A Rose in the Highlands (Highland Roses School)

by Heather McCollum

  Abovestairs, a howl erupted, and the maid behind the woman’s sister leaned forward, her eyes round. “There be ghosts within the walls?” she asked.

  The side of Grey’s mouth tipped upward in a half smile. “Aye, ’tis haunted by the English who’ve been slaughtered trying to take my castle.” Again, the mournful cry echoed in the stairwell.

  Alana scooped up Robert, who immediately tried to lick her face and then chewed on her plaited hair. “Stad, ye wee beasty,” she whispered.

  Hooooowwwlll.

  Grey studied Evelyn Worthington as she stared at the steps, her hands clasped. The strength in her stance surprised him. Despite being half drowned with rainwater and no doubt cold, she didn’t curl forward or cling to her sister. No simpering aristocrat, Evelyn Worthington wasn’t afraid to muddy her slippers to get what she wanted. Unfortunately, she wanted something she would never have. His home.

  Howling echoed between the narrow rock walls of the curling steps. “There is no such thing as spirits,” Evelyn said.

  “Maybe not in England, but in Scotland, the land is ripe with wandering ghosts and pixies,” Grey said. “This one protects Finlarig against English.”

  “I hear a pixie will cut one’s tongue out to keep its secrets,” the maid said so softly, the wind beyond the door nearly blew over her words.

  At the steps, the large shape of his sister’s wolfhound, Ceò, emerged from the shadows. Her three other pups followed, trying to nose underneath to nurse. Ceò raised her long, light-gray snout to howl again, but Alana rushed over. “Here is your wee Robert, Ceò. No need to wake the dead.” The large dog nudged her pup, sniffing and licking him until Robert fell over, presenting his stomach.

  Evelyn looked at Grey. “Robert is the dog, I assume.”

  Grey relaxed his stance, though kept his arms across his chest. “Named after the French explorer, Robert de La Salle. And your assumptions, so far, have been completely wrong.”

  Her lush lips opened and closed several times until she spoke, her voice icy. “Shall we reconvene in the morning with less yelling?” As if the wet, cold night were suddenly too much, her shoulders bent forward. So, there was a real woman beneath the withering looks and razor-sharp words.

  “I suppose ye are wanting to sleep here?” Grey asked.

  She fanned her dripping skirt out before the fire. “Preferably in a bed free of vermin and rainwater.”

  “Molly will need a bed, too,” the sister said, glancing toward the maid, who watched the steps, a curious grin on her face as if she wished for a real ghost to present itself. “James and Thomas will likely bed down with the horses.”

  Another wave of annoyance tightened Grey’s middle, and he narrowed his eyes at the bossy woman. “Your protection is lacking, by the way. An old man and a boy.” He shook his head. “This is wild country. ’Tis amazing ye made it this far.”

  “James has two muskets, and we traveled with English regiments most of the journey,” Evelyn said.

  “Yet ye arrive in the dark, alone.”

  She looked away. Had she finally realized her jeopardy in angering a Highlander without an army behind her? Evelyn Worthington was rash, stubborn, and without the instincts that would serve to keep her alive in the Highlands.

  “I am going to bed,” Alana said, picking up a pup. She made a clicking noise with her mouth at another female pup. Ceò lifted Robert by the nape of his neck, carrying him toward the stairs, his little tail tucked between his legs. Grey threw one of the torches into the fire grate and scooped up the fourth puppy to head for the stairwell with the last torch without slowing his stride. “Come along then.”

  On the second level, he stopped and heard the woman’s footfalls squish with rainwater on the wooden floorboards of the hall. “The chief’s room is on this level, along with rooms for the family and guests,” he said. “But parts are charred like below. Ye can find a bed on the fourth floor where the servants slept.”

  “The chief’s room is the largest in the castle, apart from the great hall,” Evelyn said, looking at him. “It is three doors down.”

  “Aye, and ’tis mine,” Grey answered, hoisting the wiggling dog against his shoulder.

  “Is your name inscribed upon it?” she asked, tilting her head. Drips from her sopping gown dotted the dusty floorboards under her.

  He worked his jaw, loosening the tightness there. “It has always been the bedchamber of Chief Campbell of Breadalbane.”

  The woman tipped her chin higher, sniffing lightly. “It is a waste of space when one just dresses and sleeps in it,” Evelyn said and yanked out a handkerchief from her pocket. She frowned at the white linen, which was just as soaked as her gown, and sniffed, pushing it back into her pocket. “It will become a great library and studying room for the students.” She wrinkled her nose as if it itched, the movement making her look softer somehow.

  “The lasses may not like it,” Grey said.

  She tipped her head slightly. “And why is that?”

  Grey held out his torch for her to take, and let his dark grin grow. “Because I sleep naked.”

  Chapter Three

  Philip, ruffles of lace around his wrists, reached for Evelyn. His fingers were cold and damp, like dingy linen left in the rain. His blank gaze moved closer, the plume in his floppy hat bending to slake across her face. Evelyn was trapped, rooted to the floor, her heart pounding.

  “This is a dream,” she said, but her voice was nothing more than a whisper. She squeezed her eyes shut. A nightmare. I don’t want this. She squeezed her whole body tight, her mind pushing for another scenario, anything other than an advancing Philip Sotheby.

  She inhaled, smelling pine and rosemary. Warm lips touched hers, slanting against her mouth as muscular arms wrapped around to her back, pulling Evelyn into a solid, broad chest. She sighed against the kiss as gentle fingers slid along her cheek. Evelyn opened her eyes, and her breath caught as she stared into the strong face of none other than Grey Campbell.

  He wore his kilt with no shirt, the skin of his chest hot under her palms. He grinned rakishly at her, stepping back. With a tug on the belt holding his Highland dress, the kilt dropped to his ankles, giving Evelyn a view of his manhood. He looked like the classical statue of David she’d studied in books.

  Evelyn jerked awake, her lips parted on a pant, her fingers curled into the sheets around her. For several seconds, she inhaled and exhaled, her eyes wide as she stared at the wooden ceiling above her. I’m in Finlarig Castle. It’s burned. And Grey Campbell… Is large and godlike. “Good God,” she whispered, frowning over the ridiculous thought. She pushed upward in her warm blankets.

  Grey Campbell was infuriating. Insufferable, devilish, and warlike. It mattered not that he was ruggedly handsome, well-muscled and tall, and that the lines of his face were classically cut. She couldn’t care any less that his dark hair hung, clipped about his head in waves, free of those awful wigs in London. Or that he smelled clean.

  I sleep naked. Lord help her, how that teasing statement, surely said in some ridiculous attempt to thwart her plans for the library, had kept her awake as she tossed in the small bed on the fourth floor. And then the dream. Evelyn had learned how to change the course of her dreams while asleep, fighting nightmares since she was a child. Grey’s comment must have influenced her turn from the distasteful scene with Philip.

  Dawn light filtered in through the warped windowpanes of the servant’s room, the second best on the floor. Scarlet was slumbering at the other end of the hall in a slightly larger, cleaner room. The rest of the rooms would be for the students once they were refreshed.

  What had happened to Finlarig? Had her advice on smoking rats to make them flee been carried out by incompetent people? And why were the chief of the Campbells and his sister still in residence? She would untangle this mess today, and nothing, save the physical hand of God himself, would lift her f
rom this castle.

  “I am not going anywhere,” she whispered. With Philip Sotheby waiting, like a gloomy, persistent mule, to marry her, and her father’s brutal demands in his will, she had no choice but to make her way here in Scotland. Or take vows of purity and join a cloister. Considering the turn of her dream, her soul was not inclined toward a nunnery.

  James had found her room, no doubt thanks to Molly, and delivered her trunk. Evelyn shook out a green day dress. Wrinkled but dry, the soft lawn brought out the color of her greenish eyes and had always been one of her favorites. She would need to acquire some work clothes as soon as possible, for there was much to be scrubbed, dusted, and swept. Just the thought of the scorched great hall made her head ache, and she rubbed a finger across her forehead.

  She brushed and tied her hair into a loose knot at her nape. There was no water in the pitcher in the small, square room, easily rectified in the kitchens. Evelyn wrapped her woven shawl around her shoulders and held the lantern before her as she made her way down the curving stone steps. She paused on the second floor, where the plastered walls were indeed singed, and glanced down the hall to where the infuriating Grey Campbell was probably sleeping naked in her library.

  She counted fifty-three steps in all to the bottom level. Climbing the stairs could give her students indoor exercise if rains kept them from their brisk walks in the courtyard for health.

  The smell of damp soot surrounded her on the first floor, making her feel like she stood in an unswept chimney. She rubbed against the tickle in her nose and walked forward, her boots crunching on the floor made of wide, gray flagstone. The great hall sat empty and without a stirred fire in the large hearth at the far end, but sunlight filtered in through the broken windows set high in the walls. Still and silent, a chill ran down Evelyn’s back. The room felt like a grave rather than the hub of her school. Black scorch marks rose on every wall to the vaulted ceilings, where arching timbers were stained black. She could imagine the flames soaring up fifteen feet to lick at the rafters. Two sparrows swooped back and forth, alighting to chirp down at her.

  “Taking shelter?” she whispered, her small voice seeming too loud in the brittle silence of the ruined hall. “Just like us.” She turned in a tight circle to survey what must have been hanging tapestries lying in mounds where the floor met the walls. Tables and chairs lay scattered and broken, half burned like she imagined bones left after a funeral pyre.

  “Whatever happened here?” Evelyn whispered.

  “English happened here.” The deep voice shot like last night’s lightning through her stomach and back, snapping her shoulders straight. She turned to see Grey Campbell standing in the entryway.

  …

  Grey had watched the Englishwoman descend the stairs from the shadows of the entryway. No longer drenched, curls escaped the bun at the back of her head. She wore a green gown of fine material instead of homespun wool, and it clung to all her womanly curves. Aye, she was bonny, but she was also English.

  “Captain Cross sent his men from the English garrison to make certain the castle was empty,” Grey said and strode to the hearth, his boots crunching through his mother’s broken dishes and tea bowls still scattered across the stone floor. He set the rushlight he held among the kindling in the grate. “When I refused to let them steal our castle, Cross’s lieutenant lit it on fire. Said he would smoke us out.”

  Grey watched Evelyn from over his shoulder. The morning light in the hall revealed her brows furrowing over alarmed eyes. They were light eyes, but he couldn’t tell the color.

  “Was…?” Her hand rose to her cheek. “Was anyone harmed?”

  “Of course,” he said, straightening to turn toward her. “Burn the Scottish vermin out, and let the Englishwoman build her school for sheep.”

  “He said…vermin?” she asked.

  Grey narrowed his eyes. “He did.”

  Evelyn cleared her throat and tilted her chin higher. He watched her slender throat swallow. “My brother nor I would ever have consented to burning the castle, especially with people inside. Captain Cross and his lieutenant will answer for their brutality and for ruining my brother’s property.”

  “Bloody hell, woman,” Grey said, frowning. Was she addled or just ignorantly English? “The castle is not your brother’s property. It was never available for sale to begin with.” He shook his head, feeling the rock of anger sitting in his middle, a constant weight since the day he received a royal missive stating that he must surrender Finlarig. “Your brother was tricked into buying something that doesn’t exist.”

  “This castle and the lands most certainly do exist,” Evelyn said, throwing her arms wide to indicate the hall. “And the English crown felt that the land and structure were forfeit.”

  Grey strode across to where he left his mug of ale on a newly built wooden table. “Forfeit on imagined charges of treason against King Charles,” Grey said.

  “Yes,” she answered, inhaling through her little nose.

  “As if I were building an army up here to swoop down and kill the English king and his queen. Bloody ludicrous,” Grey said. “I have enough to do just keeping our harvest going, my people living in harmony, and the Menzies clan from trying to regain this land after we’ve lived on it for centuries. I have no reason to plot against a king who is too busy making merry with all the ladies of London to concern himself with our holding.”

  Evelyn ran the pads of her fingers across her forehead. “The king has dissolved parliament because he feels they overstep their duty in wanting to rule with him. It has made him anxious about his support and possible plots against his life. But why would he target Finlarig Castle? Or the Campbells of Breadalbane if you’ve had no interactions with him?”

  “He doesn’t feel an explanation is required. Just torches.” Grey grabbed some fresh bread that his Gram had given him when he’d visited her yesterday in her cottage west of the village. After surviving the fire, she refused to return. The shame he felt that his grandmother couldn’t depend on him to protect her was still raw. His jaw ached as he clenched it.

  With each step Evelyn took, shattered pottery and china crunched under her boots. She looked down at the ashy floor. “There is more here than broken window glass.”

  Slow and deep, but with carefully schooled apathy, Grey’s words came. “Lieutenant Burdock took the time to have his men smash everything before they lit the tapestries while holding us back with smoking muskets. Ye’re stepping on centuries’ old pottery and my mother’s Chinese tea bowls, a gift from my father.”

  Evelyn squatted, her green skirt billowing out around her, to unearth a red-hued piece from the rubble. “Good God.”

  Grey gave a dark laugh. “God seems to be good for only the English, lass, else He’d have at least brought down the rains that night instead of wind to fuel the fires.”

  She glanced at him from her crouch. “Could the lieutenant have meant to…frighten you with torches and smoke, but the winds caught?”

  Grey’s fists clenched against his legs. “He came inside, smashed everything, and held his torch to the tapestries,” he said, his words grinding out from behind his teeth.

  “Oh,” she said, dropping her gaze back to the shattered fragments. He watched her uncover and collect pieces of broken tea bowls, cups, and plates in her top skirt. She carried them to the table, setting them down gingerly as if they could break further. The way she treated the pieces with care irritated him. “They are rubbish now,” he said and grabbed the back of his skull, pressing against the tension in his neck.

  “Perhaps they can be mended.” She bent over them. “I have a decent recipe for glue.”

  She glanced up, meeting his gaze. Closer now, he could see that her eyes were greenish gray, like the summer moors in the mist. “They will never be the same,” he said and swallowed past the bitter pill of dishonor and loss.

  She nodded but kept
his gaze. “Sometimes things that are broken can be changed into something new if the pieces are picked up, dusted off, and put together.”

  “No matter how much glue ye paste on there, it won’t hold drink any longer.”

  “But it could have value beyond the extrinsic,” she murmured.

  “Descartes may argue that,” he said and watched her eyes open wider. “The intrinsic value of rubbish is nil, making your time wasted. It will just be swept out,” he said, enjoying the look of astonishment on her face.

  “You know French philosophy?”

  “I am not some illiterate Scottish barbarian, Lady Evelyn.” He leaned a bit closer, his eyes squinting despite his grin. “I chose not to read your damned paper when I burned it, but I very well could have.”

  She frowned, weighing his words, then looked out at the ransacked great hall. She let loose a long huff, shaking her head. “What a blasted mess this is, intrinsically as well as physically.” She turned until she located a chair that still had four legs and righted it, sitting against the high back. “Are you willing to share?” she asked, looking at the rolls on the one rebuilt table.

  “My castle? No. My bread? Aye.”

  Evelyn glanced at the ceiling as if an angel sat among the rafters, and she wished to persuade him to bring down a lightning bolt.

  “Good to see you two aren’t dueling this morning,” her sister called from the stairwell. She took two crunching steps. “Lord, this place is a disaster.”

  The second sister, Scarlet, was bonny too, yet sadness seemed to dull her gaze. She lifted the edge of her skirt so as not to let it touch the destruction of his hall…the destruction of his life and legacy.

  “This is what a damn English captain can wreak when the English crown wishes to steal a man’s home,” Grey said. He turned on his heel to leave the castle. He didn’t owe them any further explanations or information. Certainly not that he was going to check in on his cousin, Aiden Campbell, who still suffered from burns.