Scottish Brides (34 page)

“Perhaps you're correct,” Janet said. “I could be sickening.”

“How very inconsiderate of you to be ill while in my presence. Leave me, then.”

Janet replaced the embroidery chest on the floor beside Harriet and nodded to her. Then, before Jeremy could wish her a soft good night, she escaped.

But not to bed. The night was young; the moon was just rising; the enchantment of an early spring breeze was too alluring to resist. The moment was too precious; the freedom too rare to waste.

She would be wild, if only for a moment.

*       *       *

A shallow stream ran through the Hansons' property to the east of the house. In the morning, it looked as if it glowed; the rays of the sun struck it just so. It reminded her of Tarlogie and the burn that flowed past their small cottage. It had winked in the morning light just like this one, before disappearing into the ground again.

Now the stream was black, lit only by a glimpse of moon. She turned and faced north, wishing that she might be like a bird and fly over the ground, finding a nest among the trees bordering a loch. She could almost feel Scotland call her from here, as if she knew that one of her children was missing. It was in her blood, this longing, so deep and so sharp that it made her wish to weep sometimes.
You can take a Scot from the land, but never the land from the Scot
—a saying she'd heard as a child, but whose actual meaning she'd never known until separated from the land of her birth.

She sat on the bank of the small stream, on the mossy ground cover. There were trees around her, shading the moonlit darkness still further. The night was welcoming, as if it approved of her escape into wildness. Just this once. A few moments out of seven years. Then she would return to being sober Janet.

She wiggled her toes, freed of shoes and stockings, lifted her serviceable servant's gown above her knees and waded into the stream. It was cold even though it was spring. Maybe it carried its chill from the high mountains of Scotland itself.
Whimsy, Janet.
More likely it was a staid little English stream. All proper and demure, never flooding, never straying from its bank. It would not tunnel through peat and carry a smoky taste. It would tumble over rocks and pebbles in only the most demure fashion.

“Is it hard to mind your manners, brook? Do you find it as difficult as I do? I wish I did not have to be so polite all the time,” she said softly.

Suddenly a voice called out of the dark. “Are you a brownie, then, that you would speak to the water?”

Her head jerked up. All she saw was a shadow on the landscape, only a long, dark shape near a tree. Her heart thudded heavily in her chest. Her hands fisted her skirts, holding them above the rippling water. Had she not been in such a position, she might have fled at the sound of him.

Or perhaps not. Maybe she'd come to meet him, then, him with his voice all dark and thick like a summer night. With the sound of Scotland in it.

“A brownie?” She could not help it; she smiled. Doing so seemed to remove the cork from her feelings, held so tight and contained these last years. “If I were a brownie,” she said, her voice as soft as his, “then I would be in the house performing the chores of the mistress—doing the supper dishes or plying my skill with a needle.”

“Ah, but the candle still shines, so perhaps you wait until all are abed before you begin your chores.”

He took a few steps forward, and she remained where she was, the sober Janet trapped by impropriety, a hoyden discovered just as she embarked upon her ill-bred ways. It did not seem quite fair to be caught just as she was about to be wild. She wiggled her toes. The rocks beneath her feet were kind and did not cut her skin, nor did the water seem as cold.

“I wish I had a bit of cheese or a drink of milk to give you,” he said.

She followed his shadow, wondered who he was. Or was he even real? Had she conjured him up from loneliness? A dream, perhaps? A phantom, come to share her wicked moments?

“You've some skill in the tempting of brownies, I see,” she said. “You must not pay them too much, else their pride is wounded.”

“Nor ignore their contribution,” he said agreeably, “lest they vanish and never appear again.”

He was Scots, and it was a moonlit night, and this was England: three points upon which a conclusion could be drawn.

“You are a border raider, aren't you?”

His laughter surprised her—not the throaty sound of it, but the surprise and delight in the sound. He seemed charmed, and that was both idiotic and oddly vainglorious. Sober Janet, captivating a reiver.

“And I've come to steal you, is that it?”

“Have you?” she asked, shaking one foot before placing it on the gently sloping bank. She stepped out of the stream and dropped her skirt.

“While it's true a lass is a blessing, cattle are more prized. Lust is all well and good, but has never taken the place of a full stomach.”

Her laughter came freely. Honesty was a commodity much lacking in her life of late. It was a refreshing thing to hear it, even if the truth was so baldly stated.

“Then I'm sorry I am not a cow, for your sake, sir.”

“Oh, I've not come for cattle this time.”

A faint skitter of alarm tripped through her. “And what
have
you come for?”

“To learn, perhaps. To seek answers to questions.”

Silence, while she waited. When it was apparent he wasn't going to satisfy her curiosity, she tilted her head and frowned into the shadows.

“The moon lights your hair, lass. It looks silver in the light. What color does it appear in the sun?”

She blinked at him, startled by the question and the air of bemusement in his voice. “Brown.”

“The brown of the earth after a spring rain?”

“Simply brown, I'm afraid. No better nor worse than that.” Her smile was coaxed free again by his practiced charm.

“And your eyes?”

“Blue. And no, not the blue of the skies.”

“You lack poetry in your soul, lass.”

“And I think you've too much of it for a reiver.”

“Harriet!” The sound of Jeremy's voice cut through their banter like a sharpened sword. Janet turned her head in the direction of the house, alarmed. If Jeremy was looking for his sister, that meant Harriet was, no doubt, looking for her. And anger or irritation was the only impetus for Harriet to go abroad at night.

She bent down and grabbed her shoes, then crumpled her stockings into her pocket and crossed the stream with one bounding leap.

She stopped and turned, wishing to say good-bye, but he had already disappeared into the shadows. Indeed, she might have imagined him. Later, in her bed that night, she wondered if she had.

Two

 

 

 

It was raining, a very fine mist that ended almost as
soon as it began. But Lachlan stood in it, he and his horse, waiting for her, wondering if a proper English miss would come to meet him in the rain. She should be warm and cozy next to a fire. Would she even sense him here? He sluiced the rain from his face and stared up at the windows of the manor house. Which room was hers?

Don't be daft, Lachlan. The very last thing you need to do is to steal your intended from her bed.
But it was a tempting thought, nonetheless. Last night, he'd only a hint of her. A moonbeam had strayed beneath a branch and sent a portrait of her into his mind. Shadows obscured her features, but they seemed fine, indeed. Brown hair, she'd said. And plain blue eyes. He doubted it. With her teasing laugh, she'd rendered him curious indeed. She did not screech as Coinneach had promised, and her hurried return to the house had proven that she did not limp.

Harriet. He did not like that name. It did not seem to fit her somehow.

Why had he thought of her all day? Because she'd teased him about brownies and stood in the middle of a stream, barefooted. Because her laughter was free and easy and seemed tied to the center of him somehow, as if a string linked them.

Come to me, lass.

Would she hear his thoughts, then? Or was he simply a fool to stand here in the rain, waiting for a sight of a woman he'd be wed to, soon enough?

 

Janet coughed again, earning herself another fierce look from Harriet. Once more, and the other woman's lips pursed so tightly, they disappeared into her face.

“What possessed you, Janet? To rid yourself of your shoes and cavort in the garden like a common doxy? Is that what I should expect of you Scots?” She lowered her needlework and stared at Janet. “You deserve to be ill, you know. I should dismiss you out of hand, but Mama had a fondness for your mother and would be distressed.”

Another cough; another frown.

“Oh, do remove yourself to your chamber, Janet. I cannot bear the sounds you make.”

Janet stood, her hands hidden in the material of her skirt. Her fingers trembled, so she fisted them.

“Thank you, Harriet,” she said, her voice barely audible. It sounded, to a casual listener, as if she were indeed sickening with a cold. But the night air had been warm, and she'd suffered more hardship in her life than approaching in a cold burn.

You are a terrible person, Janet. To pretend an illness in order to escape Harriet.
But, oh, the better to be able to race along the grass of the garden and return to the stream. Perhaps her reiver would be there, the man she'd conjured up from loneliness and longing.

The rain that had misted the air earlier had stopped, but the dampness of the grass soaked into her slippers. She brushed against a low-hanging branch, and droplets beaded her cheek. She smiled. How many times had she stood in a Highland rain, her head tilted back, her face washed clean?
Too many times, but too long ago, Janet.

The air was scented with the rain still, and the smell of growing things. She stopped and closed her eyes, wondering if she could tell all the various scents apart, one from the other.

You delay because you do not wish to know, Janet,
she chided herself.
You do not wish to reach the stream and have him not be there. Why else do you stand in full view of the house and discovery? In order to summon him here with wishes, then?

“Have you another name?” His voice came from behind a nearby tree. As she watched, a shadow disengaged itself and walked forward. Beside him walked a horse; it, too, only darkness upon darkness. She might have conjured up the man, but had she summoned the horse, too?

“Another name?”

“Not your Christian name.”

“Elizabeth,” she said, giving him her middle name.

“A nice English name.”

“I was named for my grandmother. She was a nice English lady.”

“We'll call you the Gaelic, then. Ealasaid.”

“Will we?” Should she have imagined a man with such an arrogant nature?

“Do not tell me you'd prefer something more English?” There was a decidedly pained tone in his voice.

“I haven't any objection to my current name,” she said.

“It's too harsh for such a lovely lass as yourself.”

“And how would you know it?”

“Perhaps I am part brownie.”

He tied the reins of his horse to a tree, then walked slowly toward her. She clenched her fists in the material of her shawl. It was not fear she felt at that moment. Fear might have been more prudent. Instead, she felt excitement, perhaps. Daring, of a certainty. She was about to be more than wild. She was to have an adventure, of that she was sure. With a Scots reiver.

“My name is not so unpleasant as yours, lass. Lachlan. Now, doesn't that have a fine ring to it? It flows from the tongue like the burn you waded in last night. Have you had no ill effects from such a daring thing?”

“You must think me puny indeed,” she said, her smile enlivened by the gentle teasing in his voice.

“No, simply a lass who should be cosseted, I think. Or protected from her more wayward nature.” Was it her imagination, or was there a smile in his voice? He was a vision crafted in mist and shadows. Even the moon had disappeared behind the clouds, as if shrouding him in secrecy.

He was really too close now, his voice curled around her like a dark, silken ribbon. It was almost heaven to hear the sound of it, the lilting tones of its teasing. He played with her, she knew. Daring he was, almost as much as she. But he knew the way of wildness, and she was new to it.

“So, you've not come to steal cattle tonight?”

“You accuse me without proof, Ealasaid. What have I stolen? Cannot I be a simple Scot wandering over the border for the sake of it? England's made it clear we belong to them. Is it only one-sided, then?”

“Then are you seeking answers, still?”

“No,” he said, his voice closer than before. “I think I've found what I needed to know.”

His fingers touched her cheek, and she jerked, startled. Instead of removing his hand, he continued his exploration, learning the texture of her skin, the shape of her face. She should have moved away or, barring that, asked him to refrain from such intimacies. But she did nothing, only stood, silent and enmeshed within a spell woven around them by the night and the mist. No, more than that. A longing for moments like this, with her breath coming in sharp little gasps and her heart racing. His fingers were rough; his touch, gentle.