“Misusing a sacred stone — for whate’er purpose — is an affront to the ancients. Only one as brazen as Maldred would have dared seize such a relic for a crest stone. I’m surprised you even noticed the thing.” He looked at her, making certain his face showed no emotion. “Not many do.”
“Perhaps they do not look clearly.”
“And you do?”
She tilted her chin. “I see much, aye.”
Ronan arched a brow.
An odd prickling at his nape warned that she meant more than his ancestor’s age-pitted heraldic shield.
“There are things here you might prefer not to see, my lady. Glen Dare folk are cautious. They prefer not to stick their hands in wasps’ nests.”
“Wasps’ nests?”
“So I said, aye.”
He wasn’t at all surprised when her expression went even more stubborn.
“Most hereabouts wouldn’t cast an eye on Maldred’s crest if their lives depended on it. Not even if you threatened to thrash their naked flesh with a switch made of thorny wood and stinging nettles.”
“Be that as it may, I still find it a great sorrow to hear an ancestral grave likened to a . . . a wasp’s nest.” Her eyes still sparking, she leaned close.
So near that her breasts — and the infernal bauble and its slinky, double-looped chain — pressed into him. Her rose scent assailed him as well, the heady fragrance addling his wits and wearing down every last one of the shields he’d thrown up against her.
Clearly bent on bedeviling him, she remained where she stood, not budging an inch.
“There are things we must discuss,Raven.” Her eyes gleamed and a swirl of rose-scented warmth seemed to slide around him, almost a caress. “Matters of great import that have naught to do with Maldred the Dire or the state this room was in when I came up here.”
Ronan drew a breath, tried hard not to move.
Speech was out of the question.
His most damnablebitswere reacting to her.
Mere stirrings, praise the saints, but if she kept taunting him, a full-fledged river of heat would soon pour into his loins and then he’d be hard-pressed to resist her.
Seemingly oblivious — or perhaps not — she lifted a hand to his face. “Look,” she urged, “see what I can show you.”
“Show me?”
She nodded. “You know my mother has thetaibhsearachd? I —”
“You have the same gift.” He made the words a statement. “Torcaill said you did.”
“He spoke true,” she admitted, her chin lifting. “And sometimes, if ataibhseartouches someone, that person can see what the seer does.”
Ronan swallowed, quite certain he didn’t wish to peer into any such image.
Not now, not on the morrow, and not even next year.
Perhaps never.
But already she was pinning him with her gaze and resting her palm against his cheek. Her fingers slid down to touch his mouth, lingering there as the room suddenly darkened around them and he lost sight of her, seeing instead Maldred’s blight of a crest stone.
“By glory!” He stared, but the thing was truly there, hovering before him.
No longer cracked and crumbling, the stone shimmered with a brilliance that hurt his eyes. The sculpted raven, its proud outline barely visible on the stone as he knew it, looked almost alive. Glistening feathers seemed to ripple in a distant wind, and two curving horns that he’d ne’er before seen appeared to rise from the bird’s head.
