The Highlander's Promise

by Heather Grothaus

  “Twice your—I’m not yet a score and ten!” he argued, but Finley had started up the path once more, a smile returning to her face.

  “Och, that’s unfortunate, then,” she lamented over her shoulder. “There’s nae shame in living a hard life, Lachlan Blair. Not all of us can be plump youths.”

  He caught up with her in two strides. “You didn’t seem to mind my dottiness in the barn this morning.”

  “I’m surprised you remember this morning, pap.”

  Now it was Lachlan Blair’s turn to laugh up into the bright afternoon sunlight. He stood to the side of the dark, arched opening of the old house and swept into a bow while Finley passed with a smug smile.

  * * * *

  Lachlan watched Finley Carson closely as she stood in the center of the main room of the old house, probably meant as a sort of reception hall, as it contained crumbling hearth openings in opposing exterior walls. Her red hair was once more tamed into a long plait that reached even farther down her slim back as she tipped her head up to the sky and wheeling seabirds in the open ceiling, and Lachlan was reminded of how her scalp had smelled the day he’d held her against him near the bridge—like flowers washed with sea air and sunshine. She dropped her head and looked around.

  She was ten and nine. Slender and blazing bright, confrontational and unapologetic. A more opposite woman from Searrach Lachlan could not even form in his mind.

  “I’ve not been here in years,” she said musingly, glancing at him as she crossed the rubble-strewn floor toward the pair of short, darkened archways in the rear of the room. She caught herself on the edges of one of the doorways and leaned in slightly, looking up and around at the interior of the cavelike storeroom that still smelled faintly of dried fish.

  “As children, we would dare each other to bring back a stone or some such trophy to prove our bravery.” Her words echoed slightly as she hung in the doorway, and then she pushed back, turning as a gust of wind blasted through the ruin, and the skittering sounds of pebbles tumbling down the body of the cliff punctuated her reminiscences. Small stones bounced down into the center of the room and rolled away in scattered directions, little more than tiny bits of gravel, but they hopped among evidence of much larger stony dislocations, proof that the old house was still very much in the process of decomposing around their heads.

  “Seems a dangerous place for children’s play.”

  “Aye. Many of us felt the thickness of our fathers’ belts for it,” she acknowledged.

  “You speak from experience?”

  Somehow her grins seemed that she always kept a secret. “Perhaps.” She stepped through the field of rubble toward him. “What is it you wanted to show me?”

  “It’s up there,” Lachlan said, nodding toward the stone steps carved from the cliff itself into the left-angled wall of the room.

  Finley turned, and her eyes went up to the switchback staircase, each flight becoming narrower by half from the ascendant floor. Where the stairs finished at the top, they appeared to be no wider than a single foothold. She looked back to him with a wary expression.

  “There’s nothing up there. Literally. The floors are gone.”

  Lachlan walked toward the stairs. “You can’t see it from down here.”

  “Sure,” Finley called out. “Last night you couldn’t stand being in the same room as me, and today you wish me to follow you to the top of a deadly precipice, under the guise of making our marriage go away. One slip and a romantic stroll becomes a tragic accident, leaving behind an eligible widower. I’m not stupid, Blair.”

  “You think I want to kill you?” he said on a laugh as he turned and looked back at her, standing with her hands on her hips, her head tilted distrustfully. He had to admit, were their roles reversed, Lachlan wouldn’t follow her up there either.

  No wonder none of the village lads dared take her on. Most men didn’t want a wife who would argue with them at all, let alone be right about it when she did.

  “Fine. Wait here, then,” he said, and bounded up the stairs, slowing his pace as he neared the top. It would do neither clan any good if he fell to his own death.

  Lachlan paused on the narrow landing before the final flight of steps, drawing his dagger from its sheath and lying flat on his stomach. He inched toward the end of the rectangular slab, reaching out across the abyss while shadows of seabirds rippled over the walls and the breeze sent sheets of pebbles and sand trickling into the void. Once his blade was loaded, he drew it back carefully and stood, supporting the blade with his left hand and retracing his steps into the main room.

  Finley didn’t look any more convinced the closer he got.

  “Hold out your hand,” he said. Once she had, Lachlan tipped the blade out into her cupped palm.

  She frowned down at the orange-black, damp crumbling mass and then looked up at him. “Dirt?”

  Lachlan shook his head. “Rust.” He used the tip of his dagger to smooth aside the middle of the pile in her palm, uncovering a small half-moon of dark metal. He looked up to meet her gaze.

  Finley’s eyes narrowed, but rather than suspicion, her look conveyed curiosity. Her hand closed over the crumbly mess and she walked toward the steps. Lachlan turned to follow her progress with his eyes, but remained in the receiving room as Finley gained the topmost landing.

  “There’s a mound of it,” she called out. “The wall’s stained where it’s run down.” Finley looked down into the room at him. “What is it?”

  “Chain mail, I think,” he replied. “English armor.”

  “Nay,” she scoffed. “How would a pile of English chain mail end up at the top of a ruined Highland house?”

  “I have the beginning of a suspicion,” Lachlan said. “But I’ll need to talk to Murdoch about it. Perhaps your da as well.”

  Finley tossed the contents in her hand back at the ledge where Lachlan had retrieved them, and he couldn’t help but be reminded of the way mourners dropped in handfuls of burial dirt over a grave. She brushed her hands together and started down the stairs, holding her words until she was once more facing Lachlan.

  “He won’t talk to you about it,” she said. “Murdoch. He won’t talk about this place or that time to anyone, not even Da. What I told you was true: My da whipped me fierce when I was a child for daring to come up here. But all he would say about it was that whatever was left inside the old house was dangerous.”

  Lachlan saw the dawning of realization in her eyes as Finley laid their discovery over her father’s warnings.

  “Don’t you think a pile of rusting English armor could have something to do with the danger he spoke of?”

  “I always assumed he meant the falling rocks.” Finley turned to look about the room again, as if seeing the whole place with new eyes. “What did you want my help with?” she asked. “I know it was not only walking up here with you.”

  “I think we both want the same thing,” Lachlan said, “and that’s for me to return to Town Blair.”

  Finley crossed her arms over her chest and nodded. “Aye.”

  “I must prove that my chiefdom has been stolen from me. And in order to do that, I’ll need to talk to any Carson who was alive during the time Tommy Annesley lived at Town Blair. ’Twould be fair simple, save for the fact that your people don’t seem to care much for me yet.”

  “Nay,” Finley scoffed.

  Lachlan allowed himself a grin at her sarcasm. “If I can get them to see that I’m not their enemy, they might give me the proof I need to regain my clan. You can help me to do that by not showing everyone how much you hate me. Maybe even being outwardly on my side. If I’m right, the Carsons will be vindicated, once and for all.”

  “And if you’re wrong?” she prompted with a superior air.

  He shrugged. “The Blairs won’t have me back anyway.”

  “What am I to do, go from door to door to tel
l everyone how lovely our wedding night was?”

  “Just don’t thwart my efforts,” he clarified.

  “Your efforts at what?”

  “Now that Carson Town has the resources it needs, it’s time for the people here to rebuild properly,” he said. “I mean to help you do just that.”

  Finley’s expression gave nothing away, and although she didn’t agree with him, neither did she argue.

  “And,” Lachlan continued, “speaking of our wedding night, if we are to be free of each other when this is over, it would be best if we continued to sleep apart. There can be no question that our marriage was never validated.”

  Her expression remained stony for a moment longer and then she shrugged and turned away. “Fine.”

  Lachlan frowned; it seemed as though he’d said something to anger her, but he couldn’t imagine what it was.

  “Fine. Good,” he said. “Where are you going?”

  “To help Mam with supper,” she said as she exited through the doorway, leaving Lachlan standing alone amidst the rubble of the ruin.

  “I’m going to find Murdoch,” he called after her. He didn’t hear a response, but perhaps the wind had stolen it.

  He waited a moment longer, then quit the old house himself. Finley was already disappearing into the dilapidated cluster of houses in the center of town when Lachlan started down the path. He tried to shake the confused feeling she’d left him with, wondering how they could have come to the ruin in a jocular manner and then parted so stiff and cold, like some specter of gloom had descended upon their endeavor rather than the buoyancy of hope they each should have felt.

  They might each get what they most wanted after all. What they deserved.

  Lachlan shook his head and continued on in the opposite direction into town, in search of Murdoch Carson.

  He didn’t see the figure watching him from the clifftop.

  Chapter 8

  Finley knew before she opened her eyes the next morning that it was no longer dark in the bedchamber. It had taken hours for her to fall asleep the night before and now she had overslept, if the sunlight filtering through the sparkling air over her bed was any indication.

  She swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat up, sliding her feet into her slippers and pulling her shawl from the peg. The bed was tidied in only a moment, and she set to replaiting her hair, while her eyes scanned the skirts and blouses lining the wall.

  Dark gray? Light gray? Grayish-brown? Hmm. Decisions, decisions. She ignored her fine wedding costume as if it wasn’t there.

  Light gray, it was.

  She dressed quickly and opened the door to the main room, expecting to see her mother and father—and perhaps Lachlan Blair—breaking their fast at the table after their morning chores. But although the fire in the hearth still smoldered, the room was empty.

  How late had she slept?

  Finley saw a towel-covered dish on the table—bannocks and butter and a cup of fresh milk. Obviously everyone else had already eaten, but where had they gone off to? She picked up a cold oatcake and took a bite, washing it down with the tepid milk. She left the cup on the table, but carried the oatcake with her out of the house.

  The light outside was gray—the glowy sort of illumination where the sun is present but yet so hidden behind such a thick barrier of clouds that everything is soft and foggy. The flower heads hung low still with dew and sleep, and Finley stepped quietly on the path, her eyes searching the farm up along their stone wall, and then out over the tops of the mist-shrouded rooftops of the town. There wasn’t a sound to be heard beyond the wind and the sea. Not even the bleat of a single sheep.

  It was then she realized the source of the morning’s odd quality: There were no animal sounds, no work sounds, echoing over the bay. It was as though everyone had vanished.

  She remembered the whispered stories from the older children when she was young, about the years of silence in Town Carson after the great battle. Nearly all the men, many of the women and children, and most of the animals were dead. It had made for terrifying haunt stories when she was wee, and now the silence caused unsettling gooseflesh to rise on her arms beneath her shawl, the cool fog dampening the tendrils of hair near her temple.

  What must it have been like for her young mother then, hearing the blackened town silent, her own husband gone in the fight? What terror had she felt, looking over the corpse of their town from the spared farm on the hill? What resentment, to be married straightaway to Rory Carson, a relative stranger to her, called back from Glasgow by his own mother?

  Finley saw the rounded, shawl-covered head coming up the path toward her now, as if her macabre imaginings had caused Ina Carson to appear. But contrary to Finley’s melancholy musings, her mother’s expression was bright.

  “Good morning, daughter,” she called up, holding her skirts slightly away from the tall, damp grass. “Your da said to let you lie in because he and Lachlan got at the chores right off.”

  Finley wanted to frown at this bit of information; she had helped her father with the morning chores since she’d been a lass of eight. But she supposed that was the point of her marrying, wasn’t it? Besides, if Lachlan Blair had his way, he wouldn’t be here helping forever. She would be wise to enjoy what respite she had.

  “Where is everyone?” Finley asked as her mother drew even with her on the path.

  “Taken the animals up over the vale to graze,” she said, and her eyes were almost sparkling in the foggy gloom. Finley thought that if the sun had been out properly, she couldn’t have withstood her mother’s gaze.

  “Our animals?”

  “All the animals,” Ina said with a smile. “Lachlan is leading the men up to the Blair pastures we’ve a right to. He’s showing them where the boundaries lie.”

  Lachlan is a harried man this morning, she thought to herself with unreasonable sourness. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t warned her yesterday that he would set out to gain the Carsons’ trust. Finley just hadn’t expected it so soon. He’d eaten supper with the family last night, and after he’d borrowed one of Mam’s lamps, Finley had walked him to the path.

  There he had wished her a good night and set off toward the old house, alone.

  Ina Carson looped her arm through Finley’s and turned them both back toward the house. “Doona worry so. I’d say it willna be too long before your husband asks the fine for permission to build a new longhouse.”

  Finley turned her head sharply to look at her mother.

  Ina continued. “The Blair is a proud man. Your father suspected he would be when he agreed to the betrothal, and he saw that it was doubly true on your wedding day. Lachlan was to be chief of Clan Blair.”

  “But he’s chief of nothing,” Finley said sternly. “He’s been sent here in disgrace.”

  “I suspect he belongs here just as much as he belongs at Town Blair. Sure, maybe he belongs here more,” Ina said, patting Finley’s arm before releasing her and disappearing through the doorway.

  Finley felt confusion distort her face. “What?” she whispered to herself, and then followed her mother inside, where she appeared to be starting the stew pot.

  “It’s part of why your da’s so out of sorts,” Ina continued, hanging the large kettle on the hook and bringing the water bucket near to send ladleful’s sloshing inside. “He knows he’s made a good match for his daughter. To a man who wouldn’t take kindly to sharing a hearth with the old folks. Lachlan was to be the chief, Fin.”

  “You said that already,” Finley acknowledged.

  “Aye, well, it’s the truth, and it’s now paining your da. The Blair needs his own house for him and his woman.”

  “He’s not the Blair. And I’m not just his woman.”

  “Sure, and what are you, then? If you think we didna notice your red eyes the morning we returned, you’re mistaken. You must have cried all t
he night, knowing he wouldn’t stay. To see him go away from you to the old house.”

  Finley pressed her lips together for a moment. “I sent him to the old house, Mam.”

  “Ah, duck,” Ina said with a sigh, rising and placing her hand along Finley’s cheek. “What else could you do? It was meant for a chief.” She patted her daughter’s face gently and turned away, and Finley rolled her eyes toward the ceiling.

  He’s not a chief, she mouthed to her mother’s back.

  “Your da’s a proud man, too, Finley,” Ina said, unwrapping a hunk of hard, shriveled meat and slicing ribbons off the end over the pot, the sharp blade of the knife pressing into the fleshy part of her thumb as if it were made of supple but impenetrable leather. “He was happy to pass the farm along to whoever it was you married, but he will not let it be said that he didna give a man what deserves it his due.”

  “Why is Lachlan Blair different from any of the other men who asked for my hand?” Finley demanded, and then added quickly with a pointed finger, “Doona say because he was to be chief, Mam.”

  Ina closed her mouth in a grin. “He’s different because he’s ended the feud, Finley. Our animals are grazing on Blair land in this very moment! Just think of the lambing we’ll have next spring!” She rewrapped the dried meat and bent to rummage in a basket for a pair of shriveled roots, muffling her words. “And it’s said that he has Carson blood on his father’s side.”

  “Is that true, though, or only something said to make us take him?”

  Ina raised up with a whoosh of breath and pushed her hair off her forehead with the back of her hand. “I doona think there was ever any question of us taking him.”

  “Ah, I see; it was me who had to be negotiated,” Finley said.

  “All that matters is that you’re married now. Let it go, Fin,” Ina said, adding the roots to the stew with a smile. “Pray God we’ll welcome more than new lambs in the spring, eh?”

  Finley’s sharp retort was stayed by the door flying open and the angelic-looking Kirsten bursting through. Both Ina and Finley looked at the girl with wide eyes, never having known the blond lass to have enough spirit to say good morning lest she was prompted.