The Highlander's Promise Read online

  Even in the rain, she amended to herself.

  “Maybe he’ll catch a chill and die,” she said out loud, trying to infuse some hope into the situation. But it did nothing to cheer her, and she couldn’t help but imagine her da’s face when he returned home on the morrow. How disappointed he would be with her. Again.

  Finley blew out the lamp and turned over to face the wall in the dark, where she could neither see nor feel evidence of her tears.

  * * * *

  “It doesn’t make good sense,” Vaughn Hargrave said aloud, his words falling flat against the rough stone walls and sliding down along with the rivulets of dark water and patches of furry scum. His hands dangled between his knees, the finely turned pelican in his right hand nodding as he gestured with it. “How many times must one man die before he is actually dead?”

  He turned his head to look at his companion. The man only stared back at him wordlessly, but Vaughn thought perhaps there were tears in his eyes.

  “Yes,” Vaughn sighed with a nod and dropped his gaze back down to his stained boots. “My feelings precisely. So frustrating! Argh!” Normally he wouldn’t slouch on a stool in such a common manner, especially in the presence of another person, but his exasperation was getting the better of him this evening. He needed the comfort of the vault, and he needed the company.

  And besides, the servant would never say anything to betray his lord’s abnormal display of melancholy.

  “I thought I had dealt with him myself,” Vaughn went on patiently, as if detailing the logic of it would somehow reorder the events. “Shot him through the gut. He should have died in a ditch along the road somewhere. But no! He found someone to take him in! Can you imagine?”

  The servant sighed.

  “Yes—who would do such a thing? A peasant looking for loose coins, that’s who.” Vaughn shook his head. “Meg found him, though—I knew she would. Even though she betrayed me in the end, I knew if anyone could find him, it was she. I am an excellent judge of people, as you know.”

  Vaughn Hargrave hummed to himself, his thoughts working around each other in an intricate dance in his head and he observed them, looking for the pattern, trying to predict the order of it.

  “But I saw his body on that hillside,” he said in a low tone. “I felt the cooling flesh with my own hand—there is no other sensation like it, of that I can attest.” He perked up and looked at the servant again. “If you’d like to see, I can—no? Suit yourself. But he was dead. His cloak, his blade, his hair—his brains on the ground. Dead.”

  Hargrave tapped the cool, sticky metal of the pelican against his other palm. “And dead he stayed until Lucan Montague carried him into London. Lucan Montague, of all people! That snot-nosed brat repays my kindness by resurrecting Thomas Annesley! The ingratitude is appalling.”

  He stood from the stool, his irritation provoking him to physical restlessness once more. He paced the width of the vault, the soles of his boots making delicious, gummy whispers on the soft floor.

  “The king was remiss in not having him hanged straightaway, yes. His Majesty cannot escape his share of responsibility. But what can you do with royalty?” Vaughn held out his hands beseechingly. “If it soothes Henry to think Thomas Annesley jumped to his death, I shall not disabuse him of the fantasy. It only plays to my benefit as the last documents for Darlyrede are settled—a dead man can make no dispute. But after the debacle at the shit pile that is Roscraig, you and I both know that Thomas Annesley is not dead, and that I simply cannot abide. I can’t, and I won’t.”

  Vaughn stopped his pacing to stare at the dark, stony wall, marbled with moss and mineral-striped water, old crusts of matter too diverse to ever know their sources.

  “I think Lucan Montague might have believed him,” Hargrave mused aloud. “And since Montague first alerted Tavish Cameron of his inheritance, it stands to reason that the pious whelp’s next destination could only be Carson Town. If only he had stayed in France.”

  He turned from the wall and walked toward the servant. The man seemed to squirm excitedly, but Hargrave would not reward impatience.

  “If the emerging pattern I’m detecting is consistent, Thomas Annesley will surely follow the very man who apprehended him into the wilds of the Highlands. I will not make the mistake of leaving anyone on that godforsaken mountain alive this time, I assure you.” He reached out and stroked the man’s wet head above the cage around his face and then raised the pelican in his hand and clicked the metal arms together gaily as he peered in the man’s held-open mouth.

  “Ah, only twelve more to go,” he said, gesturing toward the small pile of teeth lying in the metal bowl near the man’s head.

  The servant gave an odd, gurgling cry in the back of his throat.

  “All right, then. If you can wait no longer,” Hargrave said with an indulgent smile.

  Chapter 7

  Finley heard Lachlan Blair’s return to the farm early the next morning, but she sat at the table in the main room for the better part of an hour, staring at the plate of oatcakes she’d made, waiting for him to knock at the door so that she could bid him to enter with a smug look firmly in place. He’d been miserable all night, she just knew it.

  But the knock never came. And by the time the dawn had grown enough to illumine the small, high-set windows, Finley knew it was only a matter of time before her parents and the rest of the town returned. She couldn’t put off her chores any longer; Da would check on the animals first thing, and he would learn of Finley’s failure directly from Lachlan Blair. Murdoch might be with him as well.

  That is, unless Lachlan Blair had done nothing more than retrieve his horse. He may have met her kin on the road back to Town Blair.

  Finley pushed back her chair with a screech and stood, snatching the plate and mug from the tabletop with a glare. She marched out the door and up the hill around the front of the longhouse, along the stone wall and toward the barn, where she heard the rhythmic ring of a hammer on metal. She paused in her march, blowing out a shallow breath of relief; at least she wouldn’t be humiliated by her family encountering her new husband as he fled from her. But now she seriously considered assisting him in wearing the breakfast she carried. Finley charged forward, her spirit renewed.

  She found him in the narrow center aisle of the barn, his feet braced apart as he lifted the hammer in his right hand high above his head. In his left hand, he held a hinge against her da’s old, misshapen anvil.

  He was wearing no shirt, and his skin glistened from whatever efforts he’d been about that morning, his long hair pulled back once more into the queue he’d worn that day in the wood. The sight of him so scantily clothed caused Finley to rock to a halt, her skirts swinging about her ankles like a bell about the clapper of her legs.

  He caught sight of her and paused his actions, standing straight and dropping his arm. “Good morning,” he said in a guarded tone. “This hinge was bent. Caused the paddock gate to drag. Thought I’d knock it out.”

  “A ram kicked it,” she offered lamely. “Da hasn’t had time to take the gate apart.”

  He looked to the dishes in her hands. “Are those for me?”

  “Aye,” Finley said stiffly with a little lift of her chin. His stomach was rippled, his waist nearly as narrow as hers.

  “About time,” he said, tossing the hinge and the hammer atop the anvil with a clatter and moving toward her.

  “You could have come inside and got them yourself.”

  He took the plate and mug from her and then walked to the little milking stool against the wall, where he lowered himself into a seat. “And have a cleaver thrown at my head as soon as I opened the door?” He shook his head and then took a sip of the warmed milk before nestling it into the midst of a little pile of straw and picking up a bannock and stuffing half of it into his mouth.

  Finley had thought of a score of things to say to Lachlan Bla
ir while she’d been alone this morning: rules for living at the farm, his responsibilities. How he could and could not interact with her. But she could not call one of them to mind as she watched the man sitting on her father’s milking stool in his smooth skin. She’d never seen a man shaped like him before. His muscles dense and exaggerated, his chest and shoulders seeming as wide as the barn aisle itself.

  He looked up at her and swallowed, licked his lips. “Did you make these?”

  Finley nodded.

  “They’re good,” he said, stuffing another into his mouth.

  “You sound surprised.”

  “I didn’t take you for a woman who cared overmuch for wifely duties, the way you shirked marriage so.”

  “I didn’t shirk marriage,” she argued.

  He paused in midchew, looking up at her.

  “Sure, I objected to being married off for the sake of having a hireling,” she said, and couldn’t help her glance over his naked torso, “but I am beginning to see how that could have its advantages.”

  He laughed, as if surprised, bringing the back of one wrist to his mouth to keep his breakfast contained. He swallowed, his eyes still smiling. “Is that all I need do to give you a civil tongue? Go about with me shirt off?”

  Finley felt a reluctant if slightly embarrassed smile play about her own mouth. “I didna want to marry you, Blair, this I canna deny. And the thought of sharing the place my da’s broke his back for his entire life with someone so full of himself doesna please me. But I willna argue with you about your shirt.”

  His grin was back—the one she remembered so vividly, the one she’d recalled in the nights after their meeting—and it brought a measure of relief to her, like an unclenching of a fist.

  She clasped her hands behind her back and strolled to a support, where she leaned her shoulder. “How did you find the old house?” she asked in a mild tone.

  Lachlan nodded. “Mm. Good. You were right.”

  Finley felt her head draw back in surprise.

  “It was wet, miserable, and freezing,” he supplied. “Just what I needed to remind me where I should be.”

  “In a warm, dry house with a roof over your head?” Finley ventured.

  “Aye, but not Rory Carson’s roof,” Lachlan said, brushing the crumbs from his lap and standing. He reached down and swiped his cup from the straw and drained it, stacked it on the metal plate and then walked toward Finley. “I’m meant to be chief. I was born to it. It’s been stolen from me, by whatever happened between our clans these thirty years ago.” He held the empty dishes toward her.

  Finley glanced down at them but did not take them, looking back up into his face with a frown. “Are you blaming the Carsons for your clan rejecting you?”

  “I don’t know yet who to blame,” Lachlan admitted. “I do doubt that the Blairs would have agreed to whatever it was that brought this town to such loss. But I have an idea that it wasn’t just the Carsons who’ve suffered. And the proof of it might lie in what I found in the ruin.”

  “There’s nothing in the old house,” Finley objected. “I’ve not been inside since I was a girl, but even then—it was rubble.”

  He was looking at her curiously, and his intense stare coupled with the warm scent rolling off his bare skin had quite addled Finley’s brains.

  “What if we could make this all go away?” he asked her in a low voice.

  “Make…make what go away?”

  “This marriage.”

  “But the treaty…”

  “The treaty will stand,” he interjected. “I promise. You could keep your da’s farm for yourself and I could go back to Town Blair and claim my rightful place.”

  Finley narrowed her eyes at him. “And Carson Town would still be owed its allowances.”

  Lachlan nodded. “I’d need your help, though.”

  “What would I have to do?”

  “Take a walk with me later,” he said, pushing the dishes into her hands just as the jingle of approaching riders filled the barn aisle. “Up to the…what did you call it?”

  “The old house.”

  “Let me show you what I found,” he said, pulling his shirt from a peg on the wall and thrusting his head through it. “You tell me what you know about it.”

  Finley nodded. “All right.” She seemed better able to think once his chest was covered, and the ridiculousness of it made her cross. “Don’t think I’ll be bringing your meals to you all the time.”

  Lachlan walked back to the anvil and once more took up the task of straightening the hinge. He raised the hammer and glanced at her with a wink. “I prefer butter and honey with my bannocks.”

  * * * *

  Finley followed Lachlan out the door of the longhouse after the awkward noon meal, during which Ina Carson had beamed knowingly between her daughter and new son-in-law and Rory Carson had kept his eyes fixed wordlessly on his plate.

  “Do you need me, Mam?” Finley asked, fidgeting with the stack of plates on the sideboard. “Lachlan’s asked me to show him about the town.”

  Rory Carson snatched up his faded blue bonnet and smashed it onto his head before exiting the house without comment.

  Ina glanced at the door with a confounded look and then smiled at Finley. “That’s a grand idea! You two go along. There will be plenty to do before supper.”

  They started down the dirt path away from the Carson longhouse, the tiny, early wildflowers bobbing and bowing onto the path and caressing Finley’s skirts in the stiff breeze. She waited until they were over the crest of the hill and heading into the town proper to address Lachlan Blair.

  “What did you do to offend my father?”

  “I was going to ask you the very thing,” Lachlan said. “He’s barely spoken two words since he returned. He wasn’t even pleased that I fixed the gate.”

  Finley smiled to herself. “Aye, well, I think Da’s realizing he’s got what he’s asked for these past years. He’s said he wanted a son-in-law to take over the duties of the farm, but when it comes down to it, I think he doesna want anyone interfering. You probably didn’t straighten the hinge to his liking.”

  “The gate doesna drag through the mud now, does it?”

  “You could be the Christ and Da would have some advice for you on the resurrection. Nothing suits him save for what he does himself.”

  “You take after him, then, eh?”

  Finley shrugged with a smile. “I canna deny it. That’s why I had nae wish to marry, and the same reason he didn’t care who I married. It didn’t matter.”

  “No one would be good enough for either of you?”

  “Something like that,” Finley said, watching her slippers kick out on the road from beneath her skirts. She wouldn’t tell him that every suitor she’d had had only been interested in the farm; she was an afterthought. An inconvenience.

  She thought to change the focus of the conversation, if not the topic. “Who was the girl at the wedding feast?”

  “The dark-haired cow, you mean?”

  She tried to suppress her smile but failed, so she gave up. “Aye.”

  “Searrach. We were to be married,” he said lightly. “Betrothed for nearly a year now. Then, I mean,” he amended. “We’re no longer betrothed, obviously.”

  “She refused you?”

  “Officially it was her father who put an end to the betrothal. Harrell’s never cared much for me. But Searrach didna argue. Seems she has her cap set for Dand, now that Marcas is chief.”

  “So I was right; she is a cow.” Finley felt a tinge of outrage for the man. “Little wonder you were so pissed at the feast.”

  “I wasn’t pissed,” he scoffed.

  “You fell off your horse while you were still in town.”

  “He threw me.”

  “Sure, and then the mad beast found me and led me right to y
ou. He likely worried you’d killed yourself.”

  “He’s a sensitive horse,” Lachlan allowed.

  Finley laughed out loud as they started the climb up to the old house. She felt oddly at ease with this man—officially her husband, unofficially her enemy—much as she had when they’d first met at the falls bridge. There was no pretense between them, and it was a welcome change from the interactions she’d had with the men from the town who’d come courting.

  The sun reflected off the sheer front of the old house with a warm blast as from a forge. Any ornamentation beyond the deepest carvings were gone—erased by wind and rain and ancient fire. The old house jutted from the cliff face with man-made angles all the way up to the top of the hill, above the wood and to the west of the Blair valley, where nothing but scrub and abandoned boulders lived to enjoy the view of the sea. A deep, rich peat bog lay between the cliff and the vale of Loch Acras, difficult to pass by foot and impossible on horseback.

  “I never knew this place existed.” Lachlan came to a stop on the path, his hands on his hips, looking up at the old house. “’Tis older than any Town Carson.”

  “The stories say that it’s Norse—when they invaded and intermarried with the old tribes. Carsons used it for the chief’s family, and as a storehouse for when the trading ships came into the bay. A meeting place for the fine. A stronghold in case of invasion. It was abandoned years before I was born.”

  “At the great battle?”

  “The fire, aye.” She felt his gaze on the side of her face and turned to meet his eyes.

  “How old are you, then?” he asked.

  “A score.” Her cheeks tingled. “Come midsummer.”

  “Good lord,” Lachlan scoffed. “Little wonder you’re such a brat.”

  “At least I have the excuse of youth,” she shot back. “You’d think someone twice my age could hold his mead and keep his seat.”