Seducing a Scottish Bride (24 page)

“Dear saints!” The color drained from his new bride’s face. “I am sorry. How horrible it must have been for you.”

“It was, and the guilt haunts me still.”

“Guilt?” Her voice was shocked. “You couldn’t have prevented a rockslide.”

“Say you?” He reached to finger one of her glossy curls, needing her vibrancy, the light and warmth that seemed to glow from
within her.

“To be sure I say it!” she charged, a flush staining her cheeks. “How could you have —”

“Perhaps” — he released the curl — “because in that very moment, as we strolled along beneath Creag na Gaoith, I thought to
myself that I loved her so desperately I would ‘move mountains to please her.’ ”

“What?” Her eyes widened. “Don’t tell me you blame yourself because of a thought?”

“That is the way of it, aye,” Ronan confirmed, the truth sending bile to his throat. “I am cursed, see you. My thoughts sometimes
take on frightening shape and form, the darker — or more irresponsible — ones causing irreparable damage if I do not marshal
them quickly enough.”

“I do not believe that.” She frowned at him, her chin more stubborn than ever. “And even if it were true, I know that —”

“It is true, I assure you. There are many —” he broke off, his eye caught by a movement at the edge of the clearing.

Something large and grayish-white crashed through the heather, its massive head lowered and its great curving horns the most
deadly he’d ever seen.

“A bull!” Gelis clapped a hand to her throat and stood frozen.

“That’s more than a bull!” Ronan lunged and grabbed her, once again shoving her aside. “Hold Buckie!”

And then the unholy creature charged, bursting from the trees with a terrifying bellow, the thunder of its hooves blistering
the air, its earth-shaking speed leaving no time for finesse.

And totally ruining what could have been a moment of revelation.

Spinning round, Ronan seized one of the Viking tent’s support poles. He ripped it from the ground and ran forward into the
bull’s path, couching the pole like a lance.

Behind him, Gelis screamed.

He ran on.

And then his world split, breaking apart on the bull’s outraged roar as it hurtled toward him, head low and horns weaving,
a murderous glint in the creature’s eyes.

Eyes red as fire.

G
elis! Tip the table and get behind it!” Ronan yelled with all his lung power, raising his voice above the ever-louder drumming
of hooves. “Do it now — with Buckie!”

Somewhere the two garrons screamed, their plunging, whinnying fear blending with Buckie’s frantic barking and the wild fury
of Ronan’s own blood in his ears.

Then the ground shook and the great Scots pines edging the clearing careened sideways, their tall, dark trunks colliding with
the sky.

Ronan dropped to his knees, aiming the sharp-ended tent pole like a long pike. He braced himself, waiting. Hoping the bull
wouldn’t change his course.

Praying he had the strength to withstand the crash.

Then, quick as winking, the beast tossed its thick, shaggy neck and swung about, thundering ever nearer, but not toward the
sharp end of the pole.

Now he charged from the side, hurtling straight for the middle of the pole and at a speed that left Ronan no time to reposition
himself.

Crrraaaaack!

The impact snapped the tent pole like a twig. Unscathed, the bull thundered past, his horntip missing Ronan’s hip by a hair’s
breadth. The beast flung himself around at once, his powerful hindquarters clipping Ronan’s shoulder and knocking him to the
ground.

He slammed onto the splintered pole shaft, white-hot pain shooting through him. Cursing, he rolled to the side and leaped
to his feet, gaining his balance only moments before the bull charged anew, hurtling straight for him.

Heart in his throat, he vaulted over a patch of heather as the bull barreled near, the beast’s hot, snorting breath blasting
him as it shot past and circled around.

This time the animal paused.

It was the break Ronan needed.

With a great screech of steel, he whipped out his sword, already slashing and stabbing. He swung the blade in a lightning-quick
windmilling arc, ready and waiting for the bull’s next charge.

Head low and swinging from side to side, the beast kept its distance. Bellowing furiously, it pawed the earth again and again,
its powerful right hoof cleaving a deep black scar in the mossy, peaty ground.

Then the great, unholy head lifted and swung in another direction, the beady red eyes fixing on the toppled trestle table
and the striped welter of the collapsed tenting.

Fiery eyes focusing, the creature shook itself. Then he shot forward with a tremendous burst of speed, tearing across the
clearing even as Ronan raced to cut him off.

“ No-o-o!” he roared, waving his sword above his head, flailing his other arm like a madman, anything to distract the bull.

Draw him away from Gelis and Buckie.

“To me! To me!” he yelled, almost upon the beast. “Wheel about, you —”

“
Cuidich N’ Righ!
”

The cry merged with his own just as he took a wild, slashing swipe at the bull’s rolling, muscle-bunched back. A bright, silvery
streak
arced beneath his down-swinging blade, deflecting the blow as the eye-blinding flash whizzed past the bull’s ears, barely
grazing him, before plunging hilt-deep into the ground at the animal’s feet.

His bride’s
sgian dubh
.

And not a third the length of his sword, yet the bull nearly upended itself trying to stop its hurtling momentum before crossing
the dirk’s steel.

With a great unearthly cry, the beast tossed up its hind legs and jerked about, its forelegs scoring the earth in the fast,
furious turn. Still bellowing, it took off, pounding away toward the heather whence it’d come.

In a blink, even the thunderous drumming of its hooves faded.

The bull was gone.

Panting, Ronan threw his sword onto the grass and bent over, his hands braced on his thighs. Sweat stung his eyes, near blinding
him, and every muscle in his body burned. Screaming pain pulsed in his side where he’d slammed into the shattered tent pole,
a heated agony so fierce he suspected he might have cracked a rib.

Not that he cared.

Lady Gelis’s dirk raging up from the rich black earth was the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen.

Just as Buckie’s barking set his heart to soaring.

Both meant they were alive and unharmed.

Relief coursing through him, he straightened. Then he dragged his forearm across his brow before stooping again to retrieve
his sword and the
sgian dubh
.

“Did I not tell you MacKenzies are bold?”

Gelis’s voice, ringing.

Ronan almost dropped both weapons.

He whirled around.

She stood before him, all high color and heaving breasts, her eyes bright and her wild, flame-red hair tangled and wind-tossed.

“Though,” she observed, speaking as lightly as if they stood before a cheery hearth fire, “it would seem our nuptial feast
has been ruined again.”

Once more he felt the ground tilt beneath his feet, albeit for a very different reason.

He looked at her, now certain she could bring any man to his knees.

“Had my dirk not nicked your sword, we would have had him!” she declared, her dimples winking.

“Sweet thunder of heaven, lass! That bull could have had you —
wanted
you!” He jammed his blade into its scabbard, shoved her
sgian dubh
beneath his own low-slung sword belt. “Praise God you weren’t injured!”

He seized her, yanking her so swiftly in his arms that he lifted her off her feet.

“You are not, are you?”

“Nae.” She shook her head. “I am . . . well! Not even a bit shaken.”

“You could have been killed.” The very thought chilled him. “Seldom have I seen such an aggressive bull, attacking for no
good cause or reason. No’ even in the wilds of Ettrick Forest, that bull-infested morass in the south.”

“There we agree.” A slight catch in her voice revealed her to be more shaken than she let on.

She’d slung her cloak around her shoulders and pulled it closer now, her fingers trembling a bit as she readjusted its clasp.

“I, too, doubt such a beast roams distant Ettrick!” she emphasized, her magnificent breasts clearly outlined beneath the drape
of her mantle. “And, it was you, not I, who stood the gravest danger.” She paused, her amber eyes narrowing. “You are not
hurt?”

He snorted.

His entire right side was on fire and every indrawn breath was a torture, but he’d sooner lop off his hand than admit it.

Most humiliating of all, judging by the flaming ache in his left foot, he suspected the bull had tromped on his toes in one
of his thunderous passes.

“I saw how hard you fell onto the tent pole,” she said, making it worse. “Are you sure —”

“ ’Twas nothing,” he lied, grateful his voice wasn’t a wheeze. “I am much more concerned with you.”

“Then all is . . . good!”

“Humph.” He sounded less than convinced.

Gelis lifted her chin. “You should be concerned with me,” she said, putting her best MacKenzie challenge into the words. “I
am your wife, was
meant
to be your wife. Truth be told” — she met his gaze boldly — “no pair has ever been better suited.”

Silence.

Unperturbed, she poked a finger in his chest. “You know it in your heart.”

“I know I should have seen you away from this place the moment you stepped out of yon trees.” He flashed a glance toward the
tall Scots pines. “That I didn’t —”

She pressed her fingers against his lips. “Perhaps the Old Ones drew us here?” She angled her head, watching him. “They have
a way of kenning us better than we know ourselves. We fought the bull together. Perhaps that shared triumph was a lesson?”

“Be that as it may, you will no’ come here again.”

He released her then, stepping back to study her face, his own pale in the cold autumn light. Dark shadows were just beginning
to shade the skin beneath his eyes and deep lines bracketed his mouth.

His gaze dropped to Buckie. The dog stood pressed against her, his hips a bit wobbly but his ears still perked and his hackles
raised. Clearly, he had no intention of taking himself elsewhere.

Not that he could with one of the Viking tent’s tie-ropes looped around his neck in a makeshift collar, the other end held
securely in her hand.

“You see,” she said, following his gaze, “we were safe all along. And” — she reached to take his hand, twining their fingers
— “if the bull
had
charged us, you would have slain him first. That I know.”

Ronan harrumphed again, wishing he were as certain.

Nor did he know how they were going to make it back to Dare, especially with Buckie.

The two garrons were gone.

“We are no’ safe even now.” He pulled his hand from her grasp, turning aside to stare off in the direction the beast had taken.
“He could return any moment.”

“Not that bull.”

She sounded sure of it.

Ronan eyed her, something about her tone lifting the fine hairs on his nape. “What do you mean no’
that bull?
”

Had she, too, noted the creature’s odd red-glowing eyes? Guessed — as he had — that the creature was bespelled?

If so, she ought to ken they were safe from him nowhere.

To be sure not here in a scarce-to-be-defended clearing with no place to hide or run should the thing have a change of heart
and come thundering back again.

Instead, a hard-riding group of Dare’s best guardsmen came spurring into the clearing, the two missing garrons led behind
them. They drew up fast, stout warriors all; each man a faithful stalwart, tough, seasoned, and well-hung with bristling steel.

“Ho! Ronan!” The first called, lifting a hand in greeting. “What goes on here?” He rode forward, his sharp gaze noting the
collapsed Viking tent. “We heard Buckie barking and then your two mounts came crashing through the trees.”

Ronan took a deep breath, dignity not letting him show his relief at their arrival.

He’d forgotten their hidden presence.

More than evident now, they swung round into a shielding semicircle, upright and alert, their hands ready to draw swords at
a single eye- blink if need be.

And clearly unaware of what had transpired.

“You did not see him, then?” Ronan turned back to Sorley, the eldest and most able guardsman.

“See who?” Sorley’s plaid rippled in the wind. “Torcaill?”

“Nae.” Ronan made a dismissive gesture. “That one is far from here . . . sprinkling Lammas ash and iron chips round our boundary
markers.”

The druid forgotten, Ronan kept his gaze on the straight-backed, proud-featured veteran. “Tell me true,” he pressed, “did
you no’ catch a glimpse of a great wild-eyed bull, gray-white and massive? The beast went charging off in the very direction
whence you came.”

Sorley shook his bearded head. “We only saw yon two garrons.”