The Highlander and the Wolf Princess

Marguerite Kaye

Scottish Highlands, 1705

Sorcha Tolmach, Princess of the Faol, possesses the power of the wolf and the otherworldly allure of her legendary clan. But she also longs for more freedom than she could ever find in her brother’s court. Impulsively running away to the Highlands, she doesn’t anticipate being wounded and confined to a ramshackle castle by Conall Macpherson, Laird of Kilfinnan. Sorcha senses only darkness in the rugged, forbidding man’s future—so why does she still feel a passionate yearning to become his mate?

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Epilogue

About the Author

Prologue

Legend has it that one dark, stormy night many centuries ago, a small wooden craft got into difficulties off the West Highland Coast, and broke its hull on the vicious outcrop of rocks called the Beathach, or the Beast. All aboard that storm-tossed ship were lost save for one, a babe in arms, only child of the mythical Highland warrior known as The Fearless One. Still tucked up in the woven reed basket in which he had been sleeping, the child was miraculously washed ashore on the remote, uninhabited Isle of Kentarra.

Here, he was found by a wolf pack who, instead of tearing out his throat, suckled him and reared him as one of their own, initiating him into their ways, imbuing him with their qualities. He survived and grew to be a man. A man with the spirit of the wolf residing inside him. He eventually learned how to master his inner beast. And he learned how—and when—to unleash its terrifying power.

From this extraordinary individual evolved the Faol, with their chilling clan motto: Faiceallach! Tha mise an seo! Beware! For I am come!

Living in uneasy symbiosis with their Highland neighbours, the Faol are feared and revered in equal measure throughout Scotland. While the men are famed for their consummate skills in battle, little is known of the reclusive Faol women, who rarely leave their remote island kingdom of Kentarra.

Like all Faol they can take the form of a wolf. Deeply sensual and possessing an extraordinary, unearthly beauty, these highly alluring creatures are irresistible to human males. The unique ability to foretell the future is possessed only by the Alpha females of the clan. A gift, which can, on occasion, prove to be more of a curse.

Chapter 1

Scottish Highlands, Summer 1705

The sun was up, a weak pale orb which merely hinted at warmth. Hard to believe it was the same one which blazed over the isle of Kentarra. Sorcha Tolmach yawned, cast aside the cloak she had wrapped around herself and sat up. Everything about the Highlands was different from the familiar landscape of home. The vast tracts of moorland and forest she had already traversed could have easily swallowed up the whole island. The jagged mountain peaks with their snowy caps were much higher than the glittering jewel-studded crags which hid the underground citadel in which she lived. Here, the people inhabited little stone cottages. A dour race they seemed, though she had taken care not to get too close to them. One thing to impulsively run off as she had done, without an escort, and to travel across this alien world quite alone. It would be quite another to openly court being discovered.

She smiled as she thought of Eoin’s reaction to her disobedience. Her brother would be furious. As Alpha Prince, he had consistently refused to allow her to visit Grada, where her other brother Struan had his own realm, but she was tired of doing what she was told. Besides, she could look after herself. Her Faol powers were all the protection she needed from any human.

Delicately sniffing the early-morning air, Sorcha felt her senses thrill at the very unfamiliarity of it. It was sharper, thinner, with none of the heady scents and soft humidity of Kentarra. But like an exotic perfume, the Highland blend of heather and pine and stony earth had its own illicit allure.

There was not a soul about. The desolate tract of moor she must negotiate rose gently in front of her, clumps of rock standing stark against the ground cover of heather and fern. In the distance, her keen eyesight spotted a narrow gap which marked the entrance to a glen. It was much greener there, and when she focused she could hear the tumble of a stream.

Quickly discarding her gown, and the white silk sark trimmed with lace she wore underneath it, which was her only other piece of clothing, Sorcha tied them into a small bundle using her cloak. Naked, she stretched her arms high and threw back her head to look up at the sun. An onlooker would have been stunned by her sheer beauty—black hair rippling almost to her waist, striking silver-grey eyes, her lush body displayed in unashamed and quite unselfconscious perfection. There was about Sorcha an air of sensuality mingled with excitement, a whiff of danger. She was a sight no man would readily forget. It was as well there was no human man to see it.

Closing her eyes, she breathed deep and focused on her inner wolf. A sleek, silver creature she was, who liked nothing more than to run, wild and free. Here in the Highlands, away from the constraints of her brother’s court and her own position as an unclaimed Alpha princess, Sorcha could afford to let her loose. Using her powers and sensing no danger hereabouts, she summoned her alter ego.

Her bones stretched. Her skin prickled. Her back lengthened; her thighs tautened. The pain was no more than a brief, blinding flash. The heart of her wolf beat faster than her own. The breath came quicker, shallower. She dropped to all fours, relishing the powerful rush that always accompanied her shifting, a mixture of sheer exuberance at the supple litheness of her body and a twisting, glittering desire that conjured vivid carnal fantasies. None of which she ever indulged.

The soft Highland breeze rippled her fur. Catching her bundle in her sharp teeth, Sorcha’s wolf picked her way delicately out of the ferns in which she had taken cover and loped confidently towards the glen.

Conall Macpherson, Laird of Kilfinnan, known to all as Black Conall, crouched down in the shelter afforded by a cluster of saplings. The tall muscular figure with his unruly hair and unkempt appearance blended seamlessly into the untamed Highland landscape. Around him in the glen, his sheep cropped contentedly at the grass. Conall picked up his musket. The long barrel was inlaid with mother-of-pearl and delicate silver filigree. Etched into the stock was the name of the man who had commissioned the expensive weapon, and the date. Rory Macpherson 1700. Five years ago. Just six months before his brother’s untimely death.

Instinctively closing his mind to those heart-wrenching memories, Conall positioned the musket on his shoulder and trained his sights on his flock. Five days in a row now, the wolf had filled its belly from his livestock.

He spotted something entering the glen from the eastern side. It was a wolf all right, though smaller than he’d expected. A female, by the looks of it, which was unusual. They rarely hunted alone. The she-wolf began to slow, her flanks heaving from the pace at which she had been travelling. A beautiful specimen with silver-grey fur, the ears and tail tipped glossy black. Part of him baulked at destroying such a lovely creature. Who would believe the merciless Black Conall capable of such compassionate thoughts?

He took aim. Perhaps it was the glint of the barrel that gave him away, but the wolf came to a sudden halt, dropping the bundle she had been carrying in her mouth. Her silver eyes seemed to be looking straight at him. Conall hesitated. Predator that she was, he was loath to kill her. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up as he squeezed the hammer back. He could swear he saw surprise rather than fear in those eyes as they locked on his, then something else. Recognition. His hold on the musket loosened, the stock trembled, drawing it to the she-wolf’s attention. Her hackles rose. Fatally, Conall hesitated. The she-wolf launched herself at him and Conall belatedly pulled the trigger.

The musket ball left the barrel with a loud report that sent the startled sheep stampeding to the far end of the glen, bleating frantically. As the bullet caught her, the she-wolf seemed to pause in mid-air before falling with a sickening thud to the soft grass. Discarding the gun and pulling his dirk from his belt, ready to spare her any suffering if necessary, Conall sped towards his prey.

The dirk dropped unheeded from his grasp as he stared in utter disbelief at the body on the ground. Not a she-wolf, but definitely female. Very female. Naked, and very beautiful, he noted distractedly. She was also bleeding profusely.

Conall dropped to his knees by the woman’s body, just as he had knelt at the side of another woman’s lifeless form, that fatal night nigh on five years ago. He could not believe it was happening again. That familiar feeling, of wanting to reel back time like a line on a fishing rod, of railing at the Fates for colluding against him, made him curse long and fluently as he searched frantically for a pulse, tearing off his shirt to staunch the bleeding as the faint fluttering on her wrist signalled that she was still alive.

The musket ball had passed clean through her thigh. A quick inspection showed him that it had narrowly missed the bone. ‘Thank God, thank God,’ he muttered, tying the makeshift bandage tightly round the wound before hefting his victim over his shoulder and making his way, as fast and as carefully as his legs would carry him, back to the ramshackle castle he, and he alone, called home.

The throbbing ache in her leg awoke her. Sorcha moaned as her hand encountered some sort of binding. The world pitched like a stormy sea when she opened her eyes, so she quickly closed them again. What had happened? Where was she? Think!

Running. Her wolf had been running through a glen. A stream gurgled. She was thinking of bathing in it, anticipating the breathtakingly icy splash of the mountain water on her skin. Then something stopped her in her tracks.

A man.

A gun.

A shot. She had been shot! Why had she not sensed any danger? Why was she not sensing it now?

Squinting through the swirling mists that clouded her vision, Sorcha forced herself upright. She was in a bed. In a large, gloomy room, so dark that she could well have been at home on Kentarra in the cavern bedchambers. Inching carefully to the floor, she limped to the window embrasure and drew back the heavy curtains, coughing and sneezing as the movement threw up clouds of dust. It would have been a pretty room were it not so neglected. The chandelier was clad in cobwebs. The sapphire-blue window hangings, which matched the canopy on the bed, were threadbare and moth-eaten. The nightstand, escritoire and several chests were thick with what looked like years of grime.

She sank back down on the bed, upon which the yellowed linen looked like it had been freshly made up. The bindings on her thigh seemed to be made from the same material. She tugged at the knots.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

It was him. The hunter. Standing in the doorway. Once again, she’d had no warning, no premonition of his presence. Startled rather than frightened, Sorcha leaped to her feet, only to stumble as her injured leg gave way. He caught her just before she hit the threadbare carpet, picking her up bodily and throwing her back onto the bed.

‘For God’s sake woman, do you want to bleed to death?’

He towered over her, hands on hips, his expression furious, his stance implacable. A wild-looking man in a worn shirt and plaid quite at odds with his air of authority, he glared out at her through a tangle of dark brown hair which reached down to his shoulders. His eyes were fierce, a startling blue, set deep below a brow that seemed to be formed into a permanent frown. A scar cut his left eyebrow in two. There was another little nick in the shape of a crescent on his chin. A hard face softened only by his mouth, which was full and sensual, though it didn’t look as if it did much smiling.

She didn’t like the way he was looking at her, but she could not seem to get her legs moving, and when she sought her wolf, it whimpered in distress and cowered deep inside her. Gritting her teeth, Sorcha made a painful lunge from the bed, only to find herself held fast in a pair of ruthlessly strong arms.

‘For the love of God, will you stay where you are. I mean you no harm.’

His voice was deep, harsh, as if, like his smile, it was rarely used. ‘No harm?’ Sorcha gazed at him in disbelief. She still couldn’t believe it. Above all else, she couldn’t understand why she hadn’t sensed the impending danger, any more than she sensed it now. She tried desperately to focus her powers, but there was nothing there—not even fear, which should have been. None of the usual cloud of images and symbols she had learned to interpret, to harness and to trust. What was wrong with her?

‘You shot me,’ she said.

‘I aimed at a wolf. I shot at a wolf. And yet…’ Conall shook his head, still quite unable to account for what had happened. ‘Who are you—or rather what are you? Are you some kind of evil spirit, sent to haunt me?’

‘I am real enough, as was the wolf.’

Her accent was strange, but not as strange as her words. ‘Then what happened to it?’

Despite the dull ache in her thigh, which was already fading, despite the failure of her powers, the human’s obvious bewilderment tickled Sorcha’s sense of the absurd. Perhaps she could sense no danger because there was none? ‘She’s right here,’ she said with a hint of a smile, ‘inside me.’

Her voice was like smoke. Her mouth was sinful, redolent of dangerous pleasures. Those lambent eyes, the same silver-grey as the wolf’s, gave her a fey look. Her figure was voluptuous, full breasts with dark, jutting nipples, hips rounding delightfully from her waist; she was as lovely and as luscious as a siren. And as dangerous. ‘You’re Faol,’ Conall said slowly, quite awed by the realization. ‘Clan Wolf.’

‘You know of us?’

‘Your warriors are legendary, but I’ve never heard tell of a female coming to the mainland.’

‘It is rarely permitted.’ She tried, but could not quite disguise the resentment in her voice.

‘Tell me, do you always wander about naked?’

Sorcha grabbed the sheet from the bed and wrapped it roughly around her. ‘I dropped my clothes when you shot me,’ she said tartly, confused by the way his gaze made her pulse thrum like a hummingbird’s wings.

Her skin was lightly tanned, the same colour all over. Her silky fall of hair was so long it caressed her bottom. Fascinated, and appalled by his own blatant display of interest, Conall dragged his eyes away. His shaft hardened with the unaccustomed stirrings of desire, and with it came acute awareness. Of the sweet, heady scent of her. Of the ripeness of her. The tantalizing otherness.

What the devil was he thinking? He ran his fingers through his wild tangle of hair. ‘You should be resting your wound.’

‘It’s not serious. The pain is already fading,’ Sorcha replied. The way he looked at her made her feel as she did when she shifted. Excited. An ache of wanting something intangible. She couldn’t understand it. Not only had he tried to kill her, but he was not at all handsome by Faol standards—and she had been wooed by the most handsome Faol in the pack. She licked her lips, quite innocent of the effect. ‘My leg will fare better without these bindings.’

‘Bandages,’ Conall said distractedly, fascinated by the glimpse of pink tongue on the darker pink plumpness of her lips.

‘Did you apply them?’ She imagined those calloused hands, the surprisingly well-cared-for fingers, on her skin. He was so different from a Faol man in every way. Bigger. Much more muscled. Broader. And his scent was different, too. Salty. Musky. Yet quite definitively male.

‘Yes I did. Luckily it’s a clean wound.’ Conall couldn’t take his eyes off her hand, where it unconsciously stroked her thigh. A gust of desire assailed him. She smelled of hot sun and some other elusive scent, like a wild Highland orchid.

Despite his heavy frown and the wariness he wore like a cloak, his mouth had a humorous curl to it, tilting up at the corners. She couldn’t read him or see his aura, which was as perturbing as it was unusual. It was as if he had placed a tangible barrier between them which made him opaque. Used as she was to almost complete transparency, it was frustrating, but also a challenge, something she could rarely resist. We Faol heal very quickly,’ Sorcha explained.

‘All the same, you need to rest.’ He meant to help her back to bed, but as he moved to do so, she stepped warily backwards, tripping on the sheet, and they fell together onto the bed.

It had been so long, so very long, since Conall had lain next to any woman, far less a captivating creature like this. She was so close he could feel the soft feathering of her breath on his cheek, count the thick dark lashes that framed those mesmerizing eyes, which were locked on his. ‘I should—you should rest,’ he said roughly. But he couldn’t seem to move. He didn’t want to move.

‘I’m not tired,’ Sorcha replied. Though the Faol were an innately sensual race, she had always instinctively guarded against intimacy of this sort. Seeing others’ innermost thoughts, their lives and futures laid bare, made her reluctant to be revealed herself. Knowing all, she had no wish to be known. Until now. Now, all she could think about was being closer still to this forbidding, powerful Highlander. Her body yearned for it. He made her feel safe and vulnerable at the same time. She edged a little towards him. Her toes brushed his legs. .

Conall’s erection hardened. He should move. He meant to move, and he did move, but in quite the opposite direction from that he intended, pulling her to him, so that they lay breast to breast, thigh to thigh. Her nipples were hard. His shaft was harder. Her breath was a whisper on his skin. Some irrevocable internal command compelled him to kiss her. So he did.

Sorcha had never allowed any man to kiss her, but as Conall’s lips touched hers, resistance was the furthest thing from her mind. His mouth was warm, every bit as sensuous as it looked. He tasted dark and dangerous. A rush of heat flushed her, from her neck down, her belly up, as his tongue touched hers. He pulled her hard to him and kissed her more deeply. It felt as intense as her shifting did. Her nipples peaked against the rough expanse of his chest. Her pulses began to flutter unevenly.

She was lying on top of him, the hard length of his erection pressing into her belly, his hand cupping her bottom. His breathing was as ragged and harsh as his appearance. His stubble rasped her delicate skin, yet his mouth was a delight. As he rolled her onto her back, she could almost taste the scent of their arousal, a bittersweet blend of salt and spice. Running her fingers across the span of his shoulders, she marvelled at the power in his bunched muscles. So this was what a man felt like? So different from what she had expected.

She tried to tug his shirt free from his belt, wanting to test the feel of his skin. His firm hand on her wrist halted her. His lips deserted hers. For a long moment he gazed at her in bewilderment. She had a fleeting glimpse of it then, his essence. Dark, hard, glittering like the rocks which formed Kentarra’s citadel. Then, as he rolled himself off the bed with an exclamation that sounded horribly like disgust, it vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

Chapter 2

Conall cursed, struggling to extinguish the flame of desire that seemed unaccountably persistent. He had forgone any right to desire long since. ‘I don’t know what possessed me,’ he said brusquely, concentrating on righting his plaid.

‘Nor indeed do I.’ For the second time in less than an hour, Sorcha fought her way through the mists which engulfed her usually clear head. ‘Who are you? And what is this place you’ve brought me to?’ she asked, surprised that she had not thought to do so before.

‘You’re in Castle Kilfinnan. My home.’ Seeing the surprise on her face, Conall laughed harshly. ‘Did you take me for a poacher? Or a sheep rustler? Aye, I can see from your face that you did. They’re my sheep that wolf I took you for has been slaughtering. These are my lands. And this is my castle.’ He made an ironic bow. ‘Conall Macpherson, Laird of Kilfinnan at your service,’ he said with a twisted smile.

It made sense now, that air he had about him, a sort of natural authority. ‘Sorcha Tolmach, Princess of the Faol,’ Sorcha riposted, irked by having misjudged him, and even more irked that he had noticed.

‘A Princess! What the devil are you doing travelling about the Highlands unchaperoned?’

‘That’s none of your business.’

‘It most certainly is, while you’re on my lands, under my roof.’

Sorcha sighed dramatically. ‘I am going to visit my elder brother. And despite what my other brother Eoin might say, I don’t need his permission to do so.’

‘Nor anyone else’s I take it? If you’ve a vengeful husband trailing in your wake…’

Sorcha gave a gurgle of laughter. ‘Faol don’t marry as you humans do. We take a life mate, but I have not yet agreed to be claimed. So you need have no fear of having to face one of our legendary warriors.’

‘I have no fear of anything nor anyone alive.’

He said it not boastfully but bleakly. She met his eyes, like chips of blue granite, and shivered. ‘I believe you,’ she said softly.

Conall shrugged. ‘So you are not married—claimed. Why is that?’

‘’Tis not for the want of trying, on my brother’s part. Since Eoin took a life mate himself, he has been overly keen on my doing so, too.’

‘But you’re set on disobeying him, are you?’

Now it was Sorcha’s turn to shrug. ‘It’s not that,’ she said, twisting the end of the sheet with her fingers. ‘It’s just that none of my suitors have been the one destined for me.’ She blushed faintly. ‘I have a gift for knowing the future. When I meet my life mate, I’ll know immediately.’

Conall raised his heavy brows. ‘You can foretell?’ he queried sceptically. ‘You’re some sort of witch?’ It would explain her effect on him.

‘My powers are not dark,’ Sorcha said indignantly.

Intrigued, Conall sat back down on the bed beside her. The mattress sank under his weight, rolling Sorcha towards him. ‘What about the past, can you see that?’ he asked, deliberately leaning even closer.

‘No.’

‘I’m glad of that. No one would wish to view my past.’

Her heart was pounding. Not wolf-fast but slow, heavy. The scent of him was wrapping itself around her. He was close enough for her to count the hairs in the rough stubble on his chin. ‘Why not?’

‘Just be grateful you’re spared the experience. How is your leg? If you were human you would be in agony, and yet you haven’t shed one single tear,’ he remarked.

‘Faol can’t cry, but that doesn’t mean we’re inhuman.’ Sorcha tossed back her hair and lifted her chin. ‘We are much more than human.’

‘Much more indeed,’ Conall mused, unable to resist touching the silky lock which trailed over her shoulders. Soft. Luxurious, just like the rest of her. ‘Woman and wolf and foreteller, too. No wonder you are much sought after.’

Sorcha jerked away from his touch, not because she wanted to, but because she did not. ‘Stop mocking me.’

‘Then show me these fabled powers of yours. What do you see for me in the future? Riches? I have those aplenty, though you’d not think it to look at me, would you? A long healthy life? I’d not thank you for that. A true love? But then I’d know you were lying, for there’s no such thing.’

As he spoke she saw it again, the dark glittering thing at his core. For a fleeting moment, too, she saw the wounded, haunted creature that lurked inside him, but it was gone before she could begin to interpret its meaning, as if Conall had lowered a portcullis, denying her access. It was frustrating and extremely intriguing. She sensed that pursuing the matter could quite possibly prove to be fraught with danger—which for some reason, made her only more determined to do so.

‘What are you hiding from me?’ she asked, guessing wildly. From the flash in his eyes she knew she had struck a raw nerve.

‘I’m not hiding anything,’ Conall said, getting to his feet. ‘Perhaps those powers of yours aren’t as infallible as you think.’

Weren’t they? Sorcha bit her lip. Had they somehow been diluted by the Highland air? Was that why Faol women stayed on Kentarra? Without her powers—no, she would not think of that. It was him. Conall Macpherson must have some unique resistance to her ability to foretell.

‘I’ll leave you to rest now.’ Conall spoke from the doorway. ‘Given the circumstances, I suppose I’ve no option but to let you stay here until your leg’s fully healed,’ he said grudgingly. ‘I’m not used to guests, so you’ll oblige me by confining yourself to this room. I’ll bring you some food later.’

Despite her certainty that she would not, Sorcha did sleep. Drained by the shock of her injury and the wild charge of emotions that her assailant had engendered in her, she fell asleep remembering the feel of his lips on hers, and she awoke hot and aroused, longing to feel them again. What was it about this man, this human man, that made her feel like this? She was sure he felt it, too, the almost tangible pull of something between them, like twin compasses. What was occurring between them?

Her leg was beginning to itch as it healed. Tearing the bandaging off, Sorcha puzzled over the enigma that was Conall Macpherson, a man who did not fear and did not wish to be known. Her natural curiosity was piqued by her inability to read him. The darkness at his core, this inexplicable pull of attraction she felt towards him, made him fascinating. She rolled over to the edge of the bed and carefully tested her weight on her injured leg. It was stiff, but the pain was gone as she had known it would be, though there was no need to inform her host of that just yet. Anxious as she was to see Struan and Iona, she wasn’t quite finished with Conall Macpherson.

Getting carefully to her feet, she took a couple of steps, and noticed her bundle of clothes sitting on a chair by the door. He must have gone back and collected it while she slept. She dressed slowly in her sark and gown then, blatantly ignoring her formidable host’s instructions, Sorcha quit her bedchamber.

The corridor was so dark that she was forced to use her night vision. Though it was early evening of high summer, only the tiniest chinks of light penetrated the gloom. Following the trail of large footsteps that had disturbed the patina of dust on what had once been rich carpeting, she made her way to the top of a broad sweep of stairs that led to the castle’s Great Hall. It was lighter here, the sunlight dappling through the enormous stained glass window above the massive oak door which must be the main entrance. Dust motes danced in the multi-hued streams of light. A spider worked busily on the web which it was spinning across the smeared crystal teardrops of a chandelier. Long threads of dust and abandoned cobwebs hung from the ornate cornicing. Clouds of it erupted from every surface she touched.

Sorcha made her way slowly down the stairs, saddened and mystified by the scale of what appeared to be wilful neglect. The end posts of the staircase were carved with rather mythical-looking serpents and dragons. An array of other magical creatures decorated the dado rail and the enormous stone fireplace which took up most of one wall of the hall. The silver claret jug and goblets which sat atop a long oak dresser were tarnished to a dull grey.

She wandered off the Great Hall into the eastern wing of the castle, randomly opening doors where she found other rooms equally neglected, equally beautiful. A drawing room. A dining room. A music room. All shuttered. No trace in the dust-covered floors of even the owner’s footsteps.

Returning to the Great Hall, she headed for the western wing, and there she found him, seated behind a large desk in the library with only a single candle for light, staring off into space, his face wreathed in a dark frown.

‘What the devil are you doing here?’ Conall leaped to his feet. ‘I told you to remain in your room.’

Sorcha closed the door behind her. This room was at least lived in. Books were piled onto every surface, lying open on the floor beside a comfortable-looking chair. Though dust still lay like a coating of frost on the mantel and the shutters, the other surfaces were clean, if not polished. A small table and a single chair sat by the hearth. ‘Do you live here, just in this one room?’

‘Do you make a habit of disobeying orders?’

‘Sometimes,’ Sorcha said with a smile.

‘Your brother must be positively relishing the temporary respite. ‘Tis a pity your wilfulness must be inflicted on me instead, but since you Faol are such quick healers, I trust it will not be long before my castle, and my life, can return to some semblance of normality.’

There could be no mistaking the antipathy in his voice. It made Sorcha even more determined to stay. ‘You know, this castle could be quite lovely. It seems a shame to neglect it so. Your staff…

‘There are no servants, Conall replied shortly.

‘But—you surely don’t live here all alone?’

The look on his face, defensive, with just a hint of embarrassment, told her that he did just that. ‘My domestic arrangements are none of your concern,’ Conall said brusquely.

‘Don’t you get lonely?’ Sorcha asked, coming farther into the room. It seemed the more he pushed her away, the more her impulse was to advance.

‘I am not accustomed to company. I have no need of it,’ Conall replied tersely. It was true. It had been true, until today.

‘But you do need to eat, do you not? As do I. Surely we could at least eat together.’

Conall hesitated. His instincts were to avoid her at all costs. There was something about her that made him want things he had stopped wanting, believed himself no longer capable of wanting. She was a danger to his carefully constructed defences. But… Conall sighed. ‘I’m no cook. It will be poor fare.’

‘I’ll eat anything, I’m ravenous,’ Sorcha said with a sweet smile. ‘That’s settled then,’ she said with an expectant look, which gave him no option but to stomp off, muttering under his breath, to the kitchen.

While he was gone, Sorcha wrestled the shutters on the windows open, revealing an overgrown rose garden outside. Conall made no comment when he returned with their meal, a surprisingly tasty beef stew with fresh peas, which they ate at the little table by the hearth while he interrogated her about Kentarra.

Though it was obviously a ploy to prevent her questioning him further, and she would have much preferred to pursue the more interesting issue of Conall’s bleak existence, Sorcha thought it best not to antagonize him further, and obliged. As she described the underground citadel of the Faol and the hot springs which gave the island its tropical climate, Conall listened, his initially feigned interest giving way to real fascination. Like Sorcha herself, the world of the Faol seemed seductive and dangerous, enticing in the way of a brightly coloured and fatally poisonous flower.

‘But though I love it dearly, sometimes I can’t help but feel stifled,’ Sorcha finished, propping her elbows on the table and resting her chin in her hands. ‘Your Highlands are so vast, and so beautiful in their own way. Eoin thinks it is disloyal to want to see other worlds, but I can’t agree with him. There is something appealing in going to a place where no one knows anything about you, isn’t there?’

‘Indeed there is,’ Conall said bitterly. ‘Though for some of us, the ties that bind are too strong to allow it.’

‘We have a ritual called a binding,’ Sorcha said, ‘when we accept an outsider into the clan.’ She pushed back her chair and peered out of the smeared glass of the casement at the evening sky. ‘It’s a full moon tonight. A night for rituals,’ she said.

‘You will get a better view outside,’ Conall said, getting to his feet and holding out his hand imperiously. Outside, the exotic scent of her would be dissipated by the soft summer Highland air, he thought. Outside, he would not feel so overwhelmed by her presence, he told himself. But as they strolled through the neglected formal gardens of the castle, the scents of wild rose and the lavender his French mother had brought from her native Provence were thin in comparison to the headier, more addictive perfume of Sorcha. Her leg seemed to be causing her a great deal of discomfort, giving her a very pronounced limp. Obviously her claims about the Faol’s ability to heal were exaggerated. He was obliged to keep hold of her in order to provide support, forced to endure the touch of her hand on his arm, the brush of her skirts against his leg.

Stopping by a moss-covered sundial, she threw her head back and gazed wide-eyed up at the stars. The line of her throat to the swell of her breasts in the low-cut gown was mesmerizing in the ghostly glow of the buttery moon. Her hair fell in a long swathe past the swell of her hips. She possessed a breathtaking, unearthly beauty. ‘Tell me what it feels like to change into your wolf,’ Conall said, rather desperately seeking distraction.

‘I don’t change into her,’ Sorcha said with a secret smile. ‘I set her free.’ She had tried, all through dinner, to quell her awareness of him, but it was impossible. No matter how many times she reminded herself that she knew nothing of him, that the things she did not know were of a certainty sinister, still her unaccountably wayward body persisted in overriding her reserve. She could not take her eyes off his mouth. His scent made her giddy. Though Foal could not lie, she found she could prevaricate, pretending her leg gave her enough trouble to justify clinging to his sinewy arm. The full moon always awoke a yearning in her, but she had never before articulated it, nor ever come close to acting upon it.

‘Describe it to me, this setting free,’ Conall said, pulling her down beside him on the bench of what had once been a rose bower, trying not to think of the flesh her silken skirts were caressing.

‘I’m not supposed to discuss it. The mysteries of the Faol are meant to remain secret from human eyes. Eoin would be horrified that you have seen me shift.’

‘Shift?’

‘Move from one form to another. It’s not that my wolf is a separate being. She’s part of me. When I shift, it’s—I don’t know, exciting, a release, a sort of rushing, like a stream tumbling over rocks. There is nothing quite like it. Except this afternoon when you—we…’ Sorcha broke off, blushing, remembering.

‘Kissed.’ Oh God, why had he said that? So much for distraction. The pull of awareness, which had only slightly weakened its grip during dinner, tightened once more to an unbearable tension. It had been a mistake not to send her back to her room. A mistake not to preserve his total isolation.

‘Kissed,’ Sorcha repeated softly. She still could not see him as she saw others, but he overwhelmed her senses with his presence in quite a different way. He made her belly flood with heat. He sent her pulses racing. She couldn’t breathe properly. She was afraid, but she was reckless with it. Her instincts, which had always so unerringly driven her habits, seemed scrambled, for they should be telling her to flee but were instead urging her to press closer. She wanted him to kiss her again, as she had never wanted anything before. And she feared, as he made to disentangle himself, that he would not. ‘Conall,’ she said, made bold by desire, ‘do you really want to know what shifting feels like?’

He looked at her warily.

‘If you kiss me…’

‘No.’

But he made no move away from her. She twined her arms around his neck. Only the rise and fall of his chest gave away his agitation. His gaze was unflinching. His face was set. She hesitated, wondering briefly what it was that drove her to act so out of character, then she decided she did not care, and kissed him anyway.

Chapter 3

Conall did not respond. His lips lay passive under hers. Whatever it was she was feeling, she had been mistaken in thinking he felt it, too. Mortified, she broke the kiss, but even as she tried to free herself, he caught her, his indigo-blue eyes blazing fiercely.

‘You should be careful what you wish for,’ he said harshly. Then his lips took hers in a deep, dark, ruthless kiss that made her own attempt seem childish. His tongue thrust into her mouth. His hands pulled her roughly to him, settling her astride him on the rustic bench, roaming over her back, her bottom, her waist, the contours of her breasts, sending jolting sparks of heat coursing through her.

The moon glowed and so too did Sorcha, lost, whirling, in the dark delights of desire. Conall’s hands lit rapturous pathways from wherever he touched down to the shimmering, gathering knot of tension deep inside her. His fingers stroked her neck, her throat, the swell of her breasts, making her nipples ache for him, rasping against the silk of her undergarments. His mouth trailed kisses where his hands had been, making her shudder, making her sex throb.

She tugged his shirt from his belt, and this time he made no effort to stop her. Her hands roamed over his back, spanning the breadth of his shoulders, tracing the contours of his muscles. His chest now, so unexpectedly smooth, his skin hot under her fingers. His rib cage lifted and swelled as he breathed unevenly. She could feel his heart beating against her palm, slower than hers, a steady bump to her fluttering pace.

Feverishly, in an agony of wanting he had no thought of controlling, Conall wrenched at the lacings of her gown, the white silk of her sark, to expose those perfect nipples to his caress, rolling them between his fingers, taking them into his mouth, licking and sucking, first one then the other.

Sorcha slumped back in his arms, overwhelmed by the spiky shards of pleasure his touch aroused as they faced each other astride the bench. Her nipples throbbed, an echo of the pulsing, more insistent throb between her thighs. Conall’s shirt hung open. Had she done that? The petal of an overblown rose touched her cheek. Above them hung the moon, ripe with promise. A ritual moon, at its most potent.

But he was not the one! What on earth was she thinking? Sorcha wrenched herself free. ‘No! I cannot,’ she panted, pulling together the open fastenings of her robe, at the same time trying to wriggle backwards on the bench away from fatal temptation.

Conall jumped to his feet, running his hand through his hair, staring in utter bewilderment at Sorcha’s dishevelled state. ‘How the devil did we…’

She glimpsed it briefly again, his inner darkness, but before she could read it, he had recovered some element of his control, and it was gone. Closing her eyes to harness the moon’s powers, she tried to push her way through the barrier Conall placed around his aura, but to no avail.

‘What was it? What did you see?’ Conall rasped.

‘Nothing.’

But the tone of her voice gave her away. ‘What was it?’ Conall demanded.

‘All I can see is cold darkness. Your world is cloaked in darkness, just like your castle,’ Sorcha whispered, wrapping her arms around herself to guard against the sharp edge of his voice. She felt raw, exposed. She had been foolish beyond belief to risk so much.

Confused by the tempest of emotions coursing through him, Conall glared at her. ‘You’re damned right my world is in darkness. Darkness and solitude, and that’s how I want it to remain.’ Five years of abstinence, and before that, the bitterness of the discovery that led to it, the double betrayal that preceded it. How had he come to forget all that in the space of a few moments? Since that fateful day, he had worked so successfully to eradicate all feelings of any sort save the bitter anger that coated everything with its acrid sheen that he had come to believe himself incapable of feeling desire ever again. What was it about this female, this other-worldly woman, that conjured up these long-forgotten, long-forbidden emotions?

He didn’t know, he didn’t care and he certainly didn’t welcome it. Conall tucked his shirt into his belt. ‘Thank you. You have saved us both from a grave error of judgement.’

‘Yes,’ Sorcha agreed, not sure if she should feel relieved or rejected. ‘But…’

‘What now?’

‘If you feel so strongly upon the matter, why then did you kiss me?’ she blurted out.

‘I don’t know! I did not intend to. That part of my life is dead.’

‘Why do you live here all alone in this place, Conall? Letting it crumble around you as if you are trying to create a mausoleum.’

‘Maybe I was wrong after all about those powers of yours,’ Conall said wryly, after a moment’s tense silence, ‘for your words are truer than you can know. I have neither the right nor the desire to enjoy life, and you have not the right to question me in this way.’

‘But you wanted me just there, just for a moment, didn’t you? Sorcha persisted, too intent on understanding him for caution.

‘Perhaps, but I have come to my senses. I don’t want you now,’ Conall said cruelly. ‘I wish I had never laid eyes on you. I don’t want you here a moment longer than you need to be.’

She flinched at the deliberate intent to hurt, but she recognized it, too, for just that. She should leave; she knew she ought to leave, but she felt she should not. There were too many unanswered questions. Both Castle Kilfinnan and its proud owner were damaged, ruined. They needed her. Ridiculous thought, but that, too, she felt rather than sensed, was the truth. She had to stay.

Though her leg would be quite healed by the morn, Conall did not know that, and provided she did not attempt an outright lie, she could keep him in ignorance of the fact. ‘I still have a long way to travel, before I reach my brother’s kingdom,’ she said carefully. ‘It is a rigorous journey, one I cannot undertake easily with a damaged leg.’

‘He is not expecting you?’

‘No,’ she replied, relieved to be able to answer honestly. ‘My decision to visit was somewhat spur of the moment, as I told you.’

Conall glowered at her. He had no option but to keep her here for the time being. ‘I suppose it’s too much to ask, that you keep to your room?’

‘My leg will heal much more quickly if I take gentle exercise.’

He looked at her sharply, alerted by her innocent look, but she held his gaze, and he remembered what she’d said about Faol being incapable of lies. ‘Very well. I suppose, since it was partly my fault that you were shot—though why the devil you had to choose my lands to run through…’ He broke off angrily and took a deep breath. ‘You can stay. But you won’t leave the castle demesne unless I accompany you, do you hear?’

‘I hear.’ Though she made no promise.

‘Which means all day tomorrow, for I’ve business in Tighnabruaich. Maybe the next day, if you’re up to it, I will show you my fiefdom. Just so that you can take some exercise, you understand.’

‘I’d like that.’

‘My aim was not to please you.’ He would not like it, he assured himself, ignoring that winsome smile of hers. He would not. She was from another world. He had cut himself off from his own to create this little purgatory he now inhabited. The only reason he was allowing Sorcha to inhabit it, too, was a sense of responsibility for her well-being. ‘Right then,’ Conall said curtly, ‘that is settled.’

‘It seems it is,’ Sorcha agreed.

She spent the next morning exploring the castle, throwing open shutters, drawing back the heavy drapes of room after opulent room, marvelling at the dusty treasures, appalled by the wilful neglect, musing over the man at the castle’s brooding heart.

Aimless and restless, she made her way out into the gardens, following a path that led around the half moat over which stood a rotting bridge, under which a pair of swans glided. Deep in thought, she wandered along a rutted track, quite unaware of having left the castle grounds to which she was supposed to be confined.

It was late afternoon when she reached the village. The people were returning from their fishing, their fields, putting away their spinning, closing up their looms. Barefoot, her hair floating around her in the light breeze, her low-cut gown revealing every curve of her sensual figure, Sorcha wended her purposeless way, only vaguely aware of them, quite unaware of the stir her own presence was provoking until a prickle of warning penetrated her mind as she neared the last cottage.

They were standing in front of her, a row of men in their rough plaids. She turned around, to be met with a row of women. The two lines formed ominously into a circle with her at the centre. Sorcha’s heart began to beat very fast. They looked at her with a mixture of curiosity and malice. She tried to smile. ‘What do you want,’ she asked falteringly.

‘Where have you come from?’ one of the women asked.

‘The castle. I am a guest of the laird. She assumed that this fact alone would assure her safety.

‘That’s a lie for a start. No one calls on Black Conall.’ The biggest of the men spat the words. ‘There’s a curse on that place.’

‘Maybe she’s there to lift the spell,’ a voice called from the back of the crowd. ‘She has the look of a witch.’

‘Aye, she does and all,’ another man said with a leering smile that showed off his absence of teeth. ‘A right pretty little sorceress at that.’

Fear gave Sorcha goose bumps. She looked warily round the circle, feeling the malice edge into open animosity. ‘You are being ridiculous. I am no witch. You had best let me be on my way. If the laird finds out…’

‘Aye, leave her be.’ Turning gratefully to this dissenting voice, Sorcha saw a woman about the same age as herself approach the edge of the circle. ‘She’s done you no harm. Let her go.’

‘Please,’ Sorcha added, but the villagers moved closer.

‘Witch.’ ‘Enchantress.’ ‘Sorceress.’ ‘Siren.’ The words whispered and hissed around her like a pall of malevolent smoke. A finger prodded her in the back. Another stroked her gown. She hugged her arms around herself and sought desperately for calm, but the danger was too much for her. Before she could prevent it, her inner wolf shimmered into life, not shifting but cloaking her form like a haze. She knew it had happened from the gasps of astonishment, the fear which made the circle of people step back.

Appalled by her lapse of self-control, Sorcha willed herself back into her human form but this seemed only to entice the people to a new level of aggression. They closed ranks around her, tugging at her hair, her gown, tearing the silk, scratching her skin.

‘Faol. ‘She-wolf.’ ‘Faol! Faol! Faol!’ The words were becoming a chant.

She could shift completely to her wolf and attack her assailants, but she sensed that Conall’s people were not evil, they merely feared the unknown. As the mob closed noisily around her, Sorcha closed her eyes.

A sudden change in atmosphere accompanied by an eerie silence made them fly open again. Conall sat astride his horse, his face a mask, his heavy brows drawn together over his nose in a thunderous frown. His eyes blazed with fury.

He dismounted, and the mob shrank back as one. ‘What is going on here?’ he barked, striding purposefully towards Sorcha, who looked on, fascinated by the sheer elemental force of him. The crowd parted wordlessly before him, their fear and trepidation almost tangible, as Conall pulled her to her feet, enfolding her roughly in his arms, a solid, reassuring wall of muscled man.

‘Well? Have you nothing to say for yourselves?’ he roared, his deep-set eyes glaring at the men, who dropped their gaze, shuffled their feet. ‘And you,’ he said, turning suddenly around on the group of women who huddled behind him, ‘you should be ashamed, to turn on a stranger like this. You will apologise, all of you. You have disgraced the name of Clan Macpherson.’

From the shelter of his arms, she saw how cowed the people were. As a princess, Sorcha was used to deference. As a prince, her brother commanded immense respect. But Conall’s people seemed genuinely afraid of him. Eyes narrowed, mouth pursed contemptuously, throwing back his shoulders, looking as fearsome and proud as the majestic mountains that formed the eastern horizon, he knew it, too, but seemed indifferent to it.

‘Conall, there’s no need,’ Sorcha said, tugging at his sleeve. ‘They did not mean to hurt me, only frighten me a little.’

‘Hold your tongue! Have you not done enough damage? This is your doing. I told you not to leave the grounds.’

She would not let him intimidate her. She would not think about what might have happened if he had not come to her rescue. ‘You might be lord and master here, but you are not my lord and master,’ Sorcha riposted.

Conall’s hold on her tightened. Seeing her at the mercy of the crowd, he had been possessed by a desire to rip each and every one of them limb from limb. Thwarted of his prey, it was a relief to vent his spleen on the cause of it. ‘While you are on my lands, that is exactly what I am, and you would do well to remember it.’

Silenced, Sorcha was forced to endure the villagers’ humiliation and her own, trying to remain as proudly aloof as it was possible to be when trapped in the grip of a brawny Highlander, while his people muttered their apologies. As soon as the last one was done, he threw her over his shoulder and strode over to his horse, where he cast her into the saddle before him.

As they travelled back to the castle, the silence between them thick as fog, the jogging movement of the horse bumped their bodies together. Despite the shimmering animosity that hung around him like a haar, the heat of his torso against her back ignited the heat in her belly. The horse’s hooves were barely clattering on the cobblestones of the stable yard when Conall threw himself out of the saddle and yanked Sorcha down, remembering her injury at the last moment, setting her with resentful care onto her feet.

‘It was an accident, Conall. I did not notice that I had strayed so far,’ she explained.

He picked up the reins and began to lead the horse into a stable. ‘My orders were quite clear, but you wilfully disobeyed them. I will not tolerate…’

‘Oh, you are infuriating!’ Sorcha strode after him, noting with surprise the orderly tack room, the fresh bales of straw, the sweet-smelling box into which he put his mount. He clearly valued his horse’s well-being, if not his own. ‘I did not wilfully disobey you. I just didn’t notice how far I had walked.’

Conall threw the saddle onto the floor against a stack of hay bales. ‘For God’s sake, woman, they might have killed you.’

She was not afraid, though judging from the wild look on his face, she ought to be. He seemed to be on the brink of losing his self-control completely. She couldn’t help wondering fleetingly what it would be like if he did. ‘You know that’s nonsense, Conall,’ she said, ‘though perhaps you would have preferred it if they had. That way you would have been rid of the irksome responsibility I so obviously have become.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ he snarled.

She took an involuntary step backwards, realizing that she had inadvertently touched a nerve, and stumbled against the leather saddle. ‘You’ve made it perfectly plain that you don’t want me here.’

‘And yet you stay, though I notice that your limp has quite miraculously disappeared. Let us see just how injured you actually are, shall we?’

His voice was no longer harsh, more like a silken growl which made the hairs on her arms stand up. Before she could stop him, he pushed her down onto the saddle, lifting the hem of her gown and petticoats high up over her leg, revealing the give-away faint white thread of her perfectly healed scar.

Chapter 4

‘Why did you deliberately mislead me?’ Conall’s hand touched the scar, tracing the slight rise, the tiny puckering of her skin. ‘Why?’

Her shivering response to his touch changed his mood abruptly from anger to awareness, from fury to desire. Tension crackled between them. His touch changed from probing to exploring. His hand moved up to cup the curve of her bottom. Sorcha clung to the saddle. Her bones felt as if they were doing the opposite of shifting. Melting. Dissolving. Leaving only hot, feverish, coursing blood to support her hot, feverish flesh.

‘You haven’t answered my question.’ His voice was like a honey-coated blade, sweetly lethal. His eyes were darker, his cheeks slashed with colour just as she could feel hers were. Both of his hands were on her bottom now, under her skirts, the palms smoothing over her tender flesh.

‘I wanted to stay a little longer,’ Sorcha confessed simply.

‘Why?’

His hands stroked down her flanks, then up the soft flesh of her inner thighs. Soft, rousing, knowing, their touch so at odds with the harshness of his expression, as if he would deny that it was him, touching her, caressing her.

‘Why, Sorcha?’ he demanded implacably.

‘I don’t really know. Last night…’

‘Last night I told you to be careful what you wished for.’

‘We stopped. You thanked me for stopping us.’

‘I meant it.’ And he had. He did. Though her nearness was making him giddy. Though his hands had a will of their own, his fingers stroking the delicate creases at the top of her thighs. The skin at their apex was smooth. Quite delightfully, wholly unexpectedly smooth. She was damp. Arousingly hot. Conall closed his eyes, trying to herd together all the excellent reasons why he should not be doing this, but they scattered like an unruly flock of sheep. He felt, rather than heard, her moan as his fingers stroked her. ‘I did mean it. I don’t want this,’ he said harshly, willing the lie to be true. ‘And you don’t want it, either,’ he added, willing her to agree, so that he would be forced to remove himself from her intoxicating presence.

She ought not to. It went against all that she thought she believed in. But since meeting this man, the foundations she had been so sure of seemed to have been quite undermined. Sorcha touched Conall’s cheek, her fingers rasping on the stubble. She twined a lock of his wild hair around her fingers. ‘Oh, but I do,’ she said fervently. Why would he not simply acknowledge this thing that existed between them, so real she could almost shape it? ‘I do, Conall. I don’t know why, but I know I do.’

He stared at her for a long tense moment, then he smiled—or it would have been a smile on any other man. ‘I believe I’ve already warned you to be careful what you wish for. Do you want me to kiss you again, Princess Sorcha?’

She had never felt so reckless nor so edgy. As little ago as last night, she had been so certain this was wrong. How could so much have changed, when nothing at all had changed? But it had, somehow. ‘Yes, Laird,’ Sorcha said softly, ‘I want you to kiss me.’

But his beautiful mouth did not claim her lips. Instead, Conall dropped to the ground between her knees, rucked up her skirts around her waist and kissed her there.

A shock of delight made her whimper, a strange noise she did not recognize as her own. His kiss was intended as a punishment, a delicious torture, and yet it ignited her. She writhed, arching against him as he kissed lower, down her leg, the crease at the back of her knee, while his fingers stilled her, then back up, nipping, licking, until finally his mouth lingered on the sheltering folds of her sex. .

The air shifted like Sorcha’s wolf, a change as tangible as the stretching and tautening of her flesh and bones. Conall stilled, his shoulders bunched, breathing; the taste of her, the heat of her, wrenched his gut. Not just with carnal desire, but long-buried feelings of wanting, yearning, longing. His touch was no longer intended to punish but to pleasure. As he licked over the swelling mound at the core of her arousal, tilting her back in the saddle so that she was leaning against the hay, the sweetness of sharing, of giving, washed over him, scouring out a little of the darkness in which he lived.

His tongue was like velvet, the softest of friction on the most sensitive part of her. His fingers eased their way into her as he kissed, licked, stroked, pushing their delicate way higher. She stopped trying to think about what he was doing and surrendered to sensation. Everything he did made her tense and flutter, tense a little more, and still more, until it became almost unbearable. She muttered inarticulate pleas with no idea what it was she asked for, though Conall seemed to understand instinctively. ‘Please,’ she panted, ‘don’t stop.’ Long seconds she waited, unendurable seconds, and then his fingers thrust a little higher, a little harder, and she felt his tongue flick her core.

A spiralling dizzying climb, and then suddenly she was flying, soaring, falling, through a climax so powerful she cried out, clutching at his shoulders, arching with the ebb and flow of it for endless, endless moments.

Sorcha became aware of his absence slowly, a chill gap where he had been. Opening her eyes, she saw Conall standing, looking down at her, an unfathomable expression on his face. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I don’t understand what’s happening to me.’ His voice was confused rather than angry as he turned away from her. ‘Maybe the villagers were right. Maybe you are a sorceress after all.’

She had to run to keep up, so quickly was he striding back through the well-kept stable yard to the unkempt castle. ‘You don’t really believe that, do you?’

‘No,’ he replied, noting the hurt expression on her face. ‘But what I do know is that I was fine the way I was, before you came along.’ Throwing open the heavy front door, he strode through the portico, into the Great Hall and on to the corridor which formed the west wing, where he stopped in his tracks. ‘What have you done here?’

‘Opened some of the shutters.’

Conall stared at the dusty hangings, the tapestry depicting the origins of the Macphersons of Kilfinnan, the portrait of two happy young men which hung on the far wall. ‘Myself and my brother, Rory,’ he said, noticing that Sorcha’s gaze was upon the painting. ‘It is a good likeness.’ He broke off abruptly and swallowed hard.

It was there again. A fleeting darkness, glittering and evil. A lurking sorrow, gone before she could grasp its shape or divine its meaning. ‘Where is Rory now,’ Sorcha whispered, though she knew the answer before Conall spoke the words.

‘Dead.’ Conall rubbed his hand over his eyes as a ray of sunlight bounced off a dimple in the window glass. ‘I wish you had not seen fit to change things in here. I liked things fine the way they were.’

‘And if you repeat it often enough, you’ll start to believe it,’ Sorcha said with a sad little smile. ‘It’s just a little light, Conall. I’m just letting in a little light.’

Though he knew her leg was healed, neither of them discussed Sorcha’s departure. The evening was spent in an uneasy mixture of conversation interspersed with abrupt, heavy silences when any inadvertent touch, of fingers passing a glass, the brush of a shoulder, the tickle of a stray lock of hair, brought the passion they had shared to mind. For long moments then, they stared, caught in the trap of wanting, before one or the other dragged their eyes away and the conversation began again.

The next day, they toured some of Conall’s closer lands on foot. He had shaved, she noticed. It made him look much younger. He had shaved again the next morning, and tied his unruly tangle of hair back in a leather thong. The morning after that, he appeared in fresh linen smelling of sunshine, and the one after that, in a carefully pleated filleadh beg woven in green and gold, held in place with a polished belt which had a jewelled gold buckle, as fine as any worn by a Faol prince.

‘You look—transformed,’ Sorcha said.

‘You mean I looked a sorry sight before,’ Conall said dryly.

‘No, of course not, but now you look as my brother does when he wears the crown.’

He could not help but be flattered, but her words disturbed him, too, for it was true, when he had fastened the gold buckle of his belt, a buckle which had been handed down from laird to laird for more than two hundred years, that long-forgotten pride in his heritage had stirred in him. “It’s amazing what a bath and a few clean clothes will do,” he said dismissively.

They walked in thoughtful silence. ‘This is the glen where we first met,’ Sorcha exclaimed, staring about her in surprise, for they had approached it from quite another direction. She sniffed the air. ‘The wolf. He’s nearby, I can sense him.

‘Damn it! I should have brought my musket.’

‘There is another way to deal with him, if you’ll let me.’

‘What, will you tell the wolf to leave my sheep alone?’

Sorcha chuckled. ‘That’s exactly what I intend to do. Hush now, don’t look so sceptical, it’s a child’s trick, no more.’ She closed her eyes and focused her attenuated senses on the distinctively sour smell of the beast, summoning him in the manner Struan had once taught her.

The wolf crawled out from its hiding place on its belly, ears back, tail down. A quick glance at Conall almost made her lose her concentration, for his expression was one of sheer disbelief, though as the animal came closer, he took her arm, instinctively trying to put her behind him. She tugged herself free. ‘He will do me no harm,’ she whispered urgently. ‘Trust me.’

Reluctantly he did, watching in astonished admiration as the vicious dark brown wolf with its slavering jaw whined like a whipped cur while Sorcha whispered in its ear in some strange guttural language. When she snapped her fingers, as if released from a spell, the beast sped off into the undergrowth, and Sorcha gave a smile of satisfaction. ‘He won’t bother you again.’

Conall threw back his head and burst into deep, hearty laughter that echoed around the glen. ‘I can’t believe you did that. I’ve never seen the like. You’re a wee witch, Sorcha Tolmach,’ he said, with an infectious grin that made him look almost boyish.

Sorcha smiled, quite entranced by the change in him. His eyes were the same summer blue as the sky above them. She reached up to brush a lock of his unruly hair from his brow. His skin was warm. His hair was springy. ‘Have a care how you speak to me, Conall Macpherson,’ she said, ‘or I might cast a spell on you, too.’

Just the flutter of her fingers on his skin was enough to bring it to the surface again, the awareness. ‘I think you already have.’

His smile faded; his eyes darkened as desire flared between them. The breeze stilled as she caught his hand in hers and lifted it to her mouth, the air seeming to holding its breath just as she did. Her tongue traced the line from his thumb up the length of his finger, her lips drawing him in, soft and warm on his fingertip, gently sucking. Conall closed his eyes. Her tongue was on his palm now, tracing little circles, making him shudder, so strong was the gust of desire which assailed him.

She leaned into him, inhaling the scent of the warm skin of his throat at the opening of his shirt. She could hear his heart pounding, feel his breath on her forehead, taste the slight saltiness of his skin. But the other sounds, of the birds and the sheep and the rustling creatures which lived in the undergrowth; other smells, of the Highland heather and the rich earth; other sensations, of the damp grass on her bare feet, which all normally crowded in on her heightened senses, disappeared. There was only Conall. She had never been so acutely aware of a single being in her life.

She licked her way up his middle finger and sucked on it, drawing it slowly into her mouth, and her belly tightened. Quite deliberately, she sucked on his next finger. Conall moaned and pulled her with him onto the soft grass. She could feel his arousal through the folds of his plaid. Her fingers stroked the length of it before she thrust her hand under his plaid, placing it on his swollen shaft. Conall gasped.

She pushed the plaid up to his waist. His erection jutted upwards, thick and engorged. She touched. Satin skin stretched tight over steel. He stroked her. She stroked him, circling her fingers round his girth, watching him, seeing how her caresses brought slashes of colour to his cheeks, how he was aroused by the power of her touch, excited by it.

He pulled her towards him, kissed her deeply and slid his fingers inside her. Immediately, her excitement focused. Eyes wide, she watched him, shivering in response as her stroking made his shaft thicken in her hand, his touch made her sex tighten around his fingers. Stroking. A rough kiss with ragged edges. More stroking, more kissing, until she could hold back no longer, her pulsing climax triggering his own. They came urgently, fast, hard. Together.

It was raining the next day, the kind of mizzle that epitomized a Highland summer, that fell like mist and smelled like smoke. Conall awoke at dawn, the light in his bedchamber filtering in through the casement window whose heavy shutters Sorcha had pulled back. Throwing back the bedcovers, he dressed hurriedly, anxious to greet the day, stopping in his tracks as he stropped his razor, realizing that his old companion, dread, had seemingly deserted him.

She was not in the kitchen, nor the little breakfast room she had opened up, nor in any of the other rooms. Outside, there was no sign of her by her favourite spot at the sundial, nor any trace of her in the herb garden. He had no idea what made him take the long-overgrown path that led to the far eastern corner of the castle grounds, but the sight of the rusty wrought iron gate left open, the track that had been forged through the long unkempt grass made his heart plummet.

‘What the devil are you doing?’

Sorcha was on her knees by the grave, heedless of the damp soaking into her silk skirts. She started at the harsh tone of his voice, having been quite unaware of his presence. ‘Rory Macpherson,’ she said in a musing tone, reading the worn lettering on the stone, quite failing to notice the pulse that beat too fast at the side of Conall’s neck. ‘Sixteenth of August, Seventeen Hundred. Your brother?’

Conall nodded curtly.

‘What happened to him? Why is this place so neglected? It feels…’ She paused, closed her eyes, focused. Conflicting signs assailed her. ‘He was but a young man. How did he die?’

His heart was racing. Images of that day flickered through his mind like spectres. The shock of the discovery. The white wall of rage. Rory’s grim look. And then Rachel. He dropped his head into his hands, clutching at his heart. ‘No!’

‘Conall! What is it?’ Sorcha scrambled to her feet.

He lifted his head, his face ashen. ‘You shouldn’t have come to this place.’ The scar that cut his eyebrow in two was livid against the unnatural pale of his skin. His face was suddenly a mask of fury. ‘Why can’t you stop meddling in things you know nothing of?’

‘Conall, what on earth is wrong with you? Whatever it is, you can tell me. I can help you, I’m sure of it.’

‘Can you bring back the dead?’ he asked.

‘No, of course not.’

‘Then you can’t help me,’ he said flatly.

He took her arm and tried to pull her away from the mound under which his dead brother lay, but she resisted. She saw it then, for the first time in days, the darkness that was his aura. Her blood ran cold as it finally took shape. Horrified, she stared. A raven. The sign of death and departure. Conall’s death.

Chapter 5

Sorcha’s skin turned icy as she stared at the creature. ‘No,’ she whispered, putting her hand to her mouth. There could be no mistaking its significance. Out of the corner of her eye Sorcha noticed a second, smaller mound. ‘Whose grave is this?’

‘Get away from there. Let us leave this place to the ghosts who inhabit it, damn you!’

Conall grabbed her arms, but she fought back, yanking free of his grip, dropping down by the second mound and hastily brushing away the moss from the inscription.

Chest heaving, Conall watched her, feeling as if the sky was about to fall upon them both.

‘Rachel Macpherson,’ Sorcha said. She looked up at Conall in confusion. ‘Rory’s wife?’

‘No,’ he said, falling onto his knees, for his legs would no longer support him. ‘Mine.’

The earth seemed to tilt beneath her. There was a roaring in her ears. ‘You were married?’ She gazed at him in utter bewilderment, then she turned back to the grave. ‘Sixteenth of August. Seventeen Hundred.’

‘Yes, the same day,’ Conall said, his voice cracking.

‘Five years ago.’ Death and departure. But the raven she could see, its blue-black feathers as glossy as if it were real, signified not the past but Conall’s future. Death and departure. She couldn’t bear that to be true. But it was true. Her powers spelled it out unequivocally. Sorcha swallowed, fighting off the panic which threatened to engulf her. ‘Five years ago, almost to the day.’

‘Do you think I need reminding?’ Conall said hoarsely. ‘Do you think I don’t relive it every single day of my life?’ Sorcha forced herself to her feet, staggered over to where he sat, bereft, and tried to put her arms around him, but he pushed her away. ‘Let me be, Sorcha. If you knew what happened, you wouldn’t want to be anywhere near me.’

It wasn’t true. Nothing he could say would stop her wanting to be with him, she realized with a flash of insight clearer than anything she had ever foretold. She loved him. The realization made her freeze, staring down at him quite blankly. She was in love. But she couldn’t be, could she? Because even now, there was no sense of what she had always been so sure there would be, a premonition that this man was meant to be her life mate. This absolute certainty she felt emanated not from her powers, but from her heart. Which couldn’t be right. But it persisted. She was in love with Conall Macpherson. Whose imminent future was death.

‘No!’ She put up her hands, trying to block out the raven, but it continued to look at her malevolently, securely perched on Conall’s shoulder. ‘No!’

‘What now,’ Conall said sharply, his eyes widening as he saw her expression. ‘What?’

‘A raven,’ Sorcha whispered.

‘The sign of death,’ Conall said, getting to his feet. ‘Hardly surprising when here we are in its very presence.’

She stared at him mutely.

Conall’s mouth twisted into that most bitter of smiles. ‘You don’t mean them, do you? You mean me.’ He laughed now, the sound shivering over Sorcha’s skin like the draught from an open grave. ‘Well, it’s no more than I deserve,’ he said, turning towards the cemetery gate.

She caught him by the arm. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘An eye for an eye, is what we say,’ Conall said. ‘Though strictly speaking, it should be two.’

‘What…’

‘I killed them,’ he said blankly. ‘I killed them both.’

She ran as fast as she could after the tall figure, plaid swinging as he strode across the grass, but she did not catch him until he was already back in the castle, halfway across the Great Hall. ‘Conall, wait.’ Panting, she grabbed him by the shirt sleeve.

‘Let me be!’

‘I can’t,’ Sorcha replied simply. ‘I need to—I can’t believe you’re a murderer.’

‘Ask anyone. Why do you think they call me Black Conall? Why do you think they fear me?’ Conall said wearily. He should never have allowed her to stay. He shouldn’t have allowed her to let hope enter his life, in the way she had gradually let light back into his castle. A great despondency settled on his shoulders. He couldn’t bear the thought of her judging him harshly, as everyone else had done. ‘I fervently wish you had not gone there,’ he said, throwing himself down on the settle.

‘It is done now, Conall. I need to know the truth.’ Sorcha pulled up a chair opposite, folding her hands tightly together lest they betray her agitation, for her heart continued to beat out the words, I love you, I love you, I love you, even as her head told her it was wrong, ridiculous, impossible, contrary to all she believed.

‘The truth? I can tell you the facts. You can make up your own mind about the truth just as everyone else has,’ Conall declared bitterly.

He lifted his hand to his hair, dropped it again and stared off to a point somewhere over her shoulder. When he spoke again it was in a cold monotone, his voice distant, lost in the past. ‘It was an arranged marriage, mine and Rachel’s. I’d known her since she was a lass. We were betrothed when she was just six. She used to spend the summer here at the castle with us, a bold wee thing, always tailing along behind me and Rory, wanting to join in our games. She was eighteen when my mother died of a fever. My father was already ailing, and he wanted us wed before he too died. I was two and twenty, and Rachel had grown into a bonny lass. I thought I loved her. I thought she loved me.’

Sorcha flinched. She could not help but be jealous of the woman who had won Conall’s affections, even though she was now dead.

‘So we married. Rory went off to France—to manage the legacy my mother left him, was what he said. My father died. I inherited the lands.’ Conall spoke now as if he were reciting from a book. ‘Rachel enjoyed the riches they brought, but our union was not blessed with a child. She was—she did her duty, but she made it plain it was a duty. Then Rory came back.’ Conall’s fingers curled around the wooden seat. The anguish on his face made the hard planes of it razor sharp. ‘And one day, not long after he returned, I found them together.’

‘No! Oh, Conall…’

‘I don’t need your pity. It was him, you see. Rory. It had always been him she wanted, but I was the heir. Rory tried to give her up—he tried to do the honourable thing when he went to France, but in the end they both betrayed me. We fought. Up in the turret. I was besting him, as I always had done,’ Conall said, the words coming out in a rush as if he were desperate to be rid of them. ‘To this day I don’t know how it happened, but he slipped. He was over the battlements before I could catch him.’

Conall stumbled to a halt. When he spoke again, his voice was jagged. ‘I swear I tried. God help me, Sorcha, I tried. Every day I relive that moment.’ His shoulders heaved. He dropped his head into his hands.

Sorcha leaped to his side, holding his head against her breast, stroking his unruly locks as he released five years’ worth of pent-up sorrow, her mind whirling at the revelations. Sorrow, pity, anger, then sorrow again, for the lives lost and the life Conall had sacrificed.

Eventually he quieted, sat back, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hands. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘No. Don’t be. Conall, please don’t be,’ Sorcha said gently. ‘Such a terrible tragedy to have carried about with you for so long—I can’t imagine how dreadful it must have been but you did not kill Rory. It was an accident. You said so yourself.’

She felt him stiffen before he pulled himself free of her embrace. ‘I should not have allowed myself to fight him. I wanted to hurt him.’

‘He betrayed you. Here, in this very castle, to have discovered them so! You cannot be blamed for your anger.’

Conall shook his head obstinately. ‘I should never have married her.’

The dates on the graves! Sorcha hardly dared ask. ‘What happened to Rachel?’

‘She took her own life. She said she did not want to live without him.’

‘But…’ Sorcha bit back the words, for fear of judging too harshly. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘In our culture what she did would have been seen as a sin.’

‘So you protected her reputation,’ Sorcha whispered.

‘As laird, I am also the law. I said it was an accident. Another accident. They didn’t believe me, of course, but they had to accept it. Not that they guessed the truth, of course. They say I murdered my brother because he wanted my lands and my wife because she could not give me a child. Ruthless Conall. Black Conall. Cursed Conall.’

Anger at his determination to condemn himself gripped Sorcha. ‘So you locked yourself away from your people and your feelings, determined to be as black as the name they gave you.’

‘I was perfectly content before you came along,’ Conall said, trying not to feel cornered.

‘That’s a lie, and you know it.’

‘What the devil does it matter anyway?’ It was almost a relief to fall back on those familiars, anger and resentment. ‘Why did you have to go poking into dark corners, casting light on hidden shadows? What has any of this to do with you?’

‘It has everything to do with me,’ Sorcha declared, realizing as she did so that it was the truth. She loved him. She really did love him. She would do anything to prevent the fate which was so clearly writ from befalling him. “Your brother and your wife betrayed you in the most awful way, and yet you blame yourself. You let this beautiful castle fall into rack and ruin because you think you don’t deserve happiness. You let your people think you a murderer, too, because you think it will help atone for these crimes you didn’t even commit. You are racked by guilt, Conall and it’s ruining your life. If you don’t have a care, it will consume you.’

‘If your powers are as infallible as you claim, my fate is already sealed.’

‘No!’ Sorcha clenched her fists. ‘The future is not cast in stone. You can change it. You can, but you have to want to.’ Though he was standing close enough for her to reach out and touch, Conall may as well have been on the other side of an abyss. ‘I can’t help you,’ Sorcha whispered. ‘If I could, I would, but the only person who can save you is you. I won’t stay here and watch you destroy yourself.’ She dashed a hand to her eyes. Wet. She blinked, and felt more moisture.

‘You’re crying!’ Conall touched the tears on her long lashes with his finger.

‘Faol don’t cry,’ Sorcha said automatically, jerking free from his hold. ‘Faol can’t cry.’ She gazed at him longingly, the love which swelled her heart spilling from her eyes in glittering droplets. She had no more words. There were no more words. It was over. Wrenching herself free, Sorcha fled from the room.

Conall stood immobile, quite unable to summon the strength to move. The strain of his confession left him temporarily empty. With trembling hands, he poured himself a dram of the clear amber whisky for which the Kilfinnan stills were famed, then dropped the glass back onto the polished surface of the dresser before the liquor touched his lips, remembering that last dram five years ago, which had turned into a bottle, then another, fuelling his rage.

For so long, he had held the horrible events close to his heart. Sorcha was right; he had come to believe himself every bit as guilty as his people branded him. But was he? He had been guilty of vengeful thoughts, driven by anger, but as Sorcha had pointed out, it had been a righteous anger. He had never wished either of them dead.

Slumping onto the hard settle yet again, Conall felt as if he had been travelling through an endlessly long, pitch-black tunnel, but all of a sudden he could see a pinpoint of light in the distance. Conall smiled suddenly. Sorcha! Sorcha was the light in his life.

‘Dear God.’ He leaped to his feet. ‘I’m in love with a Faol princess,’ Conall said aloud with a foolish grin, which faded almost immediately. She’d said she was leaving. She was crying when she left. Sorcha, who could not cry, was crying. Sorcha, who refused to believe what her own powers told her about him. Because…

His heart stilled. Because she loved him? Hope edged like the first fingers of dawn into his heart. Galvanised into action, he ran for the front door. How long had she been gone? Five minutes? Twenty? An hour? He had no idea. Striding quickly to the stables, he saddled his horse and set off across his lands at a gallop.

Sorcha sat by a stream, panting from the effort of getting as far from Castle Kilfinnan as quickly as possible before she changed her mind. Setting free her wolf as she ran down the steps, she had hoped to erase the pain, stop the unfamiliar tears. She loved Conall with all her heart, but she could not stay. Not even her love could redeem him, unless he chose first to redeem himself.

As she dipped her toes into the cool water, dripping it onto her heated cheeks, a thundering of hooves made her look up. The horse was headed straight for her. There was a man in the saddle. A man with a wild tangle of hair, an achingly familiar breadth of shoulders. Sorcha scrambled to her feet.

Conall threw himself to the ground before the horse had quite come to a halt. ‘Sorcha. I love you.

‘What?’ Her heart began to beat wildly, like one of the little brightly coloured hummingbirds which flew around the hot springs on Kentarra. ‘But you can’t.’

Conall laughed. ‘Now I know your powers have quite deserted you, for it’s the absolute truth. I love you. I’ve been blind. A fool. Too caught up in the morass of my own guilt to see clearly. You were right.’ Conall ran his fingers through his already tangled hair in a gesture that tugged on Sorcha’s heartstrings. ‘I have a long road to travel, if I’m to forgive myself completely, but with your help I will. You put me on that road, Sorcha. Will you follow it with me?’

Conall dropped to his knees on the grass and took her hand. ‘I love you with all my heart. You’ve brought me back to life and now I want to share that life with you.’

‘You love me.’ She dropped to her knees beside him. ‘You really do love me?’

‘I really, really do,’ Conall said, smiling tenderly at her.

She hardly dared look, but she forced herself to. The blue-black bird was flexing its wings. ‘I love you,’ she said softly to Conall, and the raven took flight.

‘My darling. My own, darling, lovely Sorcha, I think I’ve been waiting all my life to hear those words.’

The certainty which had so long deserted her enveloped her now. To hell with her powers, her heart told her all she needed to know. As Conall kissed her, wrapping his arms around her so tightly she could not breathe, Sorcha listened to her heart.

Their kiss was gentle at first, as if neither could believe that it was real. They touched each other tentatively, as if afraid that the other might somehow disappear. It felt like the first time. It felt like no one had ever before made love as they would make love.

Conall kissed her eyelids, licking the salty tracks of her tears from her cheeks. He kissed the tender skin behind her ears before returning to her lips, murmuring his love over and over and over, and their touch became more passionate.

Her throat, he kissed next, then the neckline of her gown, hot kisses across the mounds of her breasts, licking into the voluptuous valley between, heating her skin where he touched. She pulled his shirt free from the belt that held his plaid and ran her hands over the smooth warmth of his back, the rippling muscle and sinew of his shoulders, his chest, his stomach. His soft moan of response plucked on her skin.

He pulled her closer now, holding her tight against him, the length of his arousal pressing into her belly. His tongue thrust deep into her mouth. His hands tangled with her hair, stroked down her back to her hips, laying her carefully down onto the grass to undo the lacings on her gown. His hair fell across her chest as he leaned over to mould her breasts in his hands, running his tongue from one nipple to the other, tracing their contours.

‘I love you so much, Sorcha.’ Conall’s voice was shaky. His fingers not quite steady as he helped her wriggle free from her clothing. As she lay naked before him, his breathing became harsh. He pulled his shirt over his head at her urging. His hose and boots were already discarded.

‘I love you too, Conall, darling Conall.’ She could not manage the buckle on his belt. He struggled with it himself, his chest heaving, until it gave, and his plaid finally dropped to the ground, leaving him naked before her. She gazed at him unashamedly, her eyes dark with desire. His shaft was thick, hard, potent. Her sex throbbed. She was weak with wanting.

Conall pulled her back to her knees, enveloping her in his arms, skin on skin, pressing close and closer, desperate for their union, yet desperate to prolong it. They kissed again, deeper, and again, their hands on each other more frantic now, more purposeful.

He cupped her, a juddering jag of heat swelling him as he caressed the smooth, vulnerable skin of her sex, the damp folds of her hot and wet. He parted them carefully, stroking into their silkiness, over the harder mound of her, his arousal increasing as he saw his touch reflected in the flush on her cheeks, the silvering glint of passion in her eyes. He stroked again, slowly and lingeringly, relishing the answering shudders.

Moaning, panting, she tugged at him urgently, falling backwards onto the grass, pulling him with her. Rolling onto his back, he pulled her on top of him, astride him, finally easing himself inside her, throwing them both high up onto another plane, his shaft forging carefully higher until she sheathed him.

With his arms around her waist, he showed her how to move, fighting for control when she did, her hair trailing over his shoulders, his arms, his thighs, her breasts brushing his chest. He thrust higher as she slipped down on him, and felt her swelling around him, felt himself swelling in response. Higher, and faster now, muscle enfolding muscle, a delicious friction of achingly sensitive skin, blanketed by the salty perfume of desire, until Sorcha cried out her completion and Conall came, spilling hot and pulsing, high into her, his own cry a hoarse, guttural sound torn from the depths of his being.

Sorcha clung to him, lost in the shifting inside her which felt like no other shifting, soaring, swooping, feeling herself fly across the earth faster than any wolf. She slumped onto Conall’s chest, breathing heavily. His heart beat hard and fast against her breast. Never, ever, ever, had she dreamed she could feel like this. Not just a new plane, a new world.

‘I love you so much,’ Conall said, running his hands up her spine, down to the curve of her bottom, back up again, for he could not quite believe she was really here, was really his.

‘I love you, too,’ Sorcha replied huskily.

‘Marry me,’ Conall said, gazing deep into her silver eyes. ‘Be my wife, and my life mate.’

‘We come from two different worlds.’

Conall’s brow raised in alarm. ‘What are you saying?’

‘Only that you realize that will mean two weddings,’ Sorcha said with a mischievous smile.

Conall rolled her onto her back. Sorcha arched up against him, feeling his shaft hardening against her thigh, the rippling response in her sex.

‘Two weddings,’ he said, kissing her. ‘And two wedding nights.’

‘Then perhaps we should start practising now,’ Sorcha said, pulling him towards her.

Epilogue

Their first wedding was secured by special licence less than a week later. The ceremony took place in Conall’s family chapel, where the sun shone down through the spectacular stained-glass dome splashing dancing spots of colour onto the white polished marble. It was a private ceremony, but when they emerged as husband and wife, they found the short distance between the church and the castle garlanded, strewn with rose petals, and lined with Conall’s clan folk. Though some came out of curiosity to see the strange union of a Highlander and a Faol princess, and some from a sense of duty, there were many others who truly wished their laird well. Only a blind man could have been oblivious to the remarkable change wrought in him by his beautiful bride.

Two days later, Sorcha and Conall set off for Kentarra. The island appeared like a dream out of the empty sea, the bank of fog which cloaked it sweeping back to reveal the black cliffs streaked with quartz which housed the underground citadel, shimmering iridescently against a brilliant blue sky.

‘It’s magnificent, just exactly as you described it,’ Conall said to his new wife, as she steered the little boat expertly through the treacherous rocks into the azure blue of the harbour.

Presented with the fait accompli of his sister’s nuptials, Prince Eoin was at first minded to declare them null. Though Freya, his life mate, pointed out that Sorcha was only following her two brothers’ example by falling in love with an outsider, it was Conall’s fierce declaration that he would fight each and every one of the Faol warriors for the right to call their princess his wife that won Eoin over.

The claiming ritual which made Conall and Sorcha life mates as well as husband and wife, took place at the full moon in the cathedral-like cavern which was the Faol throne room, where thick columns of rock in the floor and ceiling glittered with semiprecious stones, and the altar, above which was suspended the sacred Faol moon, was made of solid silver.

Conall stood proudly in his full Highland regalia at the centre of a circle of Faol, whose unearthly beauty and subtly pervasive sensuality would have been unnerving, were he not so entirely focused on their princess, who was to become his bride for the second time.

A collective gasp made him crane his eyes, thinking he had missed Sorcha’s arrival, but instead he saw all attention turned towards the arrival of two newcomers. The man looked very like Eoin, not just in his features, but in his princely carriage. The woman was not Faol but human, and beautiful in her own way, with bright auburn hair and equally bright emerald eyes. She was obviously slightly nervous, clinging to the man’s hand as she looked about her. The circle opened to allow them to join, just as Prince Eoin strode into the room clad in his formal golden gowns. He halted for just a moment at the sight of the two unannounced guests, a strange smile lighting his countenance, before he turned to welcome Sorcha.

She was dressed entirely in white, a loose gown, unadorned with any jewellery save for the heavy Kilfinnan diamond that Conall had placed on her wedding finger the week before. Her long black hair rippled down her back. Her silver eyes were wide, and focused entirely on her husband, who was about to become also her life mate.

‘My love,’ Conall said, enfolding her hand in his.

‘My heart,’ she said with a tremulous smile, and the ceremony began with chanting in a language Conall could not understand. Followed by the tying of hands with a silver cord. The sharing of blood through a cut made in each of their breasts. Then the claiming kiss, during which the Faol shifted, the circle becoming a ring of magnificent wolves, the chanting becoming a low whispering howl. And then, finally, Conall and Sorcha melded, becoming irrevocably bound.

‘The end of two and the birth of one,’ Prince Eoin declared as the Faol people shifted back to their human form. As they dispersed, Freya joined them with her new baby son. Only then did Sorcha notice the other couple.

‘Struan!’ she cried in delight, hugging her brother, whom she had not seen since before his abdication. ‘I was on my way to Grada to visit you,’ she said, beaming.

‘Until she became waylaid crossing my lands,’ Conall said, putting his arm around her, ‘For which I am eternally grateful.’

‘This is Iona, Sorcha,’ Struan said, introducing the woman for whom he had given up Kentarra.

Sorcha smiled. ‘Now that I have met you, Iona, I can see why my brother was willing to sacrifice everything for you.’

‘Struan. You are more than welcome!’ Eoin slapped his brother’s back.

‘I thought it was time. We have a lot to catch up on, little brother. Who’d have thought it, both of us claimed and now with children to boot.’

‘I know,’ Eoin said, beaming over at Freya.

‘You’ll forgive me for interrupting the family reunion,’ Conall said, ‘but a privilege as it is to meet you all…’

‘It’s your claiming night,’ Eoin said with a grin.

‘Exactly.’ Turning to Sorcha, Conall held out his hand. ‘My love.’

When he smiled at her like that, they could be alone in the world. Sorcha placed her hand in his, and led him out of the citadel, along the special path that led to the beach to the diamond-studded cavern that held the Claiming bed.

‘Twice now, you have bound yourself to me,’ Conall said, kissing her. ‘You realize that you’re mine for life.’

Sorcha twined her arms around him, pressing herself sinuously close. ‘And you are mine. It’s a full moon tonight,’ she whispered. ‘Do you know what that means?’

‘A night for rituals?’

‘The most potent of nights,’ Sorcha whispered, “a perfect night for new life to be created.’

The last remnants of the dark weight he carried inside him were gone. Conall felt as if his heart would burst with trying to contain the love it held. ‘A new life,’ he said in awe. ‘Do you mean it?’

Sorcha smiled. ‘I hope so,’ she said.

Picking her up in his arms, Conall laid her gently down on the bed, where their bodies were dappled with the light from the diamonds, their twined bodies reflected in the mirror above. ‘My darling Sorcha, I hope so, too.’

Sorcha smiled. Her powers told her that their hope was indeed to be rewarded.

Don’t miss previous installments in Marguerite Kaye’s Legend of the Faol series!

On the remote Highland isle of Kentarra reside the Faol, a race of fierce warriors. With the spirit of the wolf residing deep inside them, the Faol are feared for their power, desired for their looks and famed as lovers…

But when the Faol come face to face with the Highland world, can love prove itself strong enough to breach all boundaries?

Claimed by the Wolf Prince

Bound to the Wolf Prince

The Highlander and the Wolf Princess

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Born and educated in Scotland, Marguerite Kay originally qualified as a lawyer but chose not to practice, a decision which was a relief, both to her and the Scottish legal Establishment. While carving out a successful career in IT, she occupied herself with her twin passions of studying history and reading, picking up a first class honours and a Masters degree along the way.

The course of her life changed dramatically when she found her soul mate. After an idyllic year out, spent travelling round the Mediterranean, Marguerite decided to take the plunge and pursue her life-long ambition to write for a living, a dream she had cherished ever since winning a national poetry competition at the age of nine.

Just like one of her fictional heroines, Marguerite’s fantasy has become reality. She has published history and travel articles, as well as short stories, but romances are her passion. Marguerite describes Georgette Heyer and Doris Day as her biggest early influences, and her partner as her inspiration.

ISBN: 978-1-4592-0271-9

The Highlander and the Wolf Princess

Copyright © 2011 by Marguerite Kaye

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