When Highland Lightning Strikes

by Willa Blair

  ****

  Angus and Brodric joined the other men in the village glen. The women stood off to one side or continued with chores. Their silence and stiff postures reflected their shock. Clan MacAnalen had lost another laird.

  Angus looked around their new village. The unfinished hall was the last place anyone should take shelter in the teeth of a gale. Several new dwellings had been built near the trees and might also be at risk, but most stood in the open glen and would be safe enough to shelter within until the storm passed.

  It occurred to him suddenly that most of the men were looking at him. Now Colin had been killed, were they waiting for him to take over again? After the clan had voted another to be chief? His wounded pride told him to let them look to another for guidance, but he could not shake the sense of duty consuming him, as much a part of him as his arms and legs. So he stepped forward, as he had done for his brother.

  “Get everyone out of the crofts nearest the trees until this storm passes.” He glanced at the sky, noting the black clouds lining up to the northwest. “Get going. We don’t have much time.”

  Everyone scattered to do his bidding. With one exception. Shona stood near the hulking great hall, looking bereft. Where was Seamus? Why wasn’t he taking care of his niece?

  “Ye’ll come with me,” Angus said once he got her attention. “There’s too little time before the rain hits to return ye to yer uncle’s croft.”

  At first, he thought she’d refuse. Her jaw clenched and her mouth flattened into a thin line. Aye, she was still angry with him. But in the end, she nodded. Thank God, she had a practical streak.

  Once he made certain everyone got out from under the trees, he escorted Shona into his croft. A small fire, banked from the morning, quickly leapt to life as he fed it dry kindling. Wind whistled at the top of the chimney, sucking air through the cracks around the door and windows, making the small flames dance and grow.

  “Brodric will join us as soon as he’s finished rounding up the last few, so ye needna worry about being alone with me,” Angus told her as he worked on building up the fire. He carefully kept his gaze off the bed behind him, which, with Shona here, suddenly seemed to dominate the room. When Shona didn’t answer, he decided changing the subject might be wise. “I suppose once this storm goes through,” he muttered, not expecting an answer, “we’ll have our choice of deadfall to keep the fires going.”

  Shona, at his back, murmured her assent. “I’m sorry about Colin,” she added, surprising him. But it wasn’t much of a leap from deadfall for firewood to what had happened to their latest laird.

  “Why should ye be?” he asked, twisting to face her, then rising from his knees. “Ye made it clear enough ye didna agree with yer uncle’s plans to marry ye with him.”

  “I didna wish him dead.”

  “I understand that.” For some reason he didn’t fathom, he couldn’t help picking at the wound. “But ye must be relieved.”

  Her stillness gave him his first inkling something was wrong. Then she clamped a hand over her mouth, stifling a sob or a scream, he couldn’t tell which, and screwed her eyes shut.

  “I shouldha saved him,” she finally said.

  Her words were uttered so softly behind her hand, Angus thought he could not have heard her correctly. A cold chill ran down his back as Brodric’s words echoed in his mind. “No’ even Healer Aileana could fix this.”

  “How, lass?” Angus objected. “A tree fell on him. The strongest man among us couldna have saved him. What makes ye think ye couldha done anything?” What had Shona meant by her whispered words? “Are ye telling me ye have an ability to…what? Keep things from falling? Is that what ye’ve been doing while ye watched the men working on the hall—making certain no one fell?”

  She fisted both hands together. “I…nay. Of course no’.”

  An image of Aileana bending over his brother suddenly appeared in Angus’s mind, then of a lad stumbling and a tray of apples that seemed to right itself. His fall into the ale. And the time he nearly fell from the roofing beam and suddenly regained his balance as though someone had steadied him. Was he daft? Or just jumping to wild conclusions? Unless she told the truth.

  Angus’s imagination went to work. What if Shona could, like Aileana, do something no one else could do? What if she, too, possessed a strange talent? The ability to move something that took immense strength but did not require her touch? Nay, that was too strange. Colin’s death rattled them all, much as the storm rattled the roofing on this croft, putting crazy ideas into his head. And hers? She must be tetched after seeing Colin crushed beneath the tree. She was certainly pale enough.

  Angus took her elbow and led her to a seat at the small table. If she was about to swoon, he didn’t want her falling into the fire.

  “Ye couldna, lass. Ye must accept Colin is dead through no one’s fault, least of all yer own. A gust from the approaching storm blew down the tree.”

  She wouldn’t meet his gaze, but he waited, giving her time.

  She took a deep breath, making her color improve, then faced him.

  The tension in her shoulders chilled him. “Ye have been doing…something.”

  Her gaze dropped, giving her only response.

  Angus couldn’t help it. He snorted. “Ye are daft. Or I am.” At her gasp, he knelt before her, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, lass, I didna mean that. And I’m sorry about what I said in the woods. I ken ye wouldna do what I accused ye of. But this…what ye seem to think…isna possible. If ye’d been there, ye’d be under the tree with him, and we’d be scraping yer remains into the ground along with his once this storm is over. The only way ye could have prevented this is to have been with him somewhere else.” Angus shook his head as a wildly different possibility occurred to him. “If ye had some power that lets ye move things, I’d have to think, given yer uncle’s intentions and yer own reluctance to marry Colin, ye dropped the tree on him yerself.”

  “What?” Shock…or outrage…pitched her voice high and rising.

  “Did ye? If I’m to believe ye have this ability, then did ye use it to kill the man yer uncle intended to force ye to marry?”

  Outside the croft, the wind picked up, roaring like a battering ram pounding the stones outside. Angus spared a moment to hope the roof would remain with the structure, but his regard never left Shona.

  Her face went from ruddy to ghastly pale. “How can ye think such a thing?”

  This time she’d pitched her voice so low, he barely heard her words.

  “Ye’re asking me to accept the impossible. If I do, the rest is also possible, is it no’?”

  Angus hated accusing her, but if his questions shattered this wall she’d built around herself and let her grief pour out, or her anger, well, anything was better than this pitiable silence, this wounded, guilt-stricken tension holding her in its grip.

  Her gaze dropped to her hands. “I was with ye.”

  Her words had no inflection and gave him no clue if she meant them as a defense or an accusation. He’d failed to break through her reserve. She’d gone back to being closed in, her face bereft of any feeling.

  He tried not to think about how well their walk had started and how badly it ended.

  “For a time, aye.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair, debating how much to tell her. “Lass, I’ve known someone who claimed to have an ability beyond mortal ken. A talent to heal all hurts. But when it really mattered, she couldna do what she promised. What I prayed for. She couldna save my brother’s life. Her talent was unreliable—or never existed. So, nay, I dinna believe any of that is possible.”

  The door slammed open and a gust of damp air blew Brodric into the croft. “God almighty, ’tis raw out there,” he announced as he grabbed the door’s edge, swung around behind it, and shoved it closed against the raging wind. “I barely made it here. A few minutes more and I wouldha blown all the way to Court. Ye wouldha found me sipping tea with the ladies,” he added in a falsetto, a big grin on his face, th
en shuddered. In his normal voice, he continued, “I’m glad to get inside,” as he secured the door. “I’d no’ be fit company for the likes o’ them.” Then he turned, took in the tableau before him, Angus’s tension and Shona’s tears, and closed his mouth. And he opened it again. “Now what have ye done, Angus?”

  Angus improvised. “She hasna been right since seeing Colin under the tree, ye daft lug. What else would ye expect from a lass save weeping?”

  Brodric shrugged and took a step toward her. “Naught else save wailing, I suppose.” He stopped when Angus shook his head, giving Brodric a clear warning to keep his distance. “A sad business, that,” he said, angling to a chair by the fire instead of continuing toward her. “We tried for the longest time to lift the tree off him, but there were too few of us, and he was already…gone.”

  Angus frowned. “How long did ye try? How long before I arrived did the tree fall?” Shona’s eyes widened, but he ignored her. The question might further hurt her feelings, but he had to know.

  “A good while,” Brodric answered, puzzlement clear in his drawn-down brow. “The men with him tried at first, then one brave fool risked getting crushed and stayed with him while the other ran for help. Eventually, a crowd showed up. We sent the women away for their own safety when the wind’s howling worsened. Then Shona arrived, and on her heels, so did ye.” He paused and looked from one to the other. “Were ye together, I take it?”

  Angus ignored his implication, too focused on the timing Brodric described. He had no doubt Shona had still been with him when the tree fell. Even if her wild intimation about her ability was true, she could not have done what he’d accused. Colin had simply been in the wrong place at the worst possible time. Angus didn’t know why that filled him with relief, but it did. His chest expanded with the first easy breath he’d taken since he and Shona had argued in the woods, before she’d run from him. He hadn’t really believed the rash story he’d spun, and she’d admitted nothing, but he was happy, nonetheless. It was impossible for her to have had anything to do with Colin’s death.

  Shona, he finally noticed, eyed him, looking like a dog that had been kicked too often and waited for the next blow to land. Did she fear him? Or something else? He squatted beside her, shrugged, and huffed out a breath. “Ye couldna have done anything.” Knowing his statement would raise questions in Brodric, he counted on his friend’s discretion. They were all on tenterhooks, nerves raw from the accidents at the hall, Colin’s death, the storm…nothing seemed to be going their way.

  Her only response was a shallow dip of her chin before she turned her back to him and faced the fire. He deserved that, he supposed.

  Brodric’s frown deepened as he looked from Shona to Angus, back and forth several times. He rose, as if to go to the lass. Angus held up a hand, forestalling any more questions. With a nod and a glance toward Angus’s bed, which earned him a frown, Brodric fetched the whisky, plunked himself down and leaned back in his chair, then took a long pull on the bottle. Angus yanked the only other seat away from the table, grabbed the bottle out of Brodric’s hand and offered it to Shona. She took a sip and passed it back to him without comment. They settled in to wait out the storm.

  ****

  Two days later, Angus crossed the village on his way to answer the council elder’s summons. He expected to face a storm of a very different kind when the Council met again to choose a new chief, but given their history, that day might not come for months.

  The clan had ridden out the windstorm with no further casualties. A day spent chopping wood freed Colin’s crushed body, and they’d buried what remained quickly, on clear ground next to where he’d died, turning the blood-soaked soil beneath him into the grave. It was grisly, awful work, but it was done. The condition of his body made moving it to bury him with those who’d died in the invasion last autumn too difficult to contemplate.

  They had no priest to sanctify the ground, but the clan prayed over him, and Angus hoped that was enough. Colin had been laird, after all, if only for a few days. One of the stone masons would fashion a marker for his grave. Angus didn’t know what else they could do, except carry on. Despite his best efforts, it seemed like that’s all they’d been doing since the lowlander army arrived all those months ago. Carrying on.

  When, he grumbled to himself, would they be whole? Rebuilt? Recovered and back on solid footing? Colin’s death was another blow—one that left them, once again, vulnerable to internal strife as well as external threats. Over the winter, Angus had done his best to suppress clan and lowlander infighting by keeping everyone as busy as possible. They’d gotten through with the Lathans’ help, but he did not want to depend on their largesse forever. MacAnalen was a proud clan with deep roots in Scotland and Ireland. He would not be responsible for letting this branch wither away, no matter who became the next laird.

  Shona, who’d avoided him these last days, had been on his mind much of the time. Her arrival had brought about a change in his outlook, and plunged him into fantasies of a better future with her by his side. Yet here he was, caught in the same doubts and frustrations. He needed her more than he wanted to admit, but she seemed determined to have nothing to do with him. He couldn’t blame her, not after he accused her of trying to trap him into marriage. God, he’d even accused her of killing Colin.

  And if he became laird? If her uncle still wanted to curry favor, the thing she most dreaded might gain him the thing he wanted most. Angus stifled a laugh at the irony, then stopped dead still in his tracks.

  The thing he wanted most? Shona? When had that happened? For months, the thing he had wanted most, besides the clan’s recovery, was to follow his brother’s footsteps and become laird. Chief of MacAnalen.

  How much would he care if he again failed to be elected? Did winning Shona now mean more to him? Of course, if her uncle had his way, aye, he might have both. That thought cheered him enough to set him moving again, and he quickly arrived at auld Luthais’s dwelling.

  “Angus, thank ye for joining us,” Luthais greeted him at the door and waved him inside. Angus nodded to him and the others, surprised to see the Council in the common room. He’d expected no one else.

  “What can I do for ye?” Angus asked, then wanted to bite his tongue. He didn’t need to give the Council any reason to demand more from him than he’d already given during the last six months.

  Luthais bestowed a brief smile on him before answering. Angus stiffened, ready for anything. After the last election and the last few days, he didn’t know what to expect.

  “I’ll be brief,” Luthais told him and Angus’s heart sank. They’d called him here—alone—to tell him he would be passed over yet again, and to save him the embarrassment of losing—twice—before the entire clan.

  “Though Colin was duly elected, there are some,” and at that, Luthais cast a stern glance around the gathered council members, “who believe the election unfairly influenced. Well, we won’t go into that now.”

  Angus frowned. Where did Luthais mean to take this? What did he mean by saying the election was influenced? By whom?

  “As ye are the man who has led this clan through its most trying time, ye are our choice for chief of clan MacAnalen. We have decided no further vote is necessary, given yer leadership and devotion to the good of the clan.”

  Shocked, Angus looked from one council member to the next and assessed, by how readily they met his gaze, whether they supported this decision. He concluded they all did, even Colin’s most vocal supporter. They were handing him the very thing he’d dreamt of for the past six months. He nodded and opened his mouth to reply, though he could barely form a coherent thought, but Luthais spoke first.

  “This is a vote of confidence in ye, Angus. The previous vote notwithstanding, and no matter the kind of chief Colin would have been, we’re pleased to have the clan’s leadership in yer capable hands.”

  Was that an apology he heard? The internal debate he’d been having flared up anew.

  He thought b
ack over the last six months. He’d relished taking leadership during the crisis, or so he believed at the time. He and the Lathan laird dealt well together. Nonetheless, what Colin had said to Seamus gave him pause. Colin, who’d been one of the most self-centered, lazy, argumentative people he knew, had acknowledged the importance of his marriage being made for an alliance. For the good of the clan. He had, perhaps, matured quickly into his position. Or he’d said that to goad Seamus, a tactic in an unspoken negotiation for Shona’s hand. There was no way to know which he’d meant now. But the idea of winning the clan by losing Shona made Angus hesitate, wrestling with two possible outcomes. Despite the risk, he knew what he must do. What his brother would expect. What he expected of himself.

  “Ye ken I will do the best I am able,” he said at last.

  “’Tis all we can ask,” Luthais replied. “Yer best has held the clan together, kept us fed and put roofs over our heads through the winter.”

  Angus basked in the praise. He was laird. There could be no question he had the authority to deal with the responsibilities he’d taken on after Gregor died. But he knew there were more demands coming. Being confirmed laird suddenly tasted bittersweet.

  “Now if ye can finish our hall, we’ll be mightily pleased.”

  Angus pursed his lips and pictured the piles of materials for the missing walls and roof. Aye, they would, the sooner the better. But he wasn’t naive enough to think being confirmed laird would make finishing the hall any easier than it had been since they’d started it.

  Not everyone in the clan supported him. By forcing the men who’d knocked down the partially finished wall to work for the stonemason and rebuild it, he’d just made enemies of some of them.

  And Shona, no matter how he ached to see her, to hear her voice and to hold her, might never be his.