When a Laird Finds a Lass

by Lecia Cornwall

  When the sobs turned to hiccups, he pulled back gently. His shirt was soaked.

  “Bed for you,” he murmured, wiping away the last of her tears with the pad of his thumb. She looked up at him, her eyes soft and wet, her lips half-parted. How easy it would be to lower his mouth to hers, kiss her . . . He reminded himself he was a gentleman, and she was a vulnerable woman under his protection. He would not violate her trust in him, or his own honor. He tried to recall any other woman he’d ever met having such an effect on him and couldn’t. Perhaps it was the situation, or the fact she was injured. Perhaps magic did exist . . .

  She made a soft sound of dismay as she looked at the wet patch her tears had left on his shirt. “I shouldn’t have—I’m not usually such a ninny. At least I don’t think I am. I don’t know, do I?” She searched his face as if he had the answer.

  “I suspect that you’re very brave. You have been so far,” he said, admiring her courage. “A few tears are allowed. My shirt will dry.”

  She stepped back and wiped her eyes with her wrist.

  He crossed to the bed and pulled the covers back. “Sleep will help,” he said.

  She climbed up onto the high mattress and lay down, her movements graceful, elegant. He tucked the covers over her. His hands were shaking.

  She settled herself on the pillow and reached out a hand to him, and he stared at it. Her fingers were long and white against the darkness, an invitation. “I owe you my thanks. You have been so kind. I don’t know if I was always afraid of the dark, but I don’t want to be alone. Will you stay until I fall asleep?”

  He couldn’t say no. He wanted to stay with her, though he knew he should call Beitris to come and sit with her. It wasn’t proper that he—His brain stopped thinking the moment he clasped her hand in his, felt her fingers close over his knuckles, and the heat of her flowed into him. He couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.

  He used his foot to drag the chair forward without letting her go, and sat beside her.

  Last night, the antler chair had been too big, too rugged. This time the chair was too small, too fragile, and it creaked under his weight.

  She sighed—a small, soft sound of sorrow, or contentment, or need. He squeezed her hand, let her know without words that he was there. She brought her other hand up to caress the back of his, her touch gentle, thanking him, perhaps. The tickle swept through him, and he raised her hand, kissed the back of it. Her skin smelled like honey. “Go to sleep,” he murmured, and she shut her eyes. He kept his own eyes open and shifted in the uncomfortable chair, then sat still as it creaked again, loud in the silence.

  Outside the window, the sea whispered to the shore, sang against the rocks in a gentle, rhythmic lullaby. He let his eyes roam over the shape of her face, the delicate lines that furrowed her brow, the softness of her mouth. He’d wait just until she fell asleep, for her hand to loosen in his.

  Then he’d go, he promised himself.

  Malcolm dreamed he was making love to Ronat, his naked body pressed to hers, her arms around his neck, pulling him down for a long, open-mouthed kiss. He was hard and ready, and she was soft and willing. Her body opened to his like a flower . . .

  He woke instantly, as if someone had thrown cold water on him. He lay with his head on the edge of the bed, his forehead pressed against her breast. It made a soft, warm pillow. His legs were numb, and his arm was asleep again, and he was still holding her hand.

  He had an erection that could knock the castle over.

  He had to leave before she woke and noticed his condition, saw the lust in his eyes. Was there lust in his eyes? There was lust everywhere else. He took a breath and tried to withdraw his hand from hers.

  Her eyes opened, and he froze, transfixed by the soft, sleepy gray depths nestled in a lush fringe of dark lashes, mere inches from his own.

  “Good morning,” she murmured, her voice husky. She didn’t let go of his hand, and he couldn’t move. She was staring at him, her eyes scanning his face, her mouth curved into a half smile, as if waking up next to a man was normal for her. Perhaps it was.

  “How—” He swallowed the lump in his throat, strove to sound normal. “How are you feeling today?”

  She smiled, and he noted the dimple in her cheek. “Well, I think.” She reached up to touch the lump on the back of her head. “It’s better. Smaller, at least.”

  He withdrew his hand from hers and sat back, nodding sagely. He crossed his legs to hide his arousal. “And do you recall anything?” he asked, as if he were interviewing a witness.

  She considered for a moment, frowning, and his hand curled tight on his knee, fighting the urge to reach out and smooth away the wee lines of worry between her brows. “I remember waking in Diarmid’s hut, and the past few days, but nothing else.”

  To his shame, he felt relief pour through him. She could not leave if she could not remember where she’d come from, could she?

  But he knew. Honor demanded he tell her the truth at once. Was it truly caution for her health that made him hesitate? Or was it the fact that she was soft, sleepy, and sweet, and that she was looking at him, scanning his face and hair, his rumpled, tearstained shirt? He felt her gaze like a caress.

  His tongue knotted around his tonsils.

  He stared at his own hand, clasped on his knee. The sunlight illuminated the golden hairs on the back of his hands, the Lowland pallor of his skin—every other man at Dunbronach had tough, leathery skin, bronzed from working in the sun, coaxing a life out of the pitiless landscape. Malcolm had a single callus on the second finger of his right hand, where the pen rubbed. He didn’t have to fight for his meals—he bought them. Tailors made his clothes, his wigs, his shoes.

  “Where did you get that scar?” she asked. She leaned forward and touched her fingertip to the silver line that wound around his right thumb. “I could feel it in the dark.”

  He looked down at it, wished he could tell her it came from battle, or defending the honor of a lady in a duel. Something brave.

  “I was fishing with Cormag when I was a lad,” he said, telling her the truth. “I got tangled in the line, cut myself, got dragged into the water, and nearly drowned. It’s why my mother decided we must leave. She was afraid this place would kill me.”

  He met Ronat’s eyes. She didn’t look bored or disdainful. “Were you afraid?”

  His father had fished him out of the water, thumped him hard on the back, made him vomit the water he’d swallowed. He’d sent Cormag to fetch Elizabeth. While they waited, someone had stitched Malcolm’s hand, but he didn’t recall any pain or fear. His father had shown him his scars, told him that all Highlanders had them. Perhaps he had been brave, once . . . Malcolm felt a wee bit of pride fill in the place where the shameful memory lived. Then his mother arrived, crying and screaming, her eyes wild and filled with fear. She’d held him so close she nearly smothered him. That had made him afraid, made him feel the pain, the fear, the burn of the salt water in his belly, lungs, and eyes. He’d become afraid of the sea in that moment, and of Cormag, and even his father.

  “No,” he lied, in answer to her question. “I wasn’t afraid. Were you afraid, when you were in the water?”

  She scanned his face. “I don’t know. I know I love the water and swimming.”

  He scanned the long, slender body beneath the covers, knew the clean, sleek lines of her. She was made for moving through the sea. Like a selkie, or a seal, something magical . . . The tingle crept up the back of his neck again. He raised a hand and rubbed it away. There was no such thing as magic.

  He rose to his feet. “I really should leave you now. Beitris will be up soon, and—”

  “Thank you for allowing me to use your mother’s chamber. And for staying with me. I don’t think I’m usually so frightened,” she said again. “I suppose the things that happen to us, or to the ones we love, are what teach us fear. Perhaps that’s how your mother felt, why she had to leave. Perhaps your father didn’t understand that, since he was born here,
belonged here. Still, he died with her name on his lips. Beitris told me.”

  He recalled his mother’s death. She’d woken briefly at the end of a long, wasting illness and stared up at the silk canopy above her bed. “I wish—” she’d whispered. For a moment her eyes had met his, and he read a kind of pleading there he took for fear of death. He’d squeezed her hand, and the look became desperate, then resigned. She’d simply closed her eyes and stopped breathing. He never knew what her final wish was.

  He looked at Ronat again. I wish . . . But there was no such thing as wishes. One had to work for what one wanted in life. He went to the door. “I will see you at breakfast, or possibly supper. If you need to be carried . . .” He swallowed. “Just call for me.”

  Outside her room, he leaned on the wall for a moment. How foolish he sounded—he, a lawyer, used to eloquently arguing complicated cases, defending, accusing, explaining. In her presence he sounded like an idiot. She tied his tongue in knots. She tied all of him in knots.

  Perhaps it was the secret he was keeping, his own guilt at doing so. Perhaps fairies or selkies did rule Dunbronach, and they’d cursed him, stolen his gifts of rhetoric and clear speech. And they’d replaced them with a desire for things he couldn’t have.

  He ran a shaking hand through his hair and vowed to stay out of that chamber—her chamber—for as long as she was at Dunbronach.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Oh my. Ronat sighed as Malcolm left the room. She felt hot, and her heart was hammering against her ribs. She stared at the door and wished he’d come back through it. He made her feel safe and alive. She liked talking with him. He had plans and ideas. He cared for his clan, and for her.

  His hair had been tousled when he woke, his rumpled red-gold curls fiery in the sunlight, the stubble on his cheek like gold dust. His eyes were wide, as green as the depths of the sea, or the hills. He sparkled, looked—well, magical, for a moment.

  There was a bold knock on the closed oak panel. She sat up. Malcolm! She was instantly breathless.

  She pulled the plaid close to her throat, made sure she was decently covered—as if he hadn’t spent the night beside her and woken beside her. She ran her hands through her hair and felt her cheeks fill with hot blood.

  “Come in.”

  It was Glenna who strode into the room. She wrinkled her nose. “Are ye still abed? I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone still in bed after the sun was up, unless they were feeling poorly or about to die of the Sickness. Are ye still feeling poorly?”

  Ronat smiled at the girl, hiding her disappointment that it wasn’t Malcolm. “I’m much better.”

  Glenna dropped a pair of scuffed leather boots beside the bed. “I brought ye a pair of Lochie’s boots. He’s grown out of three pairs in the past winter. He doesn’t need these anymore. They’ll protect your feet.”

  Ronat smiled. “I’ll thank Lochie when I see him.”

  Glenna sat on the bed and kicked her feet. “Oh, he’s outside. He was too shy to come into a bow-door. That’s what Beitris calls this room. It’s what she called it—Lady Elizabeth, the laird’s mam.”

  Ronat laughed. “A boudoir,” she said.

  Glenna crossed to the dressing table, examined the ivory combs, the ribbons. “She must have been pretty, though Fergus says that handsome is as handsome does and willna say more. The laird looks like his da.”

  Then Archie MacDonald must have been handsome indeed, Ronat thought as she swung her legs over the edge of the bed and stood up. She waited for a moment to see if her headache would return, or her bruised body would object, but she felt much better. She crossed the room and poured water from the pitcher into the porcelain basin and splashed her face. She tugged her saffron gown over her shift and belted it with Cormag’s belt. She borrowed the thickest pair of stockings she could find in Lady Elizabeth’s wardrobe—still as sheer as a spider’s web—and carefully tugged on Lochie’s boots, lacing the left one extra tight around her injured ankle.

  Lochie was waiting in the hallway, and he blushed scarlet at the sight of his boots on Ronat’s feet. He held out a gnarled walking stick. “This was my grandfather’s,” he murmured, blushing again. Glenna led the way along the hall, almost running down the stairs, as if she could not bear to be indoors. Ronat went carefully in the unfamiliar boots and noted the ancient dips and cracks in the steps that Malcolm had mentioned. Neither Glenna nor Lochie paid them any mind, but their feet were bare, and they’d probably scrambled up and down the same steps a thousand times.

  Beitris was in the hall when they arrived, and she fluttered over to Ronat as soon as she appeared, checking for fever and peering at the bruise on her forehead. “Are ye sure ye’re well enough to be up, let alone rambling about the place with these two? Ye’d best have some breakfast.”

  Ronat looked around the hall for Malcolm, but aside from Dougal, who was tuning a wee harp, the room was empty. The seanchaidh patted the seat beside his own. “Come and sit down, lass. Have ye remembered anything more of who ye are?”

  She shook her head, and he poured her a cup of ale. “Beitris makes the ale herself. It’s flavored with honey and heather and a few secret things she won’t name, but it will strengthen yer blood right enough.”

  He looked at Lochie. “Have ye been practicing your pipes, lad?”

  Lochie made a face. “Aye, but I’m not as good as my da was,” he said, his face falling.

  “His da was Archie’s piper,” Dougal told Ronat. “The Sickness took him and Lochie’s mam, and his grandda too, and left just Lochie and his sister. There’s no one to teach him to play the way his grandfather taught his da, and his father taught him.” Lochie looked gloomy.

  “May I hear you play sometime, Lochie?” Ronat asked. He looked up at her in surprise.

  “Ye’ll be sorry ye asked,” Glenna said rudely. She held her nose and made a series of ghastly moans and wails.

  Lochie turned pink. “Ye’re the meanest creature, Glenna MacDonald, and the ugliest. If Ronat’s a selkie, then ye must be a wolffish, and there’s nothing worse than that.” He turned on his heel and marched out of the hall, his back straight, his head high.

  Glenna watched him go. “I am not a wolffish.”

  Ronat’s heart went out to her, like a sister. “Of course you’re not. Lads say daft things when they’re angry, but you shouldn’t have made fun of his piping.”

  “Ye hurt his pride. Sometimes all a man has is his pride,” Dougal said. “It’s a lonely thing to learn something on yer own.”

  Glenna studied her hands, contrite.

  Ronat looked at Dougal’s harp. “Perhaps Lochie should be a harper,” she said. “At least for now. Once he learns that, he might do better on the pipes.”

  Dougal’s white brows rose. “That’s very wise. It’s worth a try.” He got to his feet as Beitris returned with fresh bannock and cheese. He bussed her cheek and picked up his harp.

  “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go find the lad and teach him a few things.”

  An hour later, Glenna led Ronat slowly up a path that led into the hills behind the castle, following the bank of a burn that tumbled down the slope. Ronat rested often, drank in the salt scent of the sea, the sweetness of new buds, and the tang of the thick pine forests. “Dunbronach is a beautiful place.” She bent to scoop a handful of water from the burn. The peat-bronze water was crisp and icy cold.

  “Aye,” Glenna said. She scanned her home as if seeing it for the first time. Then she cried out in surprise, and Ronat followed the point of her finger.

  “There’s a boat coming into the bay!” She looked at Ronat in a panic. “What if it’s come for you?” She shaded her eyes with her hand and studied the vessel.

  Ronat stared at the dark shape of the boat, just passing the island. Her kin? Her heart lifted, then sank. Malcolm . . . she’d have to leave him. Ronat began to make her slow way down the hill, leaning on the stick, ignoring the ache in her ankle.

  Glenna stayed where she was, shading her ey
es with her hand. She let out a horrific shriek, and Ronat spun. Glenna rushed down the slope and grabbed her arm. “Wait! It’s not for you at all.”

  Ronat looked at the terror on Glenna’s face, felt her own fear rise. “Are they enemies?”

  Glenna looked sick. “Worse,” she said. “It’s Maccus MacDonald. We have to hide.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Beitris, Catriona, and Peggy came hurrying up the path as the boat sailed past the island in the bay.

  Glenna ran down the slope to meet them. “It’s Maccus!” she screeched. “Run! Hide!” Beitris caught the girl and hugged her tight, her expression grim.

  “Aye, we know. We’ve already warned the other lasses to stay out of sight,” Beitris said. She looked at Ronat. “Ye’d best come with us,” she said.

  “Who is Maccus?” Ronat asked.

  “The laird’s cousin,” Catriona said, glancing over her shoulder at the approaching boat. “He’s a dangerous man.”

  “Surely Malcolm—the laird—won’t allow a visitor to do any harm here,” Ronat said in surprise.

  Beitris shook her head. “Maccus is no ordinary visitor. He’s the son of our clan chief—”

  “His bastard-born son,” Peggy interrupted.

  “Aye, but still the chief’s son,” Beitris went on. “Archie banished him, but Malcolm Ban . . .” Her eyes slid away, full of uncertainty and fear.