“Aye,” he admitted. “I like her.”
“Then ye must go to her, claim her, right away.” She stood, as though ready to shoo him from her house.
“Ye make it sound so easy.” He stood as well, feeling large and encumbered in her dainty room.
“Nothing worthwhile is easy,” she quipped. “Ye helped to dismantle the East India Company. Ye’ve stormed castles and replaced entire regimes. Should she resist ye, lay siege to her defenses and scale her walls, Lieutenant Colonel, it’s not as if ye doona ken how to do that.”
That drew a dry sound of amusement from him. “I canna go now, I have a weeklong summit to reside over here in Dingwall. It’s an obligation to my kin and clan I canna ignore.”
“Then ye have a week to figure out how ye’re going to win her heart, Laird Mackenzie, I suggest ye use it wisely.”
* * *
Russell had been right about the rain, Mena thought as she stood on the roof of Ravencroft Keep’s northwest parapet and surveyed the festivities below her. The chilly October breeze whispered of moisture, but not a drop had fallen.
The Mackenzie laird had returned from Dingwall two days ago and, it seemed, had brought most of the Highlands home with him for the Samhain celebration. Mena hadn’t the opportunity to see or speak to Ravencroft alone as he was always surrounded by guests or on some errand or another. Today he’d taken the children and the visiting lairds Monroe and Fraser with their families to the village of Fearnloch, leaving Mena to her own devices.
She’d spent the day helping poor harried Jani and the housekeeper, Mrs. Grady, with menial tasks to ease the burden of the household staff. Soon, though, she found herself more in the way than accommodating, and she sought a moment of solitude before the commencement of the evening’s revelry.
Ravencroft had come alive with Highlanders, rustic and noble alike. Many of them slept indoors in any one of the lavish guest rooms, but more still pitched grand and colorful tents on the grounds, heating them with pungent peat fires and enough Scotch and ale to drown an entire ship of pirates.
Mena had Jani familiarize her with the plaids and flags proudly displayed on the tents and tartans of the people. Guests from the neighboring MacDonnell and MacBean clans feasted with the MacKinnon of Skye and the MacNeil of the Outer Hebrides. Campbells threaded among them, as did a few Ross and Frasier clansmen, as well.
Mena didn’t own a Halloween costume, but she did don her black cloak with the fox-fur collar for the occasion, and settled it over her finest green silk dress.
With its looming red stone grandeur, extensive grounds, and spires that pierced the gothic gray skies, Ravencroft Keep was the perfect setting for the macabre holiday. Though, from what Mena could see from her vantage, the costumed carousers were much too cheerful to be considered ghoulish in the least.
Mena had been afraid of heights, once upon a time, but locked away in her tiny white room in Belle Glen, she’d gained more than a passing appreciation for the open sky. She’d yearned for it in the cruel hours of darkness. During times she’d been confined alone for the entirety of the day, she’d watched the sun move a tiny circle across the floor from a little porthole window that was too high to see out of. Those days she’d yearned for the beauty of a sunset, or a glimpse of a moonlit night.
Now Mena breathed in the fragrant evening air as she watched the sun dip below the trees and the isles beyond, wishing she could be the raven she’d spied soaring over the fires that dotted the autumn terrain of Wester Ross. Starting in the east, the sky had become black, the closest stars appearing as pinpricks on the eternal canvas of the Highland firmament. As she followed the arc of the dusky sky to the west, Mena observed the ribbon of azure still illuminating the horizon above the shadow of the Hebrides. The stars had only become a suggestion of light and Mena planned on remaining until the night sky shimmered with constellations as she’d only seen it do here in the Highlands.
The trees and stones of the keep sheltered those below from the biting wind, but where she stood on the balustrade, it teased wisps of her hair and the hem of her dress. Feeling silly and fanciful, Mena held open the seams of her cloak and let the breezes billow it out from her spread arms, imagining that she truly had wings.
The bitter chill sent a delicious thrill through her, and Mena let out a delighted gasp as she looked below her, the dizzying height intensifying her reckless sensation of freedom. If her body couldn’t fly, at least her soul might, and she released it into the wind with a contented sigh.
Once the cold turned from invigorating to uncomfortable, she lowered herself to perch on the waist-high stone wall and play voyeur to the night.
The crash of the heavy tower door against the stone wall nearly shocked her out of her skin, and she almost flung herself backward onto the parapet’s walkway.
Mena’s heart threatened to leap out of her chest as Ravencroft stood framed by the stone arch, his shoulders heaving as though he’d run a great distance. He looked like some pagan deity, long ebony hair loose around his wide shoulders, but for two braids swinging from right above his temple. A linen shirt, dark vest, and kilt peeked from where his own cloak parted.
Onyx eyes gleamed at her, lit from below by the growing number of fires. His heavy boots made gravelly sounds as he stalked closer.
She should stand and curtsy, or turn and flee, but the abject relief in his eyes held her quite transfixed.
“I saw yer shadow on the roof,” he said as though out of breath. “Holding yer cloak out like ye meant to fly away, and I thought—”
Mena gasped and berated herself for her utter stupidity. She hadn’t expected anyone to see her up here as the eastern sky behind her was dark. Apparently she’d still cast some sort of shadow, and anyone looking up at just the right moment might be worried that she’d fall from the roof.
Or jump, as the previous Lady Ravencroft had done.
Liam was out of breath now because he’d raced from the grounds below up to the towers to save her life.
“My Laird Ravencroft, I’m so very sorry,” she began earnestly. “I didn’t at all mean to cause you distress, you must believe me … I would never … that is … I wasn’t thinking…”
He stopped an arm’s length from where she sat, twisting to face him. Shadows played off his flexing jaw as his gaze touched her from the top of her hair all the way down to the hem of her skirts as they rippled beneath her swinging feet from where she perched.
“Please forgive me,” she begged, searching his savage features for a sense of how angry she’d made him.