The bitter chill sent a delicious thrill through her, and Mena let out a delighted gasp as she looked below her, the dizzying height intensifying her reckless sensation of freedom. If her body couldn’t fly, at least her soul might, and she released it into the wind with a contented sigh.
Once the cold turned from invigorating to uncomfortable, she lowered herself to perch on the waist-high stone wall and play voyeur to the night.
The crash of the heavy tower door against the stone wall nearly shocked her out of her skin, and she almost flung herself backward onto the parapet’s walkway.
Mena’s heart threatened to leap out of her chest as Ravencroft stood framed by the stone arch, his shoulders heaving as though he’d run a great distance. He looked like some pagan deity, long ebony hair loose around his wide shoulders, but for two braids swinging from right above his temple. A linen shirt, dark vest, and kilt peeked from where his own cloak parted.
Onyx eyes gleamed at her, lit from below by the growing number of fires. His heavy boots made gravelly sounds as he stalked closer.
She should stand and curtsy, or turn and flee, but the abject relief in his eyes held her quite transfixed.
“I saw yer shadow on the roof,” he said as though out of breath. “Holding yer cloak out like ye meant to fly away, and I thought—”
Mena gasped and berated herself for her utter stupidity. She hadn’t expected anyone to see her up here as the eastern sky behind her was dark. Apparently she’d still cast some sort of shadow, and anyone looking up at just the right moment might be worried that she’d fall from the roof.
Or jump, as the previous Lady Ravencroft had done.
Liam was out of breath now because he’d raced from the grounds below up to the towers to save her life.
“My Laird Ravencroft, I’m so very sorry,” she began earnestly. “I didn’t at all mean to cause you distress, you must believe me … I would never … that is … I wasn’t thinking…”
He stopped an arm’s length from where she sat, twisting to face him. Shadows played off his flexing jaw as his gaze touched her from the top of her hair all the way down to the hem of her skirts as they rippled beneath her swinging feet from where she perched.
“Please forgive me,” she begged, searching his savage features for a sense of how angry she’d made him.
To her utter astonishment, his expression relaxed and his shoulders sagged, though the intensity never left his dark eyes.
“Lass, I’d forgive ye just about anything in that dress.”
Flushing, Mena pulled the edges of her cloak around her, sinking her neck into the fur collar and covering the deep cleft of her décolletage.
The laird frowned, but said nothing.
Unable to look at him and still maintain her breath, Mena turned back to the tableau beneath them, a pang of happiness tugging at her heart when she spied Andrew romping about the grounds with little Rune yapping at his heels.
“May I join ye?” Ravencroft murmured from beside her, his breath a warm puff of white against the growing chill of the evening.
“It’s your castle,” she replied. She wished he wouldn’t, and yet she didn’t want him to leave. The last time she’d been alone with him she’d allowed him the most illicit liberties. Liam Mackenzie turned her into someone who was not herself. Every moment in his presence was fraught with intensity and heart-stopping emotion.
Mena didn’t watch as he kicked his leg over the wall, and then the other, settling in next to her close enough that her shoulder pressed against his arm. She’d have to scoot away from him in order to maintain a respectable distance, and though the rules of conduct dictated that she should, it would still be unaccountably rude.
Either way she couldn’t win, and Mena had the distinct impression that he’d put her in that position on purpose.
Glancing at him sharply from under her lashes, she found she could not look away. What must it be like, she wondered, to sit atop such a grand castle and lord over all that was below him? Every soul in the village, every grain in the field, every beast in the pasture all relied upon his land, his will, his honor, and his word. No wonder Ravencroft surveyed the scene with a look of fierce possession, as stolid and stony as a gargoyle, and every bit as formidable.
“This must be how the world looked in the beginning,” he observed in a voice as smooth as silk and hard as iron.
She knew exactly what he meant. What had life been like when the pleasures of night and the seduction of fire could culminate in orgiastic revelry that wasn’t impeded by the structures of society?
“Perhaps this is what it will look like at the end,” she hypothesized, feeling strangely reckless as though the spirit of the holiday was somehow contagious.
“What are ye doing up here, Miss Lockhart?” he asked, without looking down at her. “Why are ye not with the others at the feast?”
Just as quickly as heat had abandoned her face, it crept back from beneath her cloak. “You’ll think me ridiculous.”
“Never.” The sound escaped on an exhale of his, too soft to be a word, too deep to be a sigh.
“I find myself here often,” she confessed. “One of my favorite things in the world is to watch day turn into night. First the brilliance of the sunset, then the quiet blues of twilight, and then this final moment.” She tilted her head back to look above her, feeling the muscles in her throat slightly stretch in a pleasant way. “It’s as though the sky disappears and some sort of heavenly curtain is pulled back, unveiling the stars. Some people find the night sky melancholy, but I’ve always thought of the stars as familiar as old friends, always right where they’re supposed to be. It gives me a sense of the same, I think.” Mena lowered her chin, and glanced to the side where Ravencroft stared at her neck with the oddest of expressions before he lifted his unreadable eyes to hers.