The Highlander's Promise

by Heather Grothaus

  She rose up on her toes slowly, slowly, and cast down her eyes. Indeed, there was the shiny silver top of a soldier’s helm just beneath the window. If he fancied to turn and raise up on his own toes, he’d be looking directly into Finley’s eyes. She eased down again and stepped silently off the chair, careful not to make a sound, turning toward Kirsten and swiftly bringing her hand to cover her friend’s mouth as it opened.

  “Shh,” Finley breathed into her ear. “The green is crawling with them—there’s one standing right under the window.” She leaned back to look into Kirsten’s eyes, and her friend nodded her understanding.

  Kirsten pulled away and moved to the chair, and Finley heard the murmur of voices coming from across the green. She watched as her friend took in the scene out the window, and Kirsten brought a hand to her mouth suddenly. She looked over her shoulder and waved Finley forward, pulling her up next to her onto the makeshift stool.

  Finley at once saw the cause for Kirsten’s alarm: A lone man had stepped onto a tabletop, a well-dressed man in finely cut clothes, and who was addressing the crowd. But while it was clear from his costume that he was a foreigner to this Highland town, the most startling aspect of the changed tableau was the presence of Marcas and Dand Blair, standing to the side of the table. Two soldiers aimed their crossbows at father and son.

  “That’s all I want,” the man on the table said to the crowd, and his words were ghostly and hollow-sounding from inside the house across the green. He held his arms wide and looked around in each direction at those seated nearest him. Several of the women were weeping into their shawls, and Finley was glad that that particular sound did not carry.

  “You got rid of him for reasons of your own—I’m certain you were quite justified,” the man went on in a queer, almost praising tone. Finley noticed then Harrell Blair and his daughter Searrach standing at the opposite end of the table as Marcas and Dand, and although the dark-haired woman who would have been Lachlan’s wife looked frightened and unsure, clinging to her father, neither of them were being held under the threat of weapons.

  “But now someone will volunteer the trek to Carson Town, someone Lachlan Blair will trust, and they will bring him back to me without revealing my…occupation of your town, as it were. They will bring him, and Thomas Annesley.”

  Marcas Blair called out then. “I’ve told you, Hargrave: Thomas Annesley isn’t here. He hasn’t been here since the day thirty years ago when you made the ben run with blood.”

  The gray-haired man whipped around and pressed his palm to his chest. “Why, I did no such thing. I was merely seeking to apprehend a fugitive. Thomas Annesley’s destination was Carson Town, so that is the town where I made my initial inquiry.”

  “You burned it to the ground,” Marcas accused.

  “And did that not work to your advantage?” Hargrave demanded in a bewildered tone. “It is my opinion that the Blairs were rewarded most generously for their aid in delivering to me what I thought was the carcass of Thomas Annesley.”

  “More than two score Blairs lost their lives that day.”

  “Through no fault of mine,” Hargrave said dismissively. “You know as well as I that it was the Carsons who set my ships—as well as their own—alight. We nearly capsized with the weight of the additional men, even though they abandoned their armor on the beach.”

  The rusting English armor, hidden away in the old house…

  “But,” Hargrave continued, “it appears I was misled. The body shown to me that day in the woods was not Thomas Annesley’s. I want him—and his son—delivered to me, now.” He paused. “Swiftness may perhaps be rewarded with more mercy than I had originally intended.”

  “Thomas Annesley isn’t here!” Marcas shouted.

  The Englishman pointed a finger at Marcas. “Deny me again. Deny me once more and I will have your precious son shot in the head. Right here before you.” He held Marcas’s gaze a moment longer.

  Harrell Blair drew the man’s attention back to the crowd on the green. “Marcas speaks the truth, Lord Hargrave. We’ve nae seen hide nor hair of Annesley since the day we found him dead.”

  “We didn’t find him dead, though, did we?” Hargrave said in a smooth, poisonous tone. “If he was dead, I wouldn’t be in this godforsaken bog with muddied boots!” He paused, as if to compose himself. “Thomas Annesley is here, you mark my words. He knows I am coming after him through his bastard children, and he is trying to stay one step ahead of me. But that ends tonight. Tonight.”

  He surveyed the crowd. “Who will go? Who will go and fetch the men who have revisited this wrath upon you? Hmm? No one? No one at all willing save your townsfolk? Your kin,” he sneered. His query was met with silence broken only by the cry of a babe. “Very well, then.”

  He looked to the soldier standing closest to him in the outer ring. “Kill one of the men. I care not which one, only do it quickly.” A cry went up from the crowd, some of the folk stood, drawing the ring of soldiers close like the drawstring of a sack.

  “Do it!” Hargrave shouted.

  A high-pitched scream cut through the chaos, bringing silence once more before a single, long, mourning wail of horror. The crowd pulled away to reveal a woman bent over the still form of a man prone, an arrow sticking awkwardly from his head.

  “Now, I’ll ask again,” Hargrave said with an air of patience. “Who will go?”

  There was a beat of silence, and Hargrave turned once more to the soldier and opened his mouth.

  “I will!” a man shouted and stood, holding his arm in the air. “Lachlan knows me well. I’ll go.”

  Hargrave looked to Harrell, who shook his head subtly.

  “Oh my, that’s not good.” Hargrave looked at the soldier and gestured to the volunteer. “Shoot him, as well; he cannot be trusted.”

  “Nae! Nae!” Harrell shouted frantically.

  Finley and Kirsten clutched each other as the big man stumbled backward in vain, while the soldier stalked toward him calmly. The Englishman stopped, lowered the crossbow to step into the stirrup, and set the bolt…

  The women at the window turned their heads to each other and squeezed their eyes shut as the jarring clack-swish of his weapon sounded. There were more screams.

  “I didna mean for you to shoot him!” Harrell cried, his voice breaking. “I only meant he was Lachlan’s mate. He might have…he might have…”

  “I knew exactly what you meant, Harrell. And that is why he is dead.” Hargrave seemed to consider the visibly distraught man for a moment, and then he looked directly at the raven-haired woman at Harrell’s side. “How silly of me. Of course. We shall send her.”

  “What? Nay! She’s me only—”

  “Your only child, yes. And once betrothed to Lachlan Blair, wasn’t she? I don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner. The perfect choice.”

  “Nay,” Searrach pleaded, grabbing her father’s shawl. “Da, nay. I canna face him. I’m afraid.”

  “I’ll go,” Harrell offered. “You know you can trust me above all.”

  “That I can,” Hargrave allowed. “You proved that by alerting me to Lucan Montague’s visit to your town. But Lachlan Blair would not likely trust you.”

  “I can convince him,” Harrell pleaded. “I can—”

  “I’ve made my decision,” Hargrave announced. “Your daughter will do my bidding or I shall let the soldiers take turns with her here on the green.” He returned his attention to Searrach. “You have two hours to return with Lachlan Blair and Thomas Annesley and not a moment more. If you fail, I will kill everyone in town, including your father. Then I will find you. And when I do, you’ll wish you had chosen the soldiers.”

  “Da,” Searrach wept.

  “It’s all right,” Harrell soothed, changing tactics. “A simple task. Go straight there and back. He’ll be easy to find.” Harrell half-carried, half-shoved her to the
edge of the green, toward the house from which Finley and Kirsten watched, then pried his daughter away from him.

  The women ducked down beneath the window as the townspeople turned to watch, and Harrell’s last murmured instructions wafted through the opening.

  “Go, me lass. Quick as ye can. Thomas Annesley willna be found, but Hargrave won’t care about that if he has Lachlan.”

  “But what do I tell him, Da?” Searrach whined. “He knows I doona want him.”

  “Tell him…tell him it’s his brother, then,” Harrell suggested. “Tell him Dand’s hurt bad. It’ll like as nae be true,” he added in an ominous tone.

  “Da?”

  “Doona worry about it, gel. Quick as ye can, now. It’ll be over soon enough, and we shall have everything we want.”

  Finley heard footsteps walking away, but dared not look out the window just yet. It didn’t really matter to her now, though, what went on on the green. She climbed down from the chair, prompting Kirsten to follow. They both paused at the door.

  “What are you doing?” Kirsten breathed.

  “We’re going after Searrach,” she said. “She canna be allowed to lure Lachlan here with lies. He must know the truth of what’s happening at Town Blair.”

  “But…Dand,” Kirsten whispered. “I canna leave when—”

  “What will you do for him here, Kirsten?” Finley demanded. “Watch him be killed?”

  “Fin!”

  “If we can overtake Searrach and warn everyone ourselves, we might have a chance to stop this whole thing from happening. You especially know the fastest way through the woods.”

  “They’ve taken the Blairs’ weapons; they’ll be no aid.”

  Finley just stared at her. “Think you Lachlan will be frightened of that? Think you the Carsons will be either? You heard as well as I: that man—that Lord Hargrave—is the one who burned Carson Town thirty years ago. And from what we heard his guards say, I don’t think there is much chance the Blairs will come out as fortunate as before. He’s going to kill them all, Kirsten, not just Dand. This time, I say it should be he who is taken by surprise.”

  Kirsten’s gentle brown eyes smoldered in the shadows for a long moment, and then she nodded. “All right. Let’s go.”

  * * * *

  By the time Lachlan returned to the old cliff house, the bonfire had been abandoned, the mountainous pile of fuel spent. A tall ring of protective rock walled in the thick bed of coals and ashes, allowing the rippling glow to do what it would. Lachlan stood on the edge of the fire he had helped kindle what seemed years ago now, soaking in the warmth pulsing from the ring.

  Myra Carson…Myra Annesley. Thomas Annesley. Edna Blair.

  Lachlan.

  Rather than show Lachlan a clear path back to Town Blair, the information he’d learned about Thomas Annesley’s connection to Carson Town had only thrust him deeper into the wilderness. He turned toward the old house, tired to his bones, unable to think any longer.

  He was only halfway across the ceiling-less entry chamber when he saw the flicker of his own fire in the doorway, which caused him to stop in his tracks, the hair on his neck raising. He hadn’t been back to the old house since this morning. He could feel eyes on him. Lachlan turned in a slow circle, looking up and all around him, but he could neither see nor hear anyone else. There could only be one person brave and careful enough to come into Lachlan’s home.

  “Edna’s son,” the voice called to him from the storeroom.

  Lachlan crossed the floor swiftly and found the strange, shriveled man sitting on the edge of the pallet, an ancient leather skull cap covering his head. His knobby fingers were laced together on his lap atop his old, long tunic; his roeskin boots were tied around his ankles like sacks.

  It was as if he had readied himself for a journey.

  “Yer verra late, Edna’s son,” Geordie said. “I thought I’d have to find ye.” He stood up, his gangly arms now hanging at his sides. “It’s time for us to go now.”

  Lachlan stared at the man for a long moment. “Go where, Geordie?”

  “Back.”

  “You mean Town Blair?”

  Geordie nodded. “There’s troubles.”

  Lachlan sighed and walked toward the pallet Geordie had abandoned. He sat on the edge and then turned, swinging his legs up onto the thin ticking and cocking one arm behind his head.

  “Troubles at Town Blair.” Lachlan stared up at the ceiling, fluttering in relaxing waves of shadows and light. “I would think you to care little for any troubles at Town Blair, even if there are any. Seems to me Town Blair has everything they want now, and nothing they don’t.”

  “That man come back,” Geordie said, looking down at Lachlan where he lay.

  “What man?”

  “The man with the boats. The man who wanted Tommy.”

  Lachlan looked at Geordie from the side of his eye. “Aye? How would you be knowing that, Geordie? You said you doona go near Town Blair.”

  “Murdoch told me.”

  Now Lachlan turned his head to look at the man properly, then he swung his legs over the side of the pallet and sat up.

  “Murdoch knows you’re here?”

  “Murdoch’s always knowed I was here. Was him let me stay.”

  A little shiver of cold raced up Lachlan’s spine. “Did he tell you to go back, Geordie? To take me with you?”

  He shook his head solemnly. “Nay. It was a warning, what only meant for me. So’s I could be sure to stay away from the wood. It’s the reckoning, Edna’s son. When the Blairs will pay for all their wickedness.”

  “Then why tell me? Why do you want to go back?”

  “Them fair lasses. Finley Carson. And the yellow-headed lass. They’ve gone up the path. They doona ken what will happen.”

  Lachlan felt his brows draw together and he stood slowly, slowly. Finley and Kirsten, whom Ina thought were at Kirsten’s family’s longhouse. What possible reason could they have for going to Town Blair?

  Geordie’s unsettling, queer gaze never wavered. “It’s time for us to go now.” He turned away, but, rather than exit into the receiving chamber of the old house, Geordie wobble-walked to the high-set opening in the storeroom that led to the soaring shaft. In a blink, he had scrambled up the rock and was gone.

  Lachlan stood there for what felt like a very long time, unable to make sense out of what Geordie Blair had told him. Was he dreaming? All of it seemed impossible. Murdoch had known a Blair was living in the old house? How could the Carson chief know the same man who had ravaged Carson Town had called on Town Blair? And why would Finley, of all people, decide this night to make the long journey to the people she swore were her enemies?

  Where had Geordie Blair gone?

  Lachlan walked to the opening. “Geordie!”

  “Hurry, Edna’s son.” His voice sounded somehow far away.

  Lachlan scrambled up the wall and into the dark shaft, where the flickering light of the fire could not reach. His boots crunched over ancient wood as he came into the center of the shaft, squinting up into the darkness, blinking in hopes of accustoming his eyes to the gloom, the tiny square of night sky so far above him moonless, starless.

  “Where are you?”

  Lachlan heard a huff of breath and then a skittering of pebbles rolling, bouncing down the walls of the shaft.

  “Up top,” Geordie called. “Hurry now.”

  Geordie had already climbed all the way up and out of the shaft, to the clifftop above the town, Lachlan realized. He walked to the wall and felt along its rough surface for the indentations of the crude ladder.

  “Edna’s son!” Geordie chastised in an annoyed tone. “It climbs the same, all the way. You doona need your eyes.”

  Lachlan could not hazard a guess as to how many times Geordie Blair had made the treacherous climb to the top of the cli
ff in all his hermit years living in the old house. Thousands, likely. And so what Lachlan could claim over the man in youth and strength was easily eclipsed by Geordie’s experience.

  And he could not simply forget that he was being led to the top of a deadly precipice by a man who’d been in hiding from his people for thirty years, upon receiving information from the chief of Lachlan’s enemies.

  Murdoch Carson is also your cousin, he reminded himself.

  And what if Geordie was right, and Finley was in danger? If it hadn’t been for her, Lachlan never would have discovered that Geordie Blair was alive, or his own connection to the Carsons. He never would have run on the beach at sunset on Lá Bealltainn. He never would have known the passion possible in an innocent kiss; the sweet excitement of the unknown; the laughter of a different people.

  But why had she gone to Town Blair?

  Lachlan began climbing.

  Geordie was right; the hand- and footholds carved out of the cliff were so evenly spaced, and it was so pitch in the shaft, that it made little difference if Lachlan’s eyes were open or closed. He concentrated on the grip of his fingers, the distribution of his weight from foot to foot as he climbed for what seemed an hour.

  “Almost there.” Geordie’s voice seemed right above him now, and Lachlan at last looked up.

  He was perhaps only four feet from the opening, and the fresh air rushing over the shaft made a sad, empty sound. It pricked Lachlan’s conscience to think of the man now helping to pull him over the edge and on to solid ground listening to that lonely, howling wind, alone, for years and years and years.

  And Murdoch Carson had known Geordie was there.

  Lachlan stood, and the wind immediately assaulted him, buffeting him with a surprising strength as he looked out over the town and the bay below. Several tiny pinpricks of light could be seen along the strip of beach: the remnants of the celebration he had taken part in. So close, and yet so far away from where he stood. From where Geordie Blair stood. Outsiders.