Her lungs felt as if they might explode from lack of oxygen and she opened her mouth for a deep shaky inhale.
Immediately, Malcolm popped the bite he held between her open lips.
“Now eat yer food and dinna force me to feed it to you as if you were a wee bairn.”
Her face heated, as much from Elesyria’s quiet laughter behind her as anything. Embarrassment, surely, though her hands still shook, even tightly fisted as they were in her lap.
If she hadn’t accepted it before, she’d certainly received quite the lesson in the last few moments.
Malcolm MacDowylt, laird of the MacGahans, was one powerfully dangerous man.
Sixteen
HE’D DREAMED OFher again last night. No misty, shrouded portents of things to come, these. No. Full-on dreams, filled with Dani dressed in the thin, frilly shift she’d worn the first time he’d laid eyes on her.
Dressed in it until it slipped off her shoulders and floated to her feet.
Malcolm leaned back in his chair, propping his feet on the table in front of him, allowing the woman of his dreams to fill his waking thoughts while he waited for Patrick to join him in his solar.
By Freya, but the woman made him smile.
“Care to share what’s put that grin on yer face?” Patrick leaned against the open doorway.
Share? No, Malcolm thought not. Not this. Better to steer his brother on to the business at hand. “What did you want to see me about?”
“After I left our strategy session last night, I bumped into the Elf. She asked what yer plans for Danielle are once this business with Torquil is finished.”
He’d not thought that far ahead, concentrating his energy instead on the task at hand—leading an army to march on his half brother to demand his sister’s freedom.
“None, eh?” Patrick shook his head. “I told the Elf as much, though it dinna please her to hear it in the least.”
“Aye, well, Elf or no, we’ve more important worries than keeping my mother-in-law happy.”
Patrick shrugged but did not appear to be satisfied with Malcolm’s response as he moved into the room, shutting the door behind him. “She asked that I deliver a message to you. A warning, if you will.”
Now there’s what he needed. Though, in truth, Patrick as messenger was better than a visit from Elesyria herself.
“And that would be?”
“She says to warn you that the woman was sent to you by the Goddess herself.”
As if he hadn’t figured that out already. “So it would seem. As a test, no doubt. To see if I fail in protecting her as I failed Isabella.”
His brother’s jaw tightened. “I’ve said my piece on that, Colm, and we’ll no argue the point now, but no. No as a test. As a gift, she says.”
A gift?Not likely. Not unless it was as a gift meant to test. To punish his failures. He knew the stories of the Magical Folk all too well to believe anything else.
“Consider yer message delivered.” Malcolm lifted his feet from his table, placing them firmly on the floor. Where they belonged. “Make sure I’m notified when MacKilyn’s men approach.”
Patrick nodded, heading toward the door again. “I’ll see to it that all is in readiness. We will be prepared to leave as soon as our allies have a good night’s rest.”
Before Patrick reached the exit, the door burst open and Dermid presented himself, the ubiquitous Rauf close at his heels.
“I thought I’d find you here.”
Their youngest brother was persistent, if nothing else.
“Now that you’ve returned from yer”—Dermid slid a knowing glance from Patrick to Malcolm—“personal business,I’m assuming yer ready to deal with our brother’s demands. I’m offering myself as messenger to carry the tribute demanded back to Torquil.”
