The Eternal Highlander

by Lynsay Sands

  Aware of the silence that had fallen among the men, Eva glanced about. The Scots were once again riding in formation. Satisfied that she wasn’t talking to herself, and therefore perhaps wasn’t mad, it would appear that they were now simply going to fall back into their usual surly travel silence. This was a disappointment to Eva who had found it quite pleasant to speak to these men, to anyone really.

  Eva was as unaccustomed to long lengths of silence as she was to long journeys. There had always been someone to talk to at Caxton; the maids, the blacksmith, the stable master, the children, the priest…Any one of them would have taken the trouble to speak to her had she stopped by to see them, yet these men had ridden at her side for two days in silence. It had made a long, wearying and monotonous journey even longer, more wearying, and more monotonous, and frankly, Eva was tired and cranky enough not to be too appreciative at the moment. In fact, she was beginning to grow irritated with the man responsible for this journey; her husband, Connall MacAdie.

  She muttered the name with a sigh. It was her considered opinion that by sending his men to collect her like a cow he wished purchased, her husband was showing her very little in the way of care and concern. Eva supposed this meant she could expect to be considered of little more value at MacAdie than she had been at Caxton. Had it been so much to hope that she might have gained a husband who valued her at least a little? It seemed Connall MacAdie wasn’t likely to.

  “M’lady?”

  Eva glanced at the man on her left distractedly. Keddy, the redhead with an unfortunate blanket of freckles on his face, had urged his mount closer again to address her. “Aye?”

  “Why are you talking to your horse about our laird?”

  “Was I?” Eva asked, taken aback at the realization that she must have been muttering her displeasure with her new husband aloud.

  “Aye,” Keddy assured her, then glanced to the man riding on her other side. “Was she no’, Donaidh?”

  “Aye.” The large, dark-haired man urged his own mount closer again so that Eva was sandwiched between the two of them on Millie’s back. “And ye werenae soundin’ too pleased with him. Are ye no pleased to be the MacAdie’s bride?”

  Eva considered lying to avoid offending these men, but lying wasn’t in her nature. “I would be more pleased had he bothered to collect me himself, rather than having you collect me like a new cow for the fields,” she admitted bluntly.

  “Ah.” Ewan and Domhall had moved up again so that the four of them were crowding her once more. It was Ewan who decided to address this matter now, “Yer English, so ye wouldnae be understandin’, but Connall wouldnae send the six of us to collect a cow. He’d send one man, and it wouldnae be any o’ us.”

  “Aye,” the other men nodded their agreement.

  “So I should be flattered that he could not be bothered to come fetch me himself, but sent the six of you?” Eva asked dryly.

  “Aye.” Ewan nodded.

  “O’course,” Keddy agreed. “After all, he couldnae collect ye himsel’, so sent us in his stead. Six of us in his stead. It shows how important ye are. He even sent Ewan.”

  The way he said it made it sound like it was a huge honor, an opinion that was verified for Eva when Domhall added, “Aye, and Ewan is his first.”

  The way he said that suggested it was an important position to hold. Eva was less interested in that, however, than why the man couldn’t collect her himself, so asked, “Why could he not collect me himself?”

  “Well…That’d be difficult to explain, lass,” Ewan began slowly even as Keddy said, “It’s his condition.”

  “Condition?” she asked with a combination of concern and interest.

  “Aye, his condition,” Ewan muttered, but he was glaring at Keddy for interfering.

  “What condition, pray tell?”

  Ewan’s scowl became even more fierce on Keddy at this question, then he finally glanced at her and said, “Tis best to ask him that.”

  Eva frowned at that unsatisfactory statement, but couldn’t think of a way to force a proper answer out of him. Giving up on it, she glanced at these men, her men now, she supposed. They had gone quiet again and Eva didn’t wish to return to the solemn silence that had marked most of this trip so far, so sought her mind for something to draw them into conversation again and keep them talking. She’d like to get to know them. She’d like to get to know someone. Eva was very aware that she was completely and utterly alone and deep in a foreign land that was now to be her home.

  She recalled dreaming of marrying and moving to her own home, and how wonderful that would be, but the reality was something else entirely, scary where she hadn’t considered it might be. Why had she never considered that it would be so scary and lonely?

  “Tis a lovely day, is it not?” she asked desperately as the men began to ease their mounts away, obviously preparing to return to their usual positions with their usual silence.

  Her comment stopped the move away from her, but the silence continued for another moment as the men glanced at each other. Eva bit her lip as she realized that it wasn’t a lovely day at all. It was late summer, but the sky was overcast and the air had a nip to it. It was too late to retract the statement, however. Aware that her face was flushing with a blush of embarrassment, she raised her chin a bit and stared straight ahead ignoring their rudeness in gawking at her as they were.

  “Er…A lovely day?” Ewan queried finally.

  “Well, ’tis not raining,” she pointed out defensively. It could be worse after all, she told herself.

  “That’s true enough,” Donaidh allowed judicially and Eva relaxed a little, but then silence fell again. She supposed that was all that her comment on the weather deserved, and decided she’d have to come up with something more interesting to discuss. Eva contemplated her options, but nothing was really coming to mind. Politics were out of the question. These were Scots. She was English. Dear God, they were practically enemies by birth alone, and surely wouldn’t agree on anything political.

  Oddly enough, it was Ewan who prolonged the conversation by announcing, “Tis no far to MacAdie now.”

  Eva felt herself stiffen at this news. Much as she would be grateful to get off her horse, she was suddenly anxious at the idea of coming face-to-face with her husband.

  “Will my husband be there when we arrive?” she asked, wondering how awful she looked after traveling for two days without stop, and suspecting she must look as travel worn and weary as she felt. It was surely no way to first meet your new husband.

  “If we arrive after dark, he’ll be there, but if we arrive while it’s still light out, he may still be…about his business,” Ewan concluded after a hesitation. “He didna ken how long it’d take to negotiate the marriage, or if we’d even succeed, ye understand,” he said, excusing the man.

  “Nay. Of course not,” Eva agreed absently, but her mind was on what he had said. If they arrived before dark he might not yet be there, which would give her the opportunity to at least change into her other gown and possibly tidy herself a bit, if not to take a bath and make herself properly presentable for this man she was to spend the rest of her life with. First impressions were very important, at least her mother had always said it was so. “And do you think we shall arrive ere dark, or after?”

  Ewan considered the matter, then decided, “We should be arriving near to when the sun sets.”

  Eva felt her shoulders sag with disappointment at those words, but quickly forced them back up. “Near to” meant they might yet arrive before her husband, which meant she might at least have a couple of minutes to try to repair herself before meeting him. More if he should happen to be later than expected. That was better than nothing.

  Two

  Eva stared down at the castle below and swallowed a sudden lump in her throat. The keep crouched at the base of the surrounding hills, shadows falling across it like a cloak. It looked a dark and gloomy place. In comparison, Caxton Hall seemed a sunny abode, at least in her memory
. To her mind, the gloomy structure below went a long way toward explaining the attitude of the men she rode with. Who could be happy and full of good cheer while abiding in such a dismal place?

  “The sun is setting.”

  Eva stirred herself to glance at her companions at that comment from Donaidh. The man’s words had sounded concerned to her. That concern was echoed in the expression of every man around her, she saw and wondered briefly if they worried that their lord would be displeased with their late arrival. Eva wasn’t too pleased with it herself, as she’d really rather hoped to have at least a few minutes to clean up and prepare herself before meeting her husband. But she was guessing that the man would be about by now, or at least would be ere they managed to make their way down the rather steep hill they had crested and to the castle.

  “Stay close,” Ewan ordered the men and Eva was surprised to hear the sudden tension in his voice. She was even more surprised when he gestured to Donaidh and the large man suddenly lifted her off her mount and onto his own, settling her before him as the other men now closed ranks, surrounding them on all sides.

  Eva didn’t struggle or protest, but she did crane her neck to try to peer back down at the castle again. She was sure that just before Ewan had blocked her view by urging his mount out before the horse she now sat on, she had glimpsed dark figures moving in the deepening black valley below. All she’d had was a quick glimpse, but Eva thought she’d seen a couple of darker shadows moving away from the castle. No matter how she craned her neck, however, she couldn’t now see past the mounted men surrounding her.

  The ride down into the valley seemed to take forever to Eva. It probably wasn’t that long a ride, but the tension in the men around her was infectious, and that and the fact that she couldn’t see a single blasted thing past the backs of her surrounding guards made it seem unending. Her vision was so obscured that it wasn’t until the starlight overhead was suddenly blocked out entirely and she glanced up to see that they were riding under the parapet and through the castle gates, that she knew they had arrived.

  The moment they were past the gates, sound exploded around them. It was as if someone had removed a muffling cape from her head, still, Eva could see nothing and she wished she could. The bailey here sounded as busy as Caxton bailey would be during the busiest mid-afternoon hours, yet it was nighttime and should have been much quieter.

  At first distracted by the noise, it took Eva a moment to realize that the men surrounding her had now relaxed. The difference was notable. Eva felt herself relax in response, but didn’t give up attempting to see her surroundings—as impossible as that was at the moment with the men still riding clustered close around the horse she and Donaidh were astride. Eva was able to catch a flash of color here and there in the light of torches that were spread liberally about. There must have been hundreds of them to emit such light, she guessed and thought it a dreadful waste. Such resources would have been carefully preserved at Caxton, but then her childhood home was a poor hold. Eva supposed her new home was in much better shape. The fact that the MacAdie had not only taken her without dower, but had actually paid one for her, should have told her that, she supposed, and wondered if she should tell her husband that he needn’t have bothered buying her. Jonathan had been willing to give her away, at least he had been before the Scots had made mention of offering a dower for her.

  Nay, she decided. Perhaps the fact that he’d had to purchase her would give her some small value in his eyes.

  A barked order from Ewan brought the party to a halt, while a second bark had the men dismounting. This would have been Eva’s opportunity to get her first glimpse of her new home, were it not for the fact that Donaidh lifted her down from the saddle even as the other men shifted and stepped down themselves. The man was quick to follow her to the ground and Eva found herself once more surrounded. Now she stood in a forest of bodies, both men and horses, and once again, she couldn’t see a thing. It was becoming damned annoying.

  “Ewan.”

  Eva glanced around sharply at that call, the ring of authority in it and the way the men around her suddenly stiffened to attention told her that it was most likely their laird, her husband. Biting her lip, she quickly tried to brush the wrinkles and dust out of her gown with one hand, while attempting to push the stiff wind-ratted mass that was her hair into some semblance of order as she listened to the men talk and awaited the introduction that surely would come.

  “M’laird,” she heard Ewan’s baritone greeting.

  “Any trouble?”

  “Nay. We rode through the night as ye ordered, rested on the edge of Caxton land, collected her and rode through the night on the way back. The trip was without incident, m’laird.”

  “Good. Magaidh—Oh, there ye are. The lass’ll be exhausted, could ye—”

  “Aye, I shall see to ’er,” a woman’s voice assured him.

  “Thank ye. Ye men see to yer horses, then report to me.”

  Eva stilled at that order and the sudden shifting of men around her as they moved to collect the reins of their horses to lead them away. They took Millie with them as well, leaving Eva standing alone to stare after them with bewilderment. For a moment, she felt rather like a lost child abandoned at market, then she gathered her wits enough to glance sharply around in search of the man who was her husband. The only person still standing near her was a woman; a beautiful, dark-haired creature with a welcoming smile.

  “Eva?”

  “Aye,” she acknowledged uncertainly.

  “I am Magaidh. I’ll take ye to yer room and see ye taken care of.” She held a hand out and clasped Eva’s in welcome, then drew it through her arm and began walking her to the castle door.

  “My husband?” Eva asked in a small voice as they entered the building. It was finally sinking in that after all her worry about her appearance on first meeting him, the man hadn’t even troubled himself to look on her. He’d ordered this woman to tend to her, then had wandered off without even a greeting.

  “Connall has business to attend to. ’Sides, he was aware that ye’d be exhausted and would want little more than hot food, a warm bath, and a soft bed to rest in. He’ll greet ye proper in the morning once ye’ve recovered from yer journey,” the woman assured her with a pat of her hand, then called several soft orders in a language that sounded like so much jargon to her untrained ear. Gaelic, Eva supposed as she was led up the stairs.

  “Ye must be exhausted. A bath’ll reinvigorate ye ere ye eat, will it not.”

  Despite the couching of the words, it wasn’t a question, the woman was informing her that she would be bathing before dining. Eva merely nodded. She hadn’t a clue who Magaidh was, but she was dressed in a fine silk gown and had a definite air of authority about her. All in all, Eva supposed the other woman fit the image of a fine Lady of the Castle, more than she did herself.

  “Are you the MacAdie’s sister?” she hazarded the guess as they had ascended the stairs and started along the hall.

  “Mither,” the woman corrected with a smile, her eyebrows rising when Eva abruptly stopped walking and gaped at her in horror.

  “Dear God, I’ve been married off to a boy,” Eva breathed and the woman laughed.

  “Nay.”

  “But I must be! You are not old enough to have a child more than ten.”

  “Connall is well past ten, lass.”

  “But—” Eva paused as realization claimed her. Of course, this woman was MacAdie’s stepmother, that was the obvious explanation. The voice she had heard in the bailey, the one she had assumed was her husband’s, had held the strength and timber of a man of at least thirty, and a man used to carrying responsibility.

  “Here we are.” Magaidh opened a door and led her into a large bedchamber. Eva gaped at the room. To a girl used to bare walls and sometimes even bare floors, the grandeur that met her eyes here was rather dazzling. This room was at least four times the size of the tiny bedchamber she had occupied at Caxton, and, these walls were not bare
. Fine tapestries lined each wall, fresh smelling rushes carpeted the floor and a cheery fire burned gaily in a huge fireplace making it obvious that they were not stingy with their wood here, as they were at Caxton.

  Eva moved to the bed and ran her fingers lightly over the fine silk material that hung around it. It was pulled back now, but would be lovely when drawn around the bed to block out the cold and draft, she thought with a sigh of pleasure. “Tis lovely.”

  “I’m glad ye like it.”

  Eva turned to smile shyly at the woman, then glanced to the door she had forgotten to close as servants began filing through it. Two men came first, bearing a huge tub which they set near the fire. Several women followed with pail after pail of steaming water. These were poured into the tub, along with a small jar of sweet smelling flowers and herbs. Once this was done, all but one servant left.

  “Glynis will help ye with yer bath,” Magaidh announced moving toward the door as she spoke. “I’ll have yer meal sent up once ye’ve finished.”

  “Thank you,” Eva said with a sincerity she couldn’t possibly express properly.

  Magaidh glanced back with a smile that seemed to warm her from the inside out. “Yer more than welcome, child. Yer home now.”

  Eva shook her head as the door closed behind the lovely woman. Imagine someone so young calling her child, she thought with weary amusement, then turned to smile at the girl who was to act as her maid. About her own height, but a bit plumper and with shiny red hair and freckles that would rival Keddy’s, the girl smiled at her widely in return.

  “Shall I help ye to undress, m’lady?” Glynis asked.