Page 3 of Beguiled By the Highlander
With the dogs at her heels, she tramped across the bracken moorlands before reaching the beach and inhaling a deep breath. In truth, winter was her favorite season, when the wind howled and waves lashed as though Njord himself, the powerful Norse god of the sea, had awoken after his timeless slumber.
She smiled at her fanciful thoughts, as she always did. The old gods of her ancestors were only myths, yet how she had loved hearing the stories from her grandmother when she was a bairn.
But her devotion to Eigg went far deeper than simply enjoying the tales from the past, when the Norse had planted their roots in the Small Isles. It was in her blood, a part of her, and how her grandmother could imagine for one moment that she’d give all of this up and wed some Campbell stranger...
Panic churned through her, the way it always did when the specter of leaving Sgur Castle assailed her, and her grip on the lantern tightened.
No. She would not dwell on such thoughts. She had been born on this Isle. And by God, and all the gods of her ancestors, she intended to die here, too.
There was only one way to calm her racing heart and the alarming sensation that the beach was spinning beneath her feet. She sank to her knees, and after placing the lantern to one side, tore off her gloves, and pushed her palms into the chilled sand.
With a ragged breath, she closed her eyes. The cold ate into her fingers and the tiny grains scratched her skin, but an ethereal whisper of calm inched along her arms and into her blood. The erratic thudding of her heart eased, the dark dread that hovered on the edges of her mind receded, and the wailing of the storm wrapped itself around her in a misty caress.
Aye. This was where she belonged. Her Isle was her anchor and her strength and no matter what had possessed her grandmother to make such an agreement with a damn Campbell, they both knew it could never happen. She and her sisters were destined to remain on Eigg, just as their foremothers had.
Somehow, she had to find a way to get through to her grandmother. And soon. Before summer arrived, and with it, the prospect of an Argyll bridegroom.
She opened her eyes and from the dull glow of her lantern watched the dogs as they darted between the bracken and sand, chasing real or imaginary vermin. And then, without warning, the three of them froze, their noses pointed towards the sea.
Frowning, she followed their gaze, but the storm still raged, and lightning still split the sky asunder. It was fierce, to be sure, but it took more than a winter’s tempest to cause the dogs to act in so unnatural a manner.
Before she could call them to heel, they took off, barking wildly, disappearing into the twilight, and she scrambled to her feet and grabbed the lantern, before glancing at Patric.
He shrugged, anticipating her question without the need for her to voice it.
“The storm might have thrown a dolphin ashore.” He sounded skeptical at the notion, but it was always a possibility, and something untoward had certainly set the dogs off.
“Then we’d best return it to the sea,” she said, and Patric fell into step beside her as they trudged towards the shore, following the sound of the dogs.
Once more, lightning rent the cloud-laden heavens, revealing the dogs standing beside an indistinguishable figure sprawled upon the sand. Thunder rumbled in the distance and a shiver raced over Isolde’s arms.
“That doesn’t look like a dolphin.” Her words were whipped away in the wind, but the way Patric stiffened by her side was answer enough that he, also, knew what they were looking at.
“Poor soul.” His voice was grim. “Wait here.”
She followed him as he strode across the sand, since there was no need to protect her from the sight of a dead man, and Patric was well aware of that. But every now and then he recalledhis pledged fatherly duty towards her to shield her from the harsher side of life.
It didn’t mean she had to abide by his commands.
Together, they stared at the victim of the storm. The lantern cast a glow around him, creating eerie shadows and the illusion that the man still breathed. Face-down in the sand, his midnight hair was a tangled mass, and it was a miracle he hadn’t merely sunk without trace considering he still wore both mantle and surcoat.
Patric grunted. “I’ll haul him further onto the beach and get the men to take him to the kirk at first light.”
It was a sound plan. And yet . . .
She frowned and crouched, swinging the lantern over the back of his head. “Look.” She pushed aside his hair, and dark blood coated her gloved fingers. “Tis a fresh wound.”
Which meant he hadn’t spent endless hours in the unforgiving sea.
Without waiting for Patric’s reply, she set the lantern down and heaved the man onto his back. At least, that was her intention, but it was harder than she’d anticipated. With a long-suffering sigh, Patric gave her a hand, and she caught sight of the man’s face.
A sharp pain pierced through her breast, which was inexplicably odd, since she didn’t recognize him as a MacDonald from any of the Isles. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t one. Perhaps he came from their clan on the mainland, and it was their shared blood connection with their ancestors that recognized him as kin.
It seemed far-fetched, and she wasn’t prone to making such fantastical leaps of logic, but why else would the glimpse of his admittedly handsome face cause such unfathomable sorrow?
His eyelids flickered.
Shock stabbed through her. Had she imagined it?
