Page 6 of Alec

Since the lass only reacted by tightening her grip, Alec carried her up to the next landing. After making his way through two more passages he entered the small chamber he used when he was not occupying his larger quarters in the garrison hall. As a lad he’d never slept on a proper bed, and as a man had never grown accustomed to one, so he kept only a thin, straw-filled ticking on the floor in one corner. What garments he had he kept in a trunk under the small table where he worked. In a basket by the large chair by the hearth he kept some scrolls he’d taken from the clan’s library in order to study when he couldn’t sleep.

He tossed some wood on the fire with one hand and then tried to put the lass on the chair, but she wouldn’t let go of him. Rather than force her to release him he turned and sat down with her. Her shivering made him pull his tartan from his shoulders and wrap it around her.

“I shallnae permit anyone to harm you again, lass,” Alec told her, and vowed to himself that would be the truth.

The woman lay against him for a long time, her shaking gradually slowing and then stopping. The warmth of her form and her calmness soothed him in return. A cluster of lilies sometimes bloomed near one of the windows in his grandsire’s barn during spring, he recalled, and she smelled just like them. He should not want her anywhere near him, no matter what she smelled of. Perhaps his guard had been lowered because he’d thought her a child at first. Now he finally understood why men and women sought to share their beds rather than sleep alone, if they experienced the same kind of comfort from each other.

She but clings to me out of fear. I’m a stranger to her.

Being so close also gave him a chance to better admire her burnished copper hair and gentle features. She seemed flawlessly proportioned now that she had been healed, with a wide forehead, smooth brows and bow-shaped lips. Her long, willowy limbs made her seem otherworldly, as did her fair, smooth skin, through which he could see the blue of some of her veins. Her hair could only be called glorious, a rich golden brown with thousands of glints of amber, bronze, and deep red. Thin gold rings in her lobes twinkled with tiny crystals, and a single pearl nestled in the upper curve of one small ear. Like him she had a cleft in her chin, but not as deep as his own. His fingers itched to touch that, as well as a faint, thumbprint-size birthmark on her left temple.

By the gods, she’s perfect.

What troubled him was seeing how her garments appeared so short on her limbs. The cuffs of her jacket now reached only just past her elbows, and gaped over the shirt she wore under it. Her breasts now strained at the flat beads holding the front together, as did her feet in the slippers with the burst seams. Everything she wore looked to him as if it had been made for a child, or a child-sized woman.

I didnae mistake what I saw at first. She came through much smaller, with an odd shape to her lower legs. But why should the spell trap change her thus? Was she sent to tempt someone?

The moment Alec indulged in his usual suspicions about outsiders, he knew in her case that they were wrong. In his old life he’d encountered many deceptive females; here in the spell trap he’d fended off one particularly vile wench who had murdered every man she’d seduced for money. That one had also tried to burn Ava Travars to death. This girl was nothing like them; her confusion and terror struck him like frantic fists. That and in his gut he seemed to recognize her, in ways and depths that he had never experienced with any other female. He wondered if she had suffered deeply at the hands of others.

Mayhap ’tis why her touch doesnae disgust me.

For a time, he wondered if she’d fallen asleep, and then she lifted her head to look at him.

In that moment he saw that her eyes were a soft, pale gray that reminded him of the fur of a mountain hare just before it turned winter white. Tears still glittered on her dark brown eyelashes, which fluttered for a moment as she took in his face. Some color had returned to her pale cheeks, and he saw a small dent on her lower lip, likely a scar from biting it over and again. She had the most ordinary of features, and yet everything about her stirred him deep inside, warming and absorbing him as if she were some great beauty.

Why do I find her so lovely? She’s naught to me.

The woman hardly breathed as she returned his regard, her astonishment plain now. Two tears trembling on her lashes spilled down her face, seemingly unnoticed by her. This must have been the first time she had taken a good look at him, Alec thought, faintly amused. To her he must have appeared otherworldly, for only one other man among the clan could match the outrageous handsomeness Ebrel and Keran had passed along to him. His black hair, violet eyes and pallid hide had come from his màthair’s Dumnonii blood and would have proved trouble enough. Only his sire’s Fae blood had magnified the rare beauty Alec had inherited, refining it to magnificence beyond anything a mortal might possess.

For once in his life Alec didn’t mind, perhaps because no female had ever wept simply from looking upon him.

Inspecting her hands, he saw that some streaks of dried blood were now all that remained of her wounds. One of the few benefits of entering the trap was that it healed whatever wounds or sickness the outsiders suffered at that moment. She had been tiny when these wounds had been inflicted in her world. He only wished he could spend five minutes alone with the bastart that had attacked and hurt a female the size of a child.

The woman withdrew one hand and pointed to a spot just below the hollow of her throat and said something that made her lips bow.

“I cannae hear you, lass,” Alec told her. “I’m night-deaf.”

She held his gaze with hers as she repeated something several times and tapped the same spot, her lips moving even slower, until he finally worked out what she was saying.

Oh. Live. Ee. Ah.

“Your name, ’tis Olivia?” he said, and she nodded and watched his face with an expectant expression. It took him another moment to fathom that she wished him to do the same. “I’m Alec McKeran.” As uncertainty flickered across her face, he added, “Another shall soon arrive and speak with you on what’s happened.”

Olivia wiped the tears from her cheeks, her movements swift, as if they embarrassed her. At the same time, she looked around the room, and the surprise returned to her face. Her gaze lingered on the ticking for so long Alec tried to explain it.

“I spent my boyhood sleeping in a barn.” As she regarded him he nodded at his odd bed. “I piled hay in one of the stalls and covered it with an old blanket. I still cannae abide a more comfortable bed.”

Understanding and sadness showed in her eyes, as if she’d known what he’d endured. Of course, she couldn’t, but her silent sympathy seemed more like a gift than an insult. Her head turned toward the door, and then she regarded him as she pointed at it and made a knocking gesture.

“Enter,” Alec called.

Benedict Miller, the clan’s healer, stepped inside. Lanky and red-haired, he carried his bag of medical supplies that he hardly ever used. The healer’s vivid green eyes shifted as he noticed Olivia’s bloody hands, and his expression became appalled.

“She was beaten badly before crossing over into the trap,” he told the healer, annoyed that Ben would assume him responsible for her wounds. “I caught her in my arms when she was flung up out of a hole that appeared in the floor. Aye, and the enchantment, ’tis changed her.”

Ben’s brow furrowed as he gazed at the lass, who was speaking again.

A moment later Ava Travars, the law woman who had become the laird’s lady, came into the room. At the sight of the tall, dark-haired beauty, Olivia stiffened, her eyes going wide, and then she slumped against him.