And Then He Loved Me (A Highlander Novella Book 1)

by Rebecca Ruger

  “Standing stones?”

  “Aye, stones that stand on end, upon a great flat plain, taller than any man I ken. A whole circle of them. They never waver or fall. You think only God must have planted them, imagine He wants you to sit and pray, the air there is so ... fascinating.”

  “How can air be fascinating?”

  James Cameron gave her a look that Isla read as suggesting she should know the answer to this, which only confused her. He stopped walking, which made Isla stop and watch him. He waved his hand around, as if searching for expression. “Air you can feel, it has its own life. It prickles yer skin, makes you aware.”

  Isla still did not understand. Air you can feel?

  His eyes settled upon her and darkened with intent. A rush of warmth swelled within her, warmed every inch of her body, all because he stared at her. He stepped closer, taking away her ability to breathe normally. She could not look away, so enraptured by the heat and promise of his gaze. He closed the distance between them. “Can you no feel it?” He’d lowered the volume of his voice, changed the timbre. Isla watched his lips move, was transfixed by them. “No what you feel inside, that’s altogether different. But the air between us, ‘tis alive and charged.”

  Isla jumped back, stared, aghast. Was he a sorcerer? What was he about?

  “You stare as if I’ve sprouted another head, lass.” There seemed to be some smirk hovering just under the surface of him.

  Isla started walking again, threw one suspicious look back at him. He caught up quickly enough. She kept her gaze then on the wooded path, overgrown and messy, but wondered, “Are the ladies in the big cities all very beautiful?”

  “Beautiful people are everywhere, Isla Gordon.”

  “But...my mam used to say at court all the gowns were made of gold. And the women wore their hair like decorations atop their head. She said their slippers were silk and one pair might cost more coin than I’d ever see in my entire life.”

  James Cameron laughed again, and Isla was beginning to like the sound of it.

  “And my own mother has often said that if you’re born ugly, you stay that way all your life. Nice gowns and fancy slippers dinna make you pretty if you’re not. ‘Tis only trappings, artifice.”

  They left the wood and started across the snow-dusted meadow.

  “That day at the manor court,” Isla said, stepping around the taller scrub brush, “you were very quiet.” Actually, she’d thought he wasn’t paying attention to half the proceedings. She’d also thought him quite frightening, with his deep voice and dark look, and those big shoulders and arms. “But you seem to talk quite a bit.”

  James considered her statement but chose only to give her a vocal, “Hmm.” He’d been thinking of Marguerite that day. It would have been her birthday.

  Of course, the minute Isla Gordon had stepped before him, when the charges read against her had raised his curiosity and his gaze, much had fled his mind. He could now retort and say that he’d initially thought her—not only at that court hearing, but on the next few occasions they’d met—a very angry young woman. Ever she seemed to be poised for battle, or to receive some slight. He’d since decided that she was not so much angry as she was frightened. Lasses should never be frightened.

  At the other side of the meadow sat Edine’s cottage, with a backdrop of the deeper forest that separated the Camerons from the MacDougals. He wouldn’t feel at all comfortable with Isla establishing herself in this almost remote location if not for the fact that it was north of Wolvesley, further from any encroaching English, and the MacDougals and the Camerons had shared centuries of peaceful coexistence.

  You seem to talk quite a bit, she’d said. There was one more thing he wanted to say to her, today, before they reached the healer’s cottage. James stopped which made her pause as well. When she turned and squinted at him, the sun being behind his head, favoring those green eyes of hers with such incredible brightness, James moved directly at her. She did not back away, indeed, rested her eyes upon his lips again, while she dropped her knotted satchel to her side, dangling from her long fingers.

  James halted, so close he need only to lift his hand to touch her. “Lass, you dinna ask about that altogether different feeling inside, the one that comes with that crackling air.”

  Confused, maybe even disconcerted, she blinked at him. And now he stared at her lips, temptingly curved, deliciously pink.

  Finally, she asked, seeming to recall his earlier comment. “What is it?”

  “That’s desire, lass.”

  Her frown was instant, but it did nothing to lessen her entrancing beauty. She challenged, “How is it you can name something that I feel?”

  “I ken its name,” James said. He placed his boot next to her skirt, where it skimmed across the hard, days-old snow and moved closer. “It’s coursing through my veins just now, same as you.”

  Very slowly, Isla shook her head while James nodded and bent toward her. He knew great satisfaction when she still did not back away, but let his lips touch hers. She closed her eyes and he did as well, gently touching a hand to her hip, applying slight pressure to draw her near. Her lips were warm and soft, shattering any calm he may have felt. He opened his mouth and covered all of hers, sent his tongue out to meet hers, savored the feel of it, the heat, the urgency, the taste.

  James inhaled sharply, mid-kiss, when he felt her hand at his chest. He curled his fingers around the hand and continued to kiss her until the deep staccato of a dog’s repeated barking reached him. Pulling his lips from her, James looked up. Edine’s hound must be just inside; their scent must have reached him.

  He looked down at Isla, while she’d leaned into him and now stared with half-shrouded lids up at him. Only the greatest fortitude kept him from returning to the promise of that kiss.

  “Edine,” he said briefly, by way of explanation, or as a reminder of their destination. Aye, but, “Desire, lass, that is what surges through you now. It hasn’t another name.”

  Her breath was shaky, her voice even more so. “What if I do no want it?”

  James frowned. “No want the desire at all, or no want it with me?”

  He was caught off guard by her answer. “Either. Both.”

  But she hadn’t denied the desire, he reasoned. “I’d be asking you ‘why’?”

  Isla only shook her head, lowered her gaze as she frowned. The door of Edine’s cottage was pulled open. Edine stood there at the threshold, cut in half by sunlight and shadows.

  “You think on that, lass. I’ll return for an answer.”

  Chapter 8

  “Yer da’s gone then?” Edine asked as Isla watched James Cameron ride away. She turned to Edine and nodded, met the woman’s round little eyes, waiting for confirmation that she would indeed be received here. Edine was more crooked than when last Isla had seen her. One gnarled hand held onto the door for support. “C’mon then.”

  Isla stepped inside, was greeted—terrified, actually—by Edine’s giant hound advancing on her, teeth bared.

  “Go on wit ye,” said Edine to the hound, which stood taller than Isla’s waist and wore a wiry coat of brown and black and gray hair. “That’s Fynn, and he’ll want to ken ye, before he lets you in.”

  Isla stood and waited, extended her hand, palm down, toward the beast. He approached, tail wagging now, and sniffed first her hand and then her skirts and her shoes before lifting his head at Isla. Standing before her, with his head tilted up at her, his snout was almost at her chest, his soft black eyes regarded her curiously. “How do you do, Fynn?”

  With that, and one more sniff aimed at her face, he seemed to lose interest and ambled away, curling up at a spot on the packed earth floor near Edine’s tiny hearth.

  “I did not know you could have a wolfhound,” Isla said. Edine had moved to the far corner of the room, had her back to Isla. “I thought only chieftains and lords could own the great hounds.”

  “Fynn was a gift,” Edine said vaguely. “And that’s all you say, ‘h
e was a gift from the Cameron’, when I’m gone.”

  Isla stepped fully inside the cottage, which seemed to be similar in size to what she’d just vacated. The first thing that had caught her eye was the fireplace. Made of stone, it sat in the middle of the outside wall of the rear of the cottage and sported both a section where hung not one but two kettles, and next to that firebox sat an oven of sorts, two deep stones shelves built into the wall. A third open section beneath these held piles of kindling and cut wood. Isla had never seen a fireplace in a cottage but realized immediately that Edine’s cottage was so much warmer than her former home. Perhaps the stone stored and shared heat with the room.

  Isla stood in the middle of the room and turned around to view it all. To the right of the entrance, behind the door sat Edine’s bed, raised off the floor in a crude but solid frame, covered in linen and a great hide of fur. Across from that, on the rear wall, many feet away from the hearth, was a cupboard, tall enough to touch the thatch of the ceiling, with shelves and drawers and hooks where hung what Isla assumed were Edine’s frocks. A stool, having only three legs, the seat being well-worn and shiny, sat next to the cupboard. At the opposite side of the room, Edine stood at a table that stretched the length of that side wall. Above and below the table, the wall was lined with shelves around the window and underneath, filled with more crocks and smaller baskets and even several glass bottles.

  There were four windows in the cottage, each closed now, a leather strap holding the shutter onto a peg protruding from the hardened daub of the sill. In the center of the room, where stood Isla, sat a lower table, with a bench on one side and a tall backed chair on the other, near the hearth. Precious candles burned in three different spots, lighting the room with a golden glow. Isla wondered how Edine could afford to employ so many at once.

  Isla felt compelled to say, “Edine, this is a rather remarkable home.” On the whole, the cottage really was surprising, with the rare amenities of fire and windows and furs. True, it was cluttered, too; no space was wasted, but filled with wooden buckets and woven baskets and stacks of fabric. One mid-sized basket held an assortment of knives and spoons. Another showed a collection what Isla was convinced was human hair, rolled into tufts and balls, in many different colors.

  “Aye,” Edine said, without turning around. “Edmund Cameron, when he was young, was stricken with some fever that near took him off. They called me up—I was young yet myself—and I labored for five days and nights over the lad. And when he lived, his da, who was the first Cameron, come and outfit the cottage proper. Ain’t known a cold winter since. I’ll no save him now, the chief, but they ken that.”

  Finally, Edine turned to Isla. “Ye put that over on the bed now, lass,” she said, pointing to Isla’s meager belongings, bundled into the coverlet. When she had done so, she joined Edine at the table, which was littered with stems and leaves, some dried and some fresher, a few knives, several ceramic bowls, and wooden pestles with rounded ends. In one corner of the table, a flat wooden dish held many separated piles of seeds. Against the wall, at the right end of the table, a low, wide-mouthed crock showed a number of snails and slugs, some moving, some not, set into a bed of leaves and grass. Isla grimaced, wondering why on earth Edine would have these garden devils in her home.

  “Edine, you dinna seem unwell,” Isla thought to say. “Why do you think you are dying?”

  The old woman lifted her head. “My heart is rightly seized by a raven’s claw. As of yet, I’ve won the fight, take back my own heart each time. But soon, the raven will be the victor.”

  Isla hadn’t any idea what Edine meant. “But ... when?”

  Edine’s slumped shoulders lifted and fell. “Maybe today.”

  Isla’s eyes widened.

  “Maybe a sennight. Mayhap a year. The heart is always last to leave the fight.”

  “Why did you pick me, Edine?” Isla had wondered this for days.

  Edine looked at Isla, narrowing her little button eyes. “Ye have other plans?”

  “I do not.”

  “Aye, but you have a good head. And you have strength—not physical, dinna need that so much. You take all their snickering and their pestering, and you do no more than raise yer chin. Ye’ll need that. They’ll call you witch. Ye’ll start, thinking you have something to prove. But ye’ll learn that healing is only about giving. And one day, ye’ll succor a wee bairn with a fever for five days and nights and watch him run through a field afore the week is out. And ye’ll no look back, you have nothing to prove no more.”

  While Isla digested this, still mildly confused, Edine turned around and proclaimed, “We’ll start with the plants. ‘Tis where the healing begins.”

  ISLA WAS QUITE SURE her head might explode from all the information that Edine thrust upon her on a daily basis. The old woman talked almost non-stop, mayhap with some knowledge that her end was actually nearer. Isla also found that the healer could be quite witty—or cutting, Isla could not always tell the difference. She hadn’t known how to take it at first, giving Edine a horrified look when they had taken the cart into Wolvesley and had been passed by Edric, from the granary. He’d barely moved out of the way, giving them a shrouded-lid look, his face scrunched up so much the entire center of it seemed only one continuous wrinkle. “I’m no sure if he looks like that apurpose,” Edine had murmured to Isla while she maneuvered the cart around the man, “to confound me with a want to smack him, or if his mam dropped him once too often as a bairn.”

  Isla could not help herself, and after her shock had worn off, she had giggled rather wildly.

  It hadn’t taken Isla long to figure out the majority of Edine’s time was not spent, as Isla had assumed, with the people in need of healing, but more in preparation for those visits. She hadn’t any idea how Edine, in her advanced years, managed all the daily chores. Of course, she had her own person to take care of, hunting and cooking and washing and laundering. Then there was the foraging and storage and preparation of those seeds and roots and plants. When spring came, there would be the planting of Edine’s garden, to supplement the hard-to-find florae and those used most regularly, which would then require regular upkeep. And in the midst of all this, she made regular calls upon the diseased or infirm, and received requests—three just yesterday—people coming up to her cottage to beg her presence for their emergency. Thus far, Isla had only observed, listening intently to all that Edine imparted, squirreling it all away for future use.

  She wasn’t sure that her presence alongside Edine was, or had been yet well-received, but for the most part people were only curious about her keeping company with Edine, and this only when their circumstance was not so dire, to allow for thoughts outside their own crisis.

  Just now, Edine had sent Isla out to the forest for more of the choke cherry bark, which was employed as a cough remedy, and which helped a person sleep more comfortably. Fynn had tagged along. It hadn’t taken him long to warm up to and then begin to shadow Isla. Truth be told, she very much liked having him with her. She certainly felt more secure, and too, it seemed less awkward when she talked aloud, and no one was near to hear.

  Isla circled the tree, which Edine had pointed out days ago, looking for any branch or limb cracked or bent. If she could help it, she’d rather not pluck from the healthy parts of the tree. But there were none, likely they’d been confiscated over time by Edine. She took then a healthy sleeping winter limb and sawed off a length of it, the diameter almost an inch thick. When cut, she yanked the lesser little arms from this piece and gathered all into a bundle of sticks in her hands.

  Fynn was underfoot and then not, chasing some critter for quite a distance. And then suddenly, he appeared again, racing past Isla and alerting her of someone’s presence by the tenor of his bark. The cherry twigs now gathered so their inner bark might be harvested, Isla followed Fynn back to the cottage, guessing another call had come for Edine’s aid. A dull sound, a thwack or thump, repeated several times, reached her ears.

  Isla c
ame around the front of the cottage. Fynn danced back toward her, his tail wagging, then darted off again, disappearing around the next corner. More thwacks sounded.

  Around the side of the cottage, Isla found none other than James Cameron, his back to her, chopping wood with a hefty axe. She noted immediately the difference in him: his sword, always at his hip, was set aside, leaning against a sloppy pile of thick logs; and his plaid, ever about one shoulder and tucked into that belt, sat neatly folded next to his sword.

  She watched, rather transfixed, as he swung the axe with two hands, up over his head and down onto the sorry log. His tunic moved against his broad back, flattened and pulled against the muscles with each swing of the tool. She saw nothing else, only a patch of his back, those muscles, that power. There was no wasted movement, each committed to with vitality, so that Isla was sure her hand itched. To touch, to feel that strength.

  Isla shook herself. These thoughts—any thoughts related to James Cameron!—were unwelcome! Unwanted!

  “Fynn!” She called to the hound, self-recrimination manifesting as general wretchedness in her tone. “Come, Fynn. Leave Sir James alone.”

  He’d been mid-swing when she first spoke. He hadn’t startled but had completed the swing and chop before turning to Isla. He set the head of the axe onto the ground, leaned on the knob of the handle. His lips quirked, as if he might smile, as if he might be happy to see her.

  “What are you doing?” She asked. She’d managed many, many days without being plagued by thoughts of him, of his kiss. That was a lie, she admitted to herself. She’d managed only to stop thinking about him on an hourly basis.

  James Cameron arched a dark brow at her, while his lips lifted in a grin. “Now lass, I want you to use yer powers of observation and reason, see if you can answer that yerself.”

  Isla gasped, his quip about as unexpected as Edine’s good humor. She folded her lips inward to keep from smiling at his nonsense. Waving the bundle of cherry sticks at his growing pile of chopped wood, She clarified, “Why are you doing this?”