“So true as the morrow, aye.”
“Can it be Maldred did not receive one?”
“For certes he was given such a token. Not heeding the practice would have seen the banishment, or worse, of the hen wife who helped birth him.” He scowled, and the plaid dipped a bit lower, this time revealing an equally fine bit of hard, naked chest.
Something inside Gelis squeezed. Everything in her world seemed to sharpen and then recede until she saw only the fire-gilded expanse of the Raven’s bare, beckoning skin. Looking at it set off a tingling flurry of warm, delicious flutters deep in her belly.
There, truth be told, and lower.
She shivered.
Her mouth went bone dry.
He was frowning at her, clearly mistaking the reason for her silence. The flush, she knew, was spreading across her breasts and inching slowly up her throat, soon to flame her cheeks a bright, glowing red.
She took a strengthening breath, forcing her mind off his chest and back to his maligned ancestor. “Could it be that bairns in Maldred’s day were not yet given such spoonfuls of earth?”
He shook his head. “The ceremony is a clan bonding ritual older than the ringtailed lout himself.”
“And it works?”
“You have already heard that it does.” He yanked up his plaid, his scowl going even blacker.
Almost as black as the whirls of decidedly masculine chest hair she’d caught a fleeting glimpse of before he’d jerked his plaid back in place.
That accomplished, he pushed away from the table and began to pace. “The clan earth runs in our blood,” he said, slanting a glance at her. “A MacRuari would be skinned, spitted, and roasted before he’d leave these lands.”
“Then” — Gelis laid on her most triumphant tone — “it follows that a MacRuari wouldn’t sunder them either. Not the glen or its people.”
Ronan stopped in his tracks.
He almost choked.
“Maldred the Dire was no ordinary clansman. He cannot be measured against the rest of us. His legacy —”
“His legacy is a broken grave slab.”
Every muscle in Ronan’s body tensed and his mouth compressed into a hard, firm line.
Across the room, bright amber eyes flashed hotly.
Ignoring their heat, he picked up the fire poker and jabbed at the peats.
“Once, my lady, when I was too young to know better, I tried to do something about Maldred’s cracked grave slab.” He kept his attention on the softly glowing peats. “Spurred by clan pride and a boy’s innocence, I marched into the overgrown burial ground, determined to wedge the two pieces of weathered stone back together again.”
“But you couldn’t.” She spoke the obvious.
“Nae, but that is no’ the purpose of my tale.”
He glanced over his shoulder at her, not surprised to see her jaw set stubbornly again.
“See you, I needed only three bold strides on that weedy, tainted ground before my right foot plunged knee-deep into a rabbit hole. The thing was hidden beneath a clump of tussocky deer grass.” His fingers tightened around the fire poker. “I broke my ankle that day. The injury kept me from accompanying my father on a long-anticipated journey to Inverness.”
He paused, remembering. “There were some amongst the clan elders who felt I’d been punished for daring to try to repair Maldred’s gravestone. My own concern was more with losing out on the adventure of a foray into a bustling township. To a wee laddie who’d ne’er yet left this glen, it was a bitter disappointment.”
Even more damning, when the break did not heal well, he was left with a painful limp that took him nearly a year of steely willpower and hard training to banish.
That, of course, he kept to himself.
