the calm before a storm. “Marsali is not herself tonight.”
Fiona scrambled off the bunk only to find Marsali blocking her way, an angry fairy on the warpath. “Dad,” Fiona said with a catch in her voice, “I warned you not to interfere. L-look what’s happening.”
He looked, his gaze widening in approval.
As Marsali’s temper had risen, so had the force of the waves battering the old ship. From the wand in her hand invisible sparks of energy and emotion burst to charge the air. As Colum moved slowly toward her, his long robes crackled with the electricity she had generated.
“Excellent,” he said, nodding his head in a gesture of pride. “I always knew you had the gift. By the Goddess, I was right.”
Marsali gazed down in disbelief at the wand, unable to speak. It was true; she could feel her entire body thrumming to some secret mystical rhythm. The very soles of her feet tingled with it. If the door had been open, she suspected she might have flown out above the stars. A sense of power embraced her, heady and dangerous.
She drew a breath. “I’m going to do something very, very terrible to you both if you don’t tell me what is going on.” She tapped the wand against her arm.
“Now.
”
Fiona quivered like a feather. The wizard shrugged, acknowledging Marsali’s power. “I cast a love spell to bind
you to the chieftain for all eternity, Marsali,” he said, his attitude unapologetic. “From what I witnessed tonight it was one of my more effective works of magic.”
Fiona nodded eagerly, dying for every detail of the delicious secret to be revealed. “He used the hair entangled in your mother’s cross. Yours and the chieftain’s. It was the most powerful spell, Marsali. The Irrevocable Spell.”
“You…
” Marsali could not force the words from her throat. A red mist swirled before her eyes. Manipulated again, by magic. Betrayed by her own flesh and blood, by the two members of her family she trusted most, as peculiar as two members might be. Was there no way to escape the misguided attempts to control her life?
Colum was smiling in satisfaction, as still as a stone. Fiona darted past him and ducked behind the desk. Books, crucibles, and earthenware jars were starting to slide off shelves and hit the floor. Sprigs of herbs wafted in the air like stardust. The waves hit the ship’s hull like cannonballs.
Marsali walked past her uncle with the wand clutched in her hand. Energy erupted from her like steam. To add to the confusion, Eun had broken free and was hopping back and forth from his perch to the bunk. When Marsali raised the wand into the air, the door flew open, and a gust of wind sent Colum staggering to his knees.
Bewildered by a power she could not control, Marsali ran out of the cabin.
When Eun followed her, the wizard understood that the bird would no longer obey him alone.
A
s Duncan watched on horseback from the cliff, he could not believe his eyes. Something very strange was going on in that cabin. There were colorful sparks of light flashing from behind the porthole. But the strangest thing was how the sea was perfectly calm except around the ship, where waves crested the hull as if driven by a gale-force fury. Clearly, this was not a normal family.
Then he saw Marsali come running out on deck in her white wedding gown; the infernal hawk was flying after her. As she reached the gangway, Duncan vaulted off his horse and rushed across the wind-tangled sea grasses to intercept her. This wasn’t his idea of a safe evening spent at home.
They met on the path. Well, they almost met. Barely three feet from Marsali, Duncan walked into a gust of wind that flattened him to the cliffside like an invisible giant’s fist. It knocked the breath from his chest. He could see Marsali through a veil of shimmering mist, her face as astonished as his by the supernatural phenomena.
“What the hell was that?” he asked hoarsely.
She edged past him, her voice a whisper in the wind. “I couldn’t tell you, my lord. But I do know that I am very, very angry, and if you try to make me go back to the castle, something bad could happen to you. I could totally lose control of my power.”
“I don’t believe in spells and curses, Marsali,” he shouted, stomping up behind her.
She turned; he slammed back two steps as if a current of lightning had shot through his body; aftershocks of discharged energy raced down his spine. “I don’t believe in them either, at least not until tonight.” She held out her wrist as Eun floated downward. “It would appear, however, that there exist certain powers in this world that thrive without our believing in them.”
Her hair was blowing around her face in a soft enticing tangle; she looked both fragile and powerful, wild and ethereal, and he wanted to carry her back to the castle and to his bed more than anything he had ever wanted in his life. He wanted to be the one to master her wildness. He wanted to absorb her spirit into his.
He wanted to kiss her too. Damn it, he was
going
to kiss her. He reached out to grab her shoulders. Then he froze as the hawk on her wrist fluttered its short rounded wings in warning.