Page 17 of The Highlander's Auctioned Wife
Anna still had a thousand questions, but Jackson was gone before she could ask a single one, closing the door behind him. Maybe, he knew that they’d get no sleep at all if he let her start her inquisition, and with so many Lairds arriving tomorrow, she would need all the rest she could get to begin her plan afresh.
Just choose him… Could I really do that?She lay down in her bed and stared up at the canopy of her bed, willing inspiration or guidance to come from the gentle waft of the draped fabric. Sleep, at the very least.
But as time ticked on and her eyes remained wide open, her mind as far from settled as it was possible to be, she sat bolt upright, threw her blankets off, and leaned over to retrieve her leatherbound portfolio from her bedside table.
Skipping past the pages she had already used for her sketches, she took a stick of charcoal, hidden in the spine of the portfolio, and began to draw her worries and her thoughts out onto a fresh sheet, as pristine as newly fallen snow.
As she drew, her mind quietened, her deftly dancing charcoal absorbing all of the energy she would have used toward fretting. She wasn’t seeing what was appearing on the page, her poised fingers moving where they wanted, creating something from the soul rather than the mind, lacking any set intent or any purpose other than to get her feelings out of her head and onto the paper. Like stowing something away for safekeeping or purging a malady before it could worsen.
She wasn’t aware of how long had passed, the time filled by the soft scratch of the charcoal, nor did she know when she might finish her piece. It wasn’t something that could be constrained by hours and minutes and seconds, though she always knew when a sketch was finished: an instinct within her told her so, bringing her out of her peaceful trance as suddenly as it had submerged her inside it.
With a final flourish of the charcoal, she knew innately that it was done.
I might sleep, after all,she mused, sighing out a more contented breath.Nothingsoothed her as much as her mindless sketching. Indeed, as she put the charcoal away, she barely had a worrisome thought in her head at all, each one sketched into the ether.
But as she took up her candle and held it above the page, eager to see what she had drawn, her blood ran cold. Her hopes of sleeping had just dwindled down to nothing. Her charcoal, her trance, had done something… terrible, pouring horror onto the page.
Stifling a frightened gasp, shocked that she had the ability to create something so awful, she tore the cursed paper from the portfolio, folding it up as small as it would go, and promptly shoved it under her pillow… where it would undoubtedly give her nightmares.
CHAPTER 9
As morning dawned,Gordon didn’t have the stomach for breakfast with the Lane family. He assumed he would be expected, but assumed no one would mind if he didn’t appear; they would likely all breathe a sigh of relief at the continued emptiness of his chair at the feasting table.
Fresh air will be nourishment enough.
On horseback this time, he tried to find his way back to the serene loch he had visited the night before, so he wouldn’t forget the route, whether he was on foot or on his stallion.
But where he could easily slip between the trees of the loch’s surrounding woodland, his mighty war-horse, bred for intimidation, muscle, and bulk, struggled to force his way through the densely packed trunks that Gordon had passed through the night before. And Gordon didn’t want the creature gaining any injuries.
As such, man and beast took the long way around, searching for a more suitable entrance into the forest.
What games have I thwarted this mornin’, I wonder?He imagined Anna coming down to breakfast in some unusual attire, only to be disappointed that he wasn’t there to see it. Laird Glendenning would have to be her sole audience, though Gordon was certain he was already ahead ofthatman in the suitor standings.
Then again, shedidrun from me…
The morning was fine and crisp, cloudless but cool; he hadn’t been informed of any event or occasion he needed to prepare for, so he was in no rush to return to Castle MacTorrach. Nor could he think of a better way to pass a few pleasant hours, calming his thoughts, before the imminent onslaught of Lairds, vying for what was already—to his mind—his.
Finding a good path on the opposite side of the woods to where he’d entered previously, the trail well-trodden by deer, Gordon felt almost at peace as his stallion plodded at a leisurely pace through the wych elms, sycamores, rowans, and hazel trees. Ancient citizens of this corner of the Highlands, watching over the petty squabbles of man, each Laird of MacTorrach barely a notch in the bark of such old sentinels.
“Aye, that’ll serve me for breakfast,” Gordon murmured suddenly, spying the glisten of fat blackberries, thriving in untouched clusters on a nearby bramble bush.
He got down and left his stallion to snatch up tufts of the verdant undergrowth, as he picked the tart fruits, devouring them by the handful. He didn’t care that his hands grew sticky with the juice or that anyone who spotted him would see the dark red smeared around his mouth and think the worst: they already did.
He had almost eaten his fill, when a harrowing sound struck him like a cold blade to the spine.
A scream, shivering through the forest. One word, repeated in desperation: “Help!”
The voice was feminine, bursting with panic, and though history dictated that he should be wary of traps, he was running toward the sound before he had time to consider the possibilities. His horse followed, the two of them crashing and snorting through the underbrush, wending around the trees, seeking out the source of those desperate screams.
“Please! Please, help!” the voice begged, getting closer.
Barreling through a wall of fir fronds, swallowing down the feeling that he was walking right into a snare, Gordon juddered to a sharp halt.
Mud sucked at his boot, threatening to steal it from his foot, but his powerful muscles managed to drag his foot out again. Breathless, testing the ground beneath him to make sure it was solid, his sharp eyes surveyed the terrain. He stood on the edge of a bog, one of nature’s most dangerous traps: it looked solidto the untrained eye, but, as he’d just discovered, putting a foot wrong would see a person trapped.
And someone was.
Submerged in the viscous, liquid earth to her waist, flailing frantically, causing her body to get sucked further and further in, was Anna. Her slender fingertips were reaching desperately for something, caught on a spiny tuft of grass, apparently oblivious to the fact that, the more she struggled, the more stuck she’d become.
