Yet that’s exactly how he looked at the moment. Weary, numbed, and utterly defeated.
He leaped to his feet the instant he saw her, his usual fierce mien snapping into place as if it’d been there all along. “By all the saints, lass, where have you been?” He came forward, gripping her firmly by the shoulders. “If I didn’t know you better, I’d think you’d taken a swim in Loch Duich.”
“Be gentle with her.” Her mother stepped out of the shadows on the other side of the hearth. “Something has clearly upset her. Your bluster and scowls will only make things worse.”
“That one doesn’t know the meaning of gentle,” Sir Marmaduke drawled from where he leaned against a table across the room. Her father’s best friend and Gelis’s uncle through marriage to her mother’s sister, Caterine, he slid a pointed glance in Linnet’s direction. “Perhaps you, my lady, should be the one to tell her.”
Her mother looked uncomfortable, her eyes filling with sympathy.
A bad sign if ever there was one.
“None of you have to tell me anything.” Gelis slipped from her father’s grasp and unfastened her cloak, tossing it onto a bench near the door. “I already know,” she blurted before her mother could try to explain. “At least, I think I do. Something happened down on the lochside. I had a vision and —”
“A vision?” Her mother’s eyes widened. “What are you saying?”
“Just what you think.” Gelis tossed back her hair, excitement making her heart pound. “I have yourtaibhsearachd.Who would’ve guessed, as there’s been no sign of it until now, but it came over me when I was walking on the shore. At first I was terrified because everything went black and I thought I was going blind. But it was a vision, just like yours.”
She paused, trying to ignore that her father’s left-eye twitch was starting up. “It happened quickly. I’d been watching this raven, circling above the loch, and suddenly he flew right at me, wrapping his wings —”
“Good God!” Her father’s brows nearly hit the ceiling. “A raven?” He threw a glance at her mother and Sir Marmaduke. “Are you certain? Sure you didn’t fall asleep on the strand and dream this?”
“Gelis? Asleep on the strand?” Sir Marmaduke shook his head in mock confusion. “For all the years I’ve known her, getting her to sleep at all has been a trial.” He gave her father a sage, all-knowing stare. “You’d best heed her words, my friend. They do give the matter an interesting twist.”
“An interesting twist.” Duncan flashed him a glare. “No one asked your vaunted opinion, Sassunach.Isay she was dreaming. Or she imagined it.”
“Stop it, both of you.” Linnet stepped between them. She spoke calmly, her composure recovered. “Twists and turns in life usually happen for a reason.”
Duncan snorted. “If there is a reason, it canna be a good one.”
Linnet’s gaze lit on a rolled parchment on the floor rushes beside his vacated chair. “For good or ill, we have yet to judge. That there is a connection, I’ve no doubt.”
“Is this the missive with my marriage offer?” Gelis snatched the scroll off the floor, almost dropping it when the smooth parchment snapped around her fingers, seeming to grip her hand. “I —oooh!” She jerked, the dangling wax seal brushing against her wrist, its touch sending flickers of heat across her flesh.
Just enough to let her know that the scroll did indeed have something to do with the raven.
She doubted anyone else could infuse a mere piece of parchment and a bit of melted wax with so much power.
The notion made her tingle, and in places and ways wholly inappropriate for the circumstances.
Well aware that her cheeks were flaming, she set the parchment on the table, then smoothed her palms on the damp folds of her skirts. Even then, the prickling little tingles remained, tiny licks of flame streaking up her arms and spilling clear down to her toes.
“So you do know,” her mother was saying, watching her intently. “Did you speak with the MacRuari courier in the hall, then?”
“No, Arabella told me.” Gelis shivered, the strange prickles reminding her of how she’d felt when her future love-mate stepped through the shimmering gap in her vision’s mist, no longer a raven, but the most dashing, compelling man she’d ever seen. She looked at her mother, her father, and her uncle, wondering if they could hear the thunder of her heart.
Sense her excitement.
“So he’s a MacRuari.” She made the words a statement. “I’ve never heard of them.”
“Would that you needn’t now.” Her father started pacing, his hands clenched in white-knuckled fists. “I would give anything to prevent this union, lass. Anything I own.”
“But not your honor.”
He shot a look at her, a hard glitter in his eyes that she’d seen only when he’d been about to go warring. “There will be safeguards, ne’er you worry. I may be honor-bound to accept this offer, but once I have agreed, I am freed of my obligation.” He paused, his expression not even softening when Telve shuffled over and leaned against his legs. “Thereafter, if even a shade of harm comes to you, I will see the Raven and Clan MacRuari wiped off the face of the Highlands.”
“The Raven?” Gelis almost forgot to breathe. “The man who offered for me is called the Raven?”
Her father jerked a nod.
