“Wait a minute.” Zeke tugged him to a stop. “You still didn’t tell me. Why doesna Jillian like you?”
Grimm rummaged for an answer that might make sense to Zeke. “I guess it’s because I teased and tormented her when she was a young lass.”
“You picked on her?”
“Mercilessly,” Grimm agreed.
“Jillian says the lads only tease the lasses they secretly like. Did you pull her hair too?”
Grimm frowned at him, wondering what that had to do with anything. “I suppose I might have, a time or two,” he admitted after some thought.
“Och, good!” Zeke exclaimed, his relief evident. “So you’re courting her now. She needs a husband,” he said matter-of-factly.
Grimm shook his head, the merest hint of an ironic grin curving his lips. He should have seen that one coming.
CHAPTER 7
GRIMM CLAMPED HIS HANDS OVER HIS EARS, BUT IT didn’t help. He tugged a pillow over his head, to no avail. He considered getting up and slamming the shutters, but a quick glance revealed that he was to be deprived of even that small pleasure. They were already closed. One of the many “gifts” that was part and parcel of being a Berserker was absurdly heightened hearing; it had enabled him to survive on occasions when a normal man couldn’t have heard the enemy stealthily approaching. Now it was proving a grave disadvantage.
He could hear her. Jillian.
All he wanted to do was sleep—for Christ’s sake, it wasn’t even dawn! Did the lass never rest? The trill of a lone flute drifted up, scaling the stone walls of the castle and creeping through the slats of the shutters on a chill morning breeze. He could feel the melancholy notes prying at the stubborn shutters on his heart. Jillian was everywhere at Caithness: blooming in the flower arrangements on the tables, glowing in the children’s smiles, stitched into the brilliantly woven tapestries. She was inescapable. Now she dared invade his sleep with the haunting melody of an ancient Gaelic love song, soaring to a high wail, then plummeting to a low moan with such convincing anguish that he snorted. As if she knew the pain of unrequited love! She was beautiful, perfect, blessed with parents, home, family, a place to belong. She had never wanted for love, and he certainly couldn’t imagine any man denying her anything. Where had she learned to play a heartbreaking love song with such plaintive empathy?
He leapt from the bed, stomped to the window, and flung the shutters open so hard they crashed into the walls. “Still play that silly thing, do you?” he called. God, she was beautiful. And God forgive him—he still wanted her every bit as badly as he had years ago. Then he’d told himself she was too young. Now that she was a woman fully grown he could no longer avail himself of that excuse.
She was standing below him on a rocky cleft overlooking the loch. The sun was a buttery gold crescent, breaking the horizon of the silvery loch. Her back was to him. She stiffened; the bittersweet song stuttered and died.
“I thought you were in the east wing,” Jillian said without turning. Her voice carried as clearly to his ears as had the melody, despite her being twenty feet below him.
“I choose my own domain, peahen. As I always have.” He leaned out the window slightly, absorbing every detail of her: blond hair rippling in the breeze, the proud set of her shoulders, the haughty angle at which she cocked her head, while she looked out over the loch as if she could scarcely bear to acknowledge his existence.
“Go home, Grimm,” she said coldly.
“ ’Tis not for you that I stay, but for your da,” he lied.
“You owe him such allegiance, then? You, who gives allegiance to none?” she mocked.
He winced. “Allegiance is not beyond me. ’Tis merely that there are so few deserving it.”
“I don’t want you here,” she flung over her shoulder.
It irritated him that she wouldn’t turn about and look at him; it was the least she could do while they said nasty things to each other. “I doona care what you want,” he forced himself to say. “Your da summoned me here, and here I will remain until he releases me.”
“I have released you!”
Grimm snorted. Would that she could release him, but whatever kept him bound to Jillian was indestructible. He should know; he’d tried for years to destroy the bond, not to care where she was, how she fared, if she was happy. “The wishes of a woman are insignificant when weighed against a man’s,” he said, certain insulting the feminine gender at large would bring her around to face him so he could savor the passion of her anger, in lieu of the sensual passion he desperately longed to provoke in her. Berserker, his mind rebuked. Leave her alone—you have no right.