“Bluidy hell.” Doubling over at the base of the staircase, he gripped his thighs as the room spun around him. His head was pounding like a drum and his throat was as dry as the summer that hadn’t rained a drop. What he wouldn’t have given for some of Lachlan’s infamous whisky. Whisky, and a damned explanation for why his entire world had shifted on its axis when he touched the silken hand of a half-mad lass with emeralds for eyes and the face of a fairy queen.
“Hair black as pitch. With emeralds where her eyes ought to be…”
No. It wasn’t possible. The Black Bride wasn’t real, and even if she were–which she wasn’t–she was a terrible, fearsome wraith who lured men to her castle with her singing and then devoured their hearts while they were still breathing.
If Mara was a murdering ghost then he was a bloody pirate lord. And the last time he’d stepped foot on anything bigger than a dinghy, he’d hurled his guts over the side.
How could a lass tiny enough to fit in his pocket be some monstrous demon sprung from the mouth of hell? If she wanted to harm him, she could have done it easily enough while he’d been unconscious. Instead, she’d saved him…even though he wasn’t sure how she had managed to transport him from the cliff path to the keep without help. Regardless, Mara wasn’t the Black Bride. At least, not the Black Bride of evil legend. But neither, he was beginning to suspect, was she completely mortal.
Long had there been stories of creatures beyond the human realm. Fairy folk, and kelpies, and changelings. He’d never put much stock in such tales. Flights of fancy, as far as he was concerned. Made to entertain children and keep a person from boredom. But then the air itself had hummed when Mara pressed her hand to his…and suddenly, wee creatures with wings didn’t seem all that implausible.
It was this castle, he decided as he sank to his haunches on the bottom step and pressed a hand to his aching temple. The walls, the tapestries, the furniture…it all feltstale. As if no one had walked these halls since Queen Mary sat upon the throne. Except he’d watched Mara sprint up the stairs with his own eyes. She hadn’t run blindly, but with a purpose. A knowledge of exactly where she was going and how to get there.
On a groan, he lowered his head between his knees and cupped his hands behind his neck. John was going to owe him two years of free drink for this, and another boon besides. This wasn’t what he’d signed up for. What he’d agreed to. Ride to Blackmoore Castle, find the ring, and ride home again before the sun set. But he hadn’t even begun his search for the ring, and the shadows creeping along the base of the windows were growing longer by the minute, and he no longer had a horse to ride home on.
“How is yer wound?” Mara asked from behind him, and if such a thing were possible, Callum would have leapt right out of his bones.
“Bluidyhell,” he swore as he lurched forward and whipped around to find her standing just two steps above him, her green eyes forlorn and her countenance solemn. “Ye canna sneak up on a person like that. Ye nearly scared me half tae…”
“Death?” she said, fingers trailing along the roughly hewn railing as she made her way down to him. Barefoot, the top of her head didn’t even reach the bottom of his chin. “Not tae worry, Callum Campbell. Ye willna die here.”
“That’s comforting tae know,” he said, only half-jesting.
She nodded, as if discussions of death and dying were an everyday occurrence. “I am going tae finish cleaning yer wound, and then ye need tae leave. Tonight. Before the sun fully sets. It isna safe for ye here.”
“I’m not leaving ye alone.” He didn’t know where the words came from, only that he meant them. Deep down in his soul, he meant them. As surely as he’d ever meant anything in his life. He was not going to abandon Mara in this place. This dark, depressing castle made of stone and secrets.
She walked out the front door and he followed behind, a frown buried in the corners of his mouth.
“Did ye hear me?” he asked when she dumped out a pail of water and began to fill it anew before disappearing into a moss-covered shack and returning with a pile of neatly folded linen squares. “When I leave, ye are coming with me.”
“Sit,” she said, pointing at a stone bench in the shade of a wych elm. “And dinna move.”
For such a wee thing, she was awfully demanding, Callum noted as he took a seat on the bench. But unlike his father, he’d never minded a strong-willed woman. Maybe if Robert Campbell hadn’t purposefully chosen meek, mild-mannered brides who would obey his every whim, he’d not have grown bored of them so easily.
“This may sting a bit,” Mara warned before she dipped a linen square in the water and then raised it to his temple. At Callum’s slight nod she started to clean the cut, her calm, meticulous method revealing that this wasn’t the first injury she’d tended to. “It’s not likely tae leave a scar, but it’ll hurt for a few days yet. When ye return tae the village, ye’ll need tae keep it clean tae avoid infection.”
“Mmmm,” he murmured noncommittally under his breath, his attention fixed on the lovely pair of breasts jutting into his face as she leaned over him. The size of ripe apples, they pushed against the edge of her bodice, rising up with every breath that she drew. Another half an inch more and her nipples would reveal themselves, dusky rose against all that soft, creamy flesh.
When arousal stirred, hot and unexpectedly heavy, he shifted his weight, absently spreading his legs further apart to accommodate the growing bulge in his trousers. Callum was accustomed to lust and all that it entailed, but this…this was something different. He didn’t just want Mara. Heneededher. As if the moment their hands had touched, they’d forged a connection that he couldn’t explain.
The ancient Celts had called it hand fasting; an old pagan ritual that had involved wrapping the hands of the couple in a length of braided cord. The act had predated the wedding itself. It was an announcement. A declaration. That this man and this woman wanted to spend the rest of their lives together. That they intended to be bonded in body, soul, and spirit. After a year had passed, they presented themselves once more to the priest. If they still wished to marry then the ceremony would proceed. If not, then the cord would be burned and they would be free to lend their heart to another.
There’d been no physical rope or binding when Mara had pressed her palm to his, but there had been a surge of electricity. Made not from man, but from the earth itself. An earth that remembered what mortals had chosen to forget.
“How long have ye been here?” he asked abruptly.
Mara’s hand stilled, then slowly withdrew from his temple. She took a step back, then another, hugging her arm tight across the front of her body. Across the front of herearasaid, a garment that hadn’t been worn by Scottish women for centuries. “I…I need to make a poultice. It will reduce the bruising, and–”
“How long have ye lived at Blackmoore Castle?” he interrupted, rising off the bench to stand over her, eyes sharp with scrutiny as he scoured her countenance for answers to questions that he could hardly believe he was asking. “Who are ye, really?”
“I already told ye who I am.” She gave a short, irritated shrug. “If ye dinna heed me words the first time, why would I waste me breath on them again?”
“Ye told me that yer name is Mara MacLea.”
“Aye, and so it is.”
“Ye told me that ye are the Black Bride.”
