Overbold steps for a maid so timid.
Proving it, she laced her fingers before her, twining them so tightly together that her knuckles gleamed white against the room’s shadow.
“The Raven’s not himself of late.” She lifted her voice, not looking at Gelis, but at the tall window arches, the rainy night beyond. Her gaze lingered there a few moments before she glanced over her shoulder at the door.
“His coldness has naught to do with you,” she finished. “His heart is good, I say you. Once you know him better, you will see —”
“I have seen more than you know.” Gelis flicked a speck of lint from her sleeve. “Truth is, I’ve seen enough to know him better than he knows himself.”
The girl’s eyes rounded and she looked about to say something, but before she could, a gusting wind swept in through the opened shutters. A chill burst of rain splattered across the tabletop, the icy spray stinging Gelis’s cheeks and dampening her gown.
“These shutters ought to be secured,” she said, leaning across the table to reach for them, her fingers closing around the cold iron of the latches in the very moment the shutters disappeared.
“A-ieeee!” She jumped back, one hand to her breast as the wind’s roar became a high-pitched buzzing in her ears and the tall window arch lengthened and widened, growing ever larger until the black, rainy night surrounded her.
From somewhere distant she heard a keening cry, a low moan that could have been her own. She slumped against the edge of the table, or something hard and solid, the cold iron of the shutter hinges shifting beneath her fingers, changing into the icy-wet, limpet-crusted rock of the great sea stones scattered along Eilean Creag’s lochside strand.
Heart pounding, she tightened her grip on the rock, her fingers slipping on the sleek wetness of sea-tangle. The buzzing in her ears grew deafening, then stopped, plunging her into silence as the blackness began to shimmer and ripple, slowly lightening to misty, luminous silver.
A glimmering and transparent curtain through which she caught glimpses of Eilean Creag’s stout curtain walls and postern gate, the shining waters of Loch Duich, and her beloved peaks of Kintail rising beyond.
Hewas there, too.
High above the loch, his great wings beating the air as he spiraled on the wind, his black eyes staring down at her. She lost her footing in the slippery rock pool, falling to her knees even as the raven vanished from the sky and her own words flew back to her.
I’ve seen enough to know him . . .
And then she did see him.
A raven no more, he strode out of a parting in the mist, his gleaming blue-black hair lifting in the wind, the glint of his sword and the bright golden torque about his neck commanding her attention.
I have seen . . .The words persisted, a repetitive hammering in her ears.
He crossed the strand with purposeful strides until he loomed above her, a man of fierce passion and heated blood, his dark eyes blazing.
Leaning down, he seized her arm, pulling her roughly to her feet. “You have seen what I wish you to see and you know naught of me.”
Gelis swayed, her senses whirling. “I —”
“Be glad it is so!” He jerked her hard against him, kissing her. A hot, demanding kiss as swift as it was savage, for he broke away as quickly, his grip on her shoulders the only thing that kept her standing.
His breath harsh, he looked at her, his gaze more piercing than ever. “Pray God you ne’er meet the truth.”
And then he was gone, Eilean Creag’s little strand and the rippled waters of Loch Duich with him.
Only the slippery cold wetness of the sea rocks remained. Hard and solid beneath her clutching fingers as the mist receded and the sea stones finally vanished as well. Their chill, seaweed-strewn surface no more than icy-wet shutter latches; the empty, rain-splattered table in front of Ronan MacRuari’s bedchamber window.
“ O-o-oh, mercy me!” Anice’s voice banished the last shimmers of the vision. “You’ve gone so pale,” she cried, clutching Gelis’s arm. “Are you ailing? Shall I fetch the hen wife? The Raven —”
“No bother. I am well enough.” Gelis drew herself up, her fingers still clenched around the shutter latches. “Only weary from the day. The long journey here and now this room,” she improvised, grasping for an explanation.
One that sounded halfway believable and wouldn’t reveal how very much shedidneed Ronan.
How much he needed her.
More sure of that need than ever, she kept her grip on the shutters. She looked out at the night, almost impenetrably dark with low, racing clouds. Beyond the castle walls, the dark Scots pines guarding Glen Dare were hidden in the deeper gloom, but the wild gusting wind was gone and only a fine rain was falling. The kind of soft misty rain all Highlanders knew and loved. Blessing its comfort and familiarity, she leaned closer to the window arch and breathed deep of the chill night air.
Her heart began to thump heavily and her throat thickened. Glen Darewasbeautiful, its reputation as being blighted an unfair misconception she knew she could set to rights.
