"Was it Vietnam? The Gulf?" Hope frowned when he didn't answer. "Ronan?"

He didn't recognize the words she said, but he knew that they were places of war. It had not ended, not even in her time.

He sighed. "No to both. It was another place, a place you would only know from books. It's so far away that sometimes even I forget it. But leave off this talk of war." He eased beneath the soft silk of her blouse. "You smell like morning, like sunlight on heather." Silk and lace pulled free. "When I saw you in the doorway, wrapped in light and wearing that piece of cloth in your hair-"

"A bow, MacLeod." Hope laughed unsteadily. "That's what it's called."

"Bow," he said hoarsely.

"Forget about the bow," she whispered. "Say my name instead."

He did as she asked, whispering the word against her mouth. Then said it again, pressed against her neck amid swift, searching kisses.

"I tried to forget." His hands clenched on her waist. "I tried to stay away. By all the saints, I tried and failed." He caught a strand of her hair and brought it to his lips. "But I saw you in the light with snow falling around you, and all I could think of was-" He drew a slow breath.

"Was what?"

"How fast I could tug that cloth from your hair and the silk from your shoulders." His eyes darkened. "I can guide an arrow to its target at two hundred paces. I can fell a grown man with one blow, but against you I am powerless." His hands tightened. "Turn from me, mo run. Turn from me now."

For answer, Hope slid close and leaned into his warmth. It wasn't fear that made her knees go weak and her pulse zing. It wasn't fear that demolished every scrap of her careful logic.

"Kiss me again and I'll think about it." She let her body flow against him, her long skirts whispering in the night. "Or are you afraid you'll give away all your dark secrets?"

His hands rose, tangled in her hair. He tilted her face back, staring at the pale skin dusted by snowflakes.

MacLeod felt something break inside him. "Aye, I know the feel of fear. My hands are trembling and I can barely see," he said harshly. "My fear is for you, for the things that could happen to you if..."

He made a sharp, angry sound and then his mouth burned over her face.

When she could think again, when she could remember how to frame words, Hope pushed him away with shaky fingers. "Say the rest. Finish the sentence," she ordered. "What could happen?"

He shrugged. "It isn't important."

"You're lying, MacLeod. You know more than you're saying. First there was the incident in the fishing shed, then that night on the stairs when I fell." Her hands fisted. "What's going on?"

"So stubborn," he said huskily.

"No more than you. At least I'm not keeping secrets."

"We all keep secrets." His hands closed over the snow-covered railing and he gripped as if for his very life, an anchor while his world swept away around him. A half smile touched his face. "But you have friends waiting inside and I'll leave you to them. No doubt they are missing you this night. Merry Christmas, Hope." He eased up the collar on his jacket and turned away.

"Merry C-Christmas? Damn you, Ronan. I'm not letting you walk away. I want the truth."

His jaw clenched. "Maybe I've forgotten the truth. Maybe I never knew what the truth was until now."

"That's no answer."

"It's the only one I can give."

Hope searched his face. "What are you so afraid of?"

That I'll start what I can't finish. That we'll topple into this sweet madness together, but you'll awake one day alone, hating me, and I'll be seven centuries away, useless to you when you need me most.

His shoulders tensed. One hand rose. Then he frowned, tugging something from beneath his jacket.

"For you." Lightly he leaped over the railing, dropped to the ground and disappeared into the night.

Hope blinked as the snow veiled his broad shoulders. There were tears in her eyes as she whispered his name. Something terrified him, and he was not a man to be easily frightened. The problem was that sometimes Hope actually found herself believing the story he had told her the night of his arrival. By physical appearance alone, he could certainly be the knight in the stairwell. But tonight of all nights she would not think about it. Christmas was a time for possibilities, not impossibilities.

With trembling hands she tore the red paper from his gift. Snow dusted a pair of chocolate eyes and soft, curly fur the color of old champagne.

A bear? This powerful man with shadows in his eyes had given her a bear?

Exuberant voices drifted through the window as Hope raised the soft body to her chest. Her hands tightened and she blinked back tears. What had he seen outside the shed, and what silent fear drove him away from her now?

Maybe I've forgotten the truth. Maybe I never knew what the truth was until now.

She sighed, wanting his touch. Wanting answers. Some part of her even wanted to hate Ronan MacLeod.

So why did the aggravating man keep making it impossible?

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.

"WHAT'S WRONG WITH HOPE?" Morwenna asked. "She's crying."

Perpetua looked up from a mound of popcorn and holly waiting to be strung onto ropes for the front door. "Crying?" Her eyes narrowed. "Nonsense, she's simply smoothing her hair. Really, Morwenna, you must control this raging imagination of yours."

"She's crying, I tell you," Morwenna hissed. "I saw her come in from the porch. MacLeod was out there with her." Behind Morwenna the fire popped noisily, casting a glow over the faces of the three sisters. Each was dressed in a different color of velvet, set off by brooches of antique silver and uncut agate.

"MacLeod?" Honoria surveyed the room with nearsighted concentration. "But he's not here."

"I know that. He didn't come inside."

"And you think..."

"I know it," Morwenna hissed. "The man has got her twisted up in knots. Oh, she puts on a good act, one that would fool most people. But we're not most people, are we?" Morwenna twisted a strand of holly between her fingers. "If that man's hurt her, I'll turn him into a toad," she muttered.

"An ugly, one-legged toad."

A log hissed on the fire, twitched, then collapsed in a storm of orange sparks.

"Morwenna, do get hold of yourself," Perpetua said curtly. "In a moment you'll have the whole house on fire."

"Fire? Oh, sorry." One surreptitious wave was enough to settle the angry orange flames back to normal.

"She's probably missing her family. All gone, you know." Perpetua drummed silently on the mahogany tabletop. "This noise and laughter must make her remember her uncle. He was a man who knew how to throw a grand party, I understand."

"Forget about her uncle," Morwenna said with unusual irritation. "What she's missing is one hard-as-nails, handsome-as-sin medieval Scotsman who doesn't have enough politeness to come inside and say hello."

"The man is hardly the sort for chitchat, my dear." Perpetua sighed. "You knew that when you voted to bring him here."

"I thought he was a man of honor."

"No," Perpetua corrected gently, "you thought he would change, become docile as a tabby cat and just as easily managed. But Ronan MacLeod will never be a sensitive twentieth-century male in touch with his nurturing female side. He'll try, but he won't succeed. He is doomed to be forever politically incorrect, I fear. After all is said and done, how could he not?"

"Nurture, shmurture," Morwenna snapped. "Hope's unhappy, Pet. We're to blame, and it's got to stop."

"What would you do, my love? Wave your hand and make all their differences go away? You can't, not with people."

Morwenna took a slow breath and sank onto the couch. "But the man will break her heart, Pet. You mark my words. Then I'll have to give him terrible nightmares."

"He already has those," Perpetua said gently.

"In that case I'll take away all his friends."

"Already done," her sister murmured.

"Whose side are you on?"

Perpetua smoothed a length of ribbon between her strong, gnarled fingers. "No one's. Or maybe everyone's. It's our job, remember? We've tampered all we may, and even beyond, I fear. Like it or not, any more interference will be at grave cost to all of us, Hope included."

"Is that so?" Morwenna's eyes glinted with defiance. "Just you listen to me. I'm not going to see Hope hurt. He's the one she's meant to have, if only he'd forget that blind honor of his."

"We cannot change him." Honoria sat forward suddenly, her eyes gold in the firelight. "Honor is the man." Suddenly her voice fell. "'Come what may, time and the hour run through the roughest day.'"

Her eyes widened. "Him. The ghost. I feel him clearly. He's coming to Glenbrae." She pushed to her feet, her brooch awry and her hands trembling. "Storms and lightning when he finds out what we've done."

Morwenna stared after her sister's retreating back. "What does she mean, Pet?"

Snow hissed against the windowpanes, building white wedges between the wooden casements.

"I'm not sure." Perpetua reached out into the night to explore what Honoria had touched, but the darkness mocked her, formless and silent. She heard the wind sigh over the roof and grumble through the tall pine trees by the loch. She heard the question of an owl near the stables.

Hope seemed to hear, too, where she stood by the window, watching the snow.

"I wish I knew," Perpetua whispered. "But I can see nothing save shadows. Nothing beyond broken dreams. For them both, I fear."

The strains of "Silent Night" echoed from the back of the crowded room, and Perpetua rose to her feet. As she turned toward the piano, her face bore the hard lines of care and great age.

ALL THE GUESTS HAD LEFT.

All the songs had been sung.

MacLeod stood in the silence of midnight, feeling snow brush his face and cheeks. In his hands he gripped a rough wooden box with a bark roof.

Inside lay three figures carved of fragrant cedar. The manger was light and the figures even lighter, but the weight in his heart made his feet slow as he crossed the dark yard before the inn. A shopkeeper in Glenbrae had gasped in shock at the sight of his ancient French currency, but he had been only too happy to give MacLeod a few supplies and several articles of clothing in exchange for the old coins.

No room in the inn. Not for one such as he, MacLeod thought as he settled the rough manger in the snow before a fir tree decorated with red tartan ribbons. This gift, like the bear he had given Hope, was small.

Gently he laid down a circle of smooth stones from the loch, and within the ring he placed the manger. Next came the carved Mary, Joseph and finally the baby Jesus in a wooden cradle filled with pine needles.

When he was done, he sat back, listening to the sigh of the wind across the glen. Behind him the house was quiet, all its leaded windows dark. As the stars glistened through the falling snow, MacLeod mused upon the peace of the night and the faith that had carried three travelers on a faraway search for a child newborn.

In comparison, his own journey seemed insignificant.

And what of his secrets? In the past week, their weight had grown until he thought he would choke.

But it would be useless to tell Hope his fears for her safety, or that every instinct warned him her inn was being watched. To his fury, there was nothing he could do but wait. Any attempt to warn her would only add to the mistrust between them. The three canny sisters were no help at all now, for their powers seemed to have failed completely.

Nor could he tell her of the visions that came in the night as he lay trapped between two worlds and two times. In painful clarity he moved down streets where he was invisible, spoke greetings to people who looked right through him. Past and present blurred together in a numbing dreamscape split by the cries of his fallen comrades, and he awoke sweating and shaken, while pale light seemed to drain from his body. At first he had tried to ignore the shaking and the weakness that followed. Then the dreams became worse.

In his heart, MacLeod knew the signs were a warning. He was a man caught out of nature's order, his very existence here an affront to divine design. He could not stay, not alive.

The only question was when he would disappear, wrenched back to his own time.

He touched the carved figures in the manger, searching for answers, but no answers came.

Meanwhile, the longer he stayed, the deeper his feelings grew for Hope. He would not call it love.

MacLeod wasn't sure what that often misused word meant, in truth. But he was deeply aware of her, keenly connected to her emotions, his day turned upside down by a single smile.

Love?

Who was to say? All he knew was that in spite of his knightly vows, whenever he was near her, he forgot all reason and honor. Touching her only brought keener pain, for it showed MacLeod all he yearned for but could never have.

Better to hold her away until she hardened her soul to him. Better to close her heart now, before the line was crossed.

Yet her heart would not harden. In spite of his distance and indifference, the desire leaped between them, fresh and sharp, whenever they touched.

MacLeod glanced at the dark sky. A star burned overhead, winking red and gold like a jewel against the night.

He stared up into its distant light and asked for strength. He prayed for answers, and an honor that seemed to slip away with every second he remained in this contentious age.

But he had neither answers nor honor in return. The star winked on, remote and unreadable. Even the wind seemed to mock him like low laughter.

And then an icy mound of snow struck him dead between the shoulders as he knelt before the decorated tree.

He turned-and felt his heart twist. She was dressed in black wool from neck to toe, and a silly red cap slanted over her head, its white tassel bobbing from a long tail. She smiled as she packed a second mound of snow into a careful, lethal ball.

MacLeod didn't speak. Maybe he had forgotten how. The sight of Hope taking careful aim, smiling with wicked glee, was too painful. He watched the wet missile and did not twist away, his thoughts full of foolish wishes and futile regrets, like a child forgotten at Christmas.