The Immortal Highlander

Page 74

Finally, his patience obviously fraying, Drustan had ordered the staff off to bed, firmly closed the library door, then, after a moment’s pause, had locked it and leaned back against it.
Must you endure that all the time? he’d demanded incredulously of Adam.
Adam had nodded. Though there are some, he said with a glance in Gabby’s direction, who bash me a good one on first sight. This said with a fine show of rubbing his lip, the one she’d split, and a faint insouciant grin.
She’d had to clench her hands into little fists to keep herself from leaping up and bashing him again. Merely for being Adam. For being so unforgivably irresistible. For being visible, damn it all. Why couldn’t he have just stayed cursed? Was that so much to ask?
He’d needed her then. But no more. He could speak for himself; no longer was she a necessary intermediary. And there were dozens of other women who were clearly more than willing to supply anything he might want, at the merest seductive crook of a finger. She’d felt suddenly, inexplicably bereft.
Scowling, she’d feigned exhaustion, in no mood to deal with the feelings that watching other women fall all over him had provoked in her. In no mood to hang around and see if they might begin scaling the castle walls and breaking in through windows to get to him.
Gwen had torn herself away from the complex cosmology questions she’d been firing at Adam long enough to show her to a chamber.
Gabby’d been pleasantly surprised to find it was no outbuilding but a lovely suite of rooms on the second floor, with a stone terrace through French doors that overlooked a garden. After Gwen had hastened off, she’d been even more pleasantly surprised to discover a half-full decanter of wine on the bedside table.
She wasn’t so happy about it this morning, however.
Nor about the fact that she’d ended up creeping out into the hall and purloining refreshments from two other “chambers” before she’d drifted off to sleep in a wine-sodden stupor.
She glanced at the bed and scowled. No wonder she felt so awful. It didn’t look as if she’d done any sleeping there; it looked more like she’d done battle for what small part of the night she’d been passed out. The silky sheets were knotted, the down comforter was wadded, and two of the plush velvet bed curtains had been torn down from their hangings. She had a vague memory of being so tipsy that when she’d tried to get out of bed and go to the bathroom, she’d gotten tangled up in them and fallen.
She had another vague memory that she didn’t like at all. She thought she might have cried last night. Over all kinds of stupid things: boyfriends and blown jobs and . . . fairies she couldn’t figure out.
She’d caught herself picking up the phone, thinking of calling her mom at one point.
Right, to say what? Hi, Mom, I really need to talk to you about this fairy I met? Gram’s dead and I don’t have anyone else? Ha.
Come to think of it, she brooded, gingerly massaging her throbbing temples, she was afraid she might have actually managed to dial through before she hung up. She couldn’t quite remember, but she’d just stepped over a phone book on the floor. And it was open to the international dialing page, and that wasn’t a good sign.
With a morose little sigh, she pulled her hair back in a clip very gently, so all her tiny hair follicles—God, her head hurt—wouldn’t scream too much in protest, then opened the door and stepped into the corridor beyond. She’d never been able to handle alcohol.
Aspirin, she needed aspirin.
A week ago, she brooded, striking off to the left (deciding after a moment’s consideration that any direction was probably as good as any other in the labyrinthine maze of stone corridors) things had been so clear. She’d known exactly who she was and what her place was in the world.
She’d been an O’Callaghan, doing what she’d been raised to do, concealing herself from nasty, inhuman fairies, living a double life, and doing a bang-up job of it for the most part.
Then she’d been an O’Callaghan being tortured by one of those nasty, inhuman fairies, albeit an impossibly seductive one, in human form.
Then she was an O’Callaghan being protected by said impossibly seductive fairy in human form from some truly nasty, inhuman fairies.
And now she was just Gabby, currently staying in a dreamy, magnificent castle in Scotland with a Fae prince who did all kinds of non-nasty, non-inhuman things like tearing up lists of names, and returning tadpoles to lakes, and saving people’s lives.
Not to mention kissing with all the otherworldly splendor of a horny angel.
A Fae prince whom virtually every woman in the castle wanted in her bed; and, from the looks of things last night, they weren’t going to waste any time trying to get him there.