The Highlander's Claim (Highland Romance)

by Jessica Knight

  I’ve been sitting here obsessing about the bloody chair so long, I’ve missed most of what the man before me has said. He stands at the foot of the dais, looking up at me, his eyes expectant as he waits for me to render a judgment. The trouble is, I don’t know what I’m supposed to be rendering a judgment about.

  “Sorry lad, what was that?” I ask.

  “For fuck’s sake man, have you not been listening to what I’m sayin’?”

  I clear my throat and flash him a grin. “Truthfully I didn’t hear a word you said.”

  There is an eruption of laughter in the hall with some good-natured insults hurled my way. Even the man standing before me is laughing and shaking his head at me. I briefly think about spinnin’ some yarn or giving him a half-arsed answer but know that wouldn’t be fair to him. Better to tell the truth probably.

  The laughter and backslapping continue, when I finally tell them my predicament. The clan has been in high spirits these last few weeks since the signed treaty was delivered to us. Those few weeks have seen zero raids by the English even though the Duke himself left for London more than two weeks ago. There has been no fighting and no deaths at the hands of the English. It’s been a time of peace that none of the old-timers around Weykirk can even remember having.

  Not having the point of English swords at our throats has definitely lightened the mood around here. I see more smiles, and that pessimistic attitude that permeated the clan even back when I was a kid has lifted like the fog that rolls in over the Highlands.

  Getting to my feet, I hold up my hands, calling for quiet, and miraculously, the men in the hall fall silent. As peace has come over our land, the rest of the clan has been more willing to accept me as the Chief. There are still those who resent me and always will. Those who will never accept me no matter what I do.

  But what I’ve noticed lately is that even those who were skeptical and deferred to me only because Gaven forced them to have been coming around. They have come to see me as a worthy successor to my father. Or at least, they’re getting there. Feelings run deeper than some of the lochs here in the Highlands, and it takes time for those feelings to turn.

  “It has been a long day for all of us. And I want to give you each the attention you deserve,” I say. “So let’s take a break for today, and if you have something to petition, come to me tomorrow morning, and we’ll start fresh.”

  There are a few grumbles and more good-natured ribbing, but the men shuffle out of the hall, on to whatever other business they have today. The only one left in the hall aside from me is Gaven, who sits in his chair on the far side of the dais. He stars at me with an amused smirk on his face.

  “Did my father really sit through the petitioners, day after day?” I ask.

  “Oh hell no. Your father was a hell of a lot smarter than you about petitioners,” he replies. “Scheduled petition days twice a week. Added a third day if it was needed but it usually wasn’t. Your old man had his limits and didn’t enjoy spendin’ all his days listenin’ to people whine.”

  I smirk and shake my head, appalled at myself for not thinking of it sooner. Gaven laughs at me.

  “And here I thought you were smart,” he jokes. “You had us all fooled, boy.”

  “You could have said something. Told me how my father did things.”

  He shrugs his broad shoulders. “You’re the Chief. It’s up to you to figure it out.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  Gaven laughs as he gets to his feet. He looks at me for a long moment; his expression suddenly serious.

  “You did good here, Malcolm. You did somethin’ not even your father could do. You brought peace to the Highlands,” he tells me. “Peace with the English, at least. You know some of those daft pricks in the other clans will still be fightin’ with each other.”

  “We wouldn’t be Scottish if we didn’t fight with each other.”

  He laughs. “Your lips to God’s ear,” he replies. “But I mean it. You did good.”

  “Thanks Gaven,” I say. “I couldn’t do this without you.”

  “Damn right you couldn’t.”

  His laughter booms off the walls of the empty hall as he heads for the door. He stops just short of it and turns around, a sly grin on his face.

  “You going out to see her?” he asks.

  “To see who?”

  He arches an eyebrow at me. “Do you really think I don’t know?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He laughs again. “Okay, you keep playing dumb, lad. Since you’re so good at it and all,” he says. “And I’ll keep pretendin’ I don’t know about you ridin’ out to look at that castle, hopin’ to get a peek at that sweet English tart you were keeping at your family home.”

  “Well I supposed I’d have to say that’s a deal then.”

  With another guffaw of laughter, Gaven turns and heads out of the hall, leaving me alone with my thoughts. How in the bloody hell did he know about my trips to Caldryn House? Has he been following me? Have I been that transparent about my feelings for Catherine? The last thing I want is for anybody to think I’m going to go soft on the English because of my feelings for her. I’m gonna have to remember to tell Gaven to keep that to himself.

  I leave through the back door to the hall. My horse is walking in the field around by the house my father built. I’ve been staying in Weykirk since trading Catherine back to her father. I want to make sure I have a solid foundation here among the clan before I go back to my family home. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself and everybody else. My family home is my escape, the place I’ll go to get away from the inanity of the day-to-day life as Clan Chief.

  Besides, even though it’s only a couple of hours further on up the road on horseback, I don’t want to be any farther from Caldryn House than I have to be.

  After packing some water, hard cheese, bread, and dried meats into my bag, I saddle my horse and climb aboard. As I rein her around and start down the path that cuts through the forest, running away from Weykirk, I glance around, making sure I’m actually on this little trek alone. As I’ve thought about it, the only logical answer to the question about Gaven knowing about my trips to the English castle is that he followed me at some point.

  I suppose it doesn’t matter that Gaven knows. For all of his bluster and bravado, he has been surprisingly discrete when it comes to sensitive matters. We didn’t start off overly well, but he’s quickly become one of my most trusted captains and confidantes.

  This path isn’t used that often, so it’s choked with undergrowth and the trees are pressed close on both sides of me. My travels along this path over the last few weeks have trampled the weeds and growth on the path, but it remains thick and untamed. The birds overhead fall silent as I pass, and I hear the small animals in the brush scurrying away quickly. The day is dull and gray anyway, but the thick canopy overhead keeps most of the minimal light out, leaving thick pockets of shadow all around. It’s a good thing I’m not a man who spooks easily.

  A couple hours of riding brings me to the edge of the forest. I slide out of my saddle and tie my horse to a tree well hidden from view before clinging to the shadows at the tree line. As I have over the last few weeks, I sit down on the wide trunk of a tree that had once been tall and mighty, likely felled by some powerful storm long ago. I drink from my waterskin and look down at Caldryn House sitting on its hill a quarter mile or so in the distance.

  I honestly don’t know why I keep coming here to stand vigil. I see the same thing every time − which is nothing. I see Seely soldiers training in the yard, patrols coming and going − though keeping well away from the road to Weykirk, I notice. I see both the flags of England and House Seely flapping in the breeze, a herd of cows wandering through the fields munching away.

  It’s what I don’t see − haven’t seen − that keeps me coming back.

  We got word that the Duke left the castle and headed south, likely bound for London, more than two weeks ago. Nobody who saw the proce
ssion go knew whether or not Catherine was with him. She believed that she would be going to her ancestral home in a place called Carlisle, whether she wanted to go or not.

  But I’m given to the belief that Catherine Seely doesn’t do a bloody thing she doesn’t want to do and that if she truly wanted to stay here in Scotland, she would have found a way. Even if that meant badgering and bullying her father, getting him so upset that he wanted her to stay here rather than be near her on the long ride south of Hadrian’s Wall. Suffice it to say, when she wants − or doesn’t want − something, Catherine can be persistent. That much I’ve come to learn about her.

  And yet, for three weeks now, I’ve heard nothing from her. I’d hoped she would send her handmaiden − Maggie, I think her name was − with another message to meet. Or, I’d hoped she’d turn up in Weykirk on her own. But she hasn’t. There’s been nothing more than a resounding silence − one that feels like it’s been tearing a hole inside of me. A hole that gets a bit bigger every day.

  I guess I come out here to watch simply because I don’t want to believe she’d leave without saying goodbye. Without some note or sign − something − telling me she was leaving. I suppose our night in that house, when she’d snuck out, might serve as a goodbye of sorts − ending things on a high note as it were − but I want to believe that if she were going to walk out of my life forever, there would be more.

  As I stare at the closed gates of the stone and wood wall that surrounds the castle, I know that sooner or later, I’m going to have to accept the fact that she’s gone. Well and truly gone. That our stolen night together really was her way of saying goodbye. But I haven’t gotten to that point yet. I keep convincing myself to come out one more time. Just spend a couple of hours out here watching. I keep telling myself that today is the day I’ll see her. That I’ll know she is still here in Scotland.

  Truthfully, I don’t know what I’d do with that knowledge just yet. I haven’t thought that far down the road. It’s not like if I see her out in the fields, I can go to her. I do that; I’m likely to have more arrows put through me than a porcupine has quills. There is no way her personal guards − of which, she is sure to have some − would let me get within a mile of her.

  There is also the other darker thought that’s been winding its way through my brain. And that is, what if she hasn’t come to see me because she doesn’t want to. Perhaps she wanted to bed me for her own purposes. To work out some wild itch she’d gotten and to be able to say she’d had one of the wild Scots the English likes to make up stories about. Maybe she just wanted to bed a savage once more before settling down into her boring, prosaic life of wedded bliss to some noble lord.

  It’s a thought I try to push away every time it crops up in my head because I simply don’t want to believe it. I looked into Catherine’s eyes and saw the depth of emotion there. I felt it in her body when we were together. Our coupling wasn’t that of a woman out for a thrill or just to have an experience she might not otherwise have. No, Catherine gave herself to me because she wanted to. Because she feels something for me. Deeply. As I do her. When we were together, it felt like the next logical scene in a play that’s been ten years in the writing.

  No, I refuse to let myself believe that she bedded me out of some morbid fascination she had. I reject that thought. She bedded me because she cares for me. And yet, no matter how many times I tell myself that, the other thought I try to ignore always manages to creep in anyway.

  I suppose that speaks to my own insecurities about myself − it’s something the old priest who served my aunt’s household back in France used to tell me. He was a man filled with knowledge and wisdom, and I spent many long hours talking to him about life and everything that went with it. He taught me a great many things, and I valued him and that wisdom deeply. But he thought me an insecure man who, at my core, never felt worthy of a woman like Catherine.

  I called it rubbish at the time and the fantasy of an overeducated mind that had little else to occupy it but to make things up about me. And yet, as I sit here alone at the edge of the woods with nothing but the trees and God above to hear my confession, I start to wonder if maybe he wasn’t entirely wrong. Maybe there is some part of me that thinks I’m not worthy of a woman like Catherine.

  I try hard to push the thought away, but it persists. I begin to wonder if that is why I pushed so hard to become the new Clan Chief − not out of loyalty to my father but because I wanted to make something of myself. It’s why I studied so hard in France. Why I read and learned everything I could and pushed myself to be better than my upbringing prepared me to be − because I wanted more out of myself and out of my life.

  Sure, I could have settled into my life as a farmer back at the family farm. I could have accepted Gaven as the new Chief, found myself a wife, had a brood of kids. If I’d wanted it, I could have made a right nice life for myself out there. It was all right there for the taking. All I had to do was keep my head down and reach for it, and it would’ve been mine.

  But if I’m being true, the moment my boots hit the soil here, becoming the Clan Chief was the only thing I wanted. I knew I’d have to wait my turn, of course, but that was the goal for me. To become something greater than what I was − a poor farmer. Educated yes, but still a poor farmer. I wanted to become something while perhaps not equal to an English lord, still somehow worthy of the love of a proper Lady.

  So maybe that’s why I’m sitting out here day after day, waiting to catch sight of Catherine, why I’m hoping that spark of feeling between us was real because in the end, I’ve done all I have for her. I wanted to make something better of myself for her. To be somehow worthy in her eyes. So to think that this was nothing more than an experimentation for her, nothing more than a flirtation with something dangerous and forbidden feels like a dagger in the heart. The mere thought that that could be true and that I’ve been working to build something greater of myself for a woman who saw me as a dalliance − having a mule kick me in the cock would feel better.

  Even worse though, it makes me feel like a bloody fool. A lovesick idiot who wanted to be something more than he was. Who wanted to give something to a woman who never wanted it to begin with and saw me as a plaything, not somebody she could truly love.

  “Bollocks,” I scold myself. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself, you pissant.”

  My horse snorts from the trees behind me − whether in agreement that I need to stop feeling sorry for myself or that I’m a pissant, I can’t say. What I do know is that if my father were here and saw me moping about, saw me feeling sorry for myself like this, he’d give me a proper kick in the ass. This is not how Dunbarr men go about their business, he’d say. Dunbarr men would take the kick in the cock with a smile and move forward.

  It’s that thought that finally gets me onto my feet. It’s time to smile and move forward. If Catherine is in fact, inside Caldryn House and wants to see me, she’ll get word to me. If she doesn’t want to see me, she won’t. Either way, I can’t keep coming out here to sit and watch those big doors − doors that may never open for me.

  I lean my head back and close my eyes, drawing in a deep, cleansing breath. When I open them again, feeling slightly more grounded, I cast a look down at Caldryn House one last time as if bidding it − and bidding her − a silent goodbye.

  “Well fuck me,” I mutter.

  It’s then I see the big gates swinging open, and a small procession on horses ride out. I count six soldiers in Seely livery, flying the colors of House Seely. And in the middle of the small pack of riders, I see her. Catherine and her handmaiden are riding in the middle of that knot of soldiers, and my heart feels fit to explode in my chest.

  Controlling my swell of emotion, I quickly mount up and stick to the forest paths, shadowing the procession at a distance.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Malcolm

  Despite the rousing speech I’d just given myself, I find myself following her anyway. If this is going to be goodbye between us, I�
�m damn well going to make her say it to my face. The conclusions and realizations I’d come to as I sat there at the edge of the forest are important and valuable, and I will hold onto them as I’d hold onto a precious gem. Something else the old priest said to me was that knowing yourself was the most important thing you could ever learn. It’s a lesson that resonated with me deeper than most anything else I learned from him.

  From my position on the wooded path, it doesn’t take me long to figure out where they’re going − there’s not much in that direction, to begin with. I’m pretty sure they’re headed to a village on the edge of clan land called Golway. It’s a good-sized place though not as large as Weykirk but is one of the more heavily populated villages in our lands.

  Knowing that’s their likely destination, I ride on ahead of them. The ride is less than an hour, and when I get there, I see some faces I recognize from the market in Weykirk. A few who’ve had petitions before me in our clan hall − which explains a few of the sour looks cast my way. I take my pack and give my horse to a boy at the stable and flip him a couple of coppers to see to the feeding and watering of my mount.

  As I walk through the muddy roads that cut through the village, I pull my brat over my head, doing my best to obscure my face. I doubt Catherine’s guards will know me − they have no cause to. But she most certainly will, and I don’t want to give myself away before I’ve had a chance to speak with her. If she truly doesn’t wish to see me again, so be it. But let me hear it from her mouth.

  I give a copper to a man for a spit of meat he’s got roasting and chew on it as I wait. I don’t have to wait long though. I hear the excited babble of children, along with the laughter and squeals from one of the other main roads in the village. I pull my brat a bit lower and continue gnawing on the spit of meat as I follow the crowd.

  Pausing at the corner of a small building, I peek around it cautiously and see Catherine and her handmaiden standing in the middle of a thick knot of children. They are smiling wide and laughing as they hand out sweets and candies to the throng of grasping hands around them. The soldiers remain on their horses, but they stand in a straight line at the head of the road, not coming into the village. Their eyes quick and active, the soldiers scan the crowd for potential threats. As if a group of hungry kids poses any sort of threat.