Highlander’s Sinister Bet: Scottish Medieval Highlander Romance

by Fiona Faris

  “How did she come to ken of the bet? I thought the bet was over.”

  “I ended it with Glenn but somehow, she kens.”

  “I kent the bet was a terrible idea from the day I heard about it,” Kyla scolded, “What about Glenn? He was the only other person that ken about the bet apart from me, and I swear that I did nae tell a soul of it.”

  Glenn; Daividh thought on his friend’s name with anger in his face. He was still mad at Glenn for everything that had happened, but they were men and men never held grudges against one another for long.

  The day after Lorraine had been last seen at the castle, he had gone to confront Glenn. He had known without a doubt that he would have been the most probable one to have told Lorraine about the bet. News had reached Daividh a number of times about the two of them, Glenn and Lorraine, exchanging words with one another, and Glenn’s attraction to her was known, though his loyalty to Daividh was without a doubt.

  “Did ye or did ye nae tell Lorraine about the bet?” Daividh had asked Glenn, who had been jesting to a few of the guards.

  “What did ye say, me laird?”

  Glenn had replied in a jovial tone that had only angered Daividh even more. Though Glenn seemed to always jest, he was never insensitive. He had known then that his friend had not been in the mood for such tones and had excused himself from the men.

  “Did ye tell Lorraine about the bet?” Daividh had repeated the question only because he was so angry that it had been the only vocabulary in his tongue.

  Glenn had bowed his head in an apology before speaking. “I am sorry, truly, I am. I was speakin’ to her and it slipped out. I tried to convince her that I was jestin’ but it was already too late,” he had said.

  While Daividh had not been so certain of his friend’s words, he had accepted his apology.

  When a man bows his head and admits his wrong, a second chance, he deserves, his father had always said.

  “I am certain he did it with intention. Everyone kens that he fancies Lorraine,” Kyla objected, after Daividh had relayed his encounter with Glenn to her.

  “He had offered to help me apologize to her even,” Daividh had said.

  “Aye, he would have but it does nae change the truth. He was jealous of ye and went to tell Lorraine hopin’ that she would be mad at ye for the bet and think that ye are playin’ with her feelin’ only-” Kyla opened her hands to gesticulate, “-now, she is mad at ye.”

  Daividh said nothing, for he did not have the strength in him to argue.

  “Have ye gone to see her at her home?” she asked him.

  Daividh shook his head. The thought had occurred to him but he had been afraid. He did not know if she would have let him into her home or if she would have yelled at him or sent him back the way he had come.

  The castle had been the best of the options in his head. She would have been considerably more reserved if he had spoken to her at the castle, but Kyla could see him as being cowardly.

  “This is nae about yer pride anymore. If ye do love the lass, then ye should go to see her. Let her ken ye are sorry lest she think ye are sittin’ in yer castle without a care or bother for her.”

  “I do care for her,” Daividh argued.

  “How would she ken this?”

  Daividh reasoned as his sister did. He hoped women were as simple creatures as men were and that they were quick to forget malice. Alas! They were not. A woman’s anger could go on for days and weeks even if not tapered.

  “I shall ride to her home, but what if she does nae wish to see me?”

  “Then ye shall leave when she wants ye to and return again until she is nae hostile towards ye anymore.”

  Daividh did not particularly like his sister’s idea. He wondered if she was on his side at all. Sex before blood – he wanted to accuse her but he chose wisely not to.

  “Ye are one of the best lookin’ men in all of the clan and dare I say all of Scotland herself. Once upon a time, ye were said to be the most charmin’ man in the clan. There was nay woman ye could nae have but ye have grown soft now, me brother.” Kyla put a strong hand on his shoulder, even though he was much bigger than she was.

  He could see as clear as day that she was trying to bait him, but he let it work nonetheless. His sad bones and lazy resolve began to come back to him. Lorraine was mad at him and rightfully so, she was, but it was only a test to charm her. He could already think on the words to say to her, the gifts he might bring her and the heartfelt apology in his chest. He did not think her a plaything and she was unlike any other woman he had come across in all of Scotland. She would forgive him if she knew the words of his heart, he knew.

  “Then I shall ride out to see her,” Daividh said with a smile on his face. It was the first time he had smiled in six days and he was glad that Kyla had been of help to him.

  “I am quite certain that it shall go well. She likes ye. I ken it and even ye ken it also. Just do nae find yerself entangled in childish bets anymore,” Kyla said, getting the last laugh.

  He pulled his petite sister into a bear hug and squeezed her hard until she begged to be allowed to breathe. It was his little punishment to her.

  “Thank ye.”

  He headed for his chambers and had a quick bath. Having a change of clothes, he ran down the stairs of the castle and headed for the stables to get himself his stead.

  The wind was strong that afternoon. It seemed perfect for a long ride or perhaps it was his optimism that made the weather seem so. He was full of smiles as he galloped ahead with his horse. The beast beneath him seemed to know in which direction to ride and the urgency with which it was meant to move to get to Lorraine.

  Kyla had given him the confidence boost he had needed to speak to her. For the first time in days, he was hopeful that things would return to the way they were with Lorraine once more. He would be able to talk to her once again and he would have the privilege of seeing her laugh again. Her eyes always squinted just a little whenever she did and he wondered if he had ever told her that before she had gotten angry with him.

  I ken nae why I did the bet in the first place. I had been shy and thought of nay other way to push meself to speak to ye. Ye are different from every other woman I have ever come across in all of the clan...

  He could tell that she would not have believed his words but he knew a part of her would have wanted to. If only she looked at his face, she would have been able to see his sincerity. It tugged at his chest so much that he felt mere passers-by would have been able to see it.

  Daividh rode that morning without a thought in his head but Lorraine’s face and the long talk he would have with her.

  A rose? He pondered on the idea but thought it only necessary after he had seen her the first time so as not as to give away all his cards all too early. Daividh rode down the path into the town and just as he rode, he felt a slight shift in his weight on the horse. He almost fell off but he righted himself just in the nick of time.

  Thank goodness! he thought but paid no attention to it. He was an expert rider and had not fallen off a horse in more than a decade. He blamed his lack of focus on his thoughts of Lorraine and found no malice in it.

  His mind was so invested in his destination that his basic instincts were dulled. He held on tight to the reins as he rode, drawing closer and closer to her home. His body bounced up and down on the back of the horse, as he pushed himself even further, hoping that time would move even faster until she was before him again.

  Daividh wrapped the rein of the horse around his hands tightly again as he felt his weight shift on the horse again. It wasn’t the wind or the horse misbehaving. He knew this and his mind was clear enough to realize that something was wrong.

  He braced himself when he came up to a bend on the road. He could hear another neigh coming from the blind spot in the road. Another rider approached him, but he was moving too fast to stop, so he braved it, hoping the rider coming would know he was approaching.

  Coming to see the other
rider, Daividh was shocked to see a coach slinging behind the horse. Instinct kicked in to avoid the rider facing him on the narrow pathway, and he pulled his horse to the shrubs that flagged the path.

  Just when he thought he had successfully belied the natural feats of most riders by reacting so quickly, Daividh felt his body lift off his horse as it came to a halt.

  The saddle! Daividh realized all too late. The saddle must have been tampered with, he realized. He had not lost focus the first time and it hadn’t been the wind. Someone had intentionally done this. He fell off his horse and into the shrubs, hard on the ground. He felt the sharp pain in his shoulder before his head struck a bed of rock. Daividh’s thought was of Lorraine before his eyes were enveloped in quiet darkness.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The first name that Daividh, heir of Clan MacDougall mentioned when he awoke was the name of the peasant girl Lorraine. The name had meant nothing to the medicine man that had been called to cater to his injuries and the concussion he had incurred during his fall.

  “Who is Lorraine?” the medicine man had asked when Glenn had been summoned to the heir’s side.

  “His friend,” Glenn had replied before he had had Daividh transported back to the castle.

  “Oh, me goodness!” Kyla and Elsa had screamed when they had seen Daividh brought unconscious to the castle with bandages over his head and his arm.

  “Is he dead?” Kyla had asked with tears withheld in her eyes.

  “Nay,” Glenn had been quick to reply the women, “He fell off his horse and hit his head. It is mild.”

  Both women had turned to the unhurt beast with malicious eyes before they had turned back to the unconscious Daividh.

  “Bring him up to his chambers,” Elsa had ordered Glenn and the man with him.

  They had obeyed and had brought Daividh up to his room. Once he was there, his stepmother and sister had resumed their watchful shifts over his health. There wasn’t a time when neither of them was by his side until he was able to stay awake long enough.

  Elsa had feared that Daividh would have lost his memory by the time he was awake, while Kyla had been scared that he would lose his ability to speak properly, but neither was to the consequence of his fall.

  “He needs rest,” the physician had said.

  It was Mairi, Lorraine’s mother, that had been called upon to check him one last time. She had left him some herbs, which Kyla had been tasked with applying in his meals and a different one onto his bodily wounds.

  Kyla was grateful that Daividh had not awoken to see Lorraine’s mother tending to him. He would have been distracted otherwise and Kyla did not want him to think of anything other than his own recovery.

  “So I cannae leave the castle?” he asked Kyla as he took his meal.

  Kyla shook her head as she watched him eat. “Ye cannae ride a horse, ye cannae walk without a family member or guard with ye. Ye cannae eat some meals lest the physician allows it-”

  “I just fell off me horse,” Daividh cut in.

  He wasn’t running a fever. He had just fallen off his horse and he was being treated as though he had been cut in battle. But Kyla was strict with his treatment.

  “Did ye see Lorraine?” she had asked him when she saw him staring in the distance on one of their walks. It was the only way to keep him from growing grumpy inside his room.

  “Nay, I fell before I could make it to her home,” he replied.

  He did not want to bother her with talks of his saddle. Whoever it was that targeted him was back again and had tried to take his life once more. It was wrong to not be bothered about it, but he did not wish to burden his sister with it.

  Kyla could see the question he wanted to ask in his eyes but his pride forbade him from asking it.

  “Nay, I do nae think she kens of yer fall,” Kyla replied.

  Daividh knew it was a feeble lie. He was the Heir MacDougall. News of his fall would have travelled far and wide and perhaps even beyond the clan lands.

  “She is still mad at me.”

  “Then I shall go speak to her on yer behalf,” Kyla offered.

  She did not offer because of her brother alone but because she was in love with love. She liked the bliss of it and the joy it brought to the faces of those it ensnared. She had never seen her brother with another woman the way he had been since he had come to talk to Lorraine. He was different with her and she did not want to take that away from him or have him lose it.

  “Ye need nae do that.”

  “Nay, I insist. I shall take a carriage, take a guard with me before ye argue with me, and I shall go knock on her door. I shall tell her that she is mean to me brother and would nae come to see him even when he fell off his horse, tryin’ to see her and apologize,” Kyla told him her plan.

  “Nay, ye would do nay such thing,” his voice was stronger than he had intended it to be.

  Kyla had only smiled. “I shall nae speak to her that way but she needs to come and see ye.”

  “I wronged her and will go to see her when I am well,” he told his sister.

  “I do nae ken when that would be but if a visit would bring Lorraine back to the castle, then I must try it. Besides, I would have more luck speakin’ to her than ye would.”

  “Because she likes ye?”

  “Nay, because I am a woman, and a woman kens how to talk to another.”

  Daividh watched as his sister hopped away with glee, hopeful of bringing Lorraine back to him. He did not fancy having his sister fight his battles for him, but at that point, he could not leave the castle. It would have taken a master plan and an army of his own to break him out of the castle until his stepmother declared him fit to leave.

  Kyla was careful. Given the sudden occurrences at the castle, it was mandatory that she left with a guard. She looked out the coach as it went down the same path that Daividh must have gone down before he had fallen and had hit his head.

  Lorraine’s house was a little cottage segregated from the other houses in the town. With a coach like hers, it was hard to drop in unannounced on people. News of her approach had reached Lorraine even before she had arrived. Kyla stepped out of the coach and Lorraine, the woman who had her brother acting unusual, stood a few paces opposite her with a simple and innocent smile on her face.

  Kyla wanted her hair. She envied the trim woman’s long hair, but she killed her feminine juxtaposing and quickly focused on the task that had brought her to Lorraine’s humble home.

  “A good afternoon to ye,” Kyla spoke first.

  Lorraine smiled and approached her. Both women shared a hug as though neither knew the reason why the other was there. For the first few minutes, they acted as friends, hugged, asked about one another and laughed.

  “I shall be back soon,” Kyla told the guard to stay put before she went into Lorraine’s home. It was humble but it was neatly arranged, and Kyla found herself impressed.

  “I assume that ye did nae hear about me brother’s fall?” Kyla started.

  “Nay.” Lorraine’s face wore horror at hearing it. She had not heard of the news of Daividh’s injury for she had been cooped up in her room for days. She had denied her mother and her brother audience. The both of them would have told her about Daividh had she entertained their words but she had been too sour to care until that moment.

  He would think me wicked for not comin’ to see him, she thought. I am still mad at him.

  She was still mad at him and knew that that had to temper some of the guilt she felt in her chest. It wasn’t her nature not to be there for one hurt, especially someone that she knew so closely and had known so fondly before their fight.

  Kyla could tell that Lorraine had not known about Daividh’s accidents.

  “I am here as his messenger, nae to tell ye of his fall but to deliver his apologies,” Kyla told her, “Though he is me older brother, he is a man and men do things without thinkin’ like we women do.”

  Lorraine could not find the words to reply with. For days, s
he had been vexed with Daividh and hurt, and all of those days, she had leapt at the sound of neighs or knocks on the door expecting him to have come to apologize to her but he had never come.

  Does he nae feel bad for what he did? she had asked herself.

  Perhaps he is too proud to admit his wrong.

  Perhaps he does nae see it as a wrong and I am just a plaything to him.

  He is heir and he must believe himself above all other people, especially a girl of a lowly family like meself...

  She had thought different things of him and herself until that afternoon, and though Kyla pleaded with her on his behalf, it had not satiated her enough. She had wanted him to come and speak his apologies himself. For one, she would have been able to tell his sincerity on his face and secondly, a part of her had just wanted to see him. She might have sent him away despite his begging but she had just wanted to see him one more time.