THE PERFECT TEN (Boxed Set)

keep?”
    Scowling, he forced her to arms’ length. “What the hell are ye then so frighten of, if nay rats?”
    She blanched and started biting her lower lip. “I couldn’t tell you while they were here.” She waved at the door. “Please lock it. I have something to show you.”
    The door secured, she paced the middle of the room twisting her wedding band. “Duncan, I don’t really expect you to understand this, because I sure as hell don’t. But one minute I was itching and as solid as you and the next I’m glowing and turning into some sort of wavering gas...” She started to weep. “Oh, just watch. Then tell me if I’m losing my mind or if what I’m feeling truly happens.”
    She twisted his ring from her middle finger and slipped it forward, keeping it poised at the tip.
    To his utter amazement and horror, she started to shimmer from head to toe like the undulating lights that occasionally lit the northern sky in winter. When the air in the room began to vibrate, to shift, he backed away, a hand before his face. As she slowly faded before his disbelieving eyes, becoming so transparent he could see the window at her back through her, he saw her usually calm visage reflected the awe and fear he felt.
    “Holy Mother! What doth...”
    Words eluded him.
    Then, just as suddenly, she became as solid as the floor beneath his feet, or as it had once been, though now he’d not have sworn it so.
    He’d listened to her tales of Lady Kathy and one hundred story sky scrapes, but what sane man would have believed it all? Yet, just now she nearly vanished before his eyes!
    Pure instinct brought his broadsword to her heart.
    Her teeth chattered as she held out her left hand. “Duncan, it’s your ring. The ring brought me here and can take me away.”
    Heart bounding, he shook his head still not believing.
    She stepped to within an inch of his blade and whispered, “Duncan, please. Put down your sword.”
    “Hold!” The claymore’s tip vibrated with his fear and he had to grasp it with two hands to stay it.
    God’s teeth! What kind of specter ‘tis Beth that she can come and go thus? And what did she want? Was she a fairy? Had she come to charm him, to take his seed as fairies were want to do whenever they wanted a human bairn, and God help him, he’d obliged? Or, God forbid, had she come from some other place to claim his soul?
    “Duncan, please...” She held out her hands in supplication. “It’s the ring.”
    “BACK WITH YE! I dinna ken ye or why ye be here, but leave !” 
    Fear he understood and routinely dealt with in battle, but the terror now surging through his blood and causing his muscles to quake and his breath to catch felt altogether foreign. As foreign as his ladywife’s ability to disappear then reappear at will.
    Fresh tears slid down her cheeks. “I don’t understand this anymore than you do. But I’m still me, just plain ol’ Katherine Elizabeth MacDougall Pudding who belongs in New York with her roaches and Chinese take-out, and I’m as frightened by this as you are.” She wrung her hands. “Actually, I’m way past frightened, Duncan, I’m truly terrified.” She reached out.
    “Nay!” He used the claymore to keep her at a safe distance, and then circled the tip at her heart for good measure.
    To his utter surprise she leaned into it, piercing the tender flesh over her breastbone. Before he could think—to either press his advantage or wonder why she did it—she uttered a wee cry and backed off the gleaming steel.
    Shaking and pale, she looked down at the wee scarlet burn that flowed down her chest. “See, I’m just flesh and blood.”
    Dumbfounded, he growled and raised his shaking blade over his shoulder.
    She searched his face for only a moment before collapsing at his feet like a dropped puppet. Her shoulders shook as she buried her face in her hands. She started to sob. As she rocked on her knees, her arms now clutching her middle, his blade hovered above the fair skin of her long exposed neck.
    Self-preservation caused him to inhale deeply, his body readying to wield his sword.
    His heart jolted when she keened, “ Why God? Why, when all I ever asked out of life was for someone to love?”
     
     
     
    Chapter 22
     
    A gust of air swished past her cheek and the claymore dropped with an ungodly clang to the floor.
    “Ah, Christ’s blood, Beth.”
    Slowly she raised her face to look into Duncan’s eyes. Not seeing death staring back, she released her