“It’s tradition.” Ula shrugged. “Blackie keeps the ways of our Norse ancestors.”
“As do I.”
“Then why seek your pallet? Alone?” She tilted her head, her fiery-red curls tossed by the wind. “Now is the time to honor the returning sun, plant seeds that will bloom in spring. You’re too young and bonnie to have lost the heat in your blood.”
“My mind was elsewhere, lady,” Callum addressed her as only he did, much to her delight, as always.
“Skerray is no place for a lady,” she said, her broad smile leaving no doubt that suited her fine.
In truth, Callum was sure, the Skerries were lucky to have her, lady or no.
Lusty, quick to laugh, and loyal to the bone, she had a heart as generous as her curves, and she knew how to use her wiles to persuade any man to do her biding. A wild-haired, hot-blooded vixen, she’d held Blackie in her thrall ever since he’d plucked her out of a Dublin alehouse.
“Aye, well…” Callum caught her wrist, dropped a kiss on her knuckles. “Then Queen of the Skerries,” he said, releasing her hand. “You cannae argue with the truth of that.”
She beamed. “And you are a gallant – too much so for the rough lot here on these isles.”
“Whate’er I am, I’ll no’ be at the revels. My pallet calls and-”
“Ah, but there’s Yuletide magic in the air tonight,” she cut him off, stepping round to block his escape when he turned toward a path between two stone cottages, small ones roofed with thatch. “There’s a lady-”
“Did you no’ just say this is nae place for a lady?”
“Did I say she was here?”
“Nae, and it scarce matters.”
“But it does.” She set down her basket of mistletoe, gripped his arm when he again tried to enter the path, a dark and muddied track, but the swiftest route to the longhouse.
Callum was tempted to break free and stride on down the path, but his fool nape was prickling. So, for good or ill, he stayed. “What is this about?”
“I see a lady for you,” Ula said, sounding much too serious. “Pale gold hair like a cascade of moonlight, eyes the blue of a deep northern sea. Tall, well-made, and with a proud look to her, as I’d imagine a Valkyrie. I dreamed of her, saw you running toward her, then catching her in your arms and whirling her round and round.”
“That’s some dream.”
“It was.” Ula held his gaze, her fabled charm replaced by earnestness. “I get such dreams now and then. I thought you knew?”
He did. “Everyone in the Skerries kens that, lassie,” he admitted, grudgingly.
Still, this night he chose to ignore her penchant for seeing things in dreams.
How often such glimpses proved true.
The last thing he needed –or wanted– was to be saddled with a gentle-born female, bonnie or otherwise. He had plans. Duties and obligations that didn’t have a sliver of wriggle room for a fussy highborn lass making his days a trial and keeping him from his goals, her blue blood too thin to even warm him on a cold winter’s night, something every Highlander appreciated in a bedmate, and for sure in a wife.
And where didthatcome from?
Ula hadn’t said she saw him marry the woman.
Praise the gods.
“Do you know where this lady is?” Callum’s tongue formed the question before he could clamp his jaw.
He did frown.
Ula’s brow also pleated. “Nae, I only saw what I told you,” she said, her words taking a weight off his heart. “But,” she added as quickly, “as soon as I wakened, I knew how she is called.”
“Her name?”
