“Then why do you reject me?” She came after him hot-foot, chin raised and breasts bouncing. “There can be no reason. Especially if you know —”
“There are scores of reasons!” He whirled to face her, the weight of Creag na Gaoith pressing on him. “Do you see yon scarred and broken crag?”
He flung out an arm, indicating the dread heights, the mass of rubble at its foot. “Tell me, lass, if you are blessed with thetaibhsearachd, why did you choose such a maligned place for your feasting-in-the-wild?”
She blinked. “Why not this place?”
Her confusion hit him full-on, a white-hot knife twisting in his heart.
She glanced at the lochan, its shining water clear and bright in the cold afternoon sun. “I’d ridden for hours and saw nowhere more pleasing.”
“And so it was . . . once.”
“Once?”
Ronan nodded, finally seeing Creag na Gaoith’s bogle peering at him from amidst the fallen stones.
A pale, almost-too-faint-to-see image, his first wife, Matilda, stood there, delicate as a spring bloom. But watching him all the same, her flaxen-blond hair unmoving in the wind, her sky-blue eyes calm, trusting as always.
Ronan blinked and she was gone.
But his guilt — and his dread — remained.
“My first wife died there,” he said, speaking quickly before prudence stayed his tongue. “We came here often and were walking there, on the other side of the lochan, when a sudden rockslide took her life. We’d only been wed a few days.”
“Dear saints!” The color drained from his new bride’s face. “I am sorry. How horrible it must have been for you.”
“It was, and the guilt haunts me still.”
“Guilt?” Her voice was shocked. “You couldn’t have prevented a rockslide.”
“Say you?” He reached to finger one of her glossy curls, needing her vibrancy, the light and warmth that seemed to glow from within her.
“To be sure I say it!” she charged, a flush staining her cheeks. “How could you have —”
“Perhaps” — he released the curl — “because in that very moment, as we strolled along beneath Creag na Gaoith, I thought to myself that I loved her so desperately I would ‘move mountains to please her.’ ”
“What?” Her eyes widened. “Don’t tell me you blame yourself because of a thought?”
“That is the way of it, aye,” Ronan confirmed, the truth sending bile to his throat. “I am cursed, see you. My thoughts sometimes take on frightening shape and form, the darker — or more irresponsible — ones causing irreparable damage if I do not marshal them quickly enough.”
“I do not believe that.” She frowned at him, her chin more stubborn than ever. “And even if it were true, I know that —”
“It is true, I assure you. There are many —” he broke off, his eye caught by a movement at the edge of the clearing.
Something large and grayish-white crashed through the heather, its massive head lowered and its great curving horns the most deadly he’d ever seen.
“A bull!” Gelis clapped a hand to her throat and stood frozen.
“That’s more than a bull!” Ronan lunged and grabbed her, once again shoving her aside. “Hold Buckie!”
And then the unholy creature charged, bursting from the trees with a terrifying bellow, the thunder of its hooves blistering the air, its earth-shaking speed leaving no time for finesse.
And totally ruining what could have been a moment of revelation.
Spinning round, Ronan seized one of the Viking tent’s support poles. He ripped it from the ground and ran forward into the bull’s path, couching the pole like a lance.
Behind him, Gelis screamed.
