The Legend Mackinnon (6 page)

He seemed to ponder this for a moment. “You say I slander the Clarens’ yet you make no attempt to defend them.”

“I defended Mairi and it almost got me skewered with a poker. You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t like debating with you.”

He waved away her concern. “I wouldn’t have run you through, lass.”

Now it was Maggie’s turn to snort and cross her arms. “You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t believe that. From where I was standing, I thought my time was up. I already saw my life flash before me once. I don’t like repeats.”

Duncan stepped closer. Maggie struggled to maintain her stance as he invaded her personal space for the second time that afternoon.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

“You said I was distant. I’m trying to improve on my shortcomings.”

Maggie swallowed hard. “You took me too literally.”
She looked up into his eyes. “You can be physically close to me, but you still come across as distant.”

“Dinna forget pompous.” There wasn’t a trace of a smile on his face, but she thought she detected the hint of it in his eyes.

“I call them like I see them.”

“Am I really so bad as all that, Maggie?”

“You come from a different time, Duncan. You’re used to commanding people—I’m simply not used to being commanded.”

The sudden flare in his eyes caught her unawares. It made her temperature spike along with her heart rate. He moved closer, inclining his head toward hers.

In a voice more gentle than she’d ever heard from him, he said, “Yer no’ so different from yer ancestors as you think, Maggie Claren.”

She dipped her chin under the intensity of his gaze. “You asked me why I don’t defend my clan. I don’t know anything of my family’s past. I know nothing of who they were, what deeds they did, dastardly or otherwise. I suppose that damns me in your eyes as much as my supposed similarity to them.” She straightened a bit, holding his steady regard, watching him just as closely.

“Do ye care so much what I think of ye, Maggie Claren?”

The answer stunned her. “Yes, apparently, I do.”

“A pompous, distant man like me?” The twinkle returned. Along with it came a slight twitch at the corner of his mouth that was the closest he’d come to a true smile since she’d met him. It did amazing things to her heart rate.

He’s not real
, she reminded herself. But Lord he sure looked real. “You—” She broke off to clear her throat. “You, um, don’t seem so distant. At the moment.”

“Aye. And I’m no’ feeling so pompous.” His lips twitched again, then smoothed, the look in his eyes deepening
to something serious and sincere. “While yer a lot like yer ancestors, Maggie, I’m beginning to see that in many ways, yer nothing like them at all.”

“Because I swallowed my pride and apologized?”

He tapped a finger on her chest above her breast, then let it rest there with a small caress. “Because ye have a heart. Somethin’ I’ve been accused of no’ being able tae claim.”

“You have to have one, to recognize one.” Maggie tentatively raised her hand to cover his. He was warm. She felt a pulse thrum beneath her fingertips. Alive. She looked down to where they touched, then back up to him. “What are you Duncan MacKinnon, man or ghost?”

“R
ight now, I’m a man, wi’ blood running through my veins.” He lifted his fingers so that they wove between hers. “And my blood is runnin’ hot and heavy wi’ the touch of you under my fingertips.” He pressed her own fingertips against her chest. “Aye and yer heart is beating strong and fine as well.” He dipped his chin and angled his head, holding her gaze as he moved his face closer to hers.

Maggie couldn’t have so much as blinked in that moment. Her breath was stalled in her throat, her mind was drunk on the sensations rocketing through her, an intoxicating thrall created by his touch, his words, his heat, his overwhelming nearness. She waited for him to close the distance, to take her mouth in a devastating kiss like any good rogue Scots hero would. Her eyes drifted shut, her lips parted …

“Open yer eyes.”

She did and found him staring intently at her. “Ye want to be ravished, is that it?”

Maggie felt embarrassment heat her skin clear down to her neck. She tried to pull away, but he locked his arm around her back and pulled her against him. The feel of
him hard and strong against her threatened to buckle her knees. She had to get away before he let her fall into a heap at his feet while he had a good laugh over her silly female sensibilities. She should have heeded her own advice and steered well clear of her supernatural roommate and put her mind to more important things,
real
things, like determining how to escape the last man she’d gotten weak-kneed over.

Although Judd had never once made her feel a sliver of the awareness pulsing through her at this moment.

He hugged her tighter still, jerking her full attention to his face, which was now a mere breath away from hers. Duncan was disturbingly real.

“Aye, I could ravage ye lass and we’d both be the happier for it I’m certain.”

She tried to struggle from his grasp, then went totally still and held him in as cool a regard as she could muster. “I no longer wish to ravish or be ravished,” she lied, “and I’ll thank you to unhand me immediately.”

With a deep, honest laugh that moved her when it shouldn’t have, he hugged her to his chest, then set her back a space, still holding her captive with both hands. “Och, but you have the Claren spirit in abundance.” His laughter subsided, but his smile did not.

It transformed him so completely, she stood there, mouth open, basking in the amazing glow of it.

He bent his head close and spoke in a whisper against her ear. “I’ll have that kiss, Maggie, but I’ll no’ be takin’ it from you. I’ve had my fill of taking without receiving. We’ll share it when it’s done. And it will be done. Many times if I’m to be the judge of it.”

Shared, he’d said. Demanded. Macho, yes, egotistical, yes, but she wanted his kiss. Perhaps many of his kisses. And he was right about one other thing, damn him. She didn’t want to be taken.

“Where is yer smart mouth when it would do ye the most good, bonnie Maggie?” Duncan asked softly.

“I think my smart mouth was doing too well for its own good,” she said faintly.

Aye, that it was, Duncan thought, coming abruptly to his senses. He should be backing away. She drew him in, made him feel a warmth the likes of which he had not felt in three hundred years. Nay, perhaps ever. And yet it was precisely that she so easily drew him in that alarmed him the most. With more control than he’d expected to be able to drum up, he let her go, stepping away from her as further insurance.

“If yer as smart as that mouth of yours, Maggie, you will be well warned to stay away from me.”

He took the loss of her smile as if it were a physical injury to him. That the look of hurt and confusion was quickly masked only made him feel worse. She had pride, that one did. And he was hard-pressed, despite their twined history, to do anything but admire her for it. “Yer pride will stand you in good stead, where I canno’.” He braced his feet and crossed his arms as if needing a shield. “Take yourself off with Lachlan’s journals and learn something of your ancestors. Perhaps there you will learn why I warn ye awa’.”

He waited for her rebuttal. When she did not deliver one he realized just how badly he’d wanted to be challenged to change his mind. After a long quiet look, she turned and walked back to the trunk, retrieving a batch of Lachlan’s leather volumes.

“Maggie.”

She paused, then finally looked at him, her brow raised in a silent question.

“Where do ye want the trunk?”

“I can handle—”

“Where do ye want it?” he demanded, somewhat more
forcefully than he’d intended. Och, but she tried him in ways he didna ken and perhaps would be wise not to.

“The loft,” she answered evenly. “But don’t think you can blink it away and make amends for your rude behavior.”

“I’ve been pompous and distant, now rude, have I? Those are the least of the names ye’d have called me if I’d continued.”

“You’re taking an awful lot for granted where I’m concerned, Duncan MacKinnon. I can make up my own mind on what I want and don’t want.”

“As can I, Maggie, as can I. Like as no’ it will be another sin I’ll be paying for, but less of one against you.”

“What are you talking about? We’re both adults. Why can’t we do whatever the hell we want to if we both agree to it?”

“I’ll no’ listen to yer swearing and carryings on. If I say we are done wi’ it, we are done wi’ it. Now move out of my way.”

She merely glared at him and folded her arms. “You’re scared aren’t you? You were actually feeling something there and it scared you, didn’t it?”

Duncan decided to ignore her. She’d live longer if he did. He bent to lift the trunk. With a groan he hoisted the unwieldy thing and began a labored walk to the stairs. He prayed he did not disgrace himself by tripping on them.

She walked behind him. “Why are you doing this?”

He had no breath to answer.

After several more strong opinions regarding his stubbornness, she ran past him and called out instructions, guiding him up the warped stairs and around the rotted boards. She then held the door for him as he maneuvered himself and the trunk inside. He lowered the thing beside the base of the ladder in a dust-raising thud.

“Couldn’t you have just, you know, blinked it in here?”

He straightened and looked at her. “Aye,” he said, gathering his breath.

“Then why—”

“Because I have only thirty-one mortal days a year and I wanted to use my God-given strength where I could.” He gave her a pointed look, but as usual, she did not heed his warning.

“Then you are mortal?”

“As much as a soul in purgatory can be.”

“Purgatory? Why? Penance for Mairi’s death? Surely you don’t bear the guilt of her choice.”

“It is not I who makes the choice of purgatory, but Them who do. I merely exist in it, to feel guilt or no’.”

“Them? Who are
They?
”

“
They
control the passage of souls.” He sighed, not sure if this was a wise discussion. But her curiosity was fired up. He could see it in her eyes and he knew not if he was strong enough to deny her the knowledge she sought. Nor was he certain he could deny himself the comfort her presence and her conversation were affording him.

“Is that it then? You’re stuck in purgatory for all eternity because They say so?”

“Until I learn the lessons They deem necessary, aye, that is the way of it.”

“What lessons?”

Duncan rubbed a hand over his face. “I do not wish to discuss this wi’ you.”

“I didn’t wish to have you invade my cabin or my life either, but you’re here and I don’t seem to have any choice in the matter. You say your past is mixed up with one of my ancestors. Doesn’t that give me some right to understand why you’re here?”

“Read the journals. Perhaps Lachlan explains it.”

“Maybe he does. But if so, that will likely be the perspective of my side of the family. Mairi’s not wandering the
hillsides of North Carolina as a ghost.
You
are. I’d like to hear it from you.”

“And I’d like to be left alone.”

She stepped closer to him. “Then you should have left me alone. But you didn’t. So it’s too late—you involved me. So deal with it.”

“Don’ step too close to me, Maggie,” he warned softly. “Or we’ll be involved, as you say, in every way a man and woman can be. I gave ye a warnin’ as much for yer own good as fer mine. I ask you to leave me be before we both take steps better not taken.”

“Speak for yourself,” she said.

“Now who’s bein’ stubborn and unwise?” he asked, tamping down the sudden urge to smile. Bluidy hell, but she riled him up in ways he did not understand.

She looked up at him then, her eyes no longer filled with anger and righteousness. There was doubt and fear behind all that soft blue. He wanted to think her a pretender as her ancestors had been, using their arsenal of feminine wiles to urge a man to do as they bid.

He was having a hard time ascribing that character to Maggie. He released a short sigh. Perhaps he’d learnt more over the centuries than he’d been aware of if this chit could simply walk in here and move him in these strange ways. Whatever the cause, he could not have looked away from her at this moment even had someone swung a claymore at his head. Daft he was. Daft and soft.

“My life as I know it is gone,” she said quietly. “I had to leave my job, my home, and all my possessions. Everything I worked for is gone. I can’t call or write to anyone. I’m a virtual prisoner here. Very much like you. You have lessons to learn here. So do I. I have to learn how to survive. I have to learn how to get myself out of this mess I’m in. I have to find a way to keep the man I once thought I loved from killing me.”

A thread of steel entered her expression and she straightened
a bit. “You’re right. I guess I was too eager to find a diversion from my very real problems. The last thing I need to do is get caught up with you.” She tried a smile and a laugh, but both wobbled on a sudden gulp of air. “I mean, I don’t even believe in ghosts.”