Page 97 of The Scottish Bride
“Ah! Here.” She brought a small, curled scrap of parchment to Liam.
“She carries her books and writing always with her,” he said, bemused.
“She does. It is her heart’s work. Read this. Is it familiar? It was with Thomas’s writings but did not fit with anything else. Some of it has been torn away.”
“‘Until luck returns,’” he read, “‘when the lady of gold—’” He looked up. “‘Takes the harp to hold.’”
“I did not understand it until now. His writing is difficult to read, and I never knew—I thought it said harp, but perhaps it is harper. Not a lady playing a harp, but a ladywitha harper.”
He studied the scrap. “It could say ‘harper.’” He looked up. “Put it together with the verse. Listen.” He recited the Dalrinnie verse again, adding the new line at the end.
And Scotland will burn until luck returns—when the lady of gold takes the harper to hold.
“It does fit the rhyme,” she said.
His sky-blue eyes searched hers. “This could refer to us. Do you see it? The lady of gold.” He touched her long, loose, thick braid.
“And the harper to hold—my harper-knight. Liam! Our meeting. Our marriage. Did Thomas see it all?”
“And predicted luck would return to Dalrinnie—and Scotland—when we found each other. By the saints!” He stood, wrapping her in his arms. “Pray God it is true. It means so much to Scotland—to Bruce!—if it is the truth foretold.”
“Thomas always spoke true.” When he kissed her then, the whirling within her felt tender, quieter, a fire banked and eager to grow. She drew back. “Please do not use that arm yet, sirrah. You must rest.”
He laughed softly against her hair. “The hour is late, and we have not yet rested, not quite, in that cozy box bed. Come, love.” Taking her hand, he drew her to the bed. “In the morning, we will depart. But before we head back to the forest tomorrow,” he said as he pulled back the coverlet, “there is a place I want to show you.”
She smiled. “Different than you might show me now?”
“You will see tomorrow. Come here.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
“How did youknow I would want to see the place where Grandda Thomas lived?” Tamsin asked, riding beside Liam.
“I had a feeling about it.” He guided his horse closer to hers and smiled. She was lovelier in the morning than he could have imagined—and he should stop thinking of how she looked, and felt, in the night. Flexing his shoulder, the wound making the movement stiff, he shrugged. “Have you been there before?”
“As children we visited him with our parents. My mother was his granddaughter. But I scarcely remember.”
“See the pine forest there?” He pointed toward the tall pines that had sheltered him. “I waited there after those rascals shot me. When I came out, I recognized the Eildon Hills, and knew the Rhymer lived near here. He is said to have met the Queen of Faery in those hills.”
“And from there he followed her into the Otherworld,” she said. Ahead rose three conical hills, the middle one slightly higher than its sisters, all of them deep blue in the midday sun, with patches of old heather and scrub along the inclines. “I dreamed of the hills once, after Grandda died, and I felt I should visit them someday.”
He sidled his horse closer and reached out a hand. She joined hands with him and they rode in silence, the horses rocking them closer to the hills.
“What else have you dreamed?” he asked.
She hesitated. “I dreamed of you, once.”
“Did you! And never said,” he teased. “Who is keeping secrets now? Tell me.”
“I dreamed I climbed down a rope out of a tower, with arrows flying all around. A knight stood below me. He was there to catch me. I let go and fell into his arms.” She glanced at him. “Later I recognized you as the knight in my dream.”
“By the very saints,” he murmured. “You do have a way about you, my lady.”
“I dreamed more recently that I was looking for you—outside Dalrinnie. But I could not find you, and then I was taken. Grabbed by someone. But I woke, and you were there with me. I think it was fear. Just—needing you.”
Keeping her hand in his, he rode thoughtfully. “I am always here for you. There is some—kind of destiny here. I have not always believed in such, but this—this between us seems undeniable.”
“I used to daydream about a man who could truly love me. I was so lonely at Dalrinnie, in that marriage. I wanted children. A home. I wanted to be free to speak the truth, too. But I had to hold my tongue and be obedient.”
