Tess and the Highlander

by May McGoldrick

  Colin held her hand tightly. “Can you tell me about it?”

  He saw her chin tremble, and then she took a deep breath. “’Tis always night. There are loud noises, all around me…like people screaming. And I see a wee lass running scared. There are dark stains on her nightgown, on her hands and feet. She is clutching something in her hand. And there are footsteps behind her. Someone is about to catch her. And then she comes face to face with a wall of fire. There is no place else to go. And the footsteps are right behind her. I always wake up then. And my chest is pounding. And I am sobbing.”

  Tess’s voice broke, and Colin pulled her against him. She came willingly. As she started crying softly against his chest, he found he had to swallow the knot that had formed in his throat.

  “I’m sorry, Tess. I am very sorry. That wee lass had to be you.” He pressed his lips against her hair. His hand caressed her back. The strong surge of protectiveness rushing through him was as unexpected as it was powerful. There had to be an attack on wherever it was that she lived. But for her to remember and reveal the painful memories made him realize how truly great her trust in him had become. “How did Garth and Charlotte find you?”

  “Washed ashore in the same place where I found you. Unconscious.”

  “Wearing these?” He pointed to the child’s clothing.

  She nodded and pulled out of his embrace. “The things in this box are the only things I have left of that life.” Tess clutched the cross in her fist and brought it to her chest.

  “This cross must be what you are holding in your dream.”

  Her dark gaze met his. “Nay, ‘twas something else. The nightmares are so real that I can almost feel it. I am holding a brooch in the palm of my hand.”

  A spark of hope ignited in his mind. With his thumb he wiped the tears from her ivory cheeks and looked into her face.

  “Is there any way you can describe this brooch to me? Did you ever see it…in your dream, I mean?”

  She nodded. “Aye, a few times in my dreams I’ve seen it. And then later…” She stopped and searched inside the old sea chest again. From the bottom, she slowly withdrew a flat object wrapped in leather.

  Colin’s gaze followed her hand’s movements as she opened the packet.

  “I didn’t find this until a month ago, after Garth and Charlotte were both dead. They had it hidden up here at the bottom of the chest.” In her hand she held a brooch. Even in the dim light he could see the red stone set in the engraved silver. “This is the brooch I have been seeing in those dreams. ‘Tis the same one the wee child has in her hand.” She handed it to him.

  On the brooch’s broad sturdy pin, a swan rising from a coronet had been engraved. Colin read the motto on the circle of silver, and his breath caught in his chest. ‘Endure Fort.’ He recognized it. The words meant ‘Endure with Strength.’

  “I think…I think I might have been holding this or wearing it when I washed ashore. But what I don’t understand is why those good people hid it away for all these years. They never said a word about it to me.”

  “Lindsay.” Colin whispered. “This is the coat of arms of the clan Lindsay, in the Highlands of Angus.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Lindsay lands lie directly to the east of Macpherson holdings. They are near the coast, with only the land of the clans Farquharson and Gordon between us.”

  Colin thought back in time. There was something gnawing at the edge of his memory. Eleven years ago. He had been nine years old.

  “It must have been about the same time that you disappeared that Sir Stephen Lindsay, the laird of Ravenie Castle, was killed in an attack.”

  He looked into her dark eyes, at her auburn hair. There were similarities, to be sure. Then, suddenly, the memories poured in. The stories he’d heard.

  “Aye, on the same night and during the attack, his only daughter was whisked away by some of the laird’s warriors and servants.” Their gazes locked. “The lass was never seen again. Some thought she was killed, too. Others assumed she’d been hidden away for fear that those who had murdered the father would harm the child. The identity of the attackers was never discovered, I think.”

  Tess’s eyes were wide. The teardrops shone on her skin. A look of disbelief continued to play across her features.

  “But I believe there are many who are still hoping for the daughter’s return.” Colin cradled her face and looked into her eyes. “Like your mother, Tess.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Tess was certain she had heard him wrong. “What did you say?”

  “Lady Evelyn Lindsay, who was Evelyn Fleming before she married your father, survived that attack and the burning of the castle. I remember what happened now. Your mother is alive and well. She is living somewhere in the Lowlands—or the Borders—near her own family.”

  The sudden flash of hope was so unexpected that she didn’t know how to react. “How…how do you know all of this?”

  “Every Highlander knows what goes on with the other clans. Word travels on the wind there, and this was no wee bit of news. Besides, as I told you before, only the Farquharson and Gordon clans separate us from the Lindsays. We’re practically neighbors.”

  “You are not just saying all of this to…to make me leave this island with you?”

  “What do you think?”

  His large and gentle hand was still cradling her face. Tess looked into the blue sea of Colin’s eyes and had her answer.

  “Nay, I think you wouldn’t.” The words tumbled out of her at the same time as she realized the significance of all she had just learned.

  She knew her name. Who she was and where she had come from. Her mother was alive. She was not alone anymore. She didn’t have to spend the rest of her life on this island, frightened and uncertain of what was to happen to her the next day.

  The realization swept through her like a whirlwind, wreaking havoc with her emotions. She didn’t know what to think first, what to do. Her mother was alive. She laughed, and then the tears began to fall.

  Her father was dead. Tess didn’t remember him, but she still had lost him in the same instant that she was told about him. Many questions battered away at her. The confusion of that night and what had she witnessed exactly that made her bury the memories so deep in the recesses of her mind.

  “I am sorry Tess. I know this is a great deal to sort through.”

  “Nay, thank you.” She wrapped her arms around him so tightly that there was not a breath of air left between them. “Thank you…thank you.”

  Tess was so lost in her own happiness and her own thoughts that it was some time before she noticed the difference in him. Colin continued to hold her, but she could feel the tenseness that had entered his body. Tess’s anxiety again asserted itself. She pulled away.

  “There is more that you are not telling me,” she said, wiping at the wetness on her face

  He shook his head. “This all happened so many years ago. I am just impatient with myself for not remembering more—remembering the details—of what was said about the people who supposedly had been behind the attack.”

  Tess placed a hand on his shoulder and pushed herself to her feet. The power of nightmares lay in how real they seemed. Perhaps, she thought, in how much reality was contained in them. If she were to look back closely enough, if she could force herself to remember the details of the dreams, then perhaps she could recall more of what she had witnessed as a child.

  Right now, though, another problem was pressing—the person she had become. Tess looked down at her simple and tattered homespun dress, at her work roughened hands. The thought of what a noble lady named Lady Evelyn might think of the commoner who claimed to be her daughter was distressing.

  He was reading her thoughts. “Tess, I know you must be anxious about being reunited with your mother again,” he began, standing up. “But why not come back to Benmore Castle with me—just for a short time—until a message can be sent to your mother, and arrangements can be made for you
to meet.”

  She had once before rejected this same invitation. Now, though, Tess found that she felt differently.

  Eleven years was a long time. Whatever bond she once must have had with her mother suddenly seemed so fragile, especially considering how little she recalled. Still though, Tess wanted to go to her. Part of her did, anyway. But Colin had suddenly become the one person that she believed she could trust. He was her only friend, and a thought began to emerge in her mind.

  “Aye. I will go with you to Benmore Castle. But when…when the message arrives from my mother, will you take me to her?”

  “If you wish it.”

  Colin took her hand in his, entwining their fingers. He said nothing more, but Tess could see that he was struggling hard to voice something deep within him.

  “You’ve no need to be doubting what we saw, m’lord,” the burly fisherman growled at Alexander Macpherson. “Unless St. Adrian himself has taken to wearing a kilt and walking on the rocks, I say there was a Highlander on that island. And we’ve ne’er spied one of yours out there before.”

  “Did he call out to you? Motion for you to come ashore? Did he show any sign that he’d needed help?”

  “Nay. Nothin’ of the kind. The lad just stood there, a-watching the half-dozen fishing boats we had out. Then he just turned around and disappeared onto the island.”

  “And you didn’t go ashore after him?”

  “What for? No reason to.” The man shrugged. “And we had fishing to do. After a storm like that, the fishing is always good. The rest of ‘em are still out there, m’lord. I only came back, as I’d heard one of your men talking of it in the alehouse last night. He said there was gold in it for whoever helped find your brother. I’m thinking maybe I made a mistake coming here.”

  “Nay. You made no mistake.”

  The fisherman followed the Highlander out of his cabin door and waited as Alexander shouted orders to his ship’s mate.

  “He didn’t look like he was in any trouble at all,” the fisherman added when the ship’s master was done. “And ‘tis not like the lad’s all alone there. Auld Garth and his wife have been living on that island forever and a day. I cannot say they’re very fond of company, but the two are sure to give a man a meal or two and a dry place to sleep.”

  “Very well,” Alexander drew a bag of gold from his belt and tossed it to the man. “I’ll see to it that more of this comes your way if that the man you saw was my brother.”

  “Aye, m’lord. Wishing ye the best, I am.” With a nimbleness that defied his burly physique, the fisherman scrambled over the side and into his currach.

  It was too much to hope, the Highlander thought as he turned his thoughts from the man rowing toward the shore. But they had searched north and south along this coast for Colin and found nothing. With each passing hour, Alexander’s hopes of finding his brother alive had lessened.

  And then the fisherman had rowed his skin-covered boat into the harbor.

  Perhaps St. Adrian wasn’t finished with his miracles, after all.

  It would be difficult to leave Tess with her kin, Colin realized as he moved quickly across the island.

  There were other things that Colin remembered. Things that he could not tell her. Hints and accusations, whispers and rumors. Tales that might have been the absolute truth…or the embittered yearning of a clan that had lost its laird. Indeed, the Lindsay clan had seen no justice meted out to Sir Stephen’s killers, whoever they were. Whatever Colin’s recollections, though, he realized they were based on fragments of what a young lad had heard years ago from traveling merchants and musicians who had previously passed across the lands of clan Lindsay. None of it was worth mentioning to Tess now. Of that he was certain.

  Within an hour, Colin built a large fire on the highest point on the island, and another one along the eastern bluffs. He had no doubt that Alexander would arrive soon, even without the aid of all these signs. But Colin had many questions about how Tess would react when the exact moment arrived to leave the island.

  He frowned at the thought of how she’d sunk into a deep melancholy once she had made up her mind to go. Colin could understand her perfectly, though. This was the place where she had spent most of her life. These ruined buildings were home. She could be herself without worrying whether others would accept or reject her.

  Colin had given her the privacy that she had sought. He’d come out to start the fires himself. But now, as the sky and the sea gradually became calmer, he could only imagine how her fears would be preying upon her.

  He turned his steps back toward the building.

  The outside, the stairs, even the large living chamber had been transformed in his absence. Everything had been cleaned and swept. Amazed, Colin looked at the shells sitting in a neat pile by the door.

  As he was looking at the changes, Tess descended the stairs of the ladder. He saw the child’s clothing and the cross and the brooch were the only things that she was carrying down. She looked self-consciously at her dress when she saw him in the room. He noticed that she had mended the holes. “I looked through everything that might have resembled a dress that Charlotte had put away up there, but there was nothing better than what I already had on.”

  “Tess, you look wonderful as you are.”

  She shook her head. “I know I don’t remember much of that other life that I left behind, but I can guess at the importance of good manners and clothing and household skills—all those things that people deem necessary in a young woman who wants to make a good first impression. All of those things that I sadly lack.” A blush had crept into her cheeks.

  He immediately took her hands. “In what is truly important in life, you are better prepared than most women twice your age. And what you don’t know you learn in no time at all. But none of that is important right now.” He lifted her chin until she was looking into his eyes. “Just think of the thrill that finding you are alive will bring to your mother and your other kin. Think of that, Tess, and everything else will work out.”

  The uncertainties in her dark eyes continued to linger. “I…I don’t want to disappoint her, Colin.”

  “You shan’t,” he said fervently. “You are alive, Tess. Alive! No mother would wish for a greater treasure.”

  She looked searchingly into his eyes, and he held her gaze for a long while. Then he smiled and glanced down at the things in her hand.

  “Now, do you mean to tell me that out of an entire loft filled with baubles and keepsakes, that’s all you are taking with you?”

  Tess smiled at the small bundle. “These are the only things that are mine. The rest belong to this island. Whoever is sent to take care of it after I go should inherit them.” She walked away from him and cast a sweeping look around the room. “There was one last thing that I was hoping to bring with me, though.”

  “If you want to bring Makyn and her wee lambs, it should be no problem.”

  She shook her head. “I wouldn’t want to uproot them. They belong here, too. What I was hoping for…it doesn’t really weigh much and doesn’t take much space. But…”

  “Anything.” He would do anything to see that smile dance in her eyes.

  “Those.” She pointed to the pile of shells. “’Tis not really for me, but more for you, as I know how you’ve become accustomed to the sound of them crunching beneath your boots and…”

  He smiled. She was going to survive this.

  They both were.

  The Isle of May was truly a place of miracles.

  ‘Unparalleled’ was the only word Alexander could think of to describe the thrill of relief that had coursed through him at the sight of his brother Colin standing on the shore of the rocky inlet. And the same word would have worked for his astonishment at the bonny caretaker of St. Adrian’s shrine. But the ship’s master had no way to describe his feelings upon learning that she was Theresa Catherine Lindsay!

  Alexander had a far better recollection than his younger brother of the storm of rumors that
had followed the attack on the Lindsay clan eleven years earlier and the young heir who had disappeared. He himself had been introduced to Sir Stephen Lindsay not long before that tragedy. He had watched the man fight in a tournament the king had held in the bowl-shaped rock amphitheater just outside the walls of Stirling Castle the summer before. He had heard stories from his own father, Alec Macpherson, about the Highlander’s courage and his dedication to his king and his people. And as a child, Alexander had even overheard bits of talk of how beneficial it would be to both clans if someday Alexander were to wed a daughter of Ravenie Castle’s laird. As it turned out, Lady Evelyn Lindsay had indeed borne a daughter.

  But life’s tragedies take no heed of men’s plans. In one fateful night, the Lindsay laird had been killed and the bairn lost. Lost until now.

  And Alexander couldn’t stop staring at her. She was no longer a bairn.

  Tess, wrapped in a stout leather cloak, was standing by the railing and listening intently to what one of the ship’s mates was telling her about the sailing vessel that was at this minute plowing through the rolling billows northward.

  “Could you possibly see fit to give me your attention for a moment?”

  Alexander heard Colin’s low growl, but answered without taking his eyes off the enchanting young woman.

  “What is wrong, brother? Feeling ignored, are you?”

  “Blast it, Alexander. If you don’t look at me, I swear I’ll throw you to the fish.”

  The edge in Colin’s voice was not like him at all. With a show of reluctance, the ship’s master drew his attention from the lass and glanced casually at the fierce young lion beside him. In looks and in size, he and Colin were very much the same. But in worldliness and good sense, Alexander knew he had more than a few years on his younger brother.