Page 45 of Highlander's Sinless Nymph
She said it casually, but Edward perceived how much it meant to her that the two of them were friends.
It must have been a cruelly lonely life the poor lass led before now, to see a weather-stained brute like me as likely material fer a friend.
Edward nodded.
“Aye, we are friends, Sassenach,” he said.
Trying to hide her girlish delight at his words, Charlotte said, “Quite right, and friends do not have secrets with one another, do they?”
15
It struck Edward that the time had finally come to make the decision that he had been putting off for the past couple of days. He had to decide whether to come clean with Charlotte, or continue down the road of reticence that he had started on.
Edward had been careful not to tell Charlotte any outright lies. Not out of any concern for herself, but because he wished to preserve his own integrity. It was something that had been instilled into him by his mother and father from an early age; that when a person is stripped of everything that they have––be they pauper or prince––all they are left with is their word.
“And the word o’ different men is like different metals dug from the ground,” Edward’s father, the Laird, would tell him. “Each carries a different weight, and each is worth a different amount. As a Laird’s son, ye must make it yer duty to ensure yer word is worth more than all our lands and everythin’ in ‘em.”
If the girl had stayed shut up tight like a razor clam during their ride perhaps the decision to keep the truth from her might have been an easier one. However, she had not. She had opened up, blossomed in his eyes, like a flower. She had spread her life before him in a display of trust that he was not sure she really comprehended.
It had touched him deeply. Touched him almost as much as it had amazed him that such a man as Captain Adair Bolton could have a daughter like Charlotte.
“Nay,” Edward said, in his deep voice, running his thumb across the scar in his eyebrow in a thoughtful fashion. “Nay, friends are nae supposed to have secrets from one another. Ye are right there, lass.”
Slowly, and with some effort, he managed to pull himself into a sitting position. He sighed and rubbed gingerly at his temple.
“Pour me another wee drop o’ that herbal tea o’ yers, Sassenach,” he said, passing his empty skin back to Charlotte. “Then I shall try and answer any questions ye have.”
Charlotte took the skin, filled it with the last of the raspberry leaf tea, and handed it back.
“Well,” she said, leaning forward and warming her hands by the fire even though the night was not cold, “I suppose I would just like to know who you are.”
Edward raised his scarred eyebrow at her. “Ye do not ken who I am yet?” he asked, evasively.
Charlotte gave him a stony look tempered by a small smile. “You know what I mean, Edward. I might have an insight into you as a person, but I don’t know where you come from. Prepare me for when we arrive at your home. Let us start off with something even a child could answer; what is your last name?”
Ah, and so the first question, the simplest question, turns out to be the question I was dreadin’ most.
Edward puffed out his cheeks. His headache still pulsed behind his eyes, but it was dulled now as he prepared to potentially alienate this woman who had, unexpectedly, really become someone he considered to be a friend.
“Me name,” he said, “is Edward MacAlpein.”
He paused for a moment to see if the name rang any bells with Charlotte, but only the slightest frown appeared between her eyes.
“MacAlpein,” she said softly to herself. “I have the strangest notion that I have heard the name before. And not too long ago.” She looked at him questioningly. “Would I know it?”
“Aye, ye might well do,” Edward said. He sighed then, took a draft of the rapidly cooling herbal tea to wet his suddenly dry throat. “Me faither is Tormad MacAlpein, Laird of the MacQuarrie clan,” he continued. “It is to the MacQuarrie lands that I am takin’ ye, Charlotte.”
The frown between the beautiful, pale blue eyes deepened at the mention of the MacQuarrie name.
“The MacQuarries… My father had dealings with them not too long ago. A year ago, maybe? A disagreement of some sort, he told me.”
Aye, that’d be about right; Captain Bolton referring to the callous murder of an innocent woman that he kidnapped as a “disagreement.”
Edward, knowing how important it was that he should keep his temper here, attempted to maintain a level tone of voice. As much as he tried though, he could not stop his face from darkening.
“It was a wee bit more than a disagreement, Charlotte,” he said.
“Yes,” Charlotte said, “yes, yes, I recall it now. He did not tell me much––he has always tried to keep me in the dark about his business with the army––but I do remember that the fortified camp at which we were based was astir with some to-do with the MacQuarries.”
