chapter Four
He couldn’t stand to look at her. It was too… She was so… Well, descriptive words had never served his purposes; therefore he elected to avoid them.
Ignoring alarming, unnecessary physical responses, Daroch carefully inspected the bowl of fine black powder upon which she’d demonstrated her ethereal lack of material mass. It consisted of the combustible mixture of sulfur, charcoal, and a purified solution boiled from ashes of wood. If he dropped the bowl, Cape Wrath would be leveled in the explosion. From what he could tell, the interaction with her miasma had no significant impact on either force.
Interesting. Unsurprising, but interesting.
“What are you cooking over there?” Her voice reached through his robes and touched his spine with an unwanted thrill.
He sighed. On second thought, he should just drop the bowl and be done with it. An inexplicable tremor in his hand caused Daroch to set the powder down.
“Oh I see! You’re melting copper and tin to make bronze. What are you going to use it for?”
It took Daroch several moments to process her question. Who ever heard of a Banshee with a melodic voice? Also, how was it one woman could be gifted with such— symmetrical features—and also a… dammit he would not use the word ‘beautiful’ to describe anything about her. Least of all her voice. Pleasing? Lyrical?
Sensuous.
He bit his lip. Hard.
“I’m fashioning a… conducting an experiment.” Gods be damned, in trying to distract himself, he’d nearly given her the honest answer, which could have meant the end of everything he worked for. A woman with a little knowledge was more dangerous than a horde of Berserker warriors. They would be the sword, the death bringers. But she, she would be the blood, the inciting incident. He had to get her out of here before she ruined everything.
“Would that experiment have anything to do with the raw iron on this table? Or the gold and silver? Or all these powders and tools and—”
“Nay,” he lied. It had everything to do with all of it. It was his life’s work. His reason for existence. And the greatest kept secret in the Highlands.
Until now.
“Good, because you overworked this other iron here, though it’s still too crude. It looks like the blast temperatures were too low but you still got enough oxygen in the metal to—”
“What are ye, a secret alchemist?” he clipped and turned around, forgetting in his exasperation that he’d planned on not looking at her.
“Nay.” Her glow caused metal beside her to glisten and Daroch focused his eyes on that, rather than her lithe form barely concealed in ghostly, transpicuous robes. “I’m the daughter of Diarmudh MacKay, the best blacksmith in the Highlands.”
Surprisingly, Daroch had heard of the man. “Didna he die some fifteen years hence?”
“Eighteen.” The Banshee turned from where she inspected the metal and caught his gaze with a sad smile. Damn it all, he wasn’t supposed to be looking. “But I was his favorite, and spent many hours in the smithy with him, black as a Demon, singing songs not fit for a wee girl while he worked all sorts of metals.”
“Demons aren’t black.” Daroch corrected while he studied her. “Ye’re not old enough for that.”
“I was four when he was kicked in the head by an unruly horse.” Grief shadowed her delicate features and Daroch had to clench his jaw and consider numerical figures to distract himself from a dangerous softening somewhere in the region of his lungs.
“Anyway, I remember everything he taught me. Especially about alloys.” She was coming closer, and Daroch found that he wanted to retreat from her. “You know, we turned it into a washhouse after his death, my mother and sisters. It was… burned.” This time, it was she who averted her eyes. “But the forge remains, though the bellows would need repairing. I’m certain you could use it.”
Daroch gaped at her. “Why?” The irony of his asking her the question wasn’t lost on him.
“Why what?”
“Why would ye offer me the use of yer beloved father’s smithy when I’ve been…”
“An unmitigated arse?” she helpfully supplied.
Daroch scowled at her. “Unwelcoming.”
She shrugged, setting her long auburn curls to flowing about her body as though she were under water. The effect was disturbingly lovely. “All this interests me, and I’ve nothing better to do.”
Something about her answer displeased him, but Daroch couldn’t identify it. Deciding he needed to busy his body before it betrayed him further, he snatched a tool and smothered one of the fires with loose earth, noting that the Banshee didn’t drift into that section of the cave until the flames had died.
Intrigued, he sank to his pallet by the dying embers of his cook fire and took the last of his dried fish from where it warmed on the rocks, trying to figure out how to inspect her without looking at her.
She stayed where she was, looking very young and very lost.
A cold pit formed low in his belly and he suddenly wasn’t hungry. Not for food, in any case. “Doona ye have someone else to torment? A vengeance to reap or some such Banshee justice to meet out on a deserving villain that will result in ye leaving?”
“Nay, not really.” She hugged her arms to her middle.
“I’m going to sleep now,” he informed her presenting her with his back and lying on the pallet facing the glowing coals. Wide awake.
“So early?” She sounded disappointed. And closer. “Can I… watch you?”
He bit back a savage curse. Her words reached through the layers of his robes, the silt, his flesh, and straight to his cock.
One hundred years. One hundred years since a woman had watched him. Objectified him.
“If ye stay, ye’ll watch me do more than sleep,” he ground out.
Her glow vanished, leaving him in frigid darkness but for the dying embers which he stared at for hours.