A Rose in the Highlands (Highland Roses School)

by Heather McCollum

  Grey began to walk again, ushering her past Kirstin’s house where a light shone in the window. The woman, no doubt, hoped to rekindle their earlier romance.

  “Why were there tears on your cheeks?” he asked.

  Damn. “There were not,” she said but knew he’d seen them. He’d likely not rest until she admitted it. “Tears only make one appear weak, so I do not acknowledge them.”

  “Ye think tears make one weak?” he asked.

  All the years of her father berating her sex for their penchant for tears, his sharp, disdainful gaze whenever she tried to comfort her weeping mother, filled her memories. She snorted. “So I’ve been told.” Evelyn saw a white stone on the path and kicked it, watching it skitter farther up the road without rolling off.

  “When I was a lad,” Grey said and rubbed his chin, “I thought the blacksmith was the strongest person alive. He banged steel into shape all day, and his biceps were mountains compared to a child’s.”

  Evelyn kicked the rock again, her gaze on the dark path flanked by bushes. The slight smell of gorse from the meadow came on the breeze that rustled the bushes.

  “And then,” he said, “my mother birthed Alana. I remember that night, as Ma cried and yelled. It was a very hard birth, from what the midwife told my Da. But Ma carried on without pause, and Alana came screaming into the world at dawn.”

  “They were fortunate,” Evelyn said and kicked the stone again, watching it roll almost to the hedge.

  “What I realized then was that my mother was actually the strongest person I knew, not the blacksmith.”

  She inhaled and lifted her gaze to the night sky as they walked without touching.

  “I’ve sat outside many births now,” Grey said, “with my warriors as they wait, listening to the cries and tears of their wives. A woman is at her strongest while releasing tears.”

  Evelyn swallowed past the tightness in her throat. “Good God, Grey, they were only a couple tears from letting another’s poor opinion of me weaken my resolve for a few minutes.” She pulled her shawl closer around her arms. “You don’t have to talk about my weakness.”

  His hand gripped gently around her upper arm, making her stop on the road. “That’s just it, Evelyn.” He waited until she finally met his gaze. The tears that she refused to acknowledge had dried, leaving the skin of her cheeks tight.

  Grey leaned closer as if he were imparting a secret. “Tears are not a show of weakness, especially when a woman continues to battle to birth a babe or build her school.”

  “Do your men weep in battle, Grey?” She pursed her lips tightly together.

  “Nay, not usually, though they curse and yell, which is just another way to release the pressure that builds up. It’s the silent ones who often crumple, especially outside the birthing room.”

  Back at Hollings, Evelyn had helped a couple mothers through births when no midwife could be found in time. Her frown softened. “Is that why you sit with them?”

  “Aye, the midwife is too busy helping the wife and babe, so I catch the falling husband.”

  She sniffed a small laugh and turned back to the road, spied another rock, and kicked it ahead of them. “Well, I was raised by a mother who wailed all the time. She used her tears to sway my siblings and me to do her bidding, but it just made our father furious. He railed against her lack of control. No one should lose control of their dignity. It was my father’s strictest rule,” she said, her voice lowering. “For everyone else but he, I suppose.” When Benjamin Worthington ranted, threatened, or struck her, he did not see it as losing control, for he was the head of the house, and she was a weak woman.

  Grey’s tone was soft. “I’ve learned over the last months that fathers can make some very poor decisions.”

  “Finlarig?” Evelyn asked.

  “Aye.” He breathed in through his nose and stepped up to her stone, kicking it with the toe of his boot. It flew straight, up the path nearly to the open portcullis.

  She stopped before the raised gates that were flanked by lit torches. “What a rotten mess,” she whispered.

  He turned to face her. “Aye,” he said. “A rotten mess.” Hard eyes met her own, reflecting the bright flame. Strength and determination warred with a pain Evelyn knew only too well when remembering her own sire. Her father’s disregard of the future happiness of his daughter had led him to set a contract for her marriage, damning her to a loveless life.

  “It’s no wonder we must strategize against one another for our own survival,” she said.

  He tipped his head slightly, studying her. “What do ye lose if your school fails to make a profit, Evelyn? Because if I fail to win Finlarig back, I lose my honor, my clan, and if I’m unable to protect my people…my life.” His words held no self-pity, just fact.

  She thought of Nathaniel, standing before their father’s desk, the night before she left, with her betrothal contract in his hands, their father’s will before him. Make the school profitable, Evie. The sheep will help to bring in coin. Then it won’t matter that you are cut from Father’s inheritance. You will be an independent woman and won’t need to marry anyone if you so desire.

  The thought of being trapped in a loveless marriage squeezed the very breath from Evelyn. She would be forced to dwell with Philip, to kiss his cold skin, forced to let him paw her body. She would live away from Scarlet, forced to spend her days playing the subservient wife, something her honor would likely not allow. She would be a disappointment, laughed at and probably despised by Philip. Her life would spiral down until she’d be forced to flee under the suffocation of an aristocratic marriage, and who knows what would become of her.

  Forcing an inhale through her nose, she leaned forward. “If I fail,” she said, “I lose my honor, my family, and my life.”

  …

  Grey shut the door to his bedroom, holding his taper before him as he strode past Evelyn’s silent door. The lass must still be sleeping. It was before dawn, but after a night of tossing in his bed, knowing she was just a wall away, he’d finally risen for the day. Even in his dreams, he had stood before the door connecting their rooms, unsure if he should knock. Her silence was the answer.

  He walked lightly in his boots along the corridor to take the steps down into the great hall. After their words before the gatehouse last night, Evelyn had barely said a complete sentence to him, and retired early as soon as she’d eaten. He’d had to survive an interrogation by her sister after Evelyn went above.

  Scarlet Worthington had a nose for secrets and a mind that could easily take her down a carnal path where she’d guess that he and Evelyn had spent an adventurous night together. So, after a few non-answers, he’d retired to his own room. After an hour of listening for a light knock, he’d finally forced himself to sleep, only to wake every few hours.

  Grey rubbed the side of his face with his hand. “Bloody hell,” he whispered, lighting one wall sconce down the back corridor toward the kitchen. What he wouldn’t give to be warm and welcome next to Evelyn. Would you give up Finlarig?

  “Mo chreach,” he muttered. He wanted Evelyn and Finlarig. You can’t have everything in life. His mother’s words haunted him as much as not knowing where her murdered body lay. Bloody foking hell.

  His boots thudded along the descending stone ramp out the back of the keep, past the untended herb gardens, and into the dark kitchen. He strode directly to the glowing coals in the hearth and stirred them with the iron poker. Adding some dry peat, he blew on the catching fire and added some cut wood. Molly would likely want it soon enough. Standing, he looked around at the empty room, last year’s herbs still hanging in the windows. By now Gram would have replaced them, but she refused to return to Finlarig, and now her mind seemed to have snapped toward bloody retaliation.

  Grey opened the stone larder and held his taper close to the opening. Evelyn’s tarts. He plucked one out and took a bite. Chewi
ng, he paused to examine the dark fruit inside. Blaeberry. The lass had used blaeberries in her tarts.

  “Shall I add tart thief to your offenses?”

  Evelyn’s voice whipped him around to face the door where she stepped inside. She was dressed as if for the day, her hair pulled back into her matronly knot. Without waiting for a reply, she walked across the room to take water from the copper in a small pot, setting it on an iron spider over the coals.

  “Are the tarts not for your students and teachers?” he asked and took another bite of the sweetened berries housed in the light crust. Her spine looked very straight. “I was but breaking my fast for the day,” he said.

  “’Tis barely day.” Evelyn straightened to look at him. “Could you not sleep?”

  “Nay.” He couldn’t tell if she looked tired in the low light. Did dark circles plague the skin beneath her eyes? He’d seen his own in the mirror that still sat in his bedchamber. “And what brings ye here so early? Or do ye walk in your sleep?”

  She crossed her arms over her breasts. “Why couldn’t you sleep?”

  Evelyn didn’t play games or spill words about like some lasses. He grinned. She wanted the truth, but could she handle it? “My thoughts kept running,” he said and shoved the rest of the tart into his mouth.

  “To where did they run?” Her eyes looked black in the shadows, even though he knew they were a gray-green like a mist-shrouded moor.

  Grey leaned his arse against the table flanking the wall and crossed his arms over his chest. “To the lass lying in the bedchamber next to mine.”

  “Oh. Were you planning her demise perhaps?”

  “Nay.”

  She walked toward him. He held his breath until she veered off to fetch herself a tart. The sky was still black, and they were alone in the kitchen. Not even their maid would rise for an hour. Grey watched Evelyn take a bite of her tart, her gaze raising to his. She swallowed. “What then were you planning for this lass next to you?” she asked.

  Evelyn, using the word “lass,” made him smile, and he reached forward to wipe a dab of blaeberry off her lower lip and lowered his fist to the high table beside him. “I lay abed all night,” he said, his voice low as his grin faded to seriousness. “Imagining how I would make the lass scream out her pleasure, the two of us against each other, carnal and wild.”

  Evelyn’s lips parted as she stared at him, her arched brows slowly rising toward her hairline. “And yet,” she whispered, rubbing her two lips together. “You didn’t knock.” Her tone, once clipped and sharp like jagged ice, was soft. Had she waited for his knock? Did she toss and turn with pent-up passion?

  Grey raised his fist from the table beside him and softly rapped his knuckles down on the wood. Knock, knock, knock.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Evelyn stared at the rugged, wild Highlander before her, and the hunger that she’d been battling all night roared up within her. Their words before Finlarig’s new massive iron gate had reminded her of their impasse.

  She’d spent the first part of the night trying to figure out a way around it. Would Grey consider letting her teach in his castle if she gave it back to him? But it wasn’t hers to give. Nathaniel had bought the property and had let her live in it only to try to save herself from an unwanted marriage. Would she sacrifice her school for a man’s honor? For he could still rule his clan from the fourth floor of the Highland Roses School. At least he’d been honest about the injury to his pride.

  She’d been around and around about all of this until she’d forced her thoughts away. But then her mind had turned to Grey’s kiss and the feel of his hands stroking her skin, the strength of his muscled arms, and the fiery tempest he easily stoked in her. Three times, Evelyn walked to the door separating their rooms. Poised to knock, her body making demands that her own pride and mind tried to subdue. But now, as he stood in the darkness before her, the warmth of the hearth fire a mere glimmer compared to the heat building within, her body ruled.

  Knock. Knock. His knuckles repeated as he stared into her gaze.

  Her parted lips came together. “Come in,” she whispered.

  She stepped forward at the same time he did, their hands reaching for each other’s faces. Her fingers slid into his hair as he held her cheeks, his palms warm against them. Their mouths met in an open, hungry kiss. Evelyn welcomed the wild heat flaring up through her, a heat that fed the ache she’d tried to tamp down all night.

  Grey’s fingers loosened her hair, and the pins began to plink against the stone floor. Her long waves fell down past her shoulders, and he stroked her back, pulling her closer.

  A moan funneled upward from Evelyn’s throat, and she rubbed her body against Grey, feeling his hardness between them. When the tip of her tongue slid into his mouth, Grey groaned and wrapped her up, kissing her fiercely, until Evelyn felt awash in sensation. Giving in to it all, she might float away in the flood of their passion and not care one wit. The only thing that mattered was Grey and the wildness between them.

  Her fingers walked a path up his shirt, feeling his muscles beneath the fabric. At the top, she plucked open the ties. Swiftly, he threw off the shirt, leaving his chest bare, and she rubbed her palms down his corded abs to the low edge of his kilt.

  “I would see ye, Evelyn,” he said, his voice thick. The sound of it, so full of desire, loosed another wave of molten passion through her body.

  She pulled the ribbon at the top of her smock, and the knot slipped away. “These?” she asked, a hint of play in her breathless voice. With her cool hands, she scooped up under each breast, bringing them up to lay open to his view above her cinched bodice. Her nipples were already hard, pearls born from the war between chill and the waging fire within her.

  “Dia math,” he breathed, and the awe in his voice pressed her boldness to the surface.

  She plumped her breast with one hand while the fingers of her other hand rucked up her full skirt and smock. God, how she wanted him to touch her like the night before.

  He stepped in to her, his rock-hard staff jutting against the confines of his kilt, and bent to kiss her, his hands sliding up under her skirts. He murmured against her ear in rough, raw Gaelic, the tone causing gooseflesh to spread down her neck. Evelyn sucked in a sharp breath as he touched her. “Ye are so hot, lass,” he whispered against her ear, and Evelyn threw her head back, giving him access to kiss her throat down to her breasts.

  Feeling the high table at her back, Evelyn shifted, turning away from him so he was at her back. He kept his hands under her skirts, cupping her backside with one hand while his other worked up his kilt. She glanced back over one shoulder, and the sight of him made her insides melt and tense like an undulating wave. “Tha thu cho teth, lass,” he breathed against her ear. He pressed his hard body against her from behind as he stroked her.

  Evelyn had never before felt so willing to surrender herself to another being. She was flying, her body poised on the edge of heaven, and she knew that when she swooped over, falling in sensation, Grey would catch her. His body curved around her, and she felt him close, so close. He brushed her hair to one side, kissing the back of her neck, moving forward to her throat and ear. She reared back as he brushed and teased her while his other hand cupped a breast, tweaking her until a moan escaped her throat. Evelyn reached forward to hold the back edge of the table, her fingers curling over the wood.

  “Aye, lass,” he said, his voice as rough as a raging river. “Hold on with your fingers.” His lips teased her ear. “And surrender everything else to the fire.”

  …

  “Someone has been playing with tarts,” Molly said as she whisked into the great hall.

  Evelyn nearly spit her tea back into the small tea bowl in her hands. She sat opposite Scarlet and Alana. The morning was well underway, and they expected students after midday.

  “Are they all eaten?” Alana asked, alarm in her voi
ce as she stood to show Ceò where a blanket, for her and her pups, lay before the hearth.

  “Nearly,” Molly said, “and there were crumbs everywhere, and streaks of bilberries across the table, like someone was grappling with them.”

  Blast. Grey promised he’d clean the kitchen when he sent her to wash the berry juice off herself before the others woke.

  Scarlet shivered and glanced under the table. “Rats perhaps?”

  Molly set a plate down with the four tarts that Evelyn and Grey had left untouched in their wild, passionate play in the kitchen before dawn. “Only if the rats were battling with them instead of eating them.”

  Evelyn breathed slowly, keeping a cool expression as she reached for one pastry. “Perhaps Isabel got into them and left a mess. I will talk to her about it.” Of course, she wouldn’t, but now no one else would. She took a bite, and the sweet juice instantly brought back the taste of Grey. Heat spread from her cheeks down her neck.

  “We will need to bake some more if we are to feed the girls who come for training today,” Molly said with a huff.

  “I will help.” Evelyn rose, turning toward the kitchen. Although she wasn’t quite sure how she’d get through baking all morning without losing herself in her memories. She was liable to be flushed and aching the whole time.

  “Evie?” Scarlet pointed at her. “You have a purple stain on the back of your skirt.”

  Evelyn yanked her skirt around, twisting to stare down over her shoulder. A smear of purple bilberry juice stretched across her backside. “I must have soiled it while baking last,” she said. “Aprons should wrap completely around me. I’m so untidy in the kitchen.”

  Scarlet quirked her lips to the side. “If you are untidy, then I am a filthy boor.”

  “Has anyone seen Izzy this morn?” Alana asked. “She wasn’t in her chamber when I stopped by with the dogs before coming down.”

  “See,” Evelyn said. “She probably ate a bunch of tarts before running outside.” No one answered her. “I will talk to her. No one should chastise her or question her for eating the tarts.”