The Adventurer (16 page)

“Calum,” was all Fergus said as he came to stand before him. He shrugged off his coat, pushed back his sleeves over his solid forearms. His face, Calum noted, was etched with a steely determination, expressionless—until he happened to catch a glance at the lass. It was only a brief glance, but in that moment, the harsh lines, the glint in his eyes, suddenly softened.

It was then Calum knew it wasn’t just the opportunity of proving his strength against Calum that had compelled Fergus to step forward.

Fergus had fallen under her spell as well.

It was dangerous, that look. And Calum knew it. He found himself wishing he could just walk away from the challenge, while at the same time knowing he could not.

“Are you ready then, lads?”

M’Cuick stepped between them, diffusing the knot of tension tied between them into nothing more than a healthy bout of male swaggering. He clapped them both on their backs and led them to the peculiar French chair across the room. The delicate carved wood on its spindly arms would not provide enough elbow room for the two men, so a makeshift tabletop was hastily improvised by way of one of M’Cuick’s cast-iron griddles. It would call for an added degree of dexterity on the part of the competitors, for if either of them so much as shifted their weight from the platform, the entire thing would teeter, immediately forfeiting the match.

Calum rolled back his shirtsleeves, then took his place at the chair where Fergus was already seated and waiting. He leaned in. Calum positioned his arm in front of him. It was the very one he’d broken that long-ago day.

They locked gazes. The men clasped hands and waited for M’Cuick to call the start of the match. All the while, they watched each other like two wolves who were not about to share the same prey.

“A’right, lads. Now you both ken what to do. Soon as I pull my hand away, the match is on.” M’Cuick glanced at them both. “Are you ready?”

“Aye,” Calum said, giving a short nod.

“Aye,” echoed Fergus.

M’Cuick’s hand fell away. Calum and Fergus engaged.

The match was on.

The room became charged with an almost palpable anticipation. The rest of the company pressed in around them.

At first there wasn’t a sound, just a tense, expectant silence as the two forces met, collided, and held, each refusing to give way to the other. It seemed as if every man present was holding his breath.

But as the match stretched on—one minute into two—and neither showed signs of relenting, the men standing around them began to stir. Soon they started to fidget. Some muttered words of encouragement, directing them neither to Calum nor to Fergus, but to them both at the same time. Others tried to guess how long the match could go on. Fortunately, they knew better than to divide into rival sides.

Between Fergus and Calum, their clasped hands labored, trembling from the force of the one meeting another equally. His jaw was tight, his teeth clenched, and Calum refused to yield.

He could not lose.

The room grew warmer. Sweat began to sheen on Fergus’s brow. He blinked twice, a split-second slip of concentration that allowed Calum’s fist to inch slightly forward. The others noticed this and responded with a collective, indrawn breath. Fergus broke his gaze from Calum’s and dropped his focus downward as he summoned every ounce of strength within him in an effort to try to regain his lost position. The muscles in his jaw worked and flexed as he strained his strength to its furthest ability. His face began to color a deep wrenching red.

The others started chanting—

Go ...

Go ...

Go ...

Calum scarcely heard them. When Fergus had dropped his head, Calum had caught sight of the lass standing a space behind him. Their gazes met, held. He focused only on her. The prize of that one kiss from her became a reward Calum couldn’t allow anyone but himself to claim.

He garnered every last bit of his strength, determination, and will, and concentrated them onto the object of their clasped hands.

He
would
win.

He knew the moment he began to gain the advantage. He felt Fergus’s fingers slip just slightly. He saw the darkness of uncertainty cloud his eyes. With a final surge borne on an audible breath of release, Calum propelled his arm forward and seized the victory.

The mob erupted with a triumphant whoop, and immediately started giving them both congratulatory claps on the back.

Calum stood. His arm and every muscle within it throbbed and burned. Where moments before it had felt invincible, it now went as weak as bog mud. He shook it off, flexing and working his fingers, tightening his fist as the company surrounded them both. Finally, he offered his hand to Fergus in a gesture of recognition and respect.

Fergus stared at him through a long moment that seemed to stretch into several. Everybody fell silent. Calum hoped Fergus wouldn’t bear the grudge of losing like a weight upon his shoulder. The two of them would need to be united if they were going to see their mission through to free Uilliam.

Fergus obviously realized this as well, for he finally took Calum’s outstretched hand in a single, conciliatory shake.

The mob cheered.

“ ’Twas a fine match,” Fergus said as they turned and started to walk together toward the center of the room.

“Aye, it was.” Calum glanced at him. “My arm feels like a limp piece of seaweed though.”

Fergus grinned. “Next time, you’ll let me win, aye? I winna want the lads to think they can shove me about should they take the notion.”

Calum chuckled and nodded. He was just glad it was over.

The men seemed to be, too. They had already started for the ale tub and kegs of wine in the corner to celebrate, until ...

“Wait!”

M’Cuick called out, summoning them back. “What about the laird’s prize?”

“Aye,” said Hamish. “You’re supposed to get a kiss from the merlass.”

The merlass.

“She’s not a ...”

Calum turned, half expecting her to have vanished in all the uproar after the match. It would have been the perfect time for her to have made her escape.

But she hadn’t.

She was standing by the hearth, alone, limned by the warmth of the firelight and looking more lovely than should have been possible.

That was what he had fought for ... and won.

With all eyes upon her, the lass came across the room to meet him.

“You are the victor,” she said softly.

“So it would appear.” Calum felt suddenly hesitant, and decided it was the presence of that stone hanging around her neck that was making him uneasy. He’d dreamed about it all his life, dreamed of having it, holding it in his hand, and now, to have it so close, yet untouchable, was something he’d never planned for.

Nor had he planned to have it nestled against the breasts of a mysterious lass who called herself a mermaid.

“You dinna have to do this,” he said, offering her the opportunity to change her mind.

Hamish and a couple of the others standing nearby overheard. They fell silent, waiting to see if she would.

She glanced fleetingly about the room, at the sea of faces watching them. Then she looked at Calum with those eyes of brilliant blue, lifted a brow, and said, “Perhaps are you intimidated by the notion of kissing a mermaid, Mr. Mackay?”

Calum heard someone chuckle. It sounded suspiciously like M’Cuick.

That chuckle, and the whisper of her soft startled gasp as he pulled her against him, were the last sounds he heard before his mouth covered hers.

Intimidated, she’d said.

He bent her back over his arm, kissing her hard. And then everything else—the room, the dozens of men standing around them—simply ceased to exist.

He’d meant to be done with it quickly, a swift and sudden sort of thing that would show her just how unintimidated he really was.

But once he’d drawn her against him, felt the warmth of her body pressed to his, felt the rapid staccato pulse-beat in her throat beneath the fingers that had lifted to caress her there, that sudden swift thing became something else entirely.

It became a long, hot, wet kiss that shot straight to his groin and somehow simply refused to end.

If he were to guess, Calum would have sworn it was her first kiss. When he first took her against him, her mouth was clamped tightly closed, and her body felt like a taut string stretched nearly to the point of breaking. Easing that tightness became a priority, and Calum stroked a hand along the column of her throat, skimming her jaw and letting his fingers get lost in the silky dark riot of her hair at the back of her neck. After a few moments, she eased just the tiniest bit, and he deepened the kiss, tasting her, teasing her ...

... tutoring her.

She was an apt student. She slackened against him, letting him bear her completely in his arms as she surrendered her mouth to his, slowly, tentatively opening her own. Their tongues met, caressed, and he seduced her, nipping her bottom lip, refusing to pull back, kissing her long and relentlessly.

He had expected he’d become aroused by it. It had been some time since he’d kissed a woman, and quite possibly a lifetime since he’d kissed one so incredibly enchanting. What he hadn’t expected was how deeply the kiss would reach inside of him, seeping like honey through every limb and taking hold of his most guarded, most protected place.

His heart.

In that moment, Calum knew what all the poets had meant by their pretty words hinting at the
zing
of Cupid’s arrow.

He knew, because in that moment, he’d been hit.

Calum lifted his head. He looked at her. His own pulse was pounding in his ears, his breath hitched, and he watched as her eyes slowly drifted open. She blinked at him, her mouth still wet from his kiss. He wanted her. Oh, how he wanted her. He wanted to take her almost as much as he wanted to take that stone that hung around her slender neck. He wanted to bury his hands in that wild black hair and kiss her again, and again, and he very likely would have, had there not been a room of hairy leering Scotsmen surrounding them.

So instead he eased her up before him to stand, and reluctantly slid his arms away.

The gaping bunch of idiots let out a resounding cheer.

Someone brought the lass a tankard, and then another to Calum. Mungo prepared to let loose on his fiddle.

Until Hamish called out, pointing at the lass.

“Look! Look at the stone! ’Tis glowing!”

And indeed it was, a bright brilliant hot red more radiant than the light of the fire.

“Och, but she truly is a merlass,” he heard someone whisper.

“Aye, just like the one who came to the Mackay in the legend ...”

Calum spun around. “No, she’s not a ...”

But it was no use. The theory blew like the seawind, sweeping through the hall and stirring everyone in its path to expressions of awe and wonder. Mungo cocked his bow and started improvising a tune, his rich tale teller’s voice singing out about “The Lass Who Came From Beneath the Sea.” Ale was swilled. A celebration was begun.

“Laird?”

Calum looked to where Hamish was standing before him. The lad looked bright-eyed, nervous. “Aye?”

“I was after wonderin’ ...” His face colored as red as that stone. “Would it—Could I—” He stammered, glancing down at his bare toes.

“What is it, lad? Out wit’ it.”

“I was after wonderin’ if I might ask the lass to dance.”

It had taken every ounce of his sixteen-year-old courage just to ask him, Calum knew. He glanced at the lass, who stood watching Mungo at his fiddle. “You certainly dinna need my permission to do it, lad.”

“Aye, but I do. She’s your merlass, Laird. She has your magic stane and you’ve just kissed her. ’Twould be like courting anither man’s wife, it would ...”

Calum was just getting ready to educate the lad about the nonsense of myths and mermaids, but stopped himself from it. The match with Fergus had been confirmation aplenty that having the lass amongst all these men could be a dangerous thing. If Fergus had taken a notion of her, others no doubt would as well. But as Hamish had said, by winning her kiss before them all, Calum had all but claimed her for his own. It was the Scots way. And her best protection while she was there would be in having the others believe she—and that stone she wore—truly were
his.

Calum knew his men, knew them to their bones. No one would harm her, and they would protect her with their lives just as they would him. So he simply answered, “ ’Tis up to the lass, then.”

“My thanks, sir.” He started to turn, then stopped. “Uh, Laird?”

“Aye, lad?”

“I’m not knowing her name. What should I call her?”

It was a question Calum wanted the answer to as well. “She calls herself Maris, Hamish.”

“Maris.” The lad nodded. “ ’Tis a bonny name, it is.”

However false it may be.

Calum stood back, watching as Hamish straightened his backbone, squared his bony shoulders, and then started toward where the lass was standing, chatting with M’Cuick by the fire.

Hamish bowed his head. It took him some effort, but he finally made his nervous request. Calum found himself holding his breath for the lad, hoping she wouldn’t rebuff him. It was undoubtedly his first experience in asking a lass to dance, and Calum couldn’t help the feeling of relief that took him when he saw the wide nervous grin spread across the lad’s face.

Hamish turned to Calum and nodded, indicating she had consented.

Together the two of them walked to the center of the room. The others noticed them, took their cue and pushed back, clearing an area. Hamish put up a hand and the music slowed to a stop.

Hamish took up the lass’s hand, showing her the basic steps of one of the Scottish country dances he’d no doubt learned on the dirt floor of the croft house he’d shared with his mother and sisters. She listened and watched, and then practiced the sequence slowly with him once. Then, when she appeared to have it, she nodded.

Mungo struck up a chord, opened into a lively tune, and they started dancing.

The mermaid’s dance.

She was a quick study, because to watch her, Calum would have never known she had only just learned the dance’s steps. She matched Hamish’s feet step for step as they skipped and hopped around the center of the room in time to the music and the clapping hands and stomping feet of the others. The mood grew livelier the more the ale poured. After a short while, Hamish found himself being called off the floor, only to be replaced by another, this time M’Cuick, who despite his great size soon proved himself to be quite nimble of foot. ’Twas a good thing, too, for he would likely crush her toes if he happened to misstep.