The Thistle and the Rose(3)

“No fear of that,” Colin interrupted with a smile. “Even if you were able to get through the entry, you'd wander through the caves that honeycomb this hill until your beard turns gray and your teeth fall out.”

“All right.” Alec yawned. “You win this one. What I need is a place to sleep after getting out of this wet gear.”

“You'll sleep here in the guest room,” Colin smirked, indicating the cave with a sweep of his hand. “All the bathwater you'll need.”

“I'm glad you consider me a friend,” Alec responded. “I'd hate to have to sleep in the dungeons.”

“If you must be such a complainer, then we'll have to arrange that,” Colin said with a gruff laugh. “Follow me.”

Lighting a thick candle with the torch that he left for the sailor, Colin led his friend into the depths of the cave, through a labyrinth of passages, and then turned into an arched stone corridor. Alec followed until they reached a stone stairway. But Colin did not go up the stairway. Instead, the warrior stopped before the stairs and, with a threatening look, turned his back on the Macpherson, blocking Alec's view of what he was doing. Then he turned, gave Alec a wink, and pushed at a section of a stone side wall, which slid noiselessly open. The two men ducked through the opening and began the long, winding stair climb to the castle above. They passed through several levels of maze-like corridors. After traveling down a long passageway past several wooden stairways, Colin led Alec through another closed section of wall, then climbed a short set of steps with his friend at his heels.

At the top Alec could see a short corridor, and he followed Colin toward a wooden panel on the right. The wall angled in from there, squeezing the corridor from either side just beyond the panel. Alec realized they had come up between the stone walls of two rooms. The narrowed section of the passageway was simply the extra space needed for each room's fireplace. They had to be between two of the best bedrooms.

“This next panel's your regular dungeon cell,” Colin joked. “If you recall, my dungeon is next door. Make yourself comfortable while I go drop my gear. I'm sure my father will want to greet you himself. He'll be glad to hear of your father's decision about backing the Stewarts.”

Alec put his hand on Colin's arm and stopped him with a threatening look.

“All the times I've stayed in this room, and you never told me that there was a secret passageway in. I'll be sleeping with my dirk handy tonight.”

“I never thought you wouldn't,” Colin said, laughing. “I'll send a man up with some wood to light the fire.”

“Send up a woman to light the fire,” Alec joked.

“You can get your own wenches, Alec Macpherson! I'll not be getting them,” Colin snorted as they stopped by the entry into Alec's room. “But, at any rate, you will not find any to suit you in this castle.”

“Not if they've the face of a Campbell,” Alec responded with an exaggerated shudder. “Oh, the nightmares that'd follow.”

“Enough, you Highland horse thief. I'll be back in a little while...through the hallway door.”

Colin slid a wooden latch and pushed the panel open. He could see the moonlight streaming across the stone floor, and, giving Alec a friendly shove into the room, pulled the panel shut.

He turned and continued down the corridor.



Celia didn't know what awakened her. When she opened her eyes, there was no noise other than the far off sound of the wind and the waves from outside the small glazed window. It was still night, though the fire in the hearth had long been out. She peered out from the heavy cloth curtain that hung around the bed. The moonlight lit the room fairly well, and nothing was unusual or different.

She had barred the door to the hallway from inside. The only other door was the small one into Ellen and the baby's room. The hallway door to their room was barred as well, and Celia could see that the door between the rooms was closed. Perhaps she should leave the door ajar, she thought.

No, that was needless worrying. Of any castle in Scotland, Kildalton had to be one of the safest. Her mind was just playing tricks on her.

Celia's eyes began to close again, but in the next moment she sat upright when she heard a wooden latch slide. Soundlessly, she drew her short sword from its place by the ornate headboard of the bed. Peering out again, she started at the sight of a tall warrior standing in front of one of the decorative wooden panels beside the great fireplace. Where had he come from? The wooden panel?

Still as a statue, she watched him for a moment look over at the bed, then begin to cross the room toward the baby's door. As he did, Celia watched him pull his long sword from its scabbard.



As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Alec dropped his leather saddlebag to the floor and looked over at the great bed that awaited him in the shadows of the moonlit room. That bed was going to feel mighty good after the hard, wet journey from the Highlands and drafty old Dunvegan Castle. A good bed, a bedroom with a fireplace, and glazed windows—these Campbells spared no expense living the good life. It was practically sinful.

Ah, well, I can be as good a sinner as they, he thought, starting across the room to the wall pegs. I'll get out of this chain mail, hang these wet clothes on the pegs, and get ready for the short welcoming visit from Colin's father. Please, Lord, let it be short.

Pulling his sword from its scabbard, Alec glanced up at the pegboard beside the small door. Then the scream stopped him in his tracks.



Celia knew that because of his height, she'd need to cut him down, or knock him down, to get at his throat. The chain mail would protect him from a straight thrust to the side of the chest.

When the intruder started for the small door, Celia erupted from the bed with a scream that could curdle a brave man's blood. It was a cry that a Welsh warrior in her father's service had taught her. Her uncle Edmund had laughed when he'd heard the lesson taking place, but he had told her that the Welsh had broken the nerve of many a hardened adversary with those war cries. It was the violent suddenness of it that went right to the bone.

Celia flew across the wooden floor with the speed of a striking snake. She swung her short sword at the knee closest to her. She'd drive into him with her shoulder whether she chopped the leg or not.



The white-shrouded ghost shrieked across the floor at him with a speed that he'd not thought possible. It was only instinct that made him swing his sword to deflect the flashing metal that he saw out of the corner of his eye arcing toward his knee. Then the “ghost” hit him with a shoulder that could hardly be called vaporous. As the breath was knocked from him, the giant warrior felt himself sailing backward.

With a crash, Alec landed on a three-legged wood chair that splintered into firewood. Before he could move a muscle, the ethereal figure was sitting on his chest, and the fallen warrior felt the point of a sword pushing meaningfully at the flesh beneath his chin.

But it was her eyes of black sapphire that pierced his will to resist.



Colin squeezed his great chest through the narrowed passageway between the fireplace walls and opened the panel into his room. Before he had the chance to close off the passage, though, that nightmarish shriek froze him. For a moment he thought that some unearthly, eldritch fiend was coming at him from the passageway, and he shook the thick candle from his hand and whipped out his sword.

The crash of metal and splintering wood that followed the scream came from the other side of the corridor.

Ducking back in and squeezing through the pitch black passage, Colin easily found the wooden latch slide—he'd grown up playing in these passageways. Kicking the panel open, the giant leapt into the bedroom, sword first, ready for anything that he might find there.

The sight that greeted him stopped him dead.

It was a vision. There, in the moonlight, knelt an unearthly creature, a white-gowned angel who glowed in the darkened room.

With a toss of shoulder-length curls of auburn hair, black eyes flashed at him for the briefest of moments, shooting lightning bolts into Colin that seared the deepest recesses of his soul with a burning that he had never before experienced. Desire, fear, wonder, all merged and raced pell-mell through his body, wreaking havoc, leaving him gasping for breath.

Colin had been ready to do battle, but now his sword hung loosely at his side. The aura of beauty that surrounded this creature had dazzled him. One look had vanquished him.

The face of this angel was like no other human face Colin had ever seen. The perfection of the features: the eyes that made him burn, the high cheekbones that made him tremble, the lips that stirred in his loins a feeling more of lust than religious devotion.

Colin was indeed gripped with a fervor that quite nearly brought him to his knees. The warrior's eyes traveled from her face to her bare feet, and the journey was slow and thorough. The thin, white shift, modest though it was, could do little to hide the body within its luminescent weave. The perfect physical incarnation he was seeing was undoubtedly a product of the heavens, but what he was feeling was very much of this earth.

There, before him, lay the future chieftain of the Macpherson clan, with a short sword to his throat. Alec, too, was amazed by this thing of beauty about to spit his head on a sword. Resistance seems to be the last thing on his mind, Colin thought.

She was only half Alec's size and weight, and yet the two men were unable, or unwilling, to move.