The Highlander’s Lost Bride (The Highlands Warring Scottish Romance) (A Medieval Historical Romance Book)

by Anne Morrison

  “You're the reason I'm in here.”

  “I don't care. I want to get out. And now, you are going to get me out of here and take me north. Now. Tonight. With you.”

  Rage welled up in Aidan at Margaret's demands, but it wasn't just rage. Right alongside it, just as strong or maybe stronger, was a feeling of pride and relief, of recognition as well.

  She's still her. Same bullheaded, pig-stubborn and determined girl.

  Margaret actually bared her teeth when he laughed, shaking his head.

  “Do not underestimate me, Aidan! I will do it; you don't know what I'm capable of.”

  “As a matter of fact, I do. All right. I'll take you north.”

  When she looked at him, there was nothing guarded in her face. It was as if all of the years had slipped away, leaving her as vulnerable as she had been at the age of eighteen, her eyes raw and wounded, her lips slightly parted as if they had been kissing.

  She looked as if there were a dozen things she wanted to say and do, but then she shut her mouth with a snap.

  “All right. Come on. I can get us out of the castle, but we need to move fast.”

  Aidan followed her, marveling at how well she had planned their escape. She knew the movements of the guards, and she wended her way through the bailey, sticking to the shadows with a single-minded tenacity. They left through the small gate that he had used to enter, and it seemed that the moment they passed through it, the alarm went up. Aidan had no idea if they had come into his cell to find it empty or if the blond English lord had discovered his prize gone.

  With a muffled curse, he grabbed up Margaret's hand and started to run, crashing across the empty land by the castle and getting to the forest as fast as he could.

  "Do you think they saw us?" Margaret gasped once they were under cover of the branches. For some reason, Aidan found it oddly difficult to let go of her hand.

  "It doesn't matter," he said shortly. "All I know is that we need to put as much distance between this place and us as soon as we can."

  To his surprise, Margaret laughed, a bright sound that contrasted oddly with the dark trees around them. He wondered if he had only imagined her squeezing his hand again as they ran.

  It didn't matter. Behind them, they could hear the castle burst to life. The guards did not seem particularly good at what they did, but Aidan had always believed that sometimes luck won out over skill, and he did not care to test it that day.

  "Come on, come on," he whispered under his breath. "Don't you dare have gone astray."

  To his relief, Bram was exactly where he had left him, grazing by a fast-running stream. When Aidan and Margaret approached, the large black gelding lifted his head almost expectantly, as if wondering what had taken Aidan so very long.

  "Is that Corwin?" asked Margaret in surprise. "Aidan, did you steal your father's horse?"

  "No," he said shortly, because it would take too long to tell her that both his father and his father's prize stallion was dead. "Come on, we need to be away, lass."

  "Wait, wait. I have an idea."

  He blinked when Margaret reached for her cloak. It was a fine thing in blue wool, cut even and embroidered with small white berries. Margaret unpinned it from around her shoulders, and with a spinning motion, threw it dead into the center of the stream. As they watched, it billowed up from the water slightly, and then started to follow the current south.

  "There," she said, coming back to stand next to him "If they see that, perhaps they'll think we went south instead of north."

  "Clever," Aidan said, pulling her up behind him on Bram's broad back. "But you're going to be cold now."

  "I'd rather be frozen into an icicle than return to Maras Castle," Margaret spat, which was interesting to say the least. "I don't care."

  "As you say, then."

  He touched his heels to Bram's sides, and then they were off and away. The black gelding was as fine a horse as Aidan had ever owned, fleet of foot and response to the lightest gesture, but tonight, Aidan couldn't appreciate his horse's good qualities. Instead, he was focused on the woman seated behind him, the one who, despite setting her hands on his shoulders, was doing her level best not to touch him.

  "Put your arms around me," he snapped finally. "I will not corrupt your English virtue if you touch me."

  "I wasn't... Oh, it doesn't matter."

  Margaret's tone was impatient, but she leaned into his back, her arms coming down to wrap around his waist instead. Aidan was shocked by how familiar it still was, how all of a sudden, it felt as if they were back on MacKinnon lands, riding with the wind rushing at them and free as they never would be again.

  Aidan shook off the pang it sent through him. They were not those people anymore, and they never would be again.

  Behind him, he could hear the distant sounds of pursuit, of men and horses, and that meant trouble. Evading capture would take all of his skill, so he bent his mind and his will to the task at hand.

  Still, he could not pull all of his mind away from the woman who clung to him as if he could fix the entire world, the one he had never thought he would see again.

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  chapter 7

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  For one terrifying moment, Margaret was falling. In her dream, she had been flying, but between one moment and the next, she had forgotten the trick of it and gone pinwheeling toward the unforgiving ground below.

  In the middle of her fall, she had woken up and realized that while flying was a dream, falling wasn't, and the ground was rushing at her with an alarming speed. She opened her mouth to shout, but then a strong arm looped around her waist, dragging her back up onto the horse's back.

  "You told me twice that you weren't asleep, but now I suspect you were lying at least one of those times," Aidan said, amusement in his voice.

  "I was awake, just... not for the last little while. Where are we?"

  Maras Castle sat on a forested plain, but now she could see that they had left it far behind. Steep rock walls rose up on either side of them, and from the trickle of water that ran alongside the path the gelding trod, she could see that it was water that had carved out this ravine so long ago. The rising sun painted the walls that it could reach with gold, bronze, and ocher, and something about the sight made Margaret take a deep breath that she sorely needed.

  "I don't know the name of it, but it will serve us well whether we know its name or not. I came this way when I was traveling south, and a man who lived close by told me that it was easier to throw a lance through a wedding ring than it was to track anything through these ravines."

  "Oh. That's good, I suppose," Margaret said.

  The ravine, with its walls of banded rock and its spare greenery growing up the walls, was a gorgeous place, but she was not in any shape to appreciate it. Her entire body felt sore, and she was just getting up her nerve to ask about a rest when Aidan pulled the horse to a halt.

  "All right. That’s what I was looking for."

  At first, she couldn't see what he was looking at, and then she realized that there was a cave mouth beside them, partially shielded by a jut in the rock. It was large, tall enough for the horse to enter without concern, and trailing along behind Aidan, Margaret looked around curiously.

  The cave itself was narrow at the front but opened up to a larger cavern beyond, the forepart of it just barely lit by the sunlight that had found its way to the bottom of the ravine. Despite the damp November air, the cave felt drier than not, and when she touched the ground, she found it hard-packed clay rather than mud.

  "Are we staying here for a while?" she asked, and Aidan raised an eyebrow.

  "If you need something a bit more luxurious, I can point you back toward your lover's castle."

  "He's not my lover, and I would sleep in this cave for the rest of my life before I went back there," Margaret retorted.

  Aidan laughed, but she wondered if there was an edge to it. She opened her mouth to
ask him, but he was busy pulling his gear from Bram's back, talking to the horse gently and praising him for the hard work he had done that day.

  Why in the world do I feel jealous of a blasted horse?

  Aidan glanced at her.

  "You can wait here while I get us some firewood."

  She made a face at him, following behind instead of waiting.

  "I don't know who you think you brought back from Maras Castle, MacTaggart, but I didn't become useless the moment I set foot on English soil, any more than you did. I can gather wood as well as I could back then, thank you."

  She wondered if she saw the ghost of a smile on his face as they went out to carefully gather wood from the ravine. It took longer than she wanted it to, but they gathered enough dry wood to keep a fire going, and she even found a late berry bush, sheltered from the birds and laden with blackberries that were small but powerfully sweet. She filled her skirts with the berries and brought them back to the cave. They wouldn't be staying long enough for her to properly dry them by the fire, but they would be just as good eaten fresh.

  Margaret smiled. She hadn't had to think about where her food had come from in years, and she already felt more like herself. Then she wondered if she really was so fickle as that, so prone to change, like water that took the shape of whatever container it was in. She shook her head. Right now, it was more important to find food than it was to plan a dinner for her father's friends, or to perfect her needlework, and that was fine.

  Margaret watched as Aidan patiently built up the fire, watching him through half-closed eyes. He was and wasn't the boy she had remembered, the man she had left. Was it a good thing or a bad thing? She couldn't let herself think about it.

  "How long are we going to stay here?" she asked instead. "That's a big fire if we're only staying for a little while."

  Aidan glanced at her as if he had forgotten she was there entirely, and then a small voice in the back of her head told her that that simply wasn't true. He had been aware of her even when his back was turned, and that sent a strange thrill up her back.

  "You're right. We're staying all day, sleeping if we can. We'll strike the trail tonight, after it gets dark."

  “We're going to travel in the dark?” Margaret asked, a little shocked. Even in the North, most people didn't like to spend much time out of doors at night unless there was a festival on.

  Aidan flashed her a bright grin.

  “We are. I can navigate by the stars well enough, and there are no spots dangerous enough to break poor Bram's leg. We're fugitives now, so we should start thinking like we are.”

  Margaret nodded, and when it was clear that she was not going to argue with him, he set about making up a rough camp that would serve them throughout the day. Aidan kept the fire small, but it was enough to warm them a little bit, and even to heat some of the rounds of bread he had stowed in his bag. The bread was hard, and the dried rabbit that he had to eat with it was gamey, but the moment the food was in front of Margaret, she realized that she was incredibly hungry. She had been going without food more often than not since her father had died, she realized, too nervous or grieved to eat. This was the first time she had had anything resembling an appetite in what felt like forever, and she ate with a will. The food was plain, but good, and she was a little startled to feel how satisfied she was after it was gone.

  She looked up to see that Aidan was watching her, a slight smile on his lips. She scowled, wondering if he was laughing over her gluttony, but when he spoke, his voice was gentle.

  “Did they not feed you, Meggie?”

  “My father fed me very well, thank you,” she said with a toss of her head. “I was only hungry.”

  Aidan didn't say anything else, but she could feel his eyes on her, sharp, but for a mercy, not unkind.

  “You keep looking at me,” she said finally. “Why?”

  “Why shouldn't I? You brought me down from the North like an ill wind. Perhaps I came all this way to look at you, to see how you've grown and what you've become.”

  “What have you learned from that?”

  He shrugged, and she wondered if there was some kind of confusion in it, something that Aidan himself couldn't begin to unravel. The English would say that there was something beastly in him, something that had more of a beast's cunning than a man's wisdom, but they would be so wrong. Aidan was a genius on the battlefield and clever off of it, but there was a humor to him as well, and a gentleness that somehow, despite everything else that had happened to them, she could still feel. That he couldn't understand what stretched between them was, in a way, comforting, because she didn't understand it either.

  “The world is a very strange place, sometimes, Meggie. I never thought to see you again.”

  Margaret didn't want to think about why that was; that way lay memories that were shrouded in thorns for her.

  “You keep calling me Meggie. No one does that anymore.”

  “Are you telling me to stop?”

  “I... I don't know. It is strange to hear that name again, on your lips and in your voice. If you never thought to see me again, I never thought to hear that again, either.”

  “What did your father call you when you were at home?”'

  She tensed a little at the mention of her father, but Aidan's voice was neutral, even kind. She had not come to expect kindness from him, and she warned herself not to let down her guard.

  “He called me his girl, most often. Margaret or his pearl as well. I don't know why you want to know.”

  “Because I don't know you any longer. Sometimes, I wonder if I ever did. I am learning now.”

  Though Margaret had told herself that she would not be baited by this man, would not allow herself to fall into pointless arguments with him, she prickled at that.

  “That's unfair. There was... there was a time when we knew each other so well. I thought I knew you better than I knew the slopes of Crinnan's Mountain, and...”

  Aidan had been poking at the fire with a stick, but now he looked up. Yes, she thought, with an internal shiver, she could perhaps see where the English had learned to call the Highlanders barbarians. Aidan had barely moved, but now there was something in his eyes that looked very much as if it could strike first and not care overmuch how it left the world after. There was something savage in his eyes, a smoldering anger that left her feeling oddly shaken.

  “I knew you not at all, Margaret, and you will not lie and say that I did. What we are doing now, with me taking you back to the North, it is because you have forced my hand and for no other reason. I never knew you then, and I sure as hell do not know you now.”

  His words were simple, and nothing but the truth, but still, it left her feeling as if she had been gutted and left for dead. Her hand raised from her side, as if she would reach for him, imploring him for understanding or raised to smack some sense into him, but she let it fall again.

  “Of course, you are right,” she said, her own voice as unforgiving as steel. “Of course, you know what is best and what should be done. You always do, don't you?”

  The problem with having a shared history was whether he admitted he did so or not, he knew all of her weak points, all the sore places. The mercy of having a shared history was that she knew his as well.

  They watched each other across the fire, one side to the darkness and the silent clay of the cave, the other to the rain that had begun to fall outside. Margaret wondered who in the world could save them from this terrible thing that lived between them, that bared its teeth and flashed its claws whenever they grew too close.

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  chapter 8

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  Aidan stood by the mouth of the cave for a long time, watching the light in the ravine change as the sun rose. He was still enough that he saw deer and fierce birds come down to drink, and it brought him a measure of peace. When the rain started to gently patter down, he was pleased. It would churn the trail to mud a
nd make them even harder to find. He didn't think that the ravine would flood so very late in the year, but they could be up and gone before it got very bad even if it did.

  Behind him, he could hear Margaret moving around their rough camp, and he was struck by another night they had spent in the wilds, not in a cave, but in a bower built from a weaving of fallen branches. He remembered the scent of sweet flowers and a cool spring wind that had made them hang on to each other, so certain that what they had would last forever.

  Aidan shook that thought away. His path was clear, and he would only muddy it needlessly by thinking back to a past that no longer existed anymore, that perhaps had never existed at all.

  When he turned back around, confident that they would not be disturbed until nightfall, he saw that she had curled up on the bare ground, beneath another dress she had pulled from her bag. It was wool, of a fine weave and a fine color, but it was no blanket. Aidan frowned when he remembered throwing her cloak into the water to throw the English off of their scent. It was a fine trick, and he wondered absently if old Alec MacKinnon, the retired Laird of Clan MacKinnon, had taught it to her. Perhaps it had even been her own father, the English lord, and he shook the thought away. If he couldn't think about her as the lively girl she had once been, he probably shouldn't spend much time considering who she was now. He had a job to do. He would do it, and then he would return to his own people and his real responsibilities.

  He settled down close to her, wrapping his cloak around his own body. It was a thick and coarse piece of green wool. During the day, it was pinned at his shoulder to serve as a rough kind of cloak, but when he lay down to sleep, it kept the ground from leaching away his heat.

  Aidan did his best to fall asleep, but it was impossible to avoid hearing Margaret. She shifted on the clay underneath them, twisting and turning to find whatever comfort she could, but he knew well enough that there was none to be found. At some point, she drifted off into a restless sleep, but she murmured when she did so, something he couldn't remember her doing before. When she had slept in his arms, she was as silent as a drowsing cat, but now there was a kind of restlessness to her. Once or twice, he wondered if he heard a sob.