Return of the Highlander (Immortal Warriors) (8 page)

So that at last he could look upon it and remember.

Ishbel.

Confusion and doubt rocked him. But she was to be his wife! Ishbel Macleod, daughter of Auchry Macleod, his neighbor. He had taken her hostage when she was sixteen, and held her for Auchry’s good behavior, to stop his thieving and raiding over the border. Whatever other morals Auchry lacked, he loved his daughter, and her presence at Castle Drumaid had curbed the worst of his behavior.

Maclean blinked and her face filled his mind, un
lined and pure, a young girl’s face. She had worn flowers in her hair, amusing him and secretly thawing his cold heart a little with her naïve charm. He had kept a proper distance from her, but as time went on an idea took shape in his mind, and when she turned seventeen he decided he would marry her, to peacefully join the lands of Macleod and Maclean.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Her face came to him again, but it was very different from before. Gone was the sweet young girl; this Ishbel’s mouth drooped and there was hatred in her eyes…aye, hatred for him and the life she did not want to share with him.

“I’ll not let my future wife tell me what to do.”
He heard his own voice, so grim, so final.
“You’ve turned me weak and soft, an’ I’ll have no more of it!”

Then, like a spring tide, Ishbel came pouring into him.

“You dinna see me as a flesh-and-blood person, do ye? You canna accept that I may be worth more than you’re willing to give me. I am to be your wife, but I mean less to you than your broadsword. I dinna want to be another like your mother.”

Maclean tried to shake it out, but now that the voice had found him it would not go away. It cried out at him from two hundred and fifty years in the past.

“Let me go, Maclean. You dinna want me. Give me this chance of happiness. You dinna care for me, you care for no one but yoursel’. Let me go back to where I belong!”

Maclean’s heart was thudding in his chest. He took a shaken breath, forcing the air through the constriction in his throat. The ache in his head was half blinding him.

“Dinna betray me, Ishbel, or I will make ye sorry!”

“It is I who will make ye sorry, Maclean!”
Ishbel screamed.
“Ye and all those ye love will pay dearly!”

There was a sound behind him, but Maclean, confused, still trapped in the past, was slow to turn. When he did, he found that the shadows had turned to night, and he could not see properly. Something was moving swiftly far down toward the loch. An animal, maybe a small horse.

He shook his head; it was nothing. He was looking for distractions because he knew very well what he had to do next.

With a shaken breath, Maclean limped toward the cottage and peered through the kitchen window. Bella was there inside, looking pale and frightened. He’d done that.

He put his hand to the glass, just as he did that first time, but nothing happened. He tried again, closing his eyes, wishing himself inside, in the warmth, with Bella. But again nothing happened. He shivered as a chill breeze whipped around him. There was no easy way back, not this time. He had moved on from being a ghost, and although he was still not a man, he was getting closer.

Maclean went to the door and reached for the doorknob.

The first time his fingers went through it, the sensation a little like plunging them into cool liquid. Frustrated, he wanted to roar at the sky and stamp around. How the bloody hell was he supposed to be the man he should always have been if he couldn’t get inside the cottage?

Maclean reached out for the doorknob again, but just as his fingers closed on it, an image of Bella’s pale, frightened face flashed into his mind. He needed to protect her, he needed to be with her, but more than that he needed not to fail her.

His hand closed on the metal doorknob, and it turned. The door opened. And for the first time since he’d come home, Maclean understood how he might escape his current predicament. Bella was the key. Every step forward he made as a man was connected to his feelings and attitude toward her. Although he wasn’t quite sure yet what he was doing right, it was a start.

Bella looked up as the door opened and her eyes were enormous.

“Maclean?” she whispered.

“Aye,” he said, although he knew she could not hear him. Not yet.

“Oh, Maclean,” she said, and she sounded so frightened and so sad his heart almost stopped. “I want to clear your name, I really do. If the legend is wrong, then I’ll do my best to find out what
really
happened, but you have to help me.”

And then Bella’s machine made a noise, the words flickered and blurred. There was a smell like burning, and she gasped and pushed frantically at the buttons, just as everything went black.

The screen was black and there was not a
sound in the room. After so much violent emotion, it seemed like an anticlimax.

Bella was staring at the machine in rigid silence, as if she couldn’t believe it, and then she picked up a book from the pile beside her and flung it at the wall, straight at his picture. It landed with a crash and bounced onto the shelf beneath before plummeting to the floor, taking several other books with it. His portrait fluttered by one corner, but did not fall.

Ah, now he understood! Bella’s accursed writing machine was dead and she thought it was his fault.

Maclean gave an evil chuckle. “Och, Bella, you have a wee temper there,” he scolded gleefully.

He was truly delighted the fiendish thing had broken; if she couldn’t write on it, then she couldn’t tell those lies. It was a reprieve for him, a little bit of time to consider what was happening.

But Bella hadn’t finished yet. She flung another book, and then another. The portrait hung doggedly by its corner and would not be dislodged. Maclean watched her expectantly, his lips twitching, but the fire had gone out of her. She dropped her head into her arms and began to sob so hard the whole desk shook.

His smile vanished. Despite his anger and his pain, the sight of her brought so low made him ache inside. It was a very long time since he had been moved by a woman’s tears; those softer feelings had rarely escaped the locks and chains he kept upon them. Women were a distraction and love made fools of men. But for once Maclean ignored his head and acted on what his heart was telling him.

He reached out his big, scarred hand and rested it gently on Bella’s shoulder.

“Come, now, lass,” he murmured, “things are no’ so bad.”

He could feel her.
Her skin, soft and warm, the pulse of her body in her blood, the bones beneath the skin, the movement of muscles as she sat up with a gasping cry and looked wildly about her.

Her face was white and streaked with tears, her eyes were red-rimmed, the pupils huge and black with fear. But she was brave, his Bella. Where other lassies would have run screaming, she stayed put.

“Who’s there?” she said, her voice shaking.

He was standing behind her, but now he stepped back, away from her. Withdrawing into himself.
He had touched her….
And she had felt him.

She was still looking all around, anxious little glances. And then she gave a sigh and pushed her long
hair out of her face and wiped her teary cheeks with her fingers. “You know, I don’t care if you are here, Maclean. Do your worst!”

She waited, Maclean waited, nothing happened. Then she looked at the broken writing machine and sighed again. “I’m going crazy,” she said. “When did I last sleep? I need to
sleep
.”

She stood up. “Maclean?” she whispered again, but when no one answered her, she shook her head and moved toward the door.

He was standing immediately in her path. This time he didn’t step aside. He waited. Hoping…longing…. Bella walked right through him and up the stairs to bed, flicking off the light as she went.

Maclean was alone in the dark room. He had touched her and she had felt him, and yet a moment later he had been a ghost again.

What had made the difference?

He thought back, trying to remember what he had felt as he reached out his hand, but all he could see were images of the past. Some were from his own unreliable memory and some were pictures put there by Bella’s words. They were jumbled in his head, confusing and frightening, and he couldn’t tell truth from lies. But still he knew. Something very bad had happened in his past, and although he had just taken a step backward, he could not escape it for much longer.

Bella stood at the window staring out at the loch, her arms clutched about her, ignoring the chill floor beneath the soles of her bare feet. Odd things were happening. The sense that she wasn’t alone had heightened, and
then the mug moving by itself and the door opening and closing. She’d felt certain Maclean was with her; she’d even spoken to him. But now…doubts were creeping in.

What about the hand? Did you imagine the hand?

No, she didn’t imagine that. She’d felt a hand on her shoulder, a big warm hand. Maclean’s hand. It was beyond creepy, but at the same time there had been a sense that the hand was trying to comfort her—she’d just gone into meltdown, after all.

The Maclean in the legend would never offer comfort to a woman. But then, she’d never completely accepted the legend.

Outside, the loch was a stretch of silver, an echo of the moonlight above. There was a splash in the water, and a ripple ran all the way to the shore. Bella frowned, trying to see what it was. A bird landing, probably, or a fish surfacing for a final snack before bed. Loch Fasail was deep and cold, and there were stories about what lay in the depths of such places. She remembered Brian insisting something had tugged at his foot as he was swimming, and how she had laughed at him.

It didn’t seem very funny now.

The splash came again, bigger, and for a heartbeat a dark shape was silhouetted against the water’s surface. There was a low keening sound. A stag, she told herself, even though she knew it was nothing like the call of a stag. Some of Gregor’s sheep were cropping the moorland grass. The sound came again, and in unison they turned and fled, their woolly rumps vanishing over the crest of the hill.

Bella snapped the curtains shut.

When had she last slept a straight eight hours? She was exhausted. Maybe that was what the hand on her shoulder had been—not Maclean, just sheer exhaustion.

Bella went to bed.

Maclean was so deep into his thoughts that it was almost like sleeping. Like dreaming. The peats in the Aga settled as they burned to ash, but he didn’t notice. His dreaming self was down by the loch, and it was as if he had never left.

He was walking, his kilt swinging, the sun upon his head. Women stared at him admiringly and men lowered their eyes with respect, for he was the Black Maclean. He smiled, feeling his heart swell. This was where he belonged.
This
was his rightful place. Not in a world where giant machines tried to run over him and people ate their meals from boxes and bags behind walls of glass and women wrote lies about him on machines.

He noticed then that Bella was up ahead of him, sitting on the stone wall in a sea of purple heather. She had her back to him and her hair hung long and dark to her waist, the ends of it moving gently in the soft breeze. As he drew closer she must have heard him, for she looked over her shoulder at him. Skin like cream, eyes dark and deep and a full, kissable mouth above a stubborn chin.

Och, Bella.

“I knew you’d come,” she said, and smiled.

He circled her until he stood before her, knee-deep in the heather, gazing down as she looked up. “You dinna belong here,” he told her sternly, but his lips were trying to smile back.

“But I do. I’m researching you,” she said.

Maclean wasn’t sure what that meant, but he shrugged as if he didn’t care. “Everyone on my land belongs to me. Mabbe that’s what you want—to be mine.”

“You can’t own people.”

“I do. They are mine and I am theirs, like a father his children.”

“A father would care for his children, he wouldn’t let them die.”

Maclean’s frown grew darker. “I dinna remember—”

“Try and remember. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

“I take no instruction from women,” he said coldly.

She blinked at him, long dark lashes sweeping over her watchful gaze. “Why not?” she demanded. “What makes you better than them?”

Maclean laughed at her simplicity, but she did not smile in return; she was deadly serious.

“You have a lot to learn, Bella Ryan.”

Bella smiled then, but it was a pitying smile, as though he were the one in need of help. “So do you, Maclean.”

“Maclean?”

The voice was old. He looked up, dragging his gaze from the fascination of Bella’s face, and suddenly she was gone and he found himself confronted by an ancient hag. White hair straggling about her stooped shoulders, a face so wrinkled and creased it was hardly a face at all, apart from the milky eyes.

“The
Fiosaiche
said ye would come,” the creature cackled.

“What are you?” he whispered, unable to disguise his horror at the sight of her.

“Och, Morven,” she sighed, “ye see these stones?” She gestured to the
Cailleach
Stones. “This is a doorway into the between-worlds, and I am its keeper. The door is open and I dinna have the strength to close it. My powers are fading and I can only come to you in dreams, to warn you—”

“Warn me about what?”

“Long ago your people passed through this door, into the between-worlds and then on to the world of the dead.”

“They died together?”

“Aye, murdered, cut down most foully. They cried to me as they passed because you were not among them. They asked me why you had abandoned them at such a time, but I had no answer.”

Maclean groaned.

“But there was one of them who did not weep. Be warned, Maclean. She has tricked me with her sweet face, tricked me into…”

Her voice was fading.

“What did you say, hag?” he shouted. “Warn me against what?”

“…Ishbel…”

The old woman was gone.

Ishbel?
Maclean felt a slow, heavy dread take hold of him. Ishbel—it seemed she was everywhere.

Bella stirred in her sleep. She had been sitting on the old stone wall by the loch, talking to Maclean, when suddenly he was gone and the old woman appeared. It was the hag in her green arisaid. Now the hag leaned over her and peered into her face. She was so old it was
impossible she was really alive. Her fingers, thin and hooked as claws, closed on Bella’s wrist and held on with surprising strength.

“Ye must remember what I tell ye, girl.”

“What do you want?”

“Listen.”

Her eyes were milky white and Bella found herself staring into them and unable to look away.

“I warned ye once against the
each-uisge
.”

“I—I think I saw it.”

“Aye, mabbe ye did. The door is open and the
each-uisge
comes and goes as it pleases. It will try and take your life.”

“But…why?”

“It does no’ matter why. Listen to me, lass. Ye must watch for when the
each-uisge
is changing its form. That is when it is vulnerable. That is when it can be captured. Ye must have the magic bridle at hand.”

“M-magic bridle?” This was absurd.

The hag was nodding slowly, and now she smiled with no teeth. “Dinna worry, I will see to it that you have such a thing before the time comes. Slip the bridle on, but remember, the creature will no’ be easily restrained, and if it knows what ye are about, then it will kill you.”

“I know this is a dream. I want to wake up now.”

“Aye, just a dream,” the hag agreed gently, “but ye must remember it nonetheless. There is a monster in the loch and it belongs to the
each-uisge
. Have ye seen the loch monster, girl?”

“I think so…. Last night something frightened the sheep.”

“Aye, he comes through the door from the between-worlds, and he’s always hungry. Dinna go too close to the water in the darkness, Arabella Ryan.”

“I don’t—”

The hag looked up suddenly and her eyes narrowed. She swept her green arisaid about her head, peering from the folds and shadows in a way that made Bella think that whatever the hag was looking at was very nasty.

She muttered something in Gaelic.

Bella tried to turn, but found she couldn’t. Then the sound of movement behind her, a splashing in the shallows of the loch and a wet, dragging sound as something heavy approached across the stony beach.

“I want to wake up now.”

The hag’s eyes gleamed in the shadows of her arisaid, and now Bella could see an image within them. It was the loch monster, its skin scaled and dripping, with a head similar to that of a stag without the antlers, and yet long-necked like the pictures she had seen of the Loch Ness Monster. The smell of it hung in the air around them, like rotting fish. As Bella stared into the hag’s eyes, she felt something fall onto her shoulder, something cold and slimy. Reaching up with a trembling hand, she felt it.

Water weed from the depths of the loch.

A cold, sour breath huffed against the flesh of Bella’s nape, and the hag began to chant in Gaelic, softly and fiercely.

That was when Bella began to scream.

Maclean woke with a start, still shivering from his waking dream. He was alone in the dark kitchen and above
him he heard Bella cry out. He didn’t remember climbing the narrow stairs, but the next moment he was in her bedchamber, standing over her.

“Bella?”

“I want to wake up!”

“Bella, quiet yourself, ’tis but a dream.”

He saw at once that this was true. Her face was tear-streaked, her long dark lashes clubbed together, her hair tangled about her. She was wearing her bedclothes, loose trousers of a sunset-pink and a long-sleeved shirt of yellow. The shirt was twisted about her and had been pulled up, disclosing the underside of one plump breast. Her trousers had slid down to rest on her rounded hips, and there was a stretch of curved belly, soft and pale and extremely tempting.

Maclean was holding his breath, all sensible thought vanished from his mind, leaving only a hot and desperate yearning.

Bella gasped again, twisting on her bed, and the shirt rose even higher. Her breast was half exposed now, the dark pink nipple contrasting with her lush creamy skin.

Maclean felt the yearning within him grow almost painful. He stretched out his hand toward her, tentative, wondering if a miracle might happen and that he might feel.

Because he wanted to. More than anything in a very long time, he wanted to feel the marvelous softness of her skin, bury his face against her and breathe in her scent, her warmth, her tranquillity. He needed her and it looked to him as if she needed him.