With a flourish, he flung back his plaid, looking anything but a peaceable visitor to the little stone chapel’s seldom-used sanctuary.
One reason, for sure, that the other men present were currently ignoring him.
He continued his rant regardless. “Heard of any more platters of food gone a-sailing out our windows? Seen any odd-eyed strangers skulking through the glen?”
Ronan looked up from the carved stone effigy he’d been examining. “There could be a lever here somewhere,” he said, ignoring his grandfather’s blether. “A secret door or passage we’ve overlooked. This is the most likely place for a hidden tomb.”
“Hah! Tomb-shwoomb, I say! We’ve peered thrice or more at every stone in here and elsewhere for the last fortnight.” Valdar’s chin jutted stubbornly. “ ’Tis a wonder we haven’t all gone cross-eyed as a great ring-tailed yowe!”
Ronan ran his hand over the cold sides of the tomb, felt along the stone flags at its base. “I cannot speak of such unfortunate ewes, but I once heard of a hidden crypt only accessible by shifting the tail of a dog carved at an effigy’s feet. The wee creature’s tail was a release disguised to look like stone and —”
“And I say you” — Valdar shook Blood Drinker in his direction — “your gel’spresenceis enough! Her hot blood and high spirits chased away the slitherin’ mist devils and all else what’s plagued us.”
“I’d rather chase them from her.” Ronan pushed to his feet, dusted his hands. “Only then will —”
“Pshaw!” Valdar scoffed. “Even you can’t deny that the sun’s been shining on our glen more often in recent times than in years!”
Ronan’s gaze flicked to the wedge of brilliant winter sunlight slanting in through the chapel’s half-opened door. “Be that as it may, we’ll continue our search.”
His grandfather huffed.
“Even the stars are brighter since she’s here,” he argued, waving Blood Drinker again. “There’s no need for us to poke and prod at walls and floors, looking for a tomb that isn’t!”
“Gelis says that it is.” Ronan folded his arms. “I believe her.”
Valdar scowled and shoved Blood Drinker beneath his wide leather belt.
Ronan frowned right back at him.
Then he looked round at the other men crowded into the chapel. Some crept about on their knees, like him, running their hands along recumbent effigies of long-sleeping forebears. Others worked in shadowy corners or the dim, must-filled vault below, using their dirk hilts to tap for hollows, the tips to probe every suspicious-looking crack.
No one found anything.
And not a man complained.
But hours later when he climbed the narrow turnpike stair to his bedchamber, his still-aching ribs and his damnable toesdidprotest.
His head pounded, too. And when he opened his door only to walk into a great, billowy cloud of deep, shimmering blue, his misery knew no bounds.
“By the Rood!” His feet slid crazily and it was all he could do to keep his legs from flying out from under him. “Gelis!” he cried, righting himself. “What goes on here?”
Her face appeared above the welling blue.
“O-o- oh, no!” She jumped up, apparently off a stool, and stood gawping at him. “I wasn’t expecting you. Not for several hours.”
“So I see.” He looked at her from just inside the door, the slippery bluecloudmaking it difficult to enter the room.
If it even was his chamber.
Swathed almost completely in blue, it was hard to tell.
But his lady was there, and in such a grand state of high-colored disarray that another type of throbbing immediately joined the pounding in his head.
Surrounded to her waist by bunches of blue silk, she appeared to be wearing only a fur-lined bed-robe, clearly unfastened. As usual, her braid had loosened and shining coppery-bright curls spilled free to dance with her every movement.
Ronan swallowed.
Every inch of him stiffened, and not from crawling around the chapel on his hands and knees.
