Claimed By The Highlander (The Highlands Warring Clan Mactaggarts Book 1)

by Anne Morrison

  There was nothing else to say.

  She stepped around him, and he didn't stop her as she went on her way.

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  chapter 34

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  Elizabeth's days fell into a rhythm faster than she thought they would. She was meant to be the future wife of the clan head's brother, but she realized that that meant something different than it would if she had stayed in England.

  There were no lords with servants who worked the land for them. The first time she saw Reade and Aidan driving the cattle to lower ground, she was startled, and that was nothing to how the crofters spoke to them. The members of Clan MacTaggart all had their own opinions and views on how things were to be done, and while most of them were pleased enough with Aidan's decisions, others needed to be argued into seeing his way, cajoled or bargained with.

  “It really is a family affair, aye,” Reade told her one night. “We are a clan, all related by blood, association, or marriage to one degree or another. We listen to Aidan because he was reared to make these decisions, but the only time his word becomes law, the way an Englishman would see it, is when the war drum beats. Sometimes not even then if the cause is not considered a good one.”

  It was not only the position of the laird that shocked her. Her mother had been a strong-minded woman, and her father had respected her mother's wits and thrift. Still, though, there was the feeling that her mother, and indeed all women, were pensioners on their men, living in the man's house and raising his children.

  The MacTaggart clan, by contrast, had women who took their places at the tables, who talked bluntly about their lives and what their children needed as well as dealt in the business of the clan's well-being. Their blunt and forthright ways were at first shocking to Elizabeth, and then she started to feel a kind of wonder as well. It was a new way of living, and willy-nilly, she was brought into it as Reade's wife-to-be.

  They assumed that her strangeness was because she was from a Lowland town and that her shyness had more to do with being with her betrothed's family than anything else, and they welcomed her one and all. Elizabeth, who had only ever lived with her family in London, and who had never even had so many friends, found that there was a part of her that was longing for a welcome, and she stepped forward to meet them.

  She was a neat hand at spinning and sewing, and there was always a want for women swift with a needle, and she even found herself pulled outside to work the land, as the days warmed and the planting began.

  At first, she kept an eye out for times when she could run, when she might steal to Finnian's stall in the stables and make her way overland to Leister Castle, but soon enough, she realized that it was hopeless. The mountain passes were crooked and strange, and without a thorough knowledge of the landscape, they could be deadly as well. Reade hadn't told her that, leaving her to find out on her own, and she believed it more than if he had told her.

  She settled into waiting, and though the despair of her strange position came up sometimes, there were too many days where she was simply too busy to worry about what might come the next.

  Reade was another issue, and sometimes, when she caught him watching her from a distance, it felt as if her heart might break. He didn't talk to her often, but that wasn't such a strange thing when his work might take him far afield with the other men. He came to sit with her at dinner, and he was always unfailingly courteous to her, but his grins were gone, as were his jokes and his teasing.

  “You've tamed him down,” one girl remarked to her at the spinning wheel one day. “It's good, he'll make you a fine a husband soon.”

  Elizabeth bit back a protest, and she was surprised to realize it wasn't for the marriage but rather for the taming. She didn't want Reade to be quiet and grave with her. She missed him, and that was a strange thing to say because they were still sleeping in the same bed.

  The first night, she had turned to him pointedly.

  “This castle is enormous. Surely there is another room that you can take.”

  “Likely. But this is the only one I want.”

  “Then I shall leave. As easy as you all are about things, surely it will not be so out of the question that I might want a place of my own, is it? Before we are wed.”

  She had put a little emphasis on the final word, and it had made him flinch a little. She was not so virtuous that she didn't want to hurt him a little after everything he had done to her, but Reade only shook his head.

  “You'll be safer here with me.”

  “From Mairi? From Maisie?”

  Something dark passed over his gaze, and in a split second, he was across the room, his hand tight around her upper arm. He wasn't hurting her, but his grasp left no doubt in her head how strong he was, and her breath caught in her throat.

  “I will not have you apart from me, Elizabeth, and that is the end of it.”

  They were frozen like that for a moment, and Elizabeth had to stifle the urge to shout at him, or even to reach up and slap him. The strange part, when she looked back on it later, was that there was no fear in her at all, nothing that told her that she was in danger from this man who had, after all, brought her to this place.

  “Let go of me,” she said instead, and in some distant part of her mind, she was surprised by how very calm she sounded, and how cold.

  Reade did as she said, letting her go, and somehow, that was the end of it. She knew that the desire that had roared so loudly between them before was still there, might always be there, but for now, they were both pretending that it didn't exist, that they hadn't cried out in each other's arms that single night.

  During the day, they kept apart, by chance and the structure of life at Doone Castle as much as inclination. At night, they came back together in the room that they shared, and they got ready for bed.

  No matter what had happened between them, they still slept curled up next to each other. Elizabeth didn't know how to feel about it, didn't understand what it meant that their hearts had never felt so far apart, when at the same time at night, he slept as close to her as her skin, her head under his chin, his arm over her hip. They didn't speak about it, but then there was so much that they never spoke about.

  One night, the message came back that the men would be in the fields until dawn. Something had happened with the herds, raiders were suspected, and every man was needed out. Some of the women went as well, and Elizabeth, as well as being worried about the possibility of raiders, felt strange as she climbed into the bed on her own. It felt too large, and certainly too cold. When she woke up alone, she felt a deep sinking in her belly, as if something had gone wrong with the world.

  Elizabeth dressed and went to break her fast in the common room, and she felt such a surge of relief from seeing Reade there that she felt almost faint. He was sitting at one of the tables, talking with a man she hadn't been introduced to yet, and Elizabeth found her feet moving without her will.

  In a moment, she was across the floor, Reade turning around just in time to catch her in his arms in surprise. She didn't say a word, only clung to him as tightly as she could, pressing her face into his chest. He smelled like wood smoke, and she was certain she had never felt anything as good as his arms around her.

  “Elizabeth!”

  He held her tightly against him, and she felt him drop a gentle kiss on the top of her head. It was the most they had touched since she first came to Doone Castle, and she couldn't help a spark of pleasure that shot through her body at it.

  “Lass, lass, did you miss me so much? I was fine.”

  She swallowed hard, aware that she was being foolish, and she stepped back from him. Did he cling to her for a moment? She couldn't quite tell.

  “I'm sorry. I missed you.”

  Her words felt stiff and strange in her own mouth. They felt at once too much and far too little, not enough to explain her actions or the way that he had gotten inside her, tangled himself so much in her heart she fel
t as if she would never be pulled free. If she even wanted to be pulled free.

  Reade reached up to run his knuckles gently over her cheekbone. The touch was as light and sweet as a summer breeze, and for some reason, it made her want to cry. What was wrong with her?

  She was relieved when Aidan called him over, and she scurried to the kitchen, eager for her breakfast but also glad to be away from Reade and the feelings that he had brought forward to her. When she brought her food back to the common room, Mairi, the woman who had greeted her the first night at Doone Castle, chuckled at her.

  “Oh, but it is fine to see you and Reade getting on a bit better. We had been afraid that you two were quarreling.”

  “Quarreling?”

  “Well, it is no easy thing for you, Elizabeth, and well we know it.”

  Elizabeth blinked.

  “What... what do you mean?” she asked nervously. Had Aidan for some reason told Mairi about her situation? Had she let something slip herself?”

  “Well, you are far from home. Ayr is different from the Highlands, and we know that you must keep very different ways. Even if you have come here with a full heart, it would be difficult, and it is certainly something we have been telling Reade.”

  “You've... been talking to him on my account?”

  Mairi laughed.

  “But of course. He was a wild boy, that one. Calmed down a bit since his father died, rest him, and turned into an able man his brother can count on. He might be as charming as the devil's own self, but he doesn't necessarily know how to treat a girl he's going to make his wife.”

  Elizabeth couldn't explain the emotions that were tugging at her now. She felt Mairi's care and love, the care and love of all the people who had helped her and looked after her since she had come to MacTaggart lands, wrap around her, soft and warm as a wool shawl.

  “Thank you,” she murmured. “Thank you, I didn't know...”

  “Well, you're going to be one of us, aren't you? We look after our own, and it is good to see that you and Reade are a little easier with each other. There's some that thought you wouldn't like it so far north, but plenty more who thought you just needed to see your way settled, to grow to know us and to care for us. You've a good heart, that's plain to see, and this is a good place.”

  Elizabeth barely stopped herself from humiliating herself in front of the older woman with her tears. After all, there was work to be done, and her part to be played in the world of Doone Castle.

  Still, she could not bring herself to close the gap between her and Reade, and as the days turned warmer, she wondered what they were going to do if a priest actually did show up, how far Reade was willing to carry the charade. Sometimes, it was easy to pretend, even to herself, that she was who she said she was, a girl who had followed her man north. Then she would be reminded of the truth, and she knew that this had to end.

  She and Reade maintained a delicate balance between them. She did not push him away at night, and he did not ask more of her. Things might have gone on as they were almost indefinitely, but then came a sudden brutal freeze, a wind that howled out of the north, everything changed again.

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  chapter 35

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  It was Mairi that felt the wind coming. Reade's father had always said that Mairi was as sharp as the wind herself, and that was what made her so keen to its changes. Aidan figured that the woman had lived through so many winters that of course, she was going to know the wind. Reade himself didn't have to worry about any of the whys and simply listened when she said that a killing wind was blowing down the mountain.

  That was bad news indeed, but Elizabeth obviously didn't understand why every man, woman, and child was suddenly in motion, going for their warmest clothes before going out into the fields. In their own room, she hesitated as Reade pulled out the warmer cloak and mantle he had thought stored for the warmer days.

  “What is going on? Why is everyone going out?”

  “It's bad news, and it means we have to get the animals under cover. They've already been let out into the open ground, and if the cold catches them, it's going to wipe out the younger ones, the ones recently calved and lambed. We could starve next winter, if the freeze is a bad one.”

  Elizabeth looked shocked as his words, but then to his surprise, she nodded.

  “Let me come with you. I can help if you will tell me what to do.”

  Reade hesitated.

  “It will be harsh, and we might be away from the castle for several nights. If you cannot keep up, I will not be able to bring you back so easily.”

  Elizabeth thrust her chin up with that pride that he had come to love so well, and she gave him a direct look.

  “I will keep up. I do not know what to do, but if you think that I can do some good…”

  “You will.”

  “Then I want to help.”

  “All right. Come on. We can get you warmer clothes than that.”

  Even bundled up in some spare clothes that had been put away years ago, Elizabeth still looked far too small and frail for Reade's liking. He pinned the cloak around her shoulders and was startled when she smiled up at him.

  “I am not fragile.”

  “I know that.”

  There was a moment, a strange moment, where anything could have happened between them. Then he heard Aidan shouting for all able people to come out into the fields, and he and Elizabeth had no more time.

  After that came a terrible tangle of rain and mud, working throughout the next forty-eight hours until there was nothing to them but the cold, the bleating of terrified and recalcitrant sheep, and the angry shouting of people who all had their own ideas of how to get everything and everyone to higher ground.

  As much as he wanted to keep his eyes on Elizabeth, Reade was too busy to do so, only seeing her out of the corner of his eye from time to time as he scrambled to keep everyone, man and beast, safe.

  As Elizabeth had promised, she did not falter. He saw her hauling a lamb in her arms as they trudged up the steep hill, he saw her running for a sheep that had somehow strayed from the rest of the flock to bring it back. If he had had the breath for it, he would have teased her mightily for thinking that she could come to the Highlands just to arrange a fine lady's hair. Instead, all he could do was push harder, put one foot in front of the other, and help the other members of his clan where he could.

  The flocks were to some extent owned communally. Each household recognized their own animals through a distinctive nick cut into the sheep's long ears, but no one checked those marks before urging the animals up to high ground. A great deal of Clan MacTaggart’s wealth was tied up in their sheep, and the flock that had to get moved up the mountain was large.

  The rain turned the slopes to mud, and Reade felt as if every step only carried him half as far as it should. By the end of the process, when the sheep were finally to higher ground, he felt as if he wanted nothing more than to sleep where he stood. Just as he was going to look for Elizabeth, she appeared by his side.

  “I told you I could keep up,” she said, equal parts triumph and exhaustion in her voice.

  “So you did,” he said.

  She nodded.

  “And now I feel as if I don't sleep soon, I may very well die.”

  Reade laughed.

  “Come on, lass. I'll get you down the hill if I have to carry you down.”

  He didn't have to, but it was a near thing, and on their way back to their rooms, he filched some food from the kitchen and a basin of hot water besides.

  “Because you looked more mud than girl,” he said, and he was rewarded with a smile of pure and relieved joy.

  “Thank you. I think I have been dreaming about this all day, sleeping on my feet.”

  “Here, shall I leave while you bathe?”

  She hesitated and then bit her lip. Despite his exhaustion, Reade looked up at her curiously. There was something different about her ju
st then, something that both was and wasn't the girl he knew.

  “No. Stay.”

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  chapter 36

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  Elizabeth could feel more than hear Reade draw in his breath. She didn't know what she was doing, but after the ordeal on the mountain, the last thing she wanted was to be apart from him. They had been sleeping together for weeks now; what more could this do?

  It all sounded very reasonable in her head, and without waiting for a response, she turned from him to strip off her clothing. As terrible as the mud had been, the rain had swept most of it away. A washcloth dunked in the hot water and then wrung out made her shiver with warmth, and as she swiped at her body, it felt as if she were being scrubbed into something new.

  Elizabeth kept her back to Reade, but she could feel him moving behind her, could feel his eyes on her as if they were his hands, his mouth. She knew he could see her bare back, her rear, her legs, all of her, but there was still something that kept her from turning around to him. She couldn't. The desire was there, but... she couldn't.

  “Ah, lass, but you are beautiful.”

  She jumped a little. He was closer than she had thought, and now she could feel his hands on her shoulders. They sent a tremor through her. He was so close, so near to her that her heart started beating faster. What if he were naked as well? What if she turned to him and offered him the cloth she was using to clean herself? How would it feel if he ran that rough fabric over the valleys and curves of her body before tracing them with his bare hands?

  Elizabeth swallowed hard.

  “I'm sorry. I can't...”