“I sent that letter a month ago. I did not think you were coming.”
She spoke like an Englishwoman now, Aidan noted, all of the North scrubbed out of her voice. Had her English father forced her, or had she done it herself, giving up everything she had been to become the beautiful, wealthy woman she was now?
“And yet here I am. The way is long in the North, and hard as well, if you remember, and I cannot so easily break away from my duties. I am the laird, now.”
“Your father is dead, then.”
There was something strange in the way she said it, sorrowful but not sorry, that made him look at her, but she looked away.
“My father is as well,” she whispered. “Just three months ago.”
Aidan didn't have it in him to pretend to be sorry that an English lord was dead. The Earl of Norwich had never entered into the pitched battles for the North, so far as Aidan knew, but there was no way he could be innocent of Scottish blood.
“Yes. I heard on the road down and also that his successor had been anointed by the Church and the Crown.”
“Yes, Harry Stratham is the new Earl of Norwich, and my new guardian.”
“And you think he won't keep you in the dresses and jewelry you have come to expect?”
Margaret reeled back as if he had slapped her, and there was actually a part of Aidan that hated himself for saying it. It wasn't as if she had been a girl with a proper place in a clan and a family. She had grown up on sufferance on the edge of MacKinnon lands, half-English and a bastard besides. Even Aidan, with no love lost for the English, would not have begrudged her making the choice that she did if she hadn't turned down the choice he had offered her first.
“You have no idea what you are talking about. You cannot come here and speak to me like that.”
“If you want to tell me what's going on, Meggie, darling, please do. As it is, I have come all the way south for no good reason but a letter from a woman I should by all rights hate, and I can talk to you however I please.”
Aidan held her gaze, and while she didn't look away, he could see her do some fast thinking. She really wasn't the same woman he had fallen in love with, and he reminded himself to be careful with her. He couldn't trust her any longer, if he ever could in the first place.
“I want you to take me home,” she said finally, and Aidan stared at her.
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chapter 3
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Too many emotions tumbled through Margaret when she saw Aidan. She could not name them or tease them apart from one another, and she felt the reserve that she had built up, brick by brick, stone by stone, start to crumble to the ground. Her father's death had started that deterioration, but now Aidan MacTaggart, who letter or no, she had never expected to come for her, was completing it.
She had no defenses against him, and he proved it when she felt a blaze of pain cross her heart at his harsh words. It was the most real thing she had felt since her father died, and some dark part of her wanted to be grateful for it.
When Aidan MacTaggart, who she had loved as much as her heart knew how to do it, looked at her and raked his green eyes up and down her dress and her jewelry, the words that she had wanted to say to him, the truth, died in her throat. Her pride made her lift her chin, and she couldn't tell him about the humiliation of Harry Stratham's hands on her, of how the new Earl of Norwich had looked at her and pawed at her and whispered things that made her skin crawl.
“I want you to take me home,” she repeated. “I need to see my mother.”
Aidan's eyes narrowed, making the scar under his eye twitch. She could still remember that scar when it was new, when her own mother had patched the skin together as if it were mending she had taken in.
“Write to her to see if she wants to bear the sight of you, and then make your fine earl take you. There's a peace on now, and it might even last long enough for you to spend Christmas with her.”
“She's my mother, and there's no one to read her any letters I send. You should know that. I have not laid eyes on her since I left, and now that my father's dead, I want to see her again.”
That, at least, was the truth. She missed Alice Barton so much, and some days, it felt as if that grief never lessened from when she had ridden away from the cottage she had grown up in.
Aidan shook his head at her.
“And.... so what you're telling me is that that pitiful little letter you sent me, the one where you told me that I was the only one who could help you, that you might actually die? What was all of that?”
Margaret bit her lip.
“It was a lie to make you come.”
The rage that swept over Aidan's face was almost terrifying. He reached for her, closing his hand around her wrist and pulling her toward him. It should have reminded her of Harry's touch, Harry's aggression, but somehow, it didn't. This was Aidan, and he might be furious with her, but he would never hurt her. She stared into his face, her jaw set, and faced his wrath.
“You lied to me? You dragged me down from the North, made me spend two weeks on the road dealing with the English, on the basis of a lie?”
“Would you have come if I had said anything else?”
“Maybe you should have tried!”
“Tried and failed, more like it! Aidan, I needed you, and you came.”
“And now, I'm going.”
He released her wrist and stood, moving halfway past her before she realized what was going on and grabbed him by a fold of his sleeve.
“You can't! You can't leave me here like this!”
“Who's going to stop me, Meggie? Are you going to call all those guards in and let them see you with some strange Highlander in your arms? They might run me through, but I wouldn't like to see what they do to you.”
She stood, slightly startled all over again by how tall he was. She was used to being able to look most men in the eye, especially in England, but Aidan towered above her. She felt a shiver of something go through her, and maybe there was fear woven through it, but more than that, there was heat, something that made her think of the glowing metal of a blacksmith's forge.
“Don't leave me,” she whispered, and she saw something besides rage come into his eyes.
She remembered this, being so very close to him, and she could see that he did, too. There was a time when he had been as close to her as her own skin, and even if she hadn't let her mind remember for years, her heart did. Her body did.
“Damn you,” he growled, but grief and longing twined with the fury, and then he was dragging her into his arms.
She leaned forward into the heat of him, and even his smell was familiar. He smelled like wool and smoke and the open mountain air, and how in the world had she not died in England without it, without him? His hard hand cupped her cheek, making her tilt her face up, and then his mouth came down hard on hers.
There was nothing kind about his kiss, nothing in the least gentle. Instead, it was a ravaging, a demand, and out of an instinct that she didn't even know she had, she lifted her head and answered it. His tongue pressed into her mouth as if he needed to taste her, and Margaret opened for him, clinging to him as he took her mouth with his.
It was a consuming kiss that took everything from her, but in return, it gave her a warmth deep inside that she was afraid had been extinguished forever. She remembered that warmth, and she cried out softly into Aidan's mouth. It was as if her heart had started to beat again after she had kept it in a sealed box for eight years.
Margaret whimpered when she felt his hands in her hair, loosening her braids with almost frantic need. His fingers threading through her loose hair sent a shiver of pleasure through her that made her press herself harder against him. She missed him, she wanted him, and now that he was here in her arms again, who in the world knew what was going to happen?
“You can't,” Aidan growled into her ear. “You can't do this to me, not again, Margaret. You don't have the right
...”
“I'm not doing anything,” she whispered. “You were the one who kissed me.”
It was only partially true. If he stepped away from her right now, she would fall down on her face. She needed him just as much as he needed her, and in that moment, she didn't have to be without him anymore. She wanted to close her eyes and luxuriate in what that meant, but instead, she took a deep breath, and somehow, somehow, made herself step back.
Margaret had learned a great deal since she had left Scotland. She had learned to dance, she had learned to cover up a sob with a smile, and she had learned how to talk as if she had never eaten an apple while dangling her sore feet into a frigidly cold mountain stream. She had learned to access a well of cold in her that she had never thought existed before, and she reached into it now.
“Did you like that?” she asked, her voice only trembling a little bit.
For a moment, Aidan stared at her, and she ached. She had already hurt him terribly once before in their lives together, and she had had no idea that she could still do it. There was a part of her that wanted to take it back, and while she was at it, she wanted to take all of it back as well—all the time apart, her decision to go to England in the first place, all of it. As her mother had always said, however, time only flowed one way, and she had to live with the world as it was.
“Little witch,” Aidan swore, and when he would have stormed past her, she put a hand on his chest. He could have knocked her away like he was swatting a fly, but her hand there, gentle and open, stopped him as surely as brick wall would have done.
“Well?”
“I see you have learned plenty of tricks in the South,” Aidan said bitterly. “And you know I did.”
“I can give you more than that,” she said, and this time, her voice didn't shake at all.
Aidan snarled at her, but he didn't move.
“This is what you have come to, then?”
“It says something about you as well if you are going to say yes,” she said, and for a moment, she thought that Aidan's pride would force him to leave. She was certain that she had failed and overplayed her hand. His disgust for her and what she had become, his very pride, would have overcome any desire for her.
Then something flat came over his expression, and she dared to breathe again.
“Tell me.”
“Take me home to my mother. Take me back to Scotland. If you do... you can use me as you like until we arrive.”
It should have been no different than what Harry was asking of her. Harry wanted to bed her on a satin bed, and Aidan would have bedded her in a barn, but in the end, it was all the same. It was a man using her body, and the only difference was that she would never look at Harry Stratham and feel as if a hot fire had been lit in her belly.
They locked eyes, and this time, Aidan was the one who looked away. His answer, though, wasn't what she thought it would be.
“Never say anything like that to me again. I swear to all Heaven that I do not care what you have done here, and what you have become, but do not say that to me again.”
“Aidan...”
“Write a letter to your mother. I swear on my honor as the Laird of Clan MacTaggart that I will read it for her. That is all I will do for you, Meggie Barton. You make take it or leave it as you choose.”
Margaret wanted to fall to her knees in pain. She wrapped her arms around herself as if that would hold her together, and she saw Aidan reach for her before he stopped himself.
“All right,” she said, her throat tight. “I'll be back with a letter. Give me just a little bit of time.”
“Don't make it too long. I may leave.”
She bared her teeth at him, and to her surprise, he pressed his thumb gently against her chin.
“There you are,” he said. “I didn't think they could get to all of you.”
She jerked her head away, furious with him, furious and sick with all of it. What did it matter to him what was left of her, what had gone? What made it his right?
“I'll be fast,” she said, and she walked out of the chapel.
She walked quickly up to her room, pulling out quill and parchment from the small box close by her bed. The letter was swift but clear, and after she sealed it, Margaret reached for the box that held her jewelry as well. She tumbled the gold necklaces, the ruby pendant, the pair of if sapphire earrings that had been a present from her father, into a small bag and threw the letter in on top of them.
Even if she gets a pittance for them, it'll be better than letting Harry admire them on me.
She started to make her way back down to the chapel, but a commotion in the bailey made her stop and look at one of the arrow-slit windows. What she saw made her gasp.
It was Aidan, out from the chapel and fighting two men who had obviously pulled him out of the chapel. The men on the wall were crying out in alarm, torches were being lit, and Margaret felt the coldest fear she had ever known come over her.
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chapter 4
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Aidan watched Margaret leave, and he felt as if his heart had turned to lead. All this way to play messenger boy, but if he stopped and thought about it too hard, he would find that he wasn't even angry about that.
No, what made him furious was the idea that Margaret—his Meggie—would look him in the eye and tell him he could have her if he only did what she said. That he could have the right to touch her, to kiss her, to do whatever he liked, if he would pay her. Coin or his protection, it didn't matter. It only came to one thing, and it made him sick.
Well, no. It made him sick to think of her making the same offer to someone else. What the hell was even happening in the South? She had left with a man who was supposed to be her father, who had sworn to love her and to cherish her as if she were his daughter by law as well as by blood. When had she decided that her virtue was worth less than something she couldn't easily get for herself?
The fury was all directed at him, and he knew it was going to keep him awake on many dark nights to come. He would always know how close he had come to wanting her, to needing her so much that he had almost said yes, and to hell with what it meant about him. He would always hate himself for almost saying yes, and there was already a part of him that hated himself for saying no.
What a terrible thing it is to love someone else, he thought almost absently, and then the door opened.
There was a reason that when a spy had been called for, his younger brother Reade had been the right choice. Reade thought like a spy, cautious and careful, while Aidan never would. When the door opened, he turned around expecting it to be Margaret again, fast as she had promised. Of course, it wasn't.
Instead, there were two men there, one slightly behind the other. For a single furious moment, Aidan thought that, angered by his refusal to help her, she must have sent the men for him. Then he saw their shocked faces at his presence, and he knew that it was just luck, pure bad luck.
Why should I be surprised? Bad luck follows her wherever she goes, like a black cat trailing along after her hems.
"You!" said one man loudly. "What are you doing here?"
Maybe there was a way that this could be salvaged. He was not as skilled a spy as Reade, but he was no fool.
"I only came in to get out of the wet," he said, remembering to disguise his thick accent at the last moment.
"This is the chapel of Earl of Norwich, not some stall where you can sleep off your drunk," snapped the guard. "Come on and get out with you."
Well, that was that. Aidan picked up his cloak and moved up the aisle. He could wait around the area for another day, maybe two, and perhaps Margaret could get her message to him some other way. He couldn't wait any longer than that. He had been away from his beloved Highlands too long already, and the stink of this many Englishmen made him want to growl.
He made to move past the men at the doorway of the chapel, and all would have been well if they had let him
pass. The other man, however, smaller than the one who had spoken and with a rather weaselly look to him, aimed a kick at Aidan as he went by.
"Cursed beasts, no better than pigs or Scotsmen," he snickered, and Aidan acted without thinking.
He saw the kick coming, not fast enough to deflect it entirely, but quickly enough to dodge it. When the man who had tried to kick him stepped forward, Aidan knocked his foot against the man's buckling knee and stomped down hard on his foot, shearing down the man's shin as he did so.
"Careful where you put that leg," he said shortly.
The man fell to the ground, gasping with pain, but the other man stared at Aidan.
"Where did you say you were from again?" he asked, and Aidan realized with a sinking stomach that he had used his own accent, rough, Northern and natural, and at this point, there was no longer a point to this game.
So, that means it’s time to change it to one I know better.
He drew his own sword, dealing the approaching man a blow that he barely blocked. The strength of the blow was enough to push the man back, and that was all Aidan wanted at this point. He had to get clear of Maras Castle and get himself gone.
When one man was still puling on the floor and the other sent staggering back, Aidan ran out of the chapel. Something in his heart tore at the idea of leaving Margaret, but there was nothing to be done now, not when the call was going to go up and send every Englishman in the castle after him.
He stepped out into the bailey and growled with frustration. There was another guard headed toward him, torch in hand.
"You said you'd come back to finish dicing after you'd done your rounds, Gunther," the man said, and then Aidan was nearly on top of him, swinging his sword wide.
Aidan was a deadly fighter when he wanted to be, but he was also the Laird of Clan MacTaggart and a follower of Robert the Bruce. He had sworn to follow Scotland's true king in word and in deed, and Robert wanted peace.
Aidan dealt the startled man a ringing blow on the side of his head with the flat of his sword, and he was just thinking that he might get away with it after all when he felt someone coming up behind him. It was the man he had pushed back in the chapel, coming up on him with a grim purpose, and Aidan snarled.
The Highlander’s Lost Bride (The Highlands Warring Scottish Romance) (A Medieval Historical Romance Book) Page 2
