Highland Brides 03 - On Bended Knee by Tanya Anne Crosby Page A

dark,” he whispered, coaxing her.
    She’d better go.
    Before he changed his mind and seduced her right here where they sat.
    Despite her angry words and all her bluster, the look in her eyes this instant told him that if he truly wished it… she would be his tonight…
    She nodded. “Aye.” And made to rise.
    He set a hand upon her shoulder, couldn’t seem to help himself.
    He hadn’t meant to.
    He wanted to tell her to run.
    He wanted to tell her to stay.
    “G’nite,” he said. “I shall see ye on the morrow?”
    “G’nite,” she said, and placed her hand over his upon her shoulder.
    For an instant, she did nothing more, and then she brushed his hand aside, and bolted away. She stopped once to look back, and said, “Until the morrow.” And then she smiled and was gone, vanished into the forest like a sprite.
    Colin stared for the longest time at the place where she had disappeared, seeing that smile again in his mind.
    It had been a perfect smile, one that had lit even her eyes, one that warmed his heart…
    With the blink of an eye, night had fallen, and there was nothing there now but shadows where she had stood… and a pair of golden eyes twinkling back at him from the darkness.
    They disappeared the instant he spied them.
    Colin blinked, and looked again, but there was nothing there at all.
    There were those who said these woods were filled with faeries and brownies and that at night their magic lit up the forest like falling stardust, but as far as Colin was concerned those were old wives’ tales and he didn’t believe a one of them.
    It was probably just some wretched beast staring back at him… a fox or a cat, mayhap.
    He shook his head, and took a deep breath to clear his senses, then gathered up what he could of Seana’s pot still to take home with him.
    She had obviously begun a new batch of her spirits because the pot still was heavy with the substance. He hated to waste it, but he couldn’t carry it home like this, so he proceeded to empty some upon the ground. But he hated to waste it all.
    Colin lifted up the pot still when it had lightened sufficiently and then emptied the rest into his mouth. It was a good strong spirit, still slightly warm. He choked a bit as it went down, but he didn’t stop. He let it pour down his throat. A little spilled down his chin.
    There were those who took their measure of a man by the way he drank his uisge . Colin had been drinking since he’d been old enough for his da to shove it down his gob. A little burn never killed a man, his da would say, but he hadn’t entirely been right.
    A little uisge beatha sometimes did.
    But it was all part of the game, and no man worth the name ever shied away from the fire water. You put your faith, not in God, but in your brewer, and your lips on the… mouth of the bottle… or was it that… you put your lips on the mouth of the brewer…
    Och, but his brain grew fuzzy, even as he drank.
    This spirit was strong.
    He finished it, and gathered the pieces of the still, then carried it home, as he’d promised her, ignoring the itty bitty bursts of light that twinkled along the path to light his way.
    Fairy dust, that’s what it looked like—if he believed in such things, but he didn’t…
    Magic lived only in the minds of old women such as his grandminny Fia—God rest her soul—and in a wee dram of good uisge beatha.
    And in Seana’s smile.
    He smiled, then, for the image of it was imprinted upon his mind… and damned if he didn’t suddenly feel better than he had in years.
    And it wasn’t the uisge beatha.

Chapter 9

     
    It was the damned uisge beatha .
    Damn, but Colin was as sick as he’d ever been in his life. This was the second time in the space of a week that he’d found himself spewing his guts out over that damned drink of hers. He hadn’t realized it until this morning, but it was her father’s spirits he had drunk at Meghan’s wedding. Who the devil had procured that waste? Not he, damn it all