“Ach, there’s nothin’ ye can do, but keep her warm now, and hear the tale so ye’ll understand what’s come over her.”
“Get on with it then, and be clear about it.”
“Keelin has always been able to see and know of events before they ever happen,” Tiarnan said. “Just like her mother, she is. She ‘sees’ danger comin’—whatever it may be—and gets us quickly out of harm’s way.”
“Do you mean to say that Lady Keelin is bewitched?”
“Nay, lad,” Tiarnan said with aggravation. “’Tis not bewitchment at all! The lass is blessed!”
Marcus looked down at Keelin’s deathly still features. Cursed was more like it, though he had no wish to believe her soul possessed by the devil.
Yet she had certainly bewitched him. Suddenly, he realized why he had been able to speak to Keelin, touch her, kiss her, when in all his previous twenty-six years, he’d hardly been able to look at a young woman without tripping over himself to escape her presence.
“’Tis a rare gift, one that Keelin’s mother possessed before her, and her mother, and on from ancient times.”
Marcus had never heard such a far-fetched tale. Yet he knew there were strange things in the world, things he had not personally experienced. There could very well be an ancient, magical spear that possessed some unexplained power, a power that Keelin somehow used.
He pulled Keelin closer into his embrace, as if to protect her from further harm. She was not as cold now, but her body was trembling. Tight coils of desire wrapped around him even now, as she lay unconscious in his arms.
Was it witchery? Or a blessing, as her uncle had said.
Marcus could see nothing but innocence now in Keelin’s delicate features, feel only vulnerability in her soft form as he cradled her under the blankets.
“She must have seen something momentous,” Tiarnan mused.
“Why do you say that?”
“Well…’tis not so easy a thing to explain,” the old man said. He rubbed his chin and chewed his lower lip. “In all the years since Keelin’s been me own true responsibility, only twice before has she been benumbed by a vision she’s seen without the aid of Ga Buidhe an Lamhaigh.”
“Benumbed?”
“Aye,” Tiarnan replied. “Made senseless. As ye see her now.”
Marcus nodded as he shifted Keelin in his arms.
“The first time was when the lass was a mere child,” he said, “and her brother was drowned.”
Marcus cringed. “What happened?”
“Aw, it pains me fiercely to recall the day when Brian O’Shea died,” Tiarnan said. “’Twas early spring. As elegant a day as we’d seen in many a week, with the sun burnin’ high and new greenery shootin’ up all around. Keely and I were within the walls Carrauntoohil Keep, with me at me work, and the lass playin’ with her rag babe.
“Most of the able-bodied men went out to hunt early that day, and the lads were left with more time than sense. They left Carrauntoohil and went to the river, swollen by then with the spring floods, and rushing faster than any of them realized.”
Marcus listened as Tiarnan O’Shea described the sudden pallor that had come over Keelin, then the violent shaking and unintelligible speech. Then the girl had lost consciousness, only to weep uncontrollably when she was finally roused.
“She’d seen Brian’s death,” Tiarnan said. “The vision had come upon her without warning, without so much as a touch of the spear.”
“And this had never happened before?”
“Nay,” the man said. “Not even to her mother. But Keelin’s gift is strong. None before her ever had the same clarity of visions that Keelin experiences.
“She saw as clearly as the lads who were there—poor Brian as he fell from the boat, tumbling into the rocky passage….”
Marcus was appalled at the thought of the child Keelin witnessing such a thing, but Tiarnan went on.
“’Twas death again that took hold of her…when her father, Eocaidh, was slain by Ruairc Mageean.”
“And you believe it’s happened again? That she’s seen another death?”
“Aye,” Tiarnan replied. “Without touchin’ the spear, the lass senses things. She has premonitions. But when she actually holds it in her hands, there are visions. Colorful. Vivid.”
Marcus made no reply. He gazed down at the limp figure in his arms and tried to imagine how Satan could possibly do his evil work through Keelin and her visions. No answer came to him.
“If ye would be so good as to keep her warm, lad,” Tiarnan said, “just till the worst of it passes…”
Marcus had plenty of heat to spare. He glanced up at Adam, who lay still in the bed, and then slid down to make himself more comfortable with Keelin. He enveloped her in a cocoon of warmth, and waited.
Keelin regained full consciousness at dawn. She’d had moments of awareness through the night, when Lord Marcus rubbed her back and her shoulders and whispered quiet, soothing words to her, but she had been unable to respond.
Her mind was still muddled, and she could not piece together all of the events of the previous day, nor did she know how she’d come to be resting in the arms of Marcus de Grant.
He still held her close, though Keelin believed he dozed. His chest, pressed against her own, moved deeply and regularly. His strong arms still embraced her, though loosely, and Keelin, fully aware now, relished the feeling of security they brought.
Her face was eye level with the hollow where his neck met his chest, and the small hairs of his chest tickled her nose. Without thinking, Keelin burrowed her face in.
“Umm…” Marcus grunted. His arms tightened around her.
Keelin shivered, not from cold, but from an altogether strange sensation, unlike anything she’d ever experienced before. Oddly compelled, she moved against him, eliciting another groan. Marcus’s muscles flexed against her, and one of his hands made circles on her back, pulling her closer to him. She knew he was not quite awake as she breathed in the scent of him. The smell of fresh river water, his chain hauberk, his linen, and something altogether different…something that was distinctly…Marcus.
Her body felt every inch of his where they touched, and she had the inexplicable urge to taste him. Her mouth was a mere breath away from his chest and she could easily—
Shocked by her own wanton whimsy, Keelin would never be so bold as to attempt such a thing. No matter how strong the impulse.
She sensed the moment when he came fully awake. His body tensed and he pulled slightly away from her.
“Ah, you’re awake, then?” he said awkwardly, clearing his throat as he spoke.
Keelin nodded. It was still unclear how she’d come to be lying among these thick woolen blankets in Marcus de Grant’s arms. She remembered parts of the previous evening, Marcus’s hands working on the knot at her neck—his kiss, and the way her bones had seemed to melt….
Cormac!
Oh, dear God and all the saints, she suddenly remembered. Cormac O’Shea was slain! And the deed was done by Ruairc Mageean.
Keelin pushed herself up from their cozy nest and became dizzy with the sudden movement. She went back down on her knees.
“Easy,” Marcus said as he helped to lower her down.
“Keely