Page 18 of The Story of his Highland Bride
And yers would be so very tender,his mind whispered, as she shifted in the saddle, pushing her backside harder against his loins. It was almost too much for him to bear, for if she was the powerful witch that he suspected her to be, she had certainly bewitched him already. And he did not know how to free himself from the spell she had weaved around him. Just the sweet scent of her, though faded somewhat, drove him to distraction.
“I thought that was what you wanted?” she replied quietly, shivering in his arms.
He paused, pulling her tighter against his chest. “Lennox saw ye leave the castle, and kenned ye’d get yerself in bother. If ye runnin’ off was what I wanted, I wouldn’ae have raced after ye like there were hounds of Hell on me tail.” His gaze flitted down to the curve of her neck, and the deep dip of her collarbone; his lips burning to taste her skin. “What were ye thinkin’, eh? Nay matter what was said between us, ye could’ve made yer escape in the daylight.”
“Isthatwhat you wanted?” She twisted around to look at him. “Should I just twiddle my thumbs all night at the castle, and try again in the morning?”
He puffed out a frustrated breath. “That’s nae what I’m sayin’. I’m… sorry if ye thought ye were nae welcome. I was thinkin’ only of the good of me people, but… I daenae want ye dead, Lass. If I did, I’d have handed ye over to Father Hepburn when I first found ye.”
“Who is Father Hepburn?” Eloise narrowed her eyes, not realizing that the rub of her thigh against Jackson’s was pushing him toward the brink of a very particular, delicious and dangerous kind of madness.
Jackson swallowed thickly. “The priest in this corner of the world,” he explained, concentrating on a diamond of freckles on the apple of her cheek to try and ignore the sway and graze of her body against him. “There’s naught he likes more than burnin’ witches, makin’ an example of anyone that doesnae follow his ways. He hasnae quite realized that there are many of us who will never fully relinquish the old ways, but he’ll be damned if he’s goin’ to let us get away with bein’ “ungodly” as he calls it. He’d have ye burned in the blink of an eye, even if he’d only seen that tunic and them trews of yers.”
“We had a vicar in our village who was like that, without the witch burning,” she said softly, turning her gaze away from him and shifting back around, facing forward. “Where I’m from, no one burns witches anymore. No one burns anyone because they’re a little bit different.”
“On the Isle of Man?”
She laughed, but it was not a cheery sort of laugh. “I told you, that’s not really where I’m from. If you were listening at all, you’d put the pieces together and finally realize that the last story I told you was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. If I can accept it, albeit reluctantly, there must be some part of you that can accept it, too.” She sagged in his embrace. “I’m not a witch, not a priestess, not a mystical spirit—I’m just a writer, thrown over three hundred years back in time where, apparently, there are still wolves roaming free in Scotland. In my time, they’re in zoos and wildlife parks, though I think I read somewhere that they’re thinking of releasing some back into the wild.”
“What is a… zoo?” The word felt strange in Jackson’s mouth.
“It’s a place where people go to look at animals that they’d never normally be able to see—lions, tigers, gorillas, aardvarks, bears, wolves. I’ve never liked zoos, really. Always thought those animals should be back where they belong, in the wild, but after coming face to face with a wolf, I’d definitely prefer to just see them from behind a fence.”
Jackson’s brow furrowed in disgust. “Sounds cruel to me.”
“There are plenty of people who’d agree with you, but it’s cute for the kids, I guess.”
As they rode and he held her close, he allowed himself to think about what she was saying, using her words to draw his attentionaway from the way that she felt. She had asked him to listen, and after their last encounter had led her to flee and almost get herself killed, he was determined to try.
She’s still sayin’ the queerest things,he mused.Things I havenae heard before. Things I couldn’ae even imagine. But… she said she was a writer. What if the things she says are just stories she’s conjured?After all, his mother and grandmother were two of the finest storytellers in Scotland, crafting detailed, wonderful, impossible tales that he lacked the imagination to create for himself.
If she was not a witch, and not an envoy of the Old Gods, then maybe shewasjust a writer with a wild imagination, who wanted tobelievethat she had come from a different time. Although, that still did not explain her peculiar garments and that black stone he had rent in half.
And if I cannae explain it, perhaps she’s tellin’ the truth—
“Tell me what happened to ye at the Cairns again,” he asked, lightly gripping her waist with his hand. He liked the way her skin gave a little beneath his fingertips, and the manner in which the subtle fullness of her breast rested upon the side of his thumb. It sparked a craving in him to feel more, but this would have to be enough. He did not want to scare her more than he had already.
With her mouth stretching into a nervous yawn, she began the tale again, adding in details that she had not mentioned before—details that, even now, he could not get his mind to comprehend, for he did not know what half of her words meant.
“I rented a car and drove it all the way up to the Highlands on a whim, after a letter came from the wedding caterers, demanding final payment,” she explained. “It was the last straw, I suppose you could say. I needed to be away from everything that reminded me of my betrothed. So, I came here—well, I came to a bed & breakfast outside Castleton. The lady there suggested I should go for a walk at Clava Cairns to help inspire me for the rest of my book.”
“I followed her advice and went there just as a storm was brewing, which she definitelywouldn’thave advised. It didn’t look like much, to begin with, but then some starlings flew down and landed on a ring of rocks around one of the cairns. I thought it was weird but carried on with my search for inspiration. That’s when the rocks started whispering to me—they said, “Your palm upon the stone.” I still don’t know why I did it, but I touched this tall, rectangular rock that didn’t look like the rest. It was… hot to the touch, and it started to glow red, so I obviously thought it was someone playing a trick on me. Then… it blasted me backward, I hit my head, and I woke up three hundred years in the past.”
Jackson fixed his gaze on the shadowy trees ahead, watching for any signs of a fresh threat between the points of Claymore’s twitching ears. “I think I ken the stone ye mean,” he said, after a moment; his heart pounding like there were unseen hands clenched around it, squeezing it hard.
“You do?” She twisted around again.
“Aye. It’s a… sentinel stone. It’s there to protect the cairns and the dead beneath,” he explained hesitantly. “Me grandmaither and me maither always said there was ancient magic buried there, too, but me faither always teased them, tellin’ them they were like two old fishwives, tellin’ frightenin’ stories around the fire in winter. He had his beliefs, I’m sure of it, but he dinnae believe the way me grandmaither and maither did. Indeed, me maither once said that she had a strange experience at those Cairns—said she heard voices, as ye just said.”
It pained him to speak of the parents that he had lost. It pained him even more to have to wonder where they were now. Could they see him from their afterlife? Were they watching over him through the black eyes of the crows that perched on the branches overhead? Were they now the two doves that cooed in the sycamores? Or were they just wind, wafting wherever the breeze took them? At least with Father Hepburn’s version of Heaven, the particulars were simple: if they had lived a good life, which they had, they would enter God’s Kingdom; if they had not lived a good life, they would burn in eternal Hell.
“Is your mother at the castle? Does she know more about Clava Cairns? Perhaps, I could speak with her, and find out what it was that she heard?” Eloise’s eager voice was like a dagger to his heart.
He cleared his throat. “She’s gone. Her and me faither, both.”
“Oh—” It was the sound of someone who understood keenly: a sorrowful expression of shared loss. “I’m sorry to hear that, and not just because I can’t talk to her about the Cairns. It’s a bittersweet thing, to meet someone who gets it, someone who has had the world pulled out from under them, too.”
He could not have phrased it more appropriately if he had tried, but hearing the whisper of his own heart, spoken aloud in her voice, it was a struggle for him not to give into the grief he had been keeping at bay. Her presence had delayed his mourning period, yet knowing she had experienced his suffering herself, he felt… comforted for the first time in years. Like he was not alone.
