“So, lass, here we are.”

“And not a floor-pallet in sight,” Madeline said from somewhere behind Iain, the swish of her skirts revealing that she was already exploring the room.

“Nae, and praise the gods.” You shall ne’er sleep so roughly again, he added to himself.

He also frowned at the room’s heavy wooden door, his hands still on its drawbar. He wasn’t keen on sliding the bar into its socket-hole. Doing so would mean locking himself in the chamber with Madeline.

The last thing he should do – yet his only choice if he wanted her safe.

At least, the ale-keeper hadn’t lied about the room’s comforts. Beaming with pride, he’d ushered them inside, even patted the bed’s plump feather mattress, again claiming it stuffed with swan down. Iain doubted that. Nevertheless, the bed’s sumptuous dressings and great size made it seductively appealing.

The entire chamber proved so.

Firmly latched shutters held back the worst of the night wind and rain, though enough of a draught whistled through the slatting to ruffle the wall hangings and tease the flame of whatever candles had been lit.

A great branch of them flickered on a table by the bed, along with a platter of oatcakes, honey, and tasty-looking cheese. Two drinking cups and an earthen jug of what the ale-keeper insisted was fine Gascon wine rounded out the tempting array.

The chamber could have been at Baldoon. Not quite as fine as his own, but similar enough in amenities to hold more than the chill of the stormy night and its shadows.

The room brimmed with reminders of his past.

Grim ones dark enough to unleash his demons, even as the undoubted luxuries ripped at his manly restraint. How could he not be stirred by the huge curtained bed, the round wooden tub filled with steaming water?

Squaring his shoulders, he took a deep breath. Laced with the smell of rain, the cold night air also held traces of the thyme and meadowsweet someone had scattered across the floor rushes. He also caught a hint of heather.

Her scent.

Wishing he hadn’t noticed, he considered the reasons he couldn’t keep her with him. Beyond the silly title she’d given him, he had nothing to offer her. Too many pain-filled memories resided at Baldoon for him to take her there. He also worried that he was somehow cursed. Damned by long tradition to bring grief or death to anyone he cared about.

How could he not worry?

The lass he’d hoped to wed before the Council of Elders pressured him into marrying Lileas perished of a fever not long after his wedding. Lileas lost her own life not long thereafter.

Nor could he ignore another truth…

Madeline Drummond carried enough burdens of her own.

He wouldn’t add to them.

But he might be able to rid her of a few. Hoping so, he slid the drawbar in place and turned to face her.

“The door is sturdy, and barred.” He paused where he stood, letting his eyes adjust to the flickering candlelight. “Nae soul shall enter. Even so, I’ll have my sword close.”

“What of us, my lord?” She met his gaze, the slight lifting of her brows indicating she meant far more than how they’d pass the night.

His loins tightened in response for she stood in tantalizing disarray near a brazier of glowing coals. Just as damning – for him – she’d lifted her hands and was unbraiding her red-gold hair.

“We take our night’s rest.” Iain gave her the best answer he could. “The day was long,” he added, glad he could find words at all. It wasn’t easy as, at the moment, he could think of nothing save how the pulsing red glow of the brazier gilded her tresses and flattered the smooth cream of her skin.

He’d thought to question her about the ex-voto, pull it from the leather purse hanging from his belt, brandish it at her, and demand an explanation. But he held his tongue, the pounding heaviness at his groin pushing him to the brink of madness.

He clenched his hands, determined to ignore the insistent throbbing, and hoped she wouldn’t spot the rise in his plaid – just as he strove not to notice she’d discarded Amicia’s shawl.

His sister’s arisaid lay folded atop a three-legged stool, and the lushness of Madeline’s breasts strained against her torn bodice.

Nothing but darkness leaked through the shutters, but the brazier and candles cast enough illumination to clearly define all the curves and dips of her delectable body.

Especially her breasts.

Iain cursed beneath his breath, molten heat running through his veins. His only salvation was that she hadn’t yet removed the two brooches holding the gown together.

Damaged as the bodice was, he could already see more than half of one coral-tipped nipple peeking through a tear in the cloth. He stared at it, his blood turning ever hotter as the tempting areola drew tight, crinkling beneath his gaze.

Lust slammed into him, his need deepening to a fierce urge to ravish her. But his conscience chided him, warning him to look aside. How sad that he couldn’t.

She stood before him bathed in shifting patterns of soft golden light, her hair unbound, the gleaming waves tumbling to her hips. Her beauty and something else – a deep, elemental ache – held him in her spell, searing his soul.

She peered at him just as intently, wearing an expression the bards would surely call haunted longing. The look wreaked as much havoc on his heart as her body let loose on his nether parts.

“We have dallied.” She broke the silence. “I do not wish to hurry you, but the hour grows late,” she added, glancing at the wooden bathing tub.

Steam rose off its heated water, curling wisps fragrant with bay leaf, rosemary, and another pleasing scent he couldn’t identify.

She looked back at him. “We are both tired, and the bathwater will not stay warm overlong.”

“To be sure,” he said, turning to the brazier, holding his hands toward its warmth.

He was an arse. He’d meant to say that the two louts belowstairs who’d seemed so interested in her wouldn’t stay in place long either. Their path would be cold by first light unless they were daft enough to linger after seeing her in his company.

To be sure, indeed.

The lass robbed him of his ability to control his attraction to her. He couldn’t even form coherent sentences. In short, she rendered him a fool.

A bluidy, lust-crazed oaf.

“Sir?”

“Aye?” He whirled around, away from the softly hissing brazier.

“The bath…” She kept her gaze on his as she combed her fingers through her hair, loosening whatever travel-tangles might’ve found their way into the glossy, red-gold waves.

“What of it?” Iain hoped she couldn’t tell that he burned to feel the cool silk of her hair sifting through his own hands. Before she could guess, he glanced at the steaming water. “The bath is well readied. I will give the ale-keeper an extra coin for his trouble.”

“That is good of you.” She, too, slid another look at the tub. “He even added a lining. But…” She clasped her hands before her. “I am wondering which of us should bathe first?”

“You, sweeting.” This time the words fair shot from his lips. Not at all ashamed of his nakedness, he was alarmed at its current state.

Nothing under the broad, starry heavens could persuade him to remove a shred of clothing until his damned manhood no longer resembled a tent pole.

His plaid in particular was staying right where it was.

“I do not mind waiting if you’d rather go first,” she offered, apparently forgetful of how much her ruined bodice displayed. “I can even assist you. I often helped my father’s guests with their ablutions. You will know ladies are accomplished at hospitality. Such duties come often, so I am not shy.”

She smiled, proving it. “I offer gladly.”

“Nae, nae, nae.” Iain raised his hands, palms facing her. He couldn’t bear it if she bathed him, touched him so intimately.

He’d also spill, shaming himself for all his days.

“Just see to yourself.” He couldn’t believe how close he was to the verge. “Enjoy your soak and I will prepare the sphagnum moss tincture I promised you.”

“You will keep your back turned?”

“Aye, so I said,” he reminded her. “You needn’t fash yourself, lassie. I ne’er break my word.”

“Nae, I imagine you do not,” she said, seeming to accept that.

Relieved, Iain strode to the end of the bed where his travel satchel rested atop an ironbound coffer.

He also kept his promises to himself. That meant he’d address unanswered questions this night. And he’d do so even if his unruly tarse grew so rigid it snapped in two.

Figuring he deserved such a fate, he undid the fastenings of his satchel and searched through its depths until his fingers closed around a small silver flask.

Uisge beatha.

Fine Highland spirits.

He went to the table by the bed and filled one of the cups with a wee measure. He’d meant to offer her the fiery drink to soothe her nerves and take the sharp corners off any edginess she might feel upon being alone with him.

Now he needed the potent brew.

Crossing the room again, he handed her the cup. “Drink,” he said when she hesitated. “‘Tis uisge beatha.”

“That I know.” She glanced at the cup, then back at him. “It’s strong. I can smell it.”

“You need strong. Now drink.”

She took a small sip.

“Gads!” She thrust the cup at him, her face turning bright pink, her eyes watering.

“More.” Iain pushed the cup back toward her. “It is potent, I know, but finish it. The heat it brings will lessen the ache in your muscles,” he improvised, the half-truth smearing another layer of dirt onto his honor.

To be sure, the drink would relax her body. But it was the loosening of her tongue that concerned him.

Feeling unworthy of the fancy title she’d bestowed on him, he took the empty cup from her and returned to the bedside table where he’d left the flagon.

He poured himself a much greater portion and downed it in one throat-burning gulp.

And a good thing, for when he turned back, she was working the clasp of his cairngorm brooch, trying to undo its pin with trembling fingers. Iain almost shook, too, a sick feeling spreading through his gut.

He knew what was coming.

And though he wouldn’t have believed it, that part of him sprang even harder. Granite hard and so much so, even his plaid could no longer be counted on to shield his deplorable condition.

“Oh, bother!” She looked at him, her eyes glittery from the uisge beatha. “I cannot undo the brooches,” she said, just as he’d dreaded she would. “You must help me.”

Iain’s heart dropped. Or would have if such a thing were possible.

Either way, he suppressed a groan and started forward. And he hoped with every step that her gaze wouldn’t dip below his waist.

He reached her in a few quick strides, the wild beat of his MacLean heart hammering in his ears, its thudding rivaled the night’s thunder and the pounding of the ceaseless rain.

“Nae worries.” He set his hands to the brooch. Quickly, before he could heed his better judgment and whirl away to sleep outside the chamber door.

“I shall help you every way I can,” some still-there shadow of his honor added, the gallant-sounding words at war with the turmoil inside him.

Save that he did wish to aid her.

But who would help him?

Not a damn soul, he answered himself as the clasp sprang free, his own cairngorm brooch dropping into his palm.

“Thank you,” she said, a tremor in her voice.

“A pleasure, lady.” He managed a smile. “I could no’ have done otherwise – lest you wish to bathe fully clothed.”

He flinched at the images conjured by his words, cursed himself for splashing them across his mind. He also fisted his hands so tightly the pin clasp jabbed him.

Clamping his teeth, he ignored the pain. In truth, he welcomed the distraction from the growing urge to push apart the edges of her torn bodice and thrust his face deep in the softness of her breasts.

Or at the very least, pull her into his arms and kiss her again.

But he just kept his jaw set and lowered his hands before his fingers could brush against the creamy silk of her bared skin even one more time.

Then he eased the pin from the fleshy part of his palm as unobtrusively as he could.

But maybe not inconspicuously enough, for her eyes narrowed, and something in her expression told him she knew exactly how wide her bodice now gaped.

How much it revealed.

Not all, but enough of her sweet bounty to buckle his knees.

“Are you unwell?” She frowned, the gold flecks in her eyes deep amber in the candlelight. “You look pained.”

“I am tired.” He was, but also stunned by the earthy, intimate things he wanted to share with her.

Worse, he’d been hit by recognition, and an irrefutable sense of rightness.

Belonging.

“If you are sure,” she said, doubt in her eyes.

“I am.” He forced a smile. “Weariness is all that plagues me.”

And it was true.

But he was not exhausted from the road. He was tired of fighting the urge to draw her into his arms. Not just for more heated kisses, to run his hands over her warm and silky flesh, to sink deeply into her, truly claiming her. He burned for that and more. Above all, he wanted to tell her who she was and what they were to each other. If the MacLean bards were to be believed, she’d belonged to him, and he to her, since time beyond mind.

And that would be so for the rest of their days, whether he left her at Duncairn or nae. Legend declared the bond between a MacLean man and his one true love could not be severed.

Not even by death.

They’d simply come together again in the Celtic Otherworld, then repeatedly seek each other until the fateful moment of recognition in as many lives as were to bless them.

But at the moment, Iain, the latest of the clan to be cast adrift on the runaway tide otherwise known as the Bane of the MacLeans, felt more cursed than blessed.

Unlike other clansmen, long since blissfully mated, his tide of destiny hadn’t run a smooth course.

Or even a straight one.

He struggled to find other soothing words, ones to calm her without making her think she’d have to add madness to his long list of faults. “You needn’t feel ill at ease with me,” he said at last, the best he could do.

“But I do not.” She touched his cheek. “At least not in the way I believe you mean.”

“Then why do you remind me of a cornered roe-deer, ready to bolt?”

She gave him a sad smile. “I have told you, it is my own self I fear, not you.”

“Tell me why.” He frowned. “I would hear what fashes you.”

“Be content knowing I am not afraid of you,” she said, holding his gaze. “Never you – not while life is in me. I have seen the goodness in you, and your valor.”

“Then be sure that keeping life in you is my purpose,” Iain said, touched by her trust.

For a moment, some of the weight on his shoulders lessened, but then he worried. Enjoying any such pleasure might have the fates snatching it right back from him.

So he turned his attention to a safer, but equally important matter.

“Lass…” He gripped her arms, not wanting her to turn aside. “Who were those men? The two in the public room. What did they want from you?”

She looked down, brushed her hair over her shoulder. “I do not know,” she said, setting her fingers to work on the second brooch.

“I think you do,” Iain pressed, not wanting to push her but sensing she wouldn’t speak of them unless he did. “You recognized them.”

She stiffened. “Recognizing them or their vile intent doesn’t mean I know their names.”

Still struggling with the brooch, she looked up long enough to let her gaze challenge him. Her eyes sparked green fire, daring him to argue with her.

“Those men are strangers to me.”

“But you know of them,” he persisted. “Enough to fear their purpose.”

“I fear no one.” Her chin came up. “You err.”

In a flare of surprising temper, she quit fumbling with the pin clasp and yanked hard on the brooch. It came free at once, a good-sized piece of jagged-edged cloth with it. The torn bodice, and her gossamer-fine shift beneath it, fell open, the creamy-smooth rounds of her breasts wholly exposed and wearing nothing but the chill night air and two tantalizingly taut crests.

“Gah!” She clapped her hands over her nakedness. “Take heed, sir. Like you, Drummond women are known for their tempers,” she warned. “We rile easily.”

Iain bit back a smile. “So I see.”

“That is the problem!” She colored, her fingers splayed across the swells of her breasts. “You have seen everything and my gown is ruined. I’ve nothing else.”

“Dinnae worry, sweeting.” Iain reached for her, to comfort her, but he caught himself and let his hands drop to his sides. “Gavin will have clothes for you when we join him and your friend on the road north tomorrow,” he said, glad he could ease some of her distress. “MacNab, at whose keep they are this night, has more sisters than you can count, and Gavin has instructions to secure fresh raiments for you.”

“Proper clothes?” She peered at him, blinking. “You made such arrangements?”

“I did.”

“I thank you.” She looked him up and down, calming. “It seems you are kindhearted and valiant – along with other things.”

“What else, then?”

“Lustiness,” she said, surprising him.

“I dinnae ken what you mean,” he lied, hoping his plaid folds hadn’t shifted. “I told you, you are safe with me.”

A tiny smile tugged at her lips. “Your eyes stray, lord.”

“Nae man could help but admire such beauty as you inadvertently displayed,” he spoke true this time. “No’ when bared breasts fair leap right at him.”

“That was not my intent.”

“The result was the same.” He smiled. “I’ll consider it a gift and nae man beyond this room shall ever hear of it, I promise.

“Can you accept that?” He leaned toward her, his gaze duly above her shoulders. “I’d vow to forget what I saw, but that would be impossible and I’ll no’ lie.”

“I appreciate your honesty.” She returned his smile. “I am not fashed. All is well.”

Too bad it wasn’t for him.

He almost lurched, her smile sending such a rush of pleasure through him. Sweet golden warmth only she could give him and that he was beginning to crave. Just now, it was everywhere in him, filling every crack and cranny in his soul.

His heart.

But the pleasurable sensations proved so strange, so unaccustomed, they skittered away the instant he focused on them.

“Until I leave you at Duncairn, anyone we meet will think you my wife, and with a few obvious exceptions, I shall treat you as such,” he said, the cold seeping back into him with each spoken word. “Think you I could sleep a night – even an hour – between here and Duncairn if I allowed you to walk about in rags?”

To his amazement, she took her hands from her breasts to grip and squeeze one of his hands. “I knew your heart was deep,” she said, tightening her grasp once more before clapping her hands back over her nipples.

“You knew?”

“I felt it.”

“How?” Iain eyed her sharply, something about her tone sending little nips of wariness down his spine.

“Women know such things,” she said, meeting his gaze with clear, deep-seeing eyes.

And he found the look she gave him every bit as intriguing as the delectable plentitude of her naked breasts.

More so, in fact.

A truth that unsettled him for it gnawed at every barrier he struggled to keep between them.

“Drummond women are also known for their daring.” She raised the hem of her skirts, letting him see the dirk-hilt protruding from her boot. “We are strong. I am not afraid to face my challenges.” Dropping her skirts again, she flicked them into place. “I know my limitations and thank you again for securing fresh clothes for me.”

“Forget the gowns.” Iain frowned, his mind on her dirk. A one-armed stripling could snatch it from her with ease, use the blade against her. “Just now, I’m more interested in your dagger. Dinnae tell me you’ve been traipsing about the land, thinking to protect yourself with it? ‘Tis a bairn’s blade.”

“I said I shall face my challenges.”

“With that wee blade?”

“It is sharp enough to split a hair,” she said, a new kind of glitter in her eyes.

She also tightened her lips then and something in the way she regarded him made his nape prickle. Surely she didn’t mean to use the blade without provocation?

Iain blinked, dragged a hand down over his chin.

The uisge beatha, or more likely, the nearness of her bared breasts, had surely turned his mind to mush.

Addled his wits.

The strain of keeping his gaze above her shoulders was giving him a headache. A worse one than if he’d tossed down the entire flagon.

He was not the paragon she took him for, and his ability to uphold such a sham was fast dwindling. Leaving her standing beside the wooden tub, he strode to the bed, tossed his leather satchel onto its feather mattress.

“Take your bath before the water chills,” he urged her, rummaging through the satchel until he found the sphagnum moss. “I will stand before the window, my back turned, until you are done.”

And if, perchance, the devil got the better of him and he risked a peek, the linen-lined tub looked deep enough to hide her nakedness to her shoulders, which was exactly why he wanted her in it.

A fool notion if ever there was one, he decided, the moment his ear caught the first soft rustlings of her hastily stripping off her clothes. But it was her sigh of pleasure as she lowered herself into the scented water that undid him.

That, and the splashy sound of water lapping against her naked skin.

“Odin’s bone,” he swore, his supposed gallantry forgotten.

Frowning darkly, he dropped the lump of moss into an earthenware bowl on the table. Blessedly, the bowl had a matching jug, and someone had thoughtfully assured it held fresh water. This he used to fill the basin and that was a blessing.

He was not going anywhere near the bathing tub.

Not with her in it.

In particular now that she’d helped herself to the little jar of lavender-scented soap. It’s sharp-sweet scent blended with her own lighter, heathery one to rise from the heated water and waft about the room.

Drift directly beneath his nose, beguiling him and increasing his difficulty in playing the gallant.

Taking great care not to look her way, he carried the sphagnum infusion across the room and plunked the bowl onto the top of the brazier.

Then he went to stand before the shuttered window, his back to the room, as promised. Inhaling deeply, he took some satisfaction in having found her at last.

Even if he could only enjoy her for the short few days needed to reach Duncairn.

Resting a shoulder against the window splay, he folded his arms and peered down through the shutter slats at the ale yard, awash in drifting mist and slanting sheets of rain.

Muffled laughter and song rose from the common room, testament of continued drinking and carousing. And not far beneath the window, the ale-stake bobbed and creaked in the wind, a garish intrusion in the storm-dark night.

And not unlike Iain himself, somehow out of place in the world around him.

The ale-stake’s supports groaned, rusty cries against the the indignities of being tossed about on the night wind. But its screeches and moans served naught, much as his own protests brought no relief from a life gone wrong.

Closing his ears to the ale-stake’s wails, and to the softer, sweeter sounds of Madeline’s ablutions, he let the cold draught blowing through the shutters carry off any residual doubts. After all these years, he finally had to accept the truth of the clan legend.

How could he not when he’d never breathed so freely or known such warmth to curl round his heart? He felt more alive than ever, in the hours she’d been at his side.

She even made him smile, something he’d never thought to do again.

Not a whim or fancy, she was indeed the other half of his heart, and he would never again scoff at legends or magic.

Leaning harder against the window’s edge, he drew a rough breath and faced one more truth.

Perhaps the most vital of all.

He could not – would not – walk away from Duncairn without her.

Regardless of what it cost him, and the gods knew she deserved better, but she would leave Duncairn at his side. And she’d go as fit her...

As his bride.