Wild Highland Magic (The Celtic Legends Series Book 3)(43)

She should have realized that the high-born were not like the laboring folk of Inishmaan, who chose as lovers whoever took their fancy. The people of Inishmaan married young, threw up a house, and happily kept a patch of land in order to feed the single cow given in dowry. But the high-born were like the wounded warriors who found their way to Da’s sickroom. Coughing blood, they’d brag of their exploits and boast of their ambitions, risking their lives and the lives of their kin for the stupid, blind determination simply to be called “My lord.”

What a fool she had been to give her heart over to Lachlan of Loch Fyfe.

She shuffled to a stop in a pool of hazy light. Out of breath, out of reason, she fell to her knees amid a circle of trees. She raised her gaze past the treetops to the endless northern twilight and wondered how she found herself in this strange place, in such a sorry state. Did she ever really have a choice in the matter? Or had her fate been sealed the moment she’d looked upon Lachlan, stretched naked on the sands of the strand?

She remembered the lines of poetry that had come to her when she’d first laid eyes upon him, lines from the story of Deirdre of the Sorrows.



I would have a man like that

Hair like the raven

Cheek like blood

His body like snow





What irony that she was destined for the same fate as the mythical Deirdre, forever in love with a man to whom she could never be betrothed.

A familiar voice rose from behind her.

“I ordered you to stay close, Cairenn.”

Lachlan stepped into the circle of oak trees just as she remembered another thing about the doomed Deirdre of the Sorrows.

Deirdre had defied a king for a chance to be with the man she loved.

***


In the gloaming, she raised her head from her knees and looked at Lachlan with bright, unworldly eyes.

His heart shifted when he saw the determination on that face.

She surged to her feet and headed for him. Orders shouted in his head—stay safe where you are, little Cairenn—but they didn’t make it out of his mouth. He’d promised himself that he would protect her—from hope, from harm, and mostly from himself. But the sight of her striding toward him with her face alight broke whatever brittle will he’d constructed. Ever since he’d left her bedroom last night, his heart had been full of wanting.

His arms opened for her as she approached, but he seized her shoulders instead.

“Cairenn—”

“You don’t love her,” she said, leaning against his grip. “This woman you’re betrothed to.”

He should lie but her eyes wouldn’t let him. “I’ve known her since I was a child. I don’t love her in that way.”

“Like a sister, then?”

“A bratty, temperamental one. Our betrothal is just a union to solidify the septs of the clan, nothing more.”

She tilted her head. “Swear to me it’s true.”

“To that I’ll swear.”

“Then I’ll be your leman.”

Those words shot to his head faster than a dozen quaffs of ale. His thoughts scattered in a thousand directions, muffled under the riotous pounding of his blood. To be a leman, she would entrust her life, her future, and her body to him with no expectation other than what he offered through kindness. His cock tightened, making it all the more difficult to summon his wits and what was left of his tattered honor.

She shifted in his grip and he realized he was squeezing her shoulders too tight. He eased his grip but fixed his will. “You deserve a better fate.”

“Yes, I do.” Her voice cut like a blade. “I deserve a hard-working husband of my own kind. I deserve a man who will speak vows in public and grant my children his name. But tell me, what chance did I ever have for that, with who I am, and all that I know?”

He had no answer for her. She claimed she could not read his thoughts except in a shared bed, but he remained uneasy with her powers nonetheless. How much harder it would be for a man she could read all the time.

“I’ll take what the world allows, Lachlan of Loch Fyfe,” she said, “if you’re still willing to offer me your heart.”

In the end, it wasn’t just her words that made him surrender what was left of his tattered promise to her father. It wasn’t just the sight of her pale, lovely face, or the beauty that lay beneath her clothing. It was the scent that rose from her pale hair, the salt-sweet scent of the open sea that gave way to a fragrance of sun-warmed rocks and crushed grass that gave away to something muskier. Her fragrance birthed fantasies of the life they could have lived on Inishmaan, if he’d had the liberty to choose.

She made a small, gasping sound just before he captured her lips. He pressed his mouth against hers and felt for a moment like they stood upon the height of her island. Nothing existed in the world but the ground beneath their feet and the trees standing like sentinels around them and their bodies so close he could feel the pillow of her breasts against his chest.

She made another sound, a whoosh of breath. Coming up from their kiss he saw the splay of her hair across the grass and realized that he’d swept her off her feet and laid her down beneath him. He looked at her in the hazy light of the lingering northern twilight. He ran his palm across her breast and her body arched, pliant to his touch.

A groan vibrated in her throat, he felt it against his mouth as he kissed the hollow. He loosened the tangle of her laces as he ran his teeth across the wool that covered the nub of her breast. The arch of her back formed a pocket for his hand. Her fingernails scratched his shoulders in the fury to pull away his tunic.