The Highlander’s Lost Bride (The Highlands Warring Scottish Romance) (A Medieval Historical Romance Book)

by Anne Morrison

  Aidan snorted.

  "We can sleep back to back, if you like. I've done it often enough with men on the march, if you are so worried I cannot restrain myself."

  I'm not worried about you restraining yourself at all. I'm more worried about myself.

  Despite that thought, however, the promise of warmth against the cold winds was too good to pass up, and she went to join him under the cloak. She stifled a sigh of pleasure as she settled against him, and she didn't say anything about sleeping back to back when he curled around her. The warmth of their bodies together would help both of them sleep better.

  We can do this. We have to.

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  chapter 20

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  Aidan was grateful for the warmth that Margaret provided him, but he had asked her to sleep next to him for concern over her illness. She looked as hale as she ever had, but the idea of her taking a chill and falling to the ground in a dead faint as she had a few days before was a horror to him.

  And... if he were perfectly honest, he was still selfish enough, still needed her enough, that he wanted her sleeping nowhere but next to him.

  His skin still crawled at the idea of forcing Margaret and not knowing it until it was too late, and he thought with some darkness that it was going to be a long trip north. He had wanted this journey over with for long enough that now it felt strange to hope it would last longer. The day was coming soon when they would be quits with each other, and there was more than a small part of him that hated that idea.

  He slept lightly that night, and pink streaks were just crossing the sky when he finally gave it up for a bad job and rose from the makeshift bed that he shared with Margaret. Aidan's face softened when he saw how soundly she still slept, and he paused to tuck his cloak more tightly around her. The chill of night had not yet dissipated, but he would be fine for a short while.

  He took a moment to stoke up the fire, and then he glanced at the stream, hesitating. It was imperative that they return to the road, putting as many miles behind them as they could, but it was still early yet, and he was almighty sick of the dried food that was typically carried along for lengthy traveling.

  He stripped down to his trews, setting his shoes aside. There was no need to wet everything he owned before he set off on a long trek north. There was a pang in his chest at leaving Margaret even that long, but he was not going far.

  The streams that came down from Crinnan's Mountain were as cold as ice and teeming with fish. He and his brother had caught them in traps, with rods and with nets throughout their childhoods, sometimes for the fun of it, sometimes when food was scarce. When they were roving the mountains, however, with no special equipment on hand, they also caught them by hand.

  The stream moved fast, but it was less cold than he feared, and this early in the morning, the fish were more active than they would be later.

  Aidan grabbed for two large trout, but they slipped between his fingers easily, as if they were ghosts. He sighed, taking a deep breath.

  He and Reade had learned to fish from an old man who did little else, and the old man had waxed eloquent on catching fish by hand.

  "They are the calmest creatures in all the world and have been so since the days of paradise. If they sense the least disquiet from you, if they can tell that you are not at peace, or if you have any violence or ill-grace in your soul, they will not come to you."

  Aidan could still hear the old man's laugh as he and Reade toppled over in the water again and again, and he reached for the peace that was beyond that.

  He cleared his mind and let his eyes relax, his hands in the water as the fish swam around him. He let his mind drift with the rushing stream water, and something about the sound of the water reminded him of Margaret's laugh.

  That was likely the opposite of what he was meant to do, but once he started thinking about Margaret, he couldn't stop.

  He remembered the wild girl he had met on the mountain, and the peace she had brought to him. He had been twenty-two, fresh off the battlefield. His father, the old laird, had fought as well as any other man there, but it was becoming too clear that the old man did not have many fights left in him, for all his protests. The weight of the clan and his responsibilities to it weighed down on Aidan like a ton of bricks, and that was what had sent him up to the mountain.

  Then he had laid eyes on a girl picking berries in the high crags. She had smiled at him with the sun sparkling in her whiskey-colored eyes, and suddenly, he had found a kind of peace he had never known before.

  When Aidan remembered that peace from that long-ago day, he reached for the fish swiftly and smoothly. In one fluid motion, his hands closed on its mottled body, and he flung it up on the shore, thrashing a violet arc in the air before it landed.

  Aidan looked up at the burst of applause from the bank, where Margaret stood still wrapped in his cloak.

  "Oh, well done," she called. "I had forgotten you could do that."

  "It's a good trick when you think you might kill someone for some fresh food," he said, wading up to the bank.

  Margaret was standing right next to his clothes, and he wondered if he could feel her eyes on his shoulders and his bare chest as he reached for them. Then she turned toward the fish, flopping on the bank, and he was sure that it was only his imagination that made it so.

  She went to pick it up, taking it in hand as if it were a loaf of bread and carrying it back to their fire.

  "I'll take care of that," Aidan said automatically. "You'll foul your clothes on the slime."

  The look she shot him was dry, but it was so familiar, he blinked.

  "You really do think that I rotted away all my useful parts in the South, don't you? I remember how to gut a fish, how to avoid slicing my hands open on the scales, and how to spit a fish as well. Just dress yourself. You are like the green man come out of the stream."

  Aidan couldn't help but laugh at her words. There were passing few people who would dare speak to the Laird of Clan MacTaggart like that any longer, and none of them were young women.

  "All right, then, I shall leave you to it."

  Aidan took his time on the shore, dunking his head in the water and having a quick bath before climbing back into his clothes. When he was done, he felt more than a little chilled, but the cold was good him, he decided. At the very least, it helped remind him that he ought not be thinking of Margaret like one of the young women from the clans, who thought too much of his rank and the prestige of wedding a laird.

  When he returned to their camp, the fish guts had been dumped into the forest, and the fish was spit head to tail over the fire.

  Margaret was still dressed in her fine English gown, but it was looking a little worse for the wear now, the sleeves tattered, and the skirts stained from their time on the road. Still, she looked a slightly strange sight, bent over the fire and judiciously salting the fish with a bit of the salt Aidan kept in his gear.

  He sat on the log from the night before, watching her.

  She shot him another look.

  "Have the men of Clan MacTaggart grown so lazy it is a wonder to them to see someone do work?"

  "I did plenty of work before you rose this morning," he said with a smile. "That's my fish on the spit, isn't it?"

  It pleased him in a strange way when she only tossed her head like a willful filly and continued tending to the fish.

  "Mine, too, if I had to gut it and get it on the spit."

  There was an old blessing, older than the church, Aidan suspected, that was read at some weddings.

  My sword belongs to you, and I will keep it to defend us. My breath belongs to you, and I will keep it to speak for us. My food belongs to you, to nourish you and to keep you warm through the long winter night.

  He had never thought much of the words before, but now, sharing his food with her, Aidan could see why those vows were so very much a part of the weddings of old.

  He had fo
ught for Margaret before this. Once, he had spoken for her. Now, he would feed her, and something about it made him want to kiss her, to love her, and to bring her close to him again.

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  chapter 21

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  When the sun climbed a little higher in the sky, it was time to break their camp by the stream, and Margaret couldn't help but feel a little wistful. Even after their fight the day before, there was something peaceful about this spot. Somehow, they had found some kind of grace here that they would not soon find again.

  They would likely never return to this place, and the idea of never finding this peace again made her flinch.

  Aidan must have caught her expression, because he glanced at her with a frown.

  "What's the matter? Missing your soft English life already?"

  A spark of temper rose up in her, and she almost wanted to fight him again because of how she felt. Sometimes, she thought it better to be fighting, snapping, and angry than it was to feel as sad as she did.

  Instead, she took a deep breath, and looked him in the eye.

  "Why did you say that?"

  He looked surprised, gazing down at her as if she were an insect that had started to speak to him.

  "What?"

  "Things like that. That I must be missing my life at Maras Castle. If I missed it, Aidan, I would have stayed. I would not be in the woods with you. I would not be traveling north as if my life depended on it."

  Aidan looked at her uncertainly, and she stepped a little closer. It felt a little like facing down a bear, but there was no fear in her in this moment at all.

  "If you truly think I miss England so much, you should just leave me here. Are you going to do that?"

  Aidan looked shocked at the idea, and then he shook his head.

  "No. I've been treating you like a fool."

  "Acting like one, too."

  "Yes. And I'm sorry. I'll not bring it up again."

  She blinked a little, because she had not expected him to be so straightforward when it came to his apology.

  When he saw her surprise, he smiled.

  "Didn't expect me to be reasonable, Meggie?"

  "I... perhaps not. I know you are, though."

  "I try my best. Come on. The sun's only climbing higher."

  The way north was still relatively flat. When it got steeper, they would have to take turns on Bram or avoid riding him at all, but for now, they could still ride double on him, Margaret with her arms loosely around Aidan's lean waist.

  They passed a few hours on the road, and then Aidan snorted with laughter.

  "What is it?" Margaret asked.

  "Without one of us picking a fight, there's not much to say."

  "That's not true," said Margaret, who was actually just beginning to find the silence oppressive. "There are many things we could speak of."

  "Such as?"

  "Tell me about your family. I cannot imagine you have been idle for eight years."

  Aidan hesitated for a moment, and she wondered if he thought her so cold that she didn't care about the MacTaggarts. They were not her clan, but she had cared for them, and for Aidan's immediate family as well. Well. Mostly.

  "Reade's married now," Aidan offered.

  Margaret blinked.

  "Truly? Did he get a girl with child?"

  For a moment, she thought she had gone too far, but Aidan laughed.

  "No, though that would have been my guess, too. He came south earlier this year on some family business, and he brought back an English girl and a load of trouble with him..."

  Margaret listened in shock to the story he told her, and then he told her more about Clan MacTaggart and its doings. She could tell when he was omitting something or leaving something out; the war had been no kinder to Clan MacTaggart than it was to anyone else, and she wondered at those gaps, and what kind of wounds they had left on Aidan.

  He had grown up to be the laird he was meant to be. In a very real way, he was Clan MacTaggart. It made it even more unbelievable that he had come south to help her.

  They traveled without incident for two days, and slowly, they fell into a kind of rhythm with each other. They lost some of their wariness, some of their reserve. There were wide swathes of the past and the present that they did not speak of. They never mentioned their shared path more than gingerly, and there was no use speaking of what Margaret had left behind or what she was running toward.

  Despite that, Margaret could feel the old sweetness between them still, something that had been almost obscured by the heat that had struck them that night at the inn.

  If Margaret was being truthful with herself, that night still troubled her. It haunted her mind when she lay down with Aidan at night.

  She knew that he thought of it, too. Sometimes, she could see a distant flash of heat in his eyes, like far-off summer lightning, and then it was gone. Neither of them would mention the way their bodies sometimes canted close together, the traces of heat they could leave on each other’s skin.

  It was far from perfect. She knew that Aidan couldn't sleep sometimes. Other times, he clung to her in his dreams, as if she could save them both. Sometimes looking at Aidan hurt, because she knew that whatever was between them had to be over, even as she knew it would never truly be over.

  It was, however, survivable, and that was all that Margaret had the right to ask for.

  She noticed that they were both stretching the days a little longer, pushing Bram until he ended the day with his head hanging down by the ground. It was as if they both knew that this tentative peace couldn't possibly last, and that the sooner they were done with each other, the better it would be.

  On one hand, it was miserable.

  On the other hand, sometimes, when she clung to Aidan as they navigated a tricky part of the trail, or when she woke up with his strong arms around her, she wondered if this was what she would have of happiness in the world. Those rare and precious moments warmed her like nothing else did, and she couldn't help but be grateful for them, want more of them, even as she knew that eventually, this journey would come to an end.

  Once, she caught Aidan watching her as she came back from a quick wash in the stream that they had stopped by. There was nothing salacious in his gaze, but instead a blank look of consideration, and she went to sit next to the fire, separating her hair into three strands to braid it up again.

  "You're looking at me as if I came back from the stream a monster instead of a woman," she commented.

  He didn't smile at that.

  "I am only thinking that I do not know where you belong."

  "Well, that's my business and not yours, isn't it?" she asked, slightly sharp.

  He shook his head, refusing to take offense.

  "I thought I knew where you belonged eight years ago. It was with me, at Doone Castle."

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  chapter 22

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  Margaret flinched at Aidan’s words, and he came to kneel behind her. His presence felt like a wall of warmth at her back, and it took her some willpower to keep from leaning back against him. He was in a strange mood, and she was wary about it. If they could bring each other great pleasure, they could also bring each other great pain. She had no urge to find more pain than she was shouldering nightly, so close to him and without the ability to be closer.

  "It wasn't where I belonged," she said softly.

  Aidan made a soft understanding sound that she knew didn't understand a single thing. He couldn't.

  "So you say."

  He brushed away her hands, separating her hair into three strands with gentle fingers. He was gentler and slower than she would have been, and she felt her eyelids droop at the sweet touch. When his fingers brushed against the bare skin at the nape of her neck, she sighed and then caught herself, sitting up straight.

  "It's bring the left strand to the middle, and then t
he right," she said.

  He chuckled with real humor.

  "Calm down, I have not forgotten."

  "You made my hair look like a bird's nest when you started."

  "I got better."

  He braided her thick hair slowly and methodically, and she could feel what a neat job he was making of it. Margaret was almost lulled by the sweetness of his touch before he spoke again.

  "And then you left, and I thought that I would know ever after where you belonged. In the South. With your English father."

  Margaret refused to flinch at his words, instead squaring up her shoulders. It was easier when she wasn't looking at him.

  "Yes. That's where I went."

  "And I thought I would never have to change my mind."

  "And what has made you change your mind, then?"

  She shivered when his hands came down on her shoulders, heavy, warm and perfect. She could feel the brush of his lips at the crown of her head.

  "Looking at you. Being with you. Seeing you. I don't know where you belong anymore."

  "Perhaps I belong nowhere," Margaret whispered, and there was a cold truth at the bottom of it. "I'm a bastard after all. Not one thing or the other. There are some who would say that I'll wander the world even after I die, denied a place that should be set apart for every creature."

  The story went around the Highlands and in England as well, regarding the sad fates of bastards, and it had always sent a chill down her spine.

  Behind her, Aidan tied off the end of her braid with the bit of ribbon she kept for the purpose and sat back.

  "Ah well, if you do that, come knock on my gravestone. I'll stand you company."

  His light words surprised a laugh out of her.

  "Oh, never," she said, with a slight smile. "You have generations of MacTaggarts to lie down with. They would miss you too much."

  "They can miss me all they like. I'll do my duty to them all my life. They can't expect it after I am dead as well."

  Margaret was slightly startled by the bitter edge that came into Aidan's voice then. She wasn't sure she had ever heard it before.