Page 38 of The Lass Defended the Laird (Explosive Highlanders 2)

Since they came back, the days and nights dragged like eternity. They went on long walks around the loch, played, chatted. Ewan fished with the footman, learned to care for Loch, gathered the last berries. Or climbed trees as he so much liked. They baked shortbread, sang, read. Nothing seemed to have any taste, any enthusiasm.

With each hollow, frosty night, her longing increased tenfold. She did not decide if it was better to have spent those days with Drostan or if they made it worse. The notion she bore years of it nearly overwhelmed her. That he was at arm’s reach, yet so distant turned it bitterer.

But she forced herself to live through it. It could not be that impossible to overcome this. She had gone through tougher despair. And survived.

“Is anything wrong with the boy, my lady.” The newly arrived footman interrupted her musings from the entrance. A burly black-eyed, black-haired lad of about twenty.

“I do not think so, no. Thanks, John.” The servant bowed and walked back outside where he was cutting logs for the fire.

They stayed on the floor until Ewan calmed down.

“I baked a honeyed cake.” She said when his crying waned. “Would you like a piece?” The sweet taste might soothe him for a while.

“Yes, mama.” His cherubic face streaked with tears, his skin red and eyes puffed. It broke her heart to see him like this.

“Come then.” An encouraging smile forced its way into her lips.

A throat cleared in Drostan’s study while his attention fled outside the window, somewhere two miles away. Abruptly, he turned his head to find his steward, Mitchel, looking expectantly at him. “I asked if ye want me to send someone to mend old Dunn’s roof, my Laird.”

Dunn? His memory tried to retrieve whatever it had retained of their conversation. Yes, Dunn, the tenant, had a leaking roof. “Sure.” He agreed, not even remembering the cost. “Do it.”

But if someone asked him if he remembered a certain wife’s auburn hair shining by the fireplace, he would describe each unruly ringlet. If someone asked him why his son nicknamed the mare, he would descant about boys’ imaginative minds. And if someone asked him if he was happy spending his nights in an empty bed, he might call the cad out.

Damn it to hell!

“Tell Lachlan to go with you. He is good with handy work.” The Laird completed absently, and finished the meeting.

His nostrils expelled forceful air as he tried to keep his mind on his clan’s tasks. It had not been easy though. Almost a week had passed, and it was getting no better.

A rasp on the door announced Fingal. “Did you want to see me?”

“Come.” He invited.

“How are things?” His brother asked. “I have not had the chance to talk to you.”

“Shady.” The Laird answered. He had not gone into many details about his absence, but he would have to take this up with his brothers and father soon. “I will explain everything after dinner.”

“Alright.” He answered as he sat in front of the massive desk.

“A marriage proposal came from The McTavish.” He got straight to the point. “For you.”

“Thinking of leg shackling me, are you?” He crossed his arms over his considerable chest.

“Only if you do not oppose.” As the Laird, it was his duty to find advantageous matches for his siblings. Even though Aileen got herself abducted by the McDougal and ended up married to their old clan enemy.

“Let me hear it.” Fingal did not conceive it unrealistic to make an alliance by marriage.

And Drostan himself had married by arrangement. At the time, he found nothing to complain about. Both McPherson and McKendrick Lairds had signed a marriage contract long before the wedding itself. He and Freya became betrothed two years before the ceremony. They knew each other from the usual gatherings of clans in festivals, weddings or burials. After the betrothal, though, they saw each other on a more…intimate basis. For him, she had been the most beautiful lass in the whole Highlands with her curves, her hazel expressive eyes and her riot of auburn curls. Together with her eagerness for him, which enthralled the groom-to-be. Even though they had kissed and touched all too often, they kept the best for last, so to say. And his memories of their wedding night were fervent to say the least.

The newlyweds settled so comfortably into married life Drostan believed that to be the rule. Only to be proven wrong in less than a year. But until then, it had been pure bliss. He never gave much attention to his feelings for her. Never labelled what they had, never examined them too closely. When she disappeared, his emotions became so ragged and muddy, he stopped considering them altogether. And buried them deep into his lonely nights.

The discovery of her whereabouts, with his son in tow, unearthed those muddy emotions he could no longer recognise. The years of estrangement, though justifiable, had done a good job of making him sceptical about the whole affair. Where he stood right now? If he only knew. It added to his unwillingness to contemplate the mat

ter.

“He wants to match you with his second daughter, Anna.” Drostan held out the letter to the younger man.

Letter in hand, he said. “McTavish is going to marry his second daughter before the first?” Fingal eyed his brother quizzically before skimming the letter.

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