The Highlander's Promise

by Heather Grothaus

  Am I happy to be chief? he asked himself suddenly. He’d sought justification for so long that, once he’d gained it, he’d never thought to question it before that night, sitting alone in his grandfather’s house, wearing his grandfather’s shawl. This was the future he had secured for himself—fought and nearly died for. Leading these people, living in this house, this town, for the rest of his life. He’d won.

  But rather than victory, why did it feel like he’d sentenced himself to a long, cold mourning for what could have been?

  Lachlan drained the cup, then blew out the lamp to hide his shaking hands in the dark.

  * * * *

  A pounding on the door woke Marcas Blair from his sleep. His head ached from too much mead, too many bad dreams of death and fire and blood. He pulled himself from the bed in the early dawn light and trudged to the door, his flesh prickling with the chill. He opened the door and saw one of the old wives, the hem of her skirts wet with dew.

  “Marcas,” she panted. “It’s the Blair.”

  “Lachlan?” He rubbed his eyes.

  “Aye, look!” The woman pointed a thick arm over the green.

  Marcas squinted and then saw the blurry outline of a fluttering cloth on the side of the Blair’s longhouse. It was like looking into the past, only months ago, when Archibald had died.

  Marcas ran from the house in his bare feet, across the green toward the flapping cloth. It was the shawl, of that there could be no doubt. He crashed against the door, throwing it open and bursting inside.

  “Lachlan!” He looked around the long, wide room. Everything was as it should have been, except there were no boots on the floor, no satchel on the peg. No knives on the table, no fire in the center hearth. The room was cold.

  Marcas walked back outside and stood before the old, threadbare shawl nailed to the longhouse wall. It was a clear message: Lachlan didn’t care who the Blair was anymore. He didn’t want the law of it. He didn’t want them. He was gone.

  Lachlan had gone home.

  Marcas leaned his forehead against the old shawl, the rough wall beneath poking through the thin material into his flesh, but he didn’t care. He wept bitter tears of regret.

  * * * *

  Finley came out of the house in the misty morning light, pulling her shawl more tightly around her. She wobbled in her slipper, realizing she hadn’t put it on properly, and stood in the dooryard, bent over, fighting with it. There.

  She raised up, but froze in place as she heard the echoing clatter of metal on metal coming from the barn. She sighed. It was either Da, changed his mind about letting her take over all the chores in truth, which he’d promised not to do—again—or it was yet another of the townsmen, intent on wooing her with work. She’d found a Blair lad, at least five years her junior, in there last week.

  Finley trudged up the path wearily. Taking care of the farm would be a lot less work if everyone would just let her get on with it.

  She walked into the barn and saw a man in the shadows, turned away from her and bent at the waist, propping the fork against the wall. He straightened, and Finley noticed that he was missing his shirt. Her heart skipped, recognizing at once those shoulders, the line of his spine. He turned.

  “Lachlan,” she breathed.

  “Good morning,” he said. “How’s your arm?”

  “As if you care. What are you doing?”

  He looked around the aisle pointedly, then back to her. He shrugged. “Working.”

  “Why are you here?” she demanded.

  “I left Town Blair.” He put his hands on his hips, blew out a breath while looking at the ground for a moment, then raised his eyes to her again. “I’m sorry. I made a terrible mistake, Finley.”

  She nodded vaguely. “Aye. That you did. Several.”

  He took a step toward her. “I love you—”

  “Stop.” Finley held up a hand. “You stop right where you stand, Lachlan Blair. I doona want to hear another word. You can just…you can just put your shirt back on and go home.” She turned and stalked from the barn, hot tears leaking from her eyes. She flung them away with her fingertips.

  “Finley!” She heard his footsteps behind her, running down the path.

  “Go away, Lachlan!”

  He grabbed her arm and turned her on the path, and Finley lashed out with her other hand, striking his bare skin with a loud smack. But it didn’t deter him. He pulled her into his arms and kissed her. She struggled, but it was as if her tears had made her weak, and when he did not relent, she surrendered to the feel of him, the smell of him. Oh, how she had missed his face, his voice, the touch of his hands.

  But the way he was touching her now, it wasn’t like before he’d left. This was insistent, urgent. His hand went to her breast; he lifted her against him.

  “I love you,” he said against her mouth. “I loved you the day after we were married, only I was too stubborn and prideful to admit it.”

  “Did they throw you out again?” she asked, her voice cool even as she clung to the warmth of him.

  “What?” he asked, and then laughed. But then he framed her face in his palms, leaned his head near hers, and looked into her eyes. “I left on my own. Because I’d rather live a hundred lifetimes in the old house alone, as Geordie did, if I canna spend the rest of my life with you. You are the very beating of the heart inside my chest, and I have longed for you as the restless sea longs to retire upon the shore.”

  She pulled away and glared at him with all the distrust she felt, even though his romantic speech had caused her chin to flinch, her throat to constrict. “You’re so sure I’ll have you, is that it? After you humiliated me?”

  “I’m not sure at all you’ll have me,” he said. “And I didn’t humiliate you. I humiliated myself. I have done nothing but show everyone who’s ever known me what an idiot I am. You—Finley, you’re everyone’s darling; their hero. Surely you know that.”

  “They want to send me to Edinburgh,” she admitted. “To make a match.”

  He shook his head, pulling her to him once more with a frown. “Nay. Doona go. You canna go. Not if you love me.” He kissed her again. “Say it.”

  “We’re friends,” she said, turning her head.

  He stooped and scooped her into his arms and walked toward the house.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded, although she hooked her arm around his neck. Just so she wouldn’t fall, she told herself.

  “Taking you inside to bed you, so you have to marry me again,” he said. “Door.”

  Finley reached down and disengaged the latch.

  He stepped inside and kicked the door closed, and the room was dark. He walked toward the back of the house, stubbed his toe on a chair that had been moved since last he was in the house, and cursed. Turned her sideways to enter the bedchamber and then laid her on the single bed that now occupied the room. She put up no resistance when Lachlan loosened her shawl and the ties of her apron and slid them from her. Finley watched him in the gloom as he bent to address his boots, stepped from them, and then knelt on the bed.

  He pushed her gown up to her hips, then up to her ribs, over her small breasts. He paused there, kissing each one in a leisurely fashion. Finley pulled her arms from the sleeves, and Lachlan lifted the gown from her head. She gave up all pretense, then, opening her legs to him as he reached down to his breeches. She wasn’t afraid of his body. In fact, the greatest fear she’d had these past weeks was that she would spend the rest of her life without feeling his body again.

  He took her slowly at first stroke, and it was just right for her. He was careful, gentle, until she had become ready for him, and then Lachlan worked his body atop hers, timed his strokes, his rocking, until Finley was panting beneath him.

  “That’s it,” he encouraged. He drove into her in a steady, increasing rhythm, and leaned his face close to hers to whisper
in her ear. “I’m going to put a baby in you. My baby.”

  Her peak took her by surprise, expanding her body and then collapsing the entire world to one pulsating point, and Lachlan stilled, his hips pushing his promised seed deep inside her.

  After a moment, he rolled away from her, flopping onto his back. Finley curled into his side.

  “I almost forgive you.”

  “Good.” He pulled her close to him and rested his cheek on her head. “I love you. Do you love me?”

  “I suppose.”

  He gave her a squeeze. “Will you make me a bannock, then? I’ve nae had a proper meal in days.”

  Finley shrieked in outrage and swiped the pillow from beneath his head to press it over his face. He tossed her off easily and pinned her to the mattress.

  “Fine, fine!” he consented. “You win. I’ll bed you once more. But then I really must have something to eat.”

  This went on for quite a happy while.

  * * * *

  They walked into town together at midday, and Finley knew they caused considerable stir as several of the wives ran off to summon the rest of the town. Lachlan grinned at her with a shy blush and shook their joined hands.

  This was a different man beside her. Same in all the ways she had missed, but with a gentleness now, a slowness he’d never before possessed.

  A certainty.

  Everyone gathered at last, even Geordie Blair, who was wearing proper clothes and living in the little cottage that had been meant for Rory and Ina Carson. He was a Carson now, and part of Carson Town. He’d more than earned it.

  Rory and Ina had taken up residence in Murdoch’s old house, and until the fine decided otherwise, Rory had agreed to act as clan chief.

  Lachlan squeezed her hand and then stepped into the center of the crowd alone. “Thank you for letting me speak,” he said. “I come here to ask once more for the charity and mercy of Carson Town. I have forsaken my place as chief of Town Blair. Because I realized it was in Carson Town that I learned the meaning of friendship. The meaning of working for the good of all. I learned about forgiveness, and family. I learned how to drag in nets.” Here, everyone chuckled. “And I realized that when I think of my future, of a family of my own, I can only imagine it being here. With all of you, if you will have me.”

  He turned to look at Finley, and his gaze burned to her soul. “If Finley will accept me as her husband. I’ve never wanted anything more in my wildest dreams than a family with this woman. Raising our bairns as she was raised. I can learn to be a better man here. I will learn. I promise you.” He looked back at the town.

  “If you refuse me, as is your right, I will bear you no ill will. But I willna return to Town Blair. More than one person in this town told me that it was nae my home, and they were right.” He turned to Finley again, facing her fully.

  “Finley Carson, will you be my wife?”

  Finley nodded and answered quietly, “Sure, I will.”

  A shout rose up in the crowd, and Lachlan and Finley were swept up in happy embraces and handshakes until at last they were pushed together.

  “Give us a kiss to seal it!” someone shouted.

  “It’s nae as if this is a proper wedding,” Finley scolded as she felt her cheeks heating under the close but smiling scrutiny of the entire town.

  Lachlan grinned down at her. “We do things better our own way.” He leaned his head toward hers.

  Eachann Todde chimed in. “I believe this happy occasion calls for a sonnet. ‘“Again, my lo—’”

  “Nay!”

  “Boo!”

  “Leave off, Todde!”

  Finley and Lachlan laughed, their foreheads leaned together.

  Then the sound of hooves rang foreign in the warm afternoon air, and all turned to regard the dusty cloud entering the town.

  Black horse, black rider.

  Lucan Montague slowed Agrios to a trot, but came right up to where Lachlan and Finley stood in the shocked and wary silence. Without a word, he reached into his black doublet and withdrew a folded packet of parchment, tied with a blood red ribbon.

  Lachlan took it, read it, and then looked into Finley’s eyes.

  Epilogue

  Vaughn Hargrave read the letter thrice over, and then folded it back neatly into its former shape. He retied the ribbon carefully and placed the letter in his desk. Then he rose and quit his chamber, making his way through the maze of corridors and stairwells that made up Darlyrede House; its cold marble floors, its muraled walls filled with sparkling, gilded frames and spotless tapestries.

  Down, down, he went. Smiling at the servants he passed. Pausing to say this or that to a particular one. He walked to the end of his wife’s wing, stood before her door for a moment. Even raised his hand to rap on it, but changed his mind. He looked around to ensure no one was watching, then entered the secret corridor to the narrow, damp stone stairs that led down, down, down even farther into the bowels of Darlyrede.

  He could hear her panicked skittering as he unlocked the gate. She wasn’t crying, and Hargrave was heartened. She was of robust stock, and tonight she would be rewarded.

  Rewarded greatly.

  “Are you awake?” He came around the corner and saw her, her skin so pale as to be nearly blue. He came to stand over her.

  “Searrach. Hallo.”

  She didn’t smile.

  He leaned down. “I have a job for you. How do you like that? Are you ready to go upstairs?”

  She nodded, her movements like a hummingbird’s, her eyes sunken like warm stones dropped in a snowdrift.

  “Well, let us see. I’m going to place great trust in you. You will need to obey me completely. Can you do that?”

  Again, the anxious nod.

  “Stand up, then,” he encouraged in a kind voice. “Here, let me help you. Careful, you’ll be a bit wobbly on the stem for a moment. Better?”

  She stared up into his face, her sharpened features wary. No trace of the plump, mouthy Highland wench he’d taken from Town Blair.

  Town Blair. Carson Town. Myra Carson…Myra Annesley. Tenred.

  Thomas.

  Thomas.

  The letter.

  “Very well.” He turned and pulled a long robe from a peg. “Put this on. You may follow me upstairs to my rooms to be cared for by my servants until you are well enough to be of use. It shall be just in time, too, I think, with such important visitors en route to Darlyrede House even as we speak. Why, just look at you, poor bird, having traveled so far from your home to seek work. Set upon by bandits, were you not? They have infested our wood, I’m afraid.”

  Searrach pushed her arms through the sleeves without question.

  Yes, she would do.