She wiggled her toes, freed of shoes and stockings, lifted her serviceable servant’s gown above her knees and waded into the stream. It was cold even though it was spring. Maybe it carried its chill from the high mountains of Scotland itself. Whimsy, Janet. More likely it was a staid little English stream. All proper and demure, never flooding, never straying from its bank. It would not tunnel through peat and carry a smoky taste. It would tumble over rocks and pebbles in only the most demure fashion.
“Is it hard to mind your manners, brook? Do you find it as difficult as I do? I wish I did not have to be so polite all the time,” she said softly.
Suddenly a voice called out of the dark. “Are you a brownie, then, that you would speak to the water?”
Her head jerked up. All she saw was a shadow on the landscape, only a long, dark shape near a tree. Her heart thudded heavily in her chest. Her hands fisted her skirts, holding them above the rippling water. Had she not been in such a position, she might have fled at the sound of him.
Or perhaps not. Maybe she’d come to meet him, then, him with his voice all dark and thick like a summer night. With the sound of Scotland in it.
“A brownie?” She could not help it; she smiled. Doing so seemed to remove the cork from her feelings, held so tight and contained these last years. “If I were a brownie,” she said, her voice as soft as his, “then I would be in the house performing the chores of the mistress—doing the supper dishes or plying my skill with a needle.”
“Ah, but the candle still shines, so perhaps you wait until all are abed before you begin your chores.”
He took a few steps forward, and she remained where she was, the sober Janet trapped by impropriety, a hoyden discovered just as she embarked upon her ill-bred ways. It did not seem quite fair to be caught just as she was about to be wild. She wiggled her toes. The rocks beneath her feet were kind and did not cut her skin, nor did the water seem as cold.
“I wish I had a bit of cheese or a drink of milk to give you,” he said.
She followed his shadow, wondered who he was. Or was he even real? Had she conjured him up from loneliness? A dream, perhaps? A phantom, come to share her wicked moments?
“You’ve some skill in the tempting of brownies, I see,” she said. “You must not pay them too much, else their pride is wounded.”
“Nor ignore their contribution,” he said agreeably, “lest they vanish and never appear again.”
He was Scots, and it was a moonlit night, and this was England: three points upon which a conclusion could be drawn.
“You are a border raider, aren’t you?”
His laughter surprised her—not the throaty sound of it, but the surprise and delight in the sound. He seemed charmed, and that was both idiotic and oddly vainglorious. Sober Janet, captivating a reiver.
“And I’ve come to steal you, is that it?”
“Have you?” she asked, shaking one foot before placing it on the gently sloping bank. She stepped out of the stream and dropped her skirt.
“While it’s true a lass is a blessing, cattle are more prized. Lust is all well and good, but has never taken the place of a full stomach.”
Her laughter came freely. Honesty was a commodity much lacking in her life of late. It was a refreshing thing to hear it, even if the truth was so baldly stated.
“Then I’m sorry I am not a cow, for your sake, sir.”
“Oh, I’ve not come for cattle this time.”
A faint skitter of alarm tripped through her. “And what have you come for?”
“To learn, perhaps. To seek answers to questions.”
Silence, while she waited. When it was apparent he wasn’t going to satisfy her curiosity, she tilted her head and frowned into the shadows.
“The moon lights your hair, lass. It looks silver in the light. What color does it appear in the sun?”
She blinked at him, startled by the question and the air of bemusement in his voice. “Brown.”
“The brown of the earth after a spring rain?”
“Simply brown, I’m afraid. No better nor worse than that.” Her smile was coaxed free again by his practiced charm.
“And your eyes?”
“Blue. And no, not the blue of the skies.”
“You lack poetry in your soul, lass.”
“And I think you’ve too much of it for a reiver.”
“Harriet!” The sound of Jeremy’s voice cut through their banter like a sharpened sword. Janet turned her head in the direction of the house, alarmed. If Jeremy was looking for his sister, that meant Harriet was, no doubt, looking for her. And anger or irritation was the only impetus for Harriet to go abroad at night.
She bent down and grabbed her shoes, then crumpled her stockings into her pocket and crossed the stream with one bounding leap.
She stopped and turned, wishing to say good-bye, but he had already disappeared into the shadows. Indeed, she might have imagined him. Later, in her bed that night, she wondered if she had.
Two
It was raining, a very fine mist that ended almost as soon as it began. But Lachlan stood in it, he and his horse, waiting for her, wondering if a proper English miss would come to meet him in the rain. She should be warm and cozy next to a fire. Would she even sense him here? He sluiced the rain from his face and stared up at the windows of the manor house. Which room was hers?
Don’t be daft, Lachlan. The very last thing you need to do is to steal your intended from her bed. But it was a tempting thought, nonetheless. Last night, he’d only a hint of her. A moonbeam had strayed beneath a branch and sent a portrait of her into his mind. Shadows obscured her features, but they seemed fine, indeed. Brown hair, she’d said. And plain blue eyes. He doubted it. With her teasing laugh, she’d rendered him curious indeed. She did not screech as Coinneach had promised, and her hurried return to the house had proven that she did not limp.
Harriet. He did not like that name. It did not seem to fit her somehow.
Why had he thought of her all day? Because she’d teased him about brownies and stood in the middle of a stream, barefooted. Because her laughter was free and easy and seemed tied to the center of him somehow, as if a string linked them.
Come to me, lass.
Would she hear his thoughts, then? Or was he simply a fool to stand here in the rain, waiting for a sight of a woman he’d be wed to, soon enough?
Janet coughed again, earning herself another fierce look from Harriet. Once more, and the other woman’s lips pursed so tightly, they disappeared into her face.
“What possessed you, Janet? To rid yourself of your shoes and cavort in the garden like a common doxy? Is that what I should expect of you Scots?” She lowered her needlework and stared at Janet. “You deserve to be ill, you know. I should dismiss you out of hand, but Mama had a fondness for your mother and would be distressed.”
Another cough; another frown.
“Oh, do remove yourself to your chamber, Janet. I cannot bear the sounds you make.”
Janet stood, her hands hidden in the material of her skirt. Her fingers trembled, so she fisted them.
“Thank you, Harriet,” she said, her voice barely audible. It sounded, to a casual listener, as if she were indeed sickening with a cold. But the night air had been warm, and she’d suffered more hardship in her life than approaching in a cold burn.
You are a terrible person, Janet. To pretend an illness in order to escape Harriet. But, oh, the better to be able to race along the grass of the garden and return to the stream. Perhaps her reiver would be there, the man she’d conjured up from loneliness and longing.
The rain that had misted the air earlier had stopped, but the dampness of the grass soaked into her slippers. She brushed against a low-hanging branch, and droplets beaded her cheek. She smiled. How many times had she stood in a Highland rain, her head tilted back, her face washed clean? Too many times, but too long ago, Janet.
The air was scented with the rain still, and the smell of growing things. She stopped an
d closed her eyes, wondering if she could tell all the various scents apart, one from the other.
You delay because you do not wish to know, Janet, she chided herself. You do not wish to reach the stream and have him not be there. Why else do you stand in full view of the house and discovery? In order to summon him here with wishes, then?
“Have you another name?” His voice came from behind a nearby tree. As she watched, a shadow disengaged itself and walked forward. Beside him walked a horse; it, too, only darkness upon darkness. She might have conjured up the man, but had she summoned the horse, too?
“Another name?”
“Not your Christian name.”
“Elizabeth,” she said, giving him her middle name.
“A nice English name.”
“I was named for my grandmother. She was a nice English lady.”
“We’ll call you the Gaelic, then. Ealasaid.”
“Will we?” Should she have imagined a man with such an arrogant nature?
“Do not tell me you’d prefer something more English?” There was a decidedly pained tone in his voice.
“I haven’t any objection to my current name,” she said.
“It’s too harsh for such a lovely lass as yourself.”
“And how would you know it?”
“Perhaps I am part brownie.”
He tied the reins of his horse to a tree, then walked slowly toward her. She clenched her fists in the material of her shawl. It was not fear she felt at that moment. Fear might have been more prudent. Instead, she felt excitement, perhaps. Daring, of a certainty. She was about to be more than wild. She was to have an adventure, of that she was sure. With a Scots reiver.
“My name is not so unpleasant as yours, lass. Lachlan. Now, doesn’t that have a fine ring to it? It flows from the tongue like the burn you waded in last night. Have you had no ill effects from such a daring thing?”
“You must think me puny indeed,” she said, her smile enlivened by the gentle teasing in his voice.
“No, simply a lass who should be cosseted, I think. Or protected from her more wayward nature.” Was it her imagination, or was there a smile in his voice? He was a vision crafted in mist and shadows. Even the moon had disappeared behind the clouds, as if shrouding him in secrecy.
He was really too close now, his voice curled around her like a dark, silken ribbon. It was almost heaven to hear the sound of it, the lilting tones of its teasing. He played with her, she knew. Daring he was, almost as much as she. But he knew the way of wildness, and she was new to it.
“So, you’ve not come to steal cattle tonight?”
“You accuse me without proof, Ealasaid. What have I stolen? Cannot I be a simple Scot wandering over the border for the sake of it? England’s made it clear we belong to them. Is it only one-sided, then?”
“Then are you seeking answers, still?”
“No,” he said, his voice closer than before. “I think I’ve found what I needed to know.”
His fingers touched her cheek, and she jerked, startled. Instead of removing his hand, he continued his exploration, learning the texture of her skin, the shape of her face. She should have moved away or, barring that, asked him to refrain from such intimacies. But she did nothing, only stood, silent and enmeshed within a spell woven around them by the night and the mist. No, more than that. A longing for moments like this, with her breath coming in sharp little gasps and her heart racing. His fingers were rough; his touch, gentle.
His thumb rested upon her chin, dipped beneath her jaw and pushed her face up. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back, waiting in terrified wonder for the touch of his lips on hers, the magical and forbidden taste of wickedness.
Instead, he spoke, his breath brushing against the tendrils of hair at her temple. “Why did you come, lass?”
Her eyes opened. He stood so close, she could feel his breath upon her cheek. Push him back, or be enfolded in his arms. That’s how close they stood.
“I couldn’t stay away.” The simple truth of it frightened her. She’d done nothing but think of him all day, wondering if she’d dreamed their first encounter.
“Neither could I, lass. A good omen, I think.” There was that hint of a smile in his voice again, as if he was amused by her. It should not have coaxed free her own smile. It might have been better if she’d feared him.
“Give me your hand, Ealasaid.”
She reached out her arm, until her fingers brushed his chest. The hand that encompassed hers was large; his palm, roughened. He laughed then, an odd sound in the darkness, and pulled her with him.
Three
He had thought about her all day, this woman with the ill-fitting name. She wasn’t timid. A timid miss might ask where he was taking her. But then, a timid miss would not be in the dark with him, or stand in a stream with her skirts to her knees.
Her voice was melodic, almost as if she had the sound of Scotland trapped within her speech. She was fleet of foot as she followed him, skipping every once in a while to keep her steps equal to his.
“Are you certain you’ve not come to steal?” she asked, her voice breathless.
“Are you feared I would ride with you across the border, lass? Hide you in my castle and demand a ransom for you?”
“Have you a castle?” She sounded fascinated.
Did she not know who he was? A thought without merit at this particular moment. But still, a thread of doubt crept through his mind. He’d never thought she wouldn’t know him. Lachlan was a good Scots name, but not very common.
“I’m Sinclair,” he said, wondering how she would receive the news that the man who held her hand and pulled her through the forest was her future husband.
“Oh.” A small sound, for all that. Still, she did not protest.
They traveled slower, winding through the thick woods. He waited for her to speak, wondered what her questions would be.
“Could you tell me about the castle?”
“Glenlyon?”
“Yes. It’s to be my home, so I would like to know.”
“It’s a castle,” he said. “It’s old and grows cold in the winter, though passably cool in the summer. You don’t expect me to tell you what color the curtains are or some such?”
Her laughter surprised him. So, too, the fact that it seemed tied to his own smile, as if she’d the power to summon it.
“Can you not wait until you see it, then?”
“You’re right; I should wait. It is only a month.”
Her hand still rested trustingly in his, and she’d said those words that had calmed his sudden jealousy without a clue that it had been there at all. It’s to be my home. She’d known who he was, then, and had not simply come with him to have an adventure before marrying. He wanted to kiss her, some recompense, some reward for her hesitant honesty, for her gift of tremulous anticipation. There had been fear in her words, barely audible, but then he’d had some experience with learning that emotion in the past few years. He was occasionally afraid of the future, afraid he might not be able to save his clan. He turned his mind from such dour thoughts.
He brought her hand to his face, kissed the inside of her wrist. He did not wish to startle her; they were newly met, however destined their future together might be. She seemed silenced by his gesture, the pounding of her blood beneath her skin the only communication between them. Perhaps not a timid woman, but one of shyness still, of uncertainty. It was there in the way her breathing had escalated, in the small step she took away from him; almost, but not quite, pulling her hand from his stewardship.
He said nothing, simply walked on, his route one learned years ago when he had first begun to visit this place. The waterfall was the headwater for the small stream she’d bathed in last night.
The sound of the rushing water drowned out her words. She pulled free of his grasp and stood on the mossy bank overlooking the pool formed by the rapids. The moon chose that moment to peek out from behind the lowering clouds, and he was treated to the
sight of her, bathed by silvered light.
She took his breath away.
She turned, her smile as radiant as the moon, the night no match for her beauty. Were all women as such when seen for the first time, or had it been his singular blessing to view her in the moonlight? Had Fate, who’d decreed the Sinclairs such a sorry lot these past years, felt only pity and sorrow for his condition, then? Had he been given this woman in order to right so many wrongs? A woman with a child in her heart, who gamboled in streams and raced like a fawn, whose laughter taunted him to smile and whose face made him thankful for Old Mab and the Legend. And perhaps even Coinneach.
Her lips were full, the lower lip more so than the upper. Her eyes were large; her cheeks, high. Her chin was neither squared nor pointed, but tapering in a way that chins do. And her nose was neither beaked nor sharp, but ended with a small upturn to it. Her hair curled over her shoulders in riotous disarray, and he wanted to know if the mist made it such, or if she was beset with curls every day. A question he’d have answered after their wedding.
He bent finally, and she cupped her hands around his ear so that he might hear her words over the roar of the water. “I’ve never known such a place existed,” she said.
His own words were said in a similar manner. He hesitated as his hands brushed over her hair, feeling the thickness of it, wishing that it might be provident to thread his fingers through it. “You’ve led a sheltered life, then, lass. Did you never go exploring?”
She shook her head. He didn’t need sunlight to see the sparkle of her eyes. He needed no urging for her to grip his hand. They followed the edge of the pool until they came to the waterfall. He turned and looked at her, as if to measure the extent of her daring, then calmly picked her up and walked into the gap between waterfall and stone.
He slowly lowered her to her feet and reluctantly stepped away. What he wanted to do was get so much closer. But they had all the time in the world to learn of the other. These moments hollowed from time and circumstance were sacred to themselves. He wanted to know things that a bridegroom might dismiss. Why she seemed so un-English for one, and why she’d never ventured far from her garden. Were her parents strict? Had she been mistreated, then? A surge of protectiveness for her thudded through him.
Scottish Brides Page 25
