Page 90 of Highlanders for the Holidays
The fact that he was not annoyed the hell out of him.
* * *
“Come to Islay,” Roderick said. “Ye don’t want to spend Yuletide alone.”
“I usually do,” she said. “I prefer it that way.”
“Ye don’t spend it with your family?” He sounded startled.
“I avoid them as much as I can—especially on feast days,” she said. “My brothers, father, and uncles use any occasion as an excuse to get drunk and into fights, and they’re always asking to borrow money.”
Lily did not know why she was telling him about her family. She never spoke of them with anyone else.
“After I was apprenticed to the old healer, she and I enjoyed a quiet Christmas, lighting an extra candle and hanging greens in the shop,” she said, smiling at the memory. “We sold bits of mistletoe and holly all through Advent.”
Lily still sold mistletoe and hung greens during Advent, but she missed the old woman.
“Have ye no mother?” Roderick asked in a quiet voice.
“She died when I was a babe.”
“My parents’ boat was lost in a winter storm when I was a wee bairn, so I know something of your loss.” He enfolded her hand in his. “But I’ve always had my grandmother and my clan.”
Most of the time, Lily did not mind having no one to share feast days with. But on Christmas, she would take out all the old letters from her sister, who lived with her husband in France, and from her friend Linnet in Northumberland.
“Lily,” Roderick said, drawing her attention back to the present. “I don’t believe I can leave ye in Ayr.”
“Why not?” Her heart beat fast at the thought, unlikely as it was, that he wanted to be with her a little longer.
“’Tis not safe for ye to be on your own in Ayr,” he said. “I’d worry about ye there.”
She was so unaccustomed to being worried about that his words made her eyes sting. When she was only a young child, her family had even moved to a different house without noticing they had left her behind until someone told them hours later.
“I may not do well in the wilderness,” Lily told him, “but I can manage the dangers of a town.”
“Nay, I’ll not take ye there and leave ye,” he said, shaking his head. “’Tis no use arguing. I’ve made up my mind.”
Now he was being high-handed. “That’s a shame, because I’ve made up my mind to go. I can walk the rest of the way.”
“Ye must trust me on this, lass,” he said, squeezing her hand. “Ye don’t know this country, and ye can’t speak our language.”
She hated letting someone else make decisions for her. But, truth be told, Roderick had held her fate in his hands from the moment he rescued her on that barren hillside.
“With your sense of direction,” he added, “you’d never get to Ayr anyway.”
She laughed in spite of herself. “I’d wager all that talk about your grand Yuletide celebrations was just to persuade me to come with you.”
“Aye,” he said, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “But what I said about the mountains of food, great bonfires, and long tales is all true.”
Lily could not muster any anger over his attempt to control her, since his only purpose was to keep her safe.
“My grandmother will be on Islay all winter,” he said. “Ye can stay with her, and she’ll teach ye those new cures you’re wanting to learn.”
She remembered hearing rumors that old magic, long forgotten in England, was still practiced in the wildest parts of Scotland. The prospect of learning these ancient skills sent a thrill through her.
“You’d do that for me?” she said. “Ask your grandmother to take me in?”
“It would be a favor to me,” he said, resting his hand over his heart. “She’s an old woman, and I don’t like her to be alone. And there’s bound to be more folk in need of healing at the Yuletide gathering than my old grandmother can manage on her own.”
A kind man was as rare as a flea-less dog. Roderick’s concern for both her and his grandmother touched Lily deeply, and it only added to his already formidable appeal.
She should get on her feet and start walking to Ayr before it was too late for a cure. But the night was dark and cold.
And Lily did not want to be cured just yet.
