Her body jerked like a fish on the line at the low rough words, but before she understood them, she heard the sway of the vowels, the burr and the lilt together, and her heart cried out home.
Margaret's head snapped up, and the man who stepped out of the darkness was tall and broad. His clothes were still damp, showing that he had come out of rain just as she had, but wasn't wearing a cloak, allowing her to see the breadth of his shoulders, the narrowness of his hips. She couldn't quite make out his features in the dim light of the chapel, but she knew that his hair would be as black as sin and there would be a scar under his eye.
“Aidan MacTaggart,” she whispered.
He's grown up, filled out, fulfilled the promise of what I always knew he would become, her mind whispered.
He came to sit on the pew next to her as if he had done so ever Sunday, but there was no hint of a smile on his face, nothing of the loving young man she had known almost a decade ago.
“Hello, Meggie. What in the name of hell did you call me for?”
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Chapter 02
Aidan came to the woods hard by Maras Castle just a little after sunset. He was two weeks from home, two weeks that he could ill-afford as the laird of Clan MacTaggart, he was sick of the lowlands and of the English, and if he had half an excuse to turn his horse around and start north again, he would have done so.
Of course he didn't.
If he could have done that, he would never have come south in the first place, traveling through the country that he and his people had so recently been at war with, keeping his mouth shut so his accent didn't give him away, and doing his best not to take offense at every slur he heard about the north.
Aidan had cursed himself for a fool when he opened that letter instead of burning it as it deserved, and he cursed himself again now as he considered the castle. It was smaller than Doone Castle, the ancestral seat of Clan MacTaggart, but while it would likely hold out well against a raid, it wasn't alert enough to keep out one determined man.
He had been afraid that he might have to try to scale the wall, but instead under the cover of the driving rain, he was able to make his way in through the small bailey gate. During times of trouble, it would be blocked off with a load of rubble from above, preventing entry or exit, but now the gate's latch was rusted and snapped when he thrust a heavy branch into it and pushed. Aidan held back a dark laugh as the gate swung in
Heaven help the English if the Bruce ever decides to go on the attack instead of simply wanting to hold what is ours.
He made his way like a shadow through the bailey, staying close to the wall and going as still a statue whenever the guards came by to make their rounds. They seemed unused to it, and he remembered that in the village they had been talking about the newly-made Earl of Norwich, who had brought his own men from the south.
That'd be Margaret's new protector, Aidan thought, and he shrugged off how poorly that idea sat on him. If she hadn't called him down from the north, he'd never be any the wiser, and none of this would have been his problem.
The chapel was obviously overgrown and deserted, and when he tried the door, it wasn't even locked. The only window was high above the door, so he reckoned it safe enough to light one of the dusty beeswax candles he discovered in a box under the alter. The entire place was nothing but dust and ash, which suited Aidan's purposes well enough. He stripped off his cloak and made his way to the small cell at the back of the chapel, where the friar himself would have lived. It was a bare little room, but there was a peg to hang his cloak on and a cot to rest on, at least for a while.
It was risky to be here, right under the Englishmen's very nose, but it would serve, at least for what he needed. He would come, reassure himself that Margaret was fine, and return to his proper place in the north.
In the silence of the chapel, with the rain rattling on the slate tiles overhead, the ridiculousness of his situation caught up with him. He was the laird of Clan MacTaggart, responsible for every member of his bloodline and the land that they had held for centuries. Last year, Robert the Bruce had declared a tentative peace with Edward of England, and by all rights, he should be in the north, working his holdings, protecting his people and seeing to the responsibilities that were uniquely his. He was lucky that his younger brother Reade had been at home and ready step up to look over things in his place, and where Reade might be too flighty to keep an eye on things, his new bride Elizabeth would steady them.
Even with Reade and Elizabeth keeping an eye on things at Doone Castle, there was no reason for the laird of Clan MacTaggart to be in England, no reason for him to be hiding in a castle, no reason at all.
Except for a beautiful young girl with dark red hair and eyes the color of good whisky, who had bound her hand to his and held in the smoke of a campfire and called it their wedding day. He had told himself that he had forgotten her and that none of it mattered anymore. It had been eight years since they had last seen each other, long enough for both of them to have married and to have had several children, long enough for the world to change around them until the line between the highlands and England had been drawn in blood instead of with stone walls.
Aidan pushed those old memories away, because they would not serve him now. They had already brought him south, and even now, he knew that they would be the death of him if he let them have their way.
His heart still beat faster at the idea of being so close to Meggie Barton, but he ignored it. He wasn't the same raw youth he had been at twenty-two, and he knew she wouldn't be the same sweet eighteen-year-old that had stolen his heart at the ford.
I should get some rest for a few hours. I can go looking for her when the keep is properly asleep.
Aidan knew that he shouldn't have come at all, but at the very least, I could make his sojourn fast.
But you still came, an irritating voice in the back of his head pointed out.
He had, and he could only hope that it wouldn't spell disaster for himself and everyone he cared about.
That was when he had heard the door to the chapel open and close again, and before he even saw her face, he knew. There was something about Margaret Barton that he knew as well as he knew the edge of his sword or the walls of Doone Castle, and that was her.
His first instinct was to rush out of the shadows and to take her in his arms again as if no time had passed at all, but that instinct had brought him south out of the mountains, and he wasn't so very inclined to listen to it at the moment.
Instead he studied her from his hidden spot, watching as she came closer to the alter to take a seat at the front pew.
She was and wasn't the girl he remembered. She was twenty-six now, with a woman's grace and bearing. She had filled out some, but there was still a legginess to her stride and a proud tilt to her head, even if she was shaking in her light slippers. She wore a heavy blood-red gown of English design, fitted to a nicety and with long and draping sleeves that she surely could not work in, but perhaps she didn't need to work any longer at all. There was a gold chain around her neck, delicate, but he had some idea of how many cattle it could buy and the number was not a small one.
She looked as if she had had bad fright, sitting with her head bowed at the pew, and without thinking, Aidan stepped out of the shadows.
“You make a pretty picture there, your hair all aglow in the candlelight, but perhaps you already know it.”
The words were flat, crueler than he had meant, and he saw shock, surprise and fleeting hurt flash through her magnificent eyes as she looked up.
“Aidan MacTaggart,” she whispered, and in some sure and secret place inside himself, Aidan knew he was doomed. It was as if he had been waiting for her to say his name again for eight years, and now that she had, he was hers again, and Heaven help him, it would all begin again, all the pain, all the torment, all of the brutality that love promised and never given could be.
He came to sit next to her, and warring with his urge
to pull her into his arms was the urge to stay away, to pull back from her as if she were poison. When he spoke, it made his voice harsh and cold even in his own ears.
“Hello, Meggie. What in the name of hell did you call me for?”
“I sent that letter a a month ago. I did not think you were coming.”
She spoke like an Englishwoman now, Aidan noted, all of the north scrubbed out of her voice. Had her English father forced her, or had she done it herself, giving up everything she had been to become the beautiful, wealthy woman she was now.
“And yet here I am. The way is long in the north, and hard as well, if you remember, and I cannot so easily break away from my duties. I am the laird, now.”
“Your father is dead, then.”
There was something strange in the way she said it, sorrowful but not sorry, that made him look at her, but she looked away.
“My father is as well. Just three months ago.”
Aidan didn't have it in him to pretend to be sorry that an English lord was dead. The Earl of Norwich had never entered into the pitched battles for the north, so far as Aidan knew, but there was no way he could be innocent of Scottish blood.
“Yes. I heard on the road down, and also that his successor had been anointed by the Church and the Crown.”
“Yes, Harry Stratham is the new Earl of Norwich, and my new guardian.
“And you think he won't keep you in the dresses and jewelry you have come to expect?”
Margaret reeled back as if he had slapped her, and there was actually a part of Aidan that hated himself for saying it. It wasn't as if she had been a girl with a proper place in a clan and a family. She had grown up on sufferance on the edge of MacKinnon lands, half-English and a bastard besides. Even Aidan, with no love lost for the English, would not have begrudged her making the choice that she did if she hadn't turned down the choice he had offered her first.
“You have no idea what you are talking about. You cannot come here and speak to me like that.”
“If you want to tell me what's going on, Meggie, darling, please do. As it is, I have come all the way south for no good reason but a letter from a woman I should by all rights hate, and I can talk to you however I please.”
Aidan held her gaze, and while she didn't look away, he could see her do some fast thinking. She really wasn't the same woman he had fallen in love with, and he reminded himself to be careful with her. He couldn't trust her any longer, if he ever could in the first place.
“I want you to take me home,” she said finally, and Aidan stared at her.
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Chapter 03
There were too many emotions tumbling through her when she saw Aidan. She could not name them or tease them apart from one another, and she felt the reserve that she had built up, brick by brick, stone by stone, start to crumble to the ground. Her father's death had started that deterioration, but now Aidan MacTaggart, who letter or no, she had never expected to come to her, was completing it.
She had no defenses against him, and he proved it when she felt a blaze of pain cross her heart at his harsh words. It was the most real thing she had felt since her father died, and some dark part of her almost wanted to be grateful for it.
When Aidan MacTaggart, who she had loved as much as her heart knew how to do it, looked at her and raked his green eyes up and down her dress and her jewelry, however, the words that she had wanted to say to him, the truth, died in her throat. Her pride made her lift her chin, and she couldn't tell him about the humiliation of Harry Stratham's hands on her, of how the new Earl of Norwich had looked at her and pawed at her and whispered things that made her skin crawl.
“I want you to take me home,” she repeated. “I need to see my mother.”
Aidan's eyes narrowed, making the scar under his eye twitch. She could still remember that scar when it was new, when her own mother had patched the skin together as if it were mending she had taken in.
“Write to her to see if she wants to bear the sight of you, and then make your fine Earl take you. There's a peace on now, and it might even last long enough for you to spend Christmas with her.”
“She's my mother, and there's no one to read her any letters I send. You should know that. I have not laid eyes on her since I left, and now that my father's dead , I want to see her again.”
That, at least, was the truth. She missed Alice Barton so much, and some days, it felt as if that grief never lessened from when she had ridden away from the cottage she had grown up in. Aidan was shaking his head at her.
“And.... so what you're telling me is that that pitiful little letter you sent me, the one where you told me that I was the only one that could help you, that you might actually die? What was all of that?”
Margaret bit her lip.
“It was a lie to make you come.”
The rage that swept over Aidan's face was almost terrifying. He reached for her, closing his hand around her wrist and pulling her towards him. It should have reminded her of Harry's touch, Harry's aggression, but somehow, it didn't. This was Aidan, and he might be furious with her, but he would never hurt her. She stared into his face, her jaw set, and faced his wrath.
“You lied to me? You dragged me down from the north, made me spend two weeks on the road dealing with the English, on the basis of a lie?”
“Would you have come if I had said anything else?”
“Maybe you should have tried!”
“Tried and failed, more like it! Aidan, I needed you, and you came.”
“And now, I'm going.”
He released her wrist and stood, moving halfway past her before she realized what was going on and grabbed him by a fold of his sleeve.
“You can't! You can't leave me here like this!”
“Who's going to stop me, Meggie? Are you going to call all those guards in and let them see you with some strange Highlander in your arms? They might run me through, but I wouldn't like to see what they do to you.”
She stood, slightly startled all over again by how tall he was. She was used to being able to look most men in the eye, especially in England, but Aidan towered above her. She felt a shiver of something go through her, and maybe there was fear woven through it, but more than that, there was heat, something that made her think of the glowing metal of a blacksmith's forge.
“Don't leave me,” was all she could say, and she saw something besides rage come into his eyes.
She remembered this, being so very close to him, and she could see that he did too. There was a time when he had been as close to her as her own skin, and even if she hadn't let her mind remember for years, her heart did. Her body did.
“Damn you,” he growled, but there was grief and longing twined with the fury, and then he was dragging her into his arms.
She leaned forward into the heat of him, and even his smell was familiar. He smelled like wool and smoke and the open mountain air, and how in the world had she not died in England without it, without him? His hard hand cupped her cheek, making her tilt her face up, and then his mouth came down hard on hers.
There was nothing kind about his kiss, nothing in the least gentle. Instead, it was a ravaging, a demand, and out of an instinct that she didn't even know she had, she lifted her head and answered hit. His tongue pressed into her mouth as if he needed to taste her, and Margaret opened for him, clinging to him as he took her mouth with his.
It was a consuming kiss that took everything from her, but in return, it gave her a warmth deep inside that she was afraid had been extinguished forever. She remembered that warmth, and she cried out softly into Aidan's mouth. It was as if her heart had started to beat again after she had kept it in a sealed box for eight years.
Margaret whimpered when she felt his hands in her hair, loosening her braids with almost frantic need. His fingers threading through her loose hair sent a shiver of pleasure through her that made her press herself harder against him. She missed him, she wanted him, and now that he was
here in her arms again, who in the world knew what was going to happen.
“You can't,” Aidan growled into her ear. “You can't do this to me, not again, Margaret. You don't have the right...”
“I'm not doing anything,” she whispered. “You were the one who kissed me.”
It was only partially true. If he stepped away from her right now, she would fall down on her face. She needed him just as much as he needed her, and in that moment, she didn't have to be without him anymore. She wanted to close her eyes and luxuriate in what that meant, but instead, she took a deep breath, and somehow, somehow, made herself step back.
Margaret had learned a great deal since she had left England. She had learned to dance, she had learned to cover up a sob with a smile, she had learned how to talk as if she had never eaten an apple while dangling her sore feet into a frigidly cold mountain stream. She had learned to access a well of cold in her that she had never thought existed before, and she reached into it now.
“Did you like that?” she asked, her voice only trembling a little bit.
For a moment Aidan stared at her, and she ached. She had already hurt him terribly once before in their lives together, and she had had no idea that she could still do it. There was a part of her that wanted to take it back, and while she was at it, she wanted to take all of it back as well, all the time apart, her decision to go to England in the first place, all of it. As her mother had always said, however, time only flowed one way, and she had to live with the world as it was.
“Little witch,” Aidan swore, and when he would have stormed past her, she put a hand on his chest. He could have knocked her away like he was swatting a fly, but her hand there, gentle and open, stopped him as surely as brick wall would have done.
“Well?”
“I see you have learned plenty of tricks in the south,” Aidan said bitterly. “And you know I did.”
“I can give you more than that,” she said, and this time her voice didn't shake at all.
Aidan snarled at her, but he didn't move.
Claimed By The Highlander (The Highlands Warring Clan Mactaggarts Book 1) Page 23
