Quest of the Highlander (Crowns & Kilts #5) - Cynthia Wright Page 0,56

bit mad.”

“I know,” she whispered. “I feel it, too.”

Chapter 16

With an effort, Lennox forced down his ardor and put her from him. “Let me help you with the loom.”

She swallowed, nodding. They spent the next hour testing the working parts of the loom as Nora chose the colors and threads she would use to weave the tapestry of the galley on the sea.

“I’m so pleased that Mary MacLean kept more than one blue bobbin. I will make each layer of the waves a different shade of blue,” Nora enthused. “It will be beautiful.”

“Do I remember correctly that ye will trace the pattern from the cartoon onto the threads? I have a charcoal pencil ye may use.”

“Thank you.”

Her smile made him want to take her in his arms again, but instead he reached out with one of his charcoals and their fingers brushed, striking sparks. “I am at your service, lass.” He was smiling too yet as their gazes caught and held, another deep shiver of arousal ran down his spine and spread through his loins.

Soon, Nora was ready to begin working on her own. Lennox made an excuse about needing to speak to Hector, but in the doorway he couldn’t resist turning back to watch her.

Her head of shining curls was bent over the loom as she gracefully arranged the vertical threads she called the warp. Every ounce of her was focused on the task at hand, and he felt a vibrant sense of creativity in the air. And something more… It was happiness, Lennox realized with a pang, and he had helped to cause it.

“This is us, isn’t it?”

His mind returned again to the moment when she had spoken those words while pointing to his drawing. Each time he thought of it, a new, powerful emotion flowed through him like a river that had broken its banks.

The truth was, when Lennox had made the pattern that morning, he’d been thinking of his mural in Ciaran and Violette’s Spirit Tower on Skye: a depiction of a galley sailing away from the MacLeod family home of Duntulm Castle, after it had been horribly conquered and stolen by warriors from a rival clan. Lennox, too, had sailed around the Western Isles since he was a wee bairn. The islands themselves were so rocky and wild, the best way to travel was always by sea.

But Nora, who had spent her life in more civilized lands, had no way of knowing or understanding that.

The strange new sensation swelled again in Lennox’s chest as he watched her hold a bobbin of blue thread up to the light. If it pleased her to think the tapestry she was weaving depicted the two of them, sailing from Oban to Duart, he would gladly agree.

* * *

When Lennox emerged into the great hall, he found it empty except for Hector’s elderly wolfhound, Fergus, who could barely rise from his place by the fire. Hector still gave the old dog an occasional bone, but otherwise he seemed to be largely ignored by the busy inhabitants of the castle.

“Hello, old fellow.” Lennox went over to the great hearth and crouched down beside the wolfhound. “Do ye miss the hunt?”

Fergus slowly lifted his head and gazed at him with foggy eyes.

“It can’t be easy to feel that ye no longer have value to your clan.” Lennox stroked the dog’s ears. Unbidden, the memory of Magnus’s wolfhound, Dougal, came to him. Many times, it had been Lennox who remembered to feed the great beast, when Da was occupied with other matters.

Since leaving Skye, Lennox had done his best to put them all out of his mind, to remember the betrayals and secrets, but now the memories began to simmer inside him, bittersweet. Years spent waking up to a new day in Duntulm Castle, perched on a cliff high above the sea. How many sparkling mornings had he stood with Magnus and Ciaran in the courtyard, practicing with his claymore or learning to hawk? It was a stunningly beautiful and thrilling place to grow up, and in spite of Lennox’s growing sense that he didn’t belong, he’d loved his family and his clan.

His chest tightened at the cascade of memories and emotions. If only it were possible to pack the past away in a chest, lock it securely, and throw the key into the sea.

Fergus dropped his head onto Lennox’s hard thigh and heaved a sigh. His breath smelled like dead rats, but the poor old hound needed to know someone still cared.