Highlander's Forbidden Love: Only love can heal the scars of the past...

by Faris, Fiona

  The old shieling.

  Elizabeth scrambled back up the cliff path. It would make sense; it was a remote and lonely spot. It would offer him shelter as well as a wide view of the moorland below. He would see the approach of any search party long before it reached him, while the high fells themselves furnished a network of folds and glens and corries into which he could quickly vanish.

  I must go to him.

  But not immediately, not right away. As Mairi had said, they would be watching her, and she did not want to lead Gilbert to him. She had to be patient and careful and as cunning as a vixen leading the hunt away from her cubs. She must bide her time.

  But she also realized that time was not something she had an abundance of. If she did not go to him soon, he would be far across the sea, and she would never see him again. She would have to move quickly but without being detected. She would slip out the castle that very night, she resolved, and go to him under cover of darkness. She would slip out the postern gate, to avoid the attention of Sanderson in the gatehouse, and follow the old drove road across the moors and into the fells. Then she would flee with Duncan, elope with him as he had begged her. She was certain now, certain that this was what she wanted, and she was willing to sacrifice her prospects of being a fine lady and her obligation and friendship to Lady Margaret to attain her heart’s desire.

  She realized too that, if she embarked on that course, there could be no turning back. It would be all or nothing.

  But that was a wager she was willing to take.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Slains Castle

  The Postern Gate

  It was just after midnight when Elizabeth slid from the postern gate and into the shadow of the curtain wall. She bore a small sack over her shoulder, in which she had purloined a wheaten loaf, some cheese, and mutton from the kitchen pantry, together with a stoppered flask of ale from the stores in the undercroft. She wore her darkest gown, covered with a long black cloak and hood; she was almost invisible in the darkness.

  She stole around the curtain wall, keeping close to the stonework until she reached the ditch. This would be the most dangerous part of her journey. The ditch was shallow, but it contained a wide quagmire which sucked and squelched beneath her feet, making her progress slow. She held her breath as she laboriously dragged her feet, step by step, through the clawing mud, careful not to leave a boot behind, and praying that none of the watch on the walls would spy her.

  Clear of the ditch, she scurried across the neck of the headland and soon reached the edge of the moor. She followed the clifftop path up past the copse, where she had eaten the strawberries on a day that seemed a lifetime ago, and onto the drove road that wended across the rough moorland.

  The road was free of heather and gorse, and the going was easy. Elizabeth made good progress up the gentle brae, the path clearly visible through the darker cover of the ling through which it ran. Soon, the ground began to rise more steeply, and she knew she was on the fells proper. The road continued, following the contours of the hills, through broad, shallow glens, skirting deeper corries in the depths of which burns chuckled over their stony beds. Occasionally, she heard night-time creatures scurry away through the undergrowth, and once she heard the sharp bark of a fox on a distant hillside. The night was utterly still, and each sound came louder than it really was. Elizabeth’s own steady breathing was her constant companion.

  After a couple of hours, the clouds parted, and the weak watery light of the moon seeped through. In the distance ahead of her, the bone-white stones of the shieling gleamed dully on the rounded crest of a knowe. As she came abreast of it, Elizabeth left the path and climbed the spongy turf to its door.

  She stopped on the threshold.

  “Duncan?” she whispered; then, realizing with a smile that no one else would be around for miles in the wilderness, she repeated more loudly, “Duncan? Are you there?”

  From the depths of the pitch-dark room came a sudden fumbling and the sound of metal scraping on stone.

  “Elizabeth? Is that you?”

  “Yes, my love,” Elizabeth replied, with feeling, her heart soaring at the sound of her Duncan’s voice.

  A hand found hers in the darkness and pulled her inside. Two strong arms smothered her in an embrace, and a mouth nuzzled her hood. Then the hood was drawn back from her head, and a face buried itself in her hair, inhaling deeply.

  “Elizabeth,” the voice said anxiously. “What are you doing here?”

  “I have come to you. I got your message from Mairi, and I have come to you. I want to be with you, always. I want to go away with you and never return. It is you I want to be with, forever and ever.”

  Duncan gave her another quick hug, then stepped past her to spy through the door. His eyes caught the moonlight that flitted hither and thither, scanning the undulating landscape.

  “Did anyone follow you? Have you been seen?”

  “I-I don’t think so,” Elizabeth replied, suddenly doubtful and uncertain. “No one challenged me as I left the castle. And I saw and heard no one follow me on the long traik up from the coast. I regularly stopped to watch and listen. No one pursued me.”

  Duncan stepped back from the door, closing it firmly behind him and plunging them into complete darkness.

  “Come, this way.”

  He led her to the back of the bothy and guided her down into his sleeping place. He sat down beside her and took her once more into his arms.

  “Have you burned your bridges?” he asked in a hushed tone.

  “I have,” she replied. “I can never go back. I think they were planning to marry me off to one of Sir Gilbert’s men; apparently, Matthew Fitt had already asked for permission to pay me court and had been rebuffed.” She chuckled. “But I think they reconsidered and decided it would be better if I were shackled to him rather than running around the country after a damned rebel. I would not have minded,” she added playfully. “He was a handsome enough fellow and very well-bred.”

  “Surely not as handsome as I?” Duncan protested, and she could hear his smile in the dark.

  “Oh, much more handsome,” she assured him. “And utterly besotted with me, by all accounts.”

  Duncan slipped his arms beneath her shoulders and drew her into another tight embrace.

  “Then more the fool are you for choosing me,” he murmured.

  “Aye,” she murmured back, “I must be moonstruck, gone gyte.”

  His mouth found hers, and they melted into a deep, deep kiss. Her hands rose to cup his face, and she drank his kiss greedily. He unclasped the cloak from her throat, and it fell to join his where it served as a blanket on his bed. She pulled his tunic and shirt over his head, while he hitched her gown up over her hips until it was gathered around her narrow waist. She pushed him gently back onto the floor and threw a leg over him. He groaned as she lowered herself smoothly onto his already erect member.

  She leaned her palms on the broad flat muscles of his chest and began to rock back and forth, ending each downward plunge with a little forward flick of her hips. Her hood was still bunched around her neck. She reached behind her and loosed the laces of her gown, letting its bodice fall to join its skirts around her waist. Duncan slid his hands up her slim flanks until his thumbs met her small breasts and he closed his palms over them. Elizabeth moaned and raised her arms above her head, folding them over her crown and tousling her long red tresses through her fingers. His hands tightened over her breasts, squeezing them firmly, rolling and tugging her hard nipples roughly between thumb and forefinger.

  He began to move beneath her, his own upward thrusts meeting each downward plunge of her hips. She gripped his hips tightly between her thighs and flicked her hips more strongly, driving the shaft of his member against the root of her clitoris. Within minutes, the flicks became jerks, and the jerks became spasms, and her whole body shook as she buried her face in her arms, arched her back, and came with a loud sob.

  When her shuddering subsided, Dunc
an slipped from beneath her, and she fell forward onto her hands and knees. He moved behind her and clutched her hips. He lifted her small pert bottom to reveal the engorged lips of her vagina. He eased forward until the head of his member nuzzled the fleshy folds.

  Suddenly, without warning, he drove in as deeply as he could go. Elizabeth gave a gasp, and her head arched back. He reached forward and gathered her hair back into a ponytail, smoothing the length of it by pulling it in long strokes through his fists. Then, holding the ponytail in one hand and leaning the other hand on her shoulder, he began to thrust deep and hard, tugging back on her hair with each lunge.

  With a strangled cry, he came, his member swelling until she felt it might split her open, his warm seed pouring into her in a torrent.

  He withdrew and fell breathless and laughing onto the cloaks beneath them, his arm going around her waist and drawing her down on top of him. She was laughing too, a joyful unrestrained laugh of sheer pleasure and happiness.

  She snuggled close against his chest as he lay on his back, gazing dreamily up into the darkness, her ear over his heart, hearing its rapid beat gradually slow to a steady pulse, the draw of his breath in his lungs. His hand clasping her shoulder, he held her there protectively.

  She was his, and he would never let her go.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The Old Shieling

  The next morning, Elizabeth awoke to find Duncan already looking out the door. He had risen at dawn to resume his lookout. Beyond the door, a bright sun shone down on an empty landscape. Her robes lay folded neatly on a stool beside their sleeping place.

  She rose from beneath their cloaks to dress. Duncan heard the movement and turned to greet her.

  “Good morrow.” He smiled.

  “Good morrow,” she returned.

  She stood naked under his gaze, her small, slim form shivering in the chill morning air, her disheveled hair gleaming richly red in the fresh morning sunlight, its long tresses falling over her shoulders and reaching her tiny budlike breasts. She shrank beneath his gaze, crossing her slim arms over her belly, awkwardly shifting her slender legs. In the cold light of day, she felt exposed and coy before him.

  “You brought breakfast, I see.” He grinned, holding up her sack. “Bread and cheese and ale… I haven’t had such dainties for quite some time now. Even when I was with the Cullens, the fare was mainly fish, and some dulse and kelp.”

  Elizabeth drew on her robes and came to stand beside him in the doorway. She shivered.

  “How have you been faring up here?” she asked.

  “Oh, there is plenty of food if you know where to look. I have set snares for rabbits, and I forage for eggs, berries, and roots. And there are fresh fish and shrimps in the burns, which are much more palatable than the salt-fish Mairi used to boil up. Just burn water for drinking, I’m afraid. What I wouldn’t give for a flagon of claret!”

  “How long must we stay here?”

  “Only until the hue and cry die down, though that may be a little longer now that you have run away. But Hay’s men have been up here several times now. I can’t see them hunting for me up here again. They probably think I’ve fled west into the mountains, maybe seeking sanctuary with my kinsmen in Badenoch or Lochaber. But you are precious to the Hays; I have a feeling they will search longer and harder for you.”

  Elizabeth stepped through the doorway into the bright morning sunshine and looked to the west. Duncan’s breath caught in his throat as he beheld yet again how beautiful she was. The sun picked out the gloss of her thick auburn hair, the milky paleness of her skin, and the black depth of her eyes. Her prettiness never failed to arrest him in those unguarded moments.

  “Why can we not go to your kinsmen in the west?” she queried. “We would be just as safe there as in France.”

  He swept out an arm as if he were shooing away an annoyance of birds.

  “Ach, I am sick of all of it, all the in-fighting and feuding and family struggles, the scheming and murders, and bloody civil wars. You would think that the plagues and famines that beset us were not enough, that we have to cut one another’s throats into the bargain.” He delivered the door-jamb an almighty thump with the heel of his hand. The whole country is bound for hell in a handcart, and I no longer want to be a part of it. What does it matter whether a Balliol, a Bruce, or a Comyn sits on the throne of Scotland when whoever sits there must visit death and destruction on his neighbors in order to hold on to it?”

  Elizabeth continued to gaze at the bonnie purple Grampians.

  “Aye, and it is such a braw land for all that. It could be Paradise on a morning like this.”

  “Only because it is empty of men,” Duncan said bitterly. “I trust St. Peter will not let a Scotsman through the Heavenly Gates, for if he does, the angels will be at one another’s throats before the day is out.”

  Elizabeth laughed, but it was a hollow laugh. She found she shared Duncan’s cynicism.

  “But isn’t it the same the whole world over?” she said. “Sir Gilbert often talks about King Robert’s ambition to go on a crusade against the Moors in Spain—”

  “He will have to conclude his present ‘crusade’ in Ireland first.” Duncan snorted with derision.

  “And the Plantagenets in England are forever at daggers drawn with the Capets in France and Flanders. Is war not just the nature of things? Is that not why the world is ordered around those who fight?”

  Duncan let out a long, sad sigh.

  “Aye, you may be right,” he conceded. “But it may equally be so that war is rather the consequence of the way the world is ordered. Maybe if the priests or farmers were in charge, there would be no wars: ‘and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more’, as Isaiah said.”

  “Wouldn’t that be wonderful?” Elizabeth said longingly.

  “In France,” Duncan went on after a pause, answering Elizabeth’s question at last, “there are places which remain unaffected by war, peaceful places, far from the centers of the rivalries of the great noble families. There, a man might grow a vineyard and make wine, safe in the knowledge that his neighbor won’t come in the night and tear up his vines and rape his wife and slaughter his children and burn down his house. France is a vast country, with many small ‘forgotten’ corners where people can just get on with life. In Scotland, all the lords and barons live on top of one another, and the people are trampled beneath the feet of their great war horses. In France, we may have hopes of being left alone. In Badenoch or Lochaber, I would be feuding with the MacPhersons, or Brodies, or Shaws.”

  “Is that, then, the life that you see for us, Duncan?” Elizabeth asked, smiling and turning to take his hands in hers. “You a farmer, tending his wines, and I tending his children?”

  “And my chickens and my pigs.” He grinned mischievously. “You would be tending those, as well as the geese and the goats.”

  “While you grow fat on my terrines and sausages and pâtés and cheese, no doubt!”

  “And my nose grows red with my wines!”

  “Then I would have to take a lover,” she warned. “I could not be doing with a fat drunken husband, snoring beside me in bed. I would send you to sleep with the pig.”

  “I fear the pig would take offense.”

  They both collapsed into peals of laughter, tugging at one another’s hands and gazing fondly through their tears into one another’s eyes.

  “Lochaber or Vallée de la Loire, I would gladly share but a pigsty with you, my darling,” Elizabeth murmured.

  “And I you,” he replied. “But I would prefer a château, even a modest one.”

  He pulled her into an embrace.

  “We will bide here for a few weeks,” he murmured into her hair. “We can easily live off the land, and we should remain undisturbed. Like I said, Hay’s men have hunted high and low for me up here on several occasions and found no hide nor hair
of me. I would be surprised if they came back. And even if they do, we can easily melt into the hills. Then, when the roads are quieter, we shall traik south over the hills to Aberdon, where we will find a Frenchman to take us on board and give us passage. Then we can be together, my love, always.”

  Elizabeth hugged him tightly and closed her eyes in bliss.

  But she could not shake the thought that they were not home and safe yet.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Slains Castle

  Solar

  Margaret was inconsolable.

  “But what if she has been murdered, Gilbert, and is lying strangled in a field? Or fallen from the cliffs and swept out to sea?”