by L. L. Muir
He shook his head. “Had that counted, I would have already collected my boon and been on my way.”
“Oh.”
There was an entire world of disappointment in that one wee word, and he struggled to undo what she had clearly taken as a rejection of herself. She was back to nibbling again.
“Of course, I would have lingered while ye and yer friend stayed on.”
She nodded, but she didn’t believe it, so he tried again.
“After all, it is nae so easy to find a loose American lass willing to kiss an ogre like me whenever I ask.”
Finally, those three freckles jumped as she laughed. “Loose? I’ll have you know that I held out for a whole… Wait a minute. No, I didn’t.” She waved him on. “Keep talking.”
“So now, I must go on watching for a deed that wants doing. Or… Or I spend all my remaining time with my loose American and say to the devil with the boon.”
Her smile made no promises. “What is this boon? Some prize, but not money, right?”
Tristan needed the right word for it, and tested a few on his tongue. “A rather symbolic bit of revenge, I’d call it. Though closure, might be a better term.”
“You don’t sound too excited.”
He forced a smile. “I suppose not. For the man from whom I would exact real revenge is long dead. Mind, if that were on offer, I would find a way to earn it.”
“What did this man do?”
By the way her gaze was repeatedly drawn to the white streak in his hair, she probably imagined something quite horrific. And in truth, it was the most terrible thing Edward Grant could have done, but it paled compared to the outright horrors of Culloden. So it certainly wasn’t the cause of his white shock of hair.
He’d never spoken of it aloud, and now that the words were forming in his mouth, they sounded pitiful indeed. But the woman still waited for his answer.
“I was young. Foolish.” He plucked up a stone from the dust around the pit and held it up to the light. But it wasn’t the stone he saw, it was a yellow gem stuck inside a chunk of granite. “I went to Edward Grant, uncle to Patrick Grant, Chief of Glenmoriston, to show off a treasure I’d found. He had often been kind to me and I thought him worldly wise. So, into a sack I put all my precious stones, still encased in mud and rock, and asked him to inspect them, to set a value to them, certain he would declare me rich on the spot.
“The man sighed and sucked his teeth as he studied each one. Then he told me they were worthless as fool’s gold. I confessed I had two dozen others, of all colors, but he insisted that, if they all came from the same general area, they were all just as worthless. But he urged me not to lose heart, that perhaps someday, they might have more value than paste jewels.
“I remember feeling quite honored when he went to his shelves and pulled down a box made of tin. He emptied the odds and ends from inside and handed the box to me. Put all yer stones in this, he said. Bury it in the ground near the southeast corner of my father’s barn, so I would never forget the spot. And in ten years, I should dig it up again and see if their worth had increased.”
“He even told me how deep to bury it, and to add a large flat stone at midpoint, to discourage anyone from digging deeper.” Tristan paused and reached for a drink to wash away the bitterness that threatened to choke him.
“And were they worthless?”
“Nay. Auch, nay. I learned later just how great a treasure they had been. There were plenty of topaz, but there were precious gems among them as well. At the time, I had no ken the area was known for them. But Edward Grant would have known.”
“So, why don’t you go dig them up?”
He shook his head and tried to put it out of his mind. But perhaps it was time to speak it aloud and be done with it.
“I believe he followed me and watched where I buried the box, so he could dig it up himself. A pair of years after I buried them, the man moved his family to Edinburgh.”
She gasped. “That’s terrible! How old were you?”
“I buried the tin when I was twelve. When I dug it up again, I was twenty and four. I had hoped to leave it to my mother when I went away to war. Worthless or no, they might have given her something to remember me by. But the stones were gone. The box was there, filled with river rocks I’d never seen before. Edward Grant might have supposed I would believe the bright colors had only been my childhood imagination. But they hadn’t, I tell you.”
Audie hurried over to his side of the fire to put an arm around his back and offer him comfort. “I believe you. I’m so sorry.”
“Auch, now. It was long ago. A fool deserves but a moment’s pity. And I’ve indulged for longer than a moment, aye?”
“Long ago? Just how old are you?”
He grinned. “Like I said. As old as the hills and as young as the mornin’.”
She smiled into his eyes, then dropped her gaze to his lips. Not one to refuse an invitation, he leaned toward her, but she quickly faced the fire and slipped one arm through his and held on with her head pressed against his shoulder.
“You’re warm,” she said quietly.
“And ye’re not.”
“Tristan?”
“Aye, lass.”
“I’m only here for two more days, but I’ll help all I can. I’m sure we can find something helpful for you to do.”
“Sadly, I must leave tomorrow.”
“No matter what?”
“Aye. Whether Hell or high water comes.”
She barked with unabashed laughter. “That’s come Hell or high water.”
“Aye. Just as I said.”
And she laughed again.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
That morning, when Audie had gone back to get her windbreaker, Natalie had made it quite clear that she wasn’t going to worry if she and Tristan didn’t come back that night. In fact, Nat wasn’t going to worry about Audie at all unless she didn’t show up at the Edinburgh airport in time to board the plane.
“I certainly wouldn’t rush back to you if I had a hunk of a man like that all to myself for a couple of days.”
So Audie didn’t worry about Natalie when she and Tristan headed deeper into the canyon—er, glen—to try and find the guy a little bit of closure. They’d taken a quick look at the roaring falls, then returned to the car where he’d snatched up the plaid tablecloth they’d forgotten about. He’d insisted that if he could wear a tablecloth, she could too. So she’d taken it to the public restroom and made a clumsy wrap-around skirt out of it. She wasn’t about to admit it felt a lot better than body-warm soggy jeans. But it did.
There was a blue stripe in the tablecloth that matched her windbreaker. It was quite the fashion statement.
“Turn here, lass. This looks familiar.”
“I don’t know. Doesn’t look like anyone has turned onto that road for a hundred years.”
“Trust me. The wilds of Scotland will grow up yer back and into yer…ears if ye stand in one place too long.”
She was pretty sure he didn’t mean ears.
They drove along a vague trail for a minute or two, then she had to laugh and stop the car. “Okay. We’re just driving into the woods, here.”
“This was a field last time I saw it.” He ducked his head to peer out the window for a drawn-out moment, and she wondered what he was thinking. Did he picture himself as a young boy, running through the grass, chasing cats up trees? Or had he always stared at the ground, digging for something interesting.
He opened the car door and started his knee-folding and unfolding routine, so she ran around to help, and wondered if it was just his kilt that made it so tricky to get in and out of a car, or if he just didn’t have the hang of it. Maybe he really did walk everywhere he went.
Something excited him when he looked up at the hillside, and she would have asked him what he saw, but he held out a hand to tell her to stay put. Obviously, he was having a private moment and the last thing she wanted to do was interrupt. So she sat on the hood of
the car, ignored the noise when the metal caved a little bit, and watched the show.
For twenty minutes, he stomped around half an acre filled with saplings and wild flowers. Every once in a while, he’d dig with the toe of his boot, or with a stick. But she quickly realized he wasn’t looking for rocks anymore. He was looking for his old life. Or graves, maybe.
She climbed off the car and called out to him. “Can I do something to help?”
He looked up and blinked as if he’d forgotten she was there. Then he grinned and waved his arm. “Come on!” Then he turned and ran away.
She didn’t run after him, not because she didn’t want to, but because she was in “walking shape” not “running shape.” But eventually, she caught up with him. Out of breath and cranky, but she’d made it. A mile away from the car and up a steep incline, but she’d made it.
While he studied the ground again, she turned and admired the hillside. About twenty feet away, at the base of the slope, stood a row of treacherous-looking trees with intense orange leaves and sharply angled, black branches. They looked like they were standing guard to keep humans from setting foot on the beauty above them.
Tall straight pines spread evenly across the space. Their pin-straight trunks were bare for the most part with needles and branches only at the very tops, making a canopy. It looked like the place where Scotsmen went shopping for cabers—the telephone poles they tossed, end over end, at the festivals.
Bright green moss was slopped around the base of each tree and a couple of centuries’ worth was poured onto the forest floor. The pines grew younger as Audie’s gaze was drawn up the hill, and the youngest of all stood in bright sunshine at the top with no canopy to cast a shadow over them.
It all stirred her imagination like nothing else had. Not the standing stones, not the castles—both ruins and updated ones—nothing she’d seen so far, in the most gorgeous country possible, had moved her like that hillside.
“It’s like this place has a story to tell,” she said, and turned around to find Tristan spearing the ground with his fake sword.
He paused and grinned up at her. “Auch, right ye are, lass. And each stone, each leaf, each blade of grass can tell it, if ye’ll but listen closely.” He pointed to his feet where the tip of his sword was buried a foot into the moss-covered ground. “This is the place, Audie. The very place!”
She looked at the foot-high corners of what once had been a stone building. They had to be as old as many of the ruins she’d toured in the past weeks.
“Well, I know it’s not your house.”
He looked at her strangely, as if she had suddenly started speaking another language, and she decided she would keep her comments to herself.
“Nay. Not my house. Ruins upon which my father’s barn stood. And this… This is the southeast corner, aye?”
“Did you bury it again? After you found the rocks inside?”
“Aye. I did. Tossed it in the hole and covered it. Swore to myself that I would forget. But I never could. Each time I picked up a stone, I hoped to see those colors again. But the last, a topaz the size of my own thumb, was the last I ever found.”
He wiped his sword on his plaid, sheathed it, and unbuckled the whole contraption and set it aside. Then he got down on his knees to dig with his bare hands.
“Where’s your little shield?”
“I traded it to Milton, for m’ breakfast.”
“That couldn’t have been a fair trade!”
He laughed and flicked sweat off his face, which left a muddy smear across his right temple. “Ye didnae taste my breakfast.”
“I see nothing to dig with,” she said, then carefully knelt on the opposite side of the hole he’d started. But when she reached down to help him dig, he grabbed her hand, jerked her off balance, and caught her with a kiss.
“Nay, lass. I wouldn’t want ye to muss yer pretty nails, aye? It won’t take long.” He kissed her once more, then let her sit back.
She lifted her wrist to her mouth and bit her lips together.
He instantly worried. “Did I hurt ye, then?”
She shook her head and laughed. “I was just thinking. We should have brought the dog.”
He rolled his eyes and went back to digging. “Then ye’d have paid no attention to me.”
She couldn’t help herself—she slowly reached for his face. He held still and watched her face as she got closer. But then she bypassed his cheek, reached under his hair, and started stroking his ear. “Gooboy.”
He growled, then snapped his teeth. She squealed and jumped back, but the movement loosened the tie around her waist, so she got up and retied it, then moved over to the pile of rubble and sat down. “I think I’d better watch from afar.”
When he’d removed all the loosened dirt, he pulled a little knife out of his sock and started stabbing again. “I suppose I should have expected the ground to be this hard, after centuries of settling.”
She couldn’t have heard him right. “I’m sorry, what?”
He tried to laugh it off, but it was a guilty laugh. “It only seems like three centuries.”
“No. You’ve said that before, that you haven’t had a dog in centuries.”
“‘Tis a common exaggeration here.”
“Did you realize your ears get red when you’re lying?”
“Not true.”
“Still red. Listen. I teach middle grade. I know these things.”
He got to his feet and stomped away, like he was ticked off. She told him she was just teasing, that she couldn’t even see his ears, but it didn’t make a difference.
Maybe he really was lying about something. What if she’d been right about Natalie setting it all in motion? She really didn’t want to entertain that possibility again, but it was too late.
She was going to be sick, and not just because Mary had put butter on her sandwich.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Audie considered heading back to the car and leaving the Scot on the mountain. After all, the guy didn’t mind walking. But she still couldn’t resist the temptation to stay with him every minute she could. As long as he wasn’t hiding something…
When Tristan reached the line of orange and black trees, he stared up the hill for a couple of minutes, then came back. He looked pretty fierce, like an ancient Highlander ready to tear someone’s head off so he could spit in the hole. But she stayed where she was and braced herself for the worst.
“Audie. This is yer last chance for peace. But ye must choose. We can avoid uncomfortable subjects and spend our last day together in blissful ignorance, or I can tell ye more than ye care to hear. But decide now.”
“Obviously, I want to know what’s going on, even if it has something to do with that witch.” And I’ll just pretend like peace isn’t the most important thing in my life.
He didn’t seem thrilled by her response. “There is nothing obvious about it. This will change things between us. I’ve seen ye broken in twain when ye thought Natalie and I betrayed ye. I’d do anything to spare ye even a moment like that again. But I cannot change what I am. And what I am, ye’ll not want to hear.”
“So. Door number one: we play patty cake and I try not to suspect you of being a hit man or a set up, or something like that. Or, door number two: you tell me the truth, that you are a hitman or a guy just hired to show me a magical time, or something like that. We admit that we shouldn’t waste any more time together, and we go our separate ways. But either way, I might get knocked off while searching for the Loch Ness Monster.”
“I wish it were just that simple.”
She’d just been kidding, really. But now she wasn’t so sure. What could possibly be worse than a hitman? And why was she so worried? If it had something to do with someone claiming to be a witch, it wasn’t real anyway. And hearing about it would only mess up the rest of their time together.
She shook her head, took a deep breath, and stood. It was one day. It didn’t need to be complicated.
“
Nope. Definitely going for door number one. Patty cake and pretending.”
He was surprised, maybe even relieved. “Excellent. And I give ye my word, ye won’t get knocked off. I left my firearm at home.”
“Then you are a hitman!”
He rolled his eyes. “I am not a hitman.”
“Good. Okay. But I still think I choose the Patty Cake Plan. Only, maybe, every once in a while I make a guess, and we eliminate my worries one at a time.”
“Just as we eliminated the hitman scenario?”
“Just like that.”
He looked at her feet. “Lass.”
She jumped and looked to see if there was a snake or something. “What?”
“I’d say that door number one is making ye nervous as a cat.”
She looked at her feet and watched herself shifting weight back and forth. She was also wringing her hands. When she looked up, she gave a nervous laugh. “Tristan?”
“Aye, lass.”
“I don’t think I can stop.”
He laughed and walked to her as he raised his arms. He put one around her shoulders and pulled her against him. Her nerves calmed immediately.
“I think wearing a tablecloth makes me nervous.”
“I think wearing a tablecloth makes ye look tempting.” He leaned forward slowly, watching her eyes. But at the last minute, he kissed the tip of her nose and pulled away. “I’ll just get this over with, shall I, so we can go back to the inn.”
It wasn’t long before he struck something with his knife. But it wasn’t the box. It was the flat rock he’d told her about. But he was excited again, knowing he was digging in the right place.
After he pulled the rock out, he started digging again with his big sword. Same process as before, but this time, they didn’t do much talking. In fact, they didn’t talk at all, and she wondered if the Patty Cake Plan had thrown a wet towel on the whole day.
She caught him glancing at her, then silently going back to his digging. And now that she’d noticed the silence, it was getting pretty dang loud.
