To Desire a Highlander

by Sue-Ellen Welfonder

  “And so you are right,” Roag agreed, joining her.

  He could see his ship now, too. The Valkyrie’s hull gleamed reddish-purple in the gloaming’s soft light, and the fearsome dragon’s head at her prow appeared alive, the white water hissing along her sides looking like a sea-beast’s seething breath. Roag could almost hear his men’s shouts, the rhythmic beat of the rowers’ gong as the ship cleaved the waves, coming fast across the current, making for Laddie’s Isle, and giving the awaited signal…

  A lone fire arrow arced high into the low-swirling mist, a red-orange streak that vanished quickly as the arrow sped downward into the dark, rolling sea.

  A second arrow followed, and then another in quick succession.

  When a fourth arc of flame failed to light the heavens, Roag heaved a great breath and stepped back from the cliff’s edge. No enemy ships had been met this day.

  What a shame his heart still thundered. How sad that he knew in his gut that, as he had every night since coming here, he’d order his men to sharpen their swords before they slept. He’d send two to stand watch atop the nameless tower. No true ramparts crowned the crumbling pile, but there was a wall-walk of sorts. Enough for a patrol to pace as they kept vigil through the night. A time when the wind often died and the heavens cleared, the stars—so very many of them—seemed close enough to grab by the handful.

  Roag frowned, reached to rub the back of his neck.

  Such a magnificent, soul-stealing place should bring a man peace, not fill his lungs with the sure scent of war, deadly, bloody, and dangerous.

  But wasn’t that why he and his men were here?

  It was, and how he wished otherwise.

  His thoughts were disturbing and traitorous; the sort of fool notions that should bedevil poets and not pester the likes of him. Such nonsense had never before visited him on a Fenris mission, and his work had shown him many places, some quite fine. Not once had he regretted leaving after his duties were done.

  Here…

  He glanced again at the sea, shining darkly in the fading light. Too easily, he could imagine this rocky, storm-racked isle as his own. For real, and with Lady Gillian as his true bride, loving him gladly and eager to fill his life with joy, to share his table and his bed, warming his nights, and making a home of the wee, windswept isle that he sensed she was also coming to love.

  His frown deepened, and even more alarming, the neck opening of his tunic seemed to tighten, cutting off his breath. He wasn’t a man to plant roots.

  He did not want a wife.

  Didn’t they aye come with ballast? Weighing a man down with burdens that grew greater with each passing year? He’d seen it happen often enough—had watched the bellies of married friends thicken and go soft, had seen such men lose their battle joy and wanderlust, their hearts beating only for their home hearths, grasping wives, hungry bairns, and ancient, milky-eyed dogs whose bony frames troubled him more than he liked.

  Biting back a curse, he strode over to Skog, lifting the beast into his arms for the trek back down the cliff path. Skog turned his head and licked his arm, the old dog’s smelly breath rising up to tickle Roag’s nose.

  “Perhaps the men you seek have gone elsewhere?” Lady Gillian said then, looking on as he settled Skog into his carrying basket and then hefted dog and basket onto his back. “We have seen no sign of any suspicious ships since the day I fell. Only a few clan galleys I recognized beyond doubt and one merchant cog. No warships or black-hulled galleys such as some Viking raiders used in days of yore. Can it be that your King has heard false tidings?” She lifted her chin, almost challengingly.

  And that was no surprise, for very few Hebrideans were overfond of Lowland nobility, kingly or otherwise.

  Lady Gillian was no exception, as she’d proved time and again.

  “Only the most trusted men come close enough to give the King such word, good or bad, my lady. No man wanting to keep his head on his neck would dare lie about a matter of such gravity. Ships have been sunk and good men lost.”

  She turned quiet as they started down the zigzagging path. He refrained from offering her his arm.

  He’d done so more than once these last weeks during her recovery, and each time she’d declined, her proud face tightening as if to show she needed no such attention, or courtesy.

  Roag frowned, and shifted her dog’s carrying basket to his other shoulder, wrapping an arm around its base.

  As such a bony beast, Skog weighed less than a large bird. But the basket was unwieldy and Roag didn’t want its bouncing to distress the dog, or make him uncomfortable.

  If only his own cares could be quelled as easily.

  Enemy ships—or the lack of them—weren’t the only worry riding him.

  Nor was his undeniable appreciation of the little isle and the inherent wildness of the Hebrides.

  Something else about Laddie’s Isle plagued him, and he wasn’t sure he could keep it to himself much longer.

  He paused only a few yards down the cliff path and glanced back the way they’d come. He could still see the moors and he let his gaze skim along the headland, the grassy, rock-strewn expanse that stretched behind. Blessedly, nothing unusual stirred there. Only mist curled across the promontory.

  Yet, earlier…

  “See here, lass.” He gripped Lady Gillian’s arm, drawing her to a halt. “Have you no’ seen the wee laddie on the cliffs?” he said, feeling hot color wash up his neck. “The ghost boy,” he admitted, making it worse. “I dinnae believe in suchlike, but I’d swear the mist sometimes looks like a bedraggled lad pointing a small blue-glowing dirk at the sea.”

  To his relief she didn’t laugh.

  Though, truly, the seriousness of her gaze unsettled him as much as if she had—for completely different reasons.

  “The laddie who haunts this isle?” She didn’t blink. Her earnest gaze and the calm way she spoke of the ghostie confirmed her belief in the boy.

  “There are tales.” It was all Roag could think to say.

  “So there are, and every isle in these waters has its own legends and such.” She drew her cloak tighter against the wind, glanced out at the sea so far below them. “Anyone you might speak to hereabouts, in any corner of the Hebrides, will tell you that there are places where strange things happen. Some might mention stones that move or living creatures that can speak, or even change into some other beast entirely, perhaps a mythical one.

  “These isles are old, you see.” She turned back to him, her gaze as calm and steady as if they sat at the high table and she’d just commented on the tastiness of a round of new, green cheese, or the quality of ale. “Even on a fine, sunlit day you might find yourself watched by something you cannot see. Or, as you seem to be suggesting, you might even glimpse the watcher.

  “In such ancient places as here”—she swept out an arm toward the sea, the narrow cliff path rising behind them—“many things are possible. We who live here know not to doubt it.”

  “I am no’ a man of these isles, lady.” Roag ignored the shivers her words sent down his back.

  The quickening of his pulse and how his heart thumped hard in an odd sense of recognition he couldn’t explain. It was a feeling of belonging, almost as if despite his denials, his soul knew she spoke the truth—his heart even accepting it.

  “At Stirling there are tales of a pink lady ghost,” he told her, growing more uncomfortable by the moment. “She is said to be the wife of a garrison knight who was felled when England’s Edward I overtook the castle many years ago. In all my days at that great stronghold, from when I was a lad right up to now, I have ne’er come across that poor woman’s grieving apparition.

  “Yet castle bards enjoy spinning tales about her late at night before the great hall’s fires.” He felt better now, relieved to have stated his position—voiced as a man of reason.

  He was a town man untroubled by legend, myth, and other such nonsense.

  “Why are you telling me this?” She gave him a sharp loo
k.

  “If I saw something that looked like this isle’s supposed ghost laddie,” he went on, “then it was only mist o’er the moors or sea spray.”

  “If he is here and you’ve seen him, you are blessed.” She kept her chin raised, seemingly undisturbed by the cold wind whipping her hair about her face. “He showed great trust in appearing to you,” she added, a slight note of reproach in her voice. “Ghosts choose carefully when deciding to manifest.”

  Roag drew a breath, not liking her logic. “Lady, I asked if you have seen the like.”

  “I have not seen ‘the like,’ no. Neither have I seen a wee lad who is surely to be pitied.”

  “He has been on the cliffs each day for weeks.” Roag felt his face heating. Not from anger, but from embarrassment, for her gentle reprimand shamed him. “Leastways whate’er it is I’ve been seeing that might resemble a lad.

  “Though I am sure it was only bog mist,” he said, willing it so.

  “So what was he doing, the poor mite?” She pushed back her hair, definitely challenging him.

  “Moving from one side of the headland to the other,” Roag told her, remembering how he’d glimpsed the ghost earlier that very afternoon. The see-through sprite had first been on the far side of the promontory from where he and Gillian stood, then, as soon as he’d stride that way, the lad would vanish before his eyes—only to reappear as quickly on the other side of the cliffs.

  All that he told her, speaking in a rush, before ending with, “Folk say that he—”

  “He warns of danger,” she finished for him, looking surprisingly calm.

  “And he will surely be here, showing himself to you, because your work here is needed. His appearances prove that I was wrong to think our King was misinformed. Clearly”—she made it sound so possible—“there is a threat about, as we now know beyond doubt. The wee laddie is trying to alert you of the menace.”

  She looked away, then back at him.

  “I am sure of it,” she said.

  “Are you?”

  She nodded.

  “Aye, well.” Roag fought the urge to thread a hand through his hair. For two pins, he’d tell her that she was the menace. Even now, listening to her expound on ghosts, his mind wandered where it shouldn’t.

  He was of a mind to grip her face with both hands, circle his thumbs over the chilled smoothness of her skin. It’d been so long since he’d kissed her, yet he’d swear he still carried the taste of her on the back of his tongue. A sweetness he’d love to sample again, now.

  Instead, he refrained. “Lady, I am well aware of the peril hereabouts.”

  He was.

  She should be, too. Such as how perilously close he was to hauling her flush against him, plundering her lips and ravishing her, here on the cliff path.

  Unable to help himself, he gave her a smile—his darkest, most wicked. “I dinnae need a wee spirit following me about, telling me my business.”

  “Perhaps he fears you will leave without addressing the trouble.” She slipped her arm from his grasp and then hitched her skirts, turning back to the downward path. “You have said how eager you are to leave,” she added over her shoulder as she started forward, stepping lightly on the steep and narrow track. She moved away briskly, her straight back and her raised head indicating that once again, for seemingly unfathomable reasons, she was wroth with him.

  “Are you not going to deny it? That you will sail away as soon as you can?” Her voice floated back to him as she nipped around a curve, disappearing behind the cliff’s jutting shoulder. “I suspect the lad wants you to stay. Perhaps he showed himself to the crew of the dragon ship? Mayhap”—she popped back into view, one hand holding her hair against the wind—“he even conjured the fog that rolled in that morn? Bogles have powers the living do not. Had the mist not rolled in, you might’ve chased thon ship.

  “Could be…” She let her words trail off, a glimmer of speculation in her eyes. “I might have drowned—had you not returned when you did.”

  Roag suspected she was right.

  The thought chilled him to the marrow. He couldn’t have borne her death. He would indeed have felt responsible, and he’d have carried that weight on his shoulders for all his days.

  “Then I am grateful to all the gods that I did,” he said, and he was.

  But his admission was wasted.

  She’d already turned and hastened back around the bend in the path.

  Her words stayed with him, circling in his head…

  I suspect the lad wants you to stay.

  “And you?” Roag remained where he was, spoke the words into the wind.

  It was probably best she’d not heard him. He also didn’t care about ghosts and what they wanted. He cared about Lady Gillian. He also wanted to stay here, much as that surprised him.

  She was the one who burned to leave.

  And the more he thought about it, the stranger her wish seemed. Much as she appeared to appreciate the wee isle and determined as she was not to return to her home, she had to have reasons for wanting off the isle so badly. That could only mean she was keeping something from him. A secret he determined to air, and as quickly as possible.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The hall was crowded that night. Men in mail or leather milled about or packed the long tables, while some stood warming their hands at the hearth where a roaring driftwood fire filled the air with sea-scented blue-green smoke. Most of the men were newly returned from the landing beach below the tower, and, having secured the Valkyrie for the night, they all held horns of ale. They drank gladly as they spoke of what they’d seen—or hadn’t seen—on their circuitous journey throughout the isles.

  Gillian sat at the high table, trying her best not to listen to the men’s talk of swords, spears, and axes; fire arrows, and the blood that would flow when they captured the blackguards attacking the crown’s fleet. After each such boast, they’d knock ale horns—or cups—and exchange thoughts on what should then be done to such miscreants.

  “If they are English,” Conn of the Strong Arm, the Valkyrie’s Irish helmsman, waved a hand toward the hall’s main door and the dark night beyond, “they shall have their bellies slit open and be tossed into the sea to feed the sharks and then the crabs. If they be Scots,” his tone hardened, as if such a betrayal were the most despicable sin in the world, “they shall twist from a rope in a place where all may stare and curse them. Then—”

  “They, too, will feed the fish and crabs!” Big Hughie raised his voice above the crackle and roar of the fire. “King Robert will dispossess them of their lands, and their families and servants should be scattered—banished from the realm so that their tainted blood can befoul us no more.”

  “Hear, hear!” a round of agreement rose from the others.

  Throughout the hall, men rapped the tables with the blunt ends of their eating knives, while those standing stamped their feet or shook their swords in the scabbards.

  The noise was deafening.

  In truth, the racket was no different from the din in Castle Sway’s hall in times of unrest and trouble. She understood the need of men to swell their chests, make threats, and swagger. Such posturing was needed now and then, especially at times when a raid or foray hadn’t brought the desired results, such as an attempt to run down and capture an enemy ship.

  The night’s bravura and ale guzzling would help the frustrated warriors to sleep on their too-thin pallets and the hall’s cold stone floor.

  Gillian knew that well.

  Hadn’t she been raised in a household of men?

  She was also clever, more sharp-witted at times than most men gave her credit for.

  So, being of a sound and lively mind…

  What concerned her was that none of Roag’s men bothered to keep such talk from her listening ears.

  That meant one of two things.

  Roag could be planning to add her to the diet of hungry Hebridean crabs.

  It was a possibility she couldn’t ig
nore, much as she doubted he’d stoop so low. Still, he had gone out of his way to emphasize the importance of his mission and how seriously he took his responsibility to his King. He’d made no secret that her presence was a thorn in his side, a complication he didn’t want or need.

  She’d be amiss in her logic if she didn’t consider he might think to have done with her.

  The other likelihood was equally unpalatable, but for a very different reason.

  There was a chance he wouldn’t release her.

  That he’d keep her at his side, even after he left the isle—perhaps as his servant or slave.

  Why else would he allow his men to speak so freely in front of her?

  They’d only do so if she wouldn’t prove a threat.

  “My apologies, lass, that the hall is so loud this night.” Roag turned to her at the table—for they sat side by side—and touched his big hand to her cheek. “They will quiet soon.”

  He leaned in, lowering his voice. “You see how much ale they’re quaffing. Snores will soon replace their boasts.”

  “I do not mind.” I would hear why you let me listen.

  “I forget that you have so many brothers.” He sat back, his face clearing as his words proved that, like so many men, he didn’t have any idea what truly bothered her.

  He lowered his hand, looking at her in a way that made a delicious warmth blossom inside her. It spread through her despite her worries, spilling from somewhere deep in her chest to flow clear to the tips of her fingers and down to her toes.

  “You will have a large garrison at your home as well,” he went on, the casualness of his observation annoying her, once again revealing that he understood little of her. “I am no’ surprised you are so tolerant of warriors. Sway is known to be a castle of men.”

  “So is yours.” But only one of you interests me.

  “This isle is nae place for a woman, for sure no’ this excuse for a tower.”

  “It is a good enough hall for warriors to tease, laugh, and boast together.” She reached for her ale horn, glad that it held warm honeyed mead. Before she took a sip, she gave him a smile, surprised how easily she could. “In days of strife and warfare, men who fight together become close. They love and trust each other as brothers, even if nary a drop of blood binds them. That I learned early, my lord,” she added, enjoying her mead. “Do not ever think your men’s nightly din disturbs me. In truth, I would be more worried if they were silent.”