Page 18 of The Highlander's Temporary Bride
She shook her head. No, what was she thinking? Whatever this was, it wasn’tthat.He was just handsome. And not a Highlander, but a Laird…
And that meant?—
“Oh my—heaven and grace on Earth,” Emma gasped, tipping her head back as they emerged from the woods on the edge of a hill that looked down on a small valley.
Gentle hills rose and fell, lights filling the air, and a town sprawled at one end. But her gaze flicked to the enormous castle. From the loch, it had seemed enormous.
Now, approaching it, Emma thought it seemed to soar in the sky. It was thrice the size of her family’s estates, and those were rumored to be almost as big as the Queen’s palaces.
It was so large that its light reflected in the distant curve of the bay, the ocean splashing at their doorstep. A shiver ran down Emma’s spine.
“What is this place?” she wondered out loud.
CHAPTER 8
As Grant rodetoward the castle, a mass of solid stone and the legacy of his clan sunk into the land, he felt a stir in his bones. One that he could never tamp down, as though the call of earth, stone, and sea went beyond the fury of his heart and memory.
Seven years ago, when the rightful Laird Ronson returned, he had not sought vengeance against his people—as some had rightly feared.
But he had sought to both right the wrongs done by his father—and if some of it was done from spite and fury, no one said a word. Not when it benefitted yeomen, nobles, and farmers alike. Not when the Banrose lands had never been so prosperous and thriving in decades.
Perhaps, though, the canny among his people knew that he poured so much energy into undoing the old Laird’s corruption because he had no other choice. If he did not have something to occupy him, he might seek vengeance—or war. For every day,Grant awoke and reached for his blade, only to remember that his father would never die by it.
No, the old bastard had died selfishly in the sea, rather than by Grant’s blade. Grant swore that the cunning old fox somehow had known when he had sought his head.
And the last time Grant had attempted to kill his father, he’d been lying in wait up the coast, only for his father to drown.
The story from the port, where his father had last set out, was that the old Laird Ronson had refused to stay, even as a storm began to rage on the horizon. And the whole ship had gone down, all souls on board lost to the depths. That had almost included Grant’s younger brother, Reuben, were it not for a freak accident a day before, where he’d been thrown off a horse and had been too unwell to travel.
Now, there were stories up and down the coast that the cruel Laird still sailed the stormy coast, forever seeking harbor, and all the poor souls with him were trapped until he found grace in his purgatory. For Ronson’s soul was too corrupt for heaven or hell.
Others whispered that the devil was to be found in Banrose and that the eldest son would never let his father rest—not when old Ronson attempted to hang the boy for feeding his people. Yet, whatever good had been in the boy was lost in the man—another sin by old Ronson.
Although Grant hoped that the former Laird was a cursed ghost, he feared that was too optimistic a fate for his father. Too kindfor the man who’d somehow plumbed the depths of his clan’s riches and nearly impoverished both his people and his clan. It had taken Grant half a decade to scrape together a semblance of what his people had before the Wednesday Uprising.
And most of that was due to turning his father’s pride and joy, the garish and newly built Ronson manor house, into a hospital. Now folk came from the Highlands and Lowlands for remedies and to find cures for their ailments, to find a healer who could help when all hope was lost. The wealthier were charged a nominal fee.
But plenty of good folks donated money to keep the hospital running, so much that Grant could’ve stopped funding it, but he refused. Instead, he increased the healers’ wages and was planning on establishing a school of medicine and healing sciences.
The only place that Grant had razed to the ground was the old Healer’s Sanctuary, for he was unable to bear the memories of where Mac had once resided. With his family’s help, he’d turned it into a medicinal garden.
A laugh almost escaped Grant, then. If there was any surer sign that the former Laird Ronson had perished at sea, it was that he had not immediately appeared to stop his eldest son from ruining the home that he’d funneled so much money into.
Hence why Grant wasn’t sure he believed in his ghost—surely, his father would choose to haunt the hospital or the castle, not the coast.
His father had been proud of Banrose Castle. Yet, he’d never wanted to live there. His ego had demanded its own space, its own legacy, so he’d built the manor.
Again, Grant wondered if he should have torched it and rebuilt upon its ashes. But his mother had known best in the end. She’d convinced him to find a better purpose. And since he owed her his life, his rightful claim to Lairdship, and his legacy, he could not disagree.
Indeed, he let Brenda have her way and be the deciding voice on all matters. All except for one—his marrying. That was until the Queen sent out her Edict.
Grant could’ve almost sworn that Queen Marianna and his mother had been plotting together.
Speakin’ of the English.
He glanced back at his unusually silent riding partner. As they turned into the long stone drive, a wall rising on either side of them, with the massive rush of a river churning beneath, Emma’s silence began to unnerve him. He glanced back as they passed under a bright torch on the wall and almost laughed.
Her blue eyes were enormous, gazing around as though she’d never seen such a place, and Grant felt a stir of pride. Probably she had not—Banrose Castle was one of the biggest estates in all of Scotland. It was rumored that some former English king had gone green with envy upon laying eyes on it and hadimmediately ordered his men to start the construction of new wings when he’d returned to London.
