by Jackie Ivie
“This is absurd,” he replied.
“Oh. I know. There are enemies behind every bush, the glens are peopled with secrets, and there’s darkness lurking in every gurgle of every burn. I doona’ ken how you manage the responsibility. I truly doona’.”
“Are you making sport of me?” he asked.
“Me?” she asked, opening her eyes wide, although that expression only got her pelted with a big drop, and that had her blinking and wiping at it, and laughing again.
“Of course, you. There isn’t another in sight, is there?”
Lisle looked about. The grass he’d been leading them through was flattening with the force of the rain, and little splashes of them were spurting back up when they reached the ground. She looked back at him.
“Nae,” she replied finally, and licked at the moisture dripping off her nose.
“Then, you were making sport of me.”
“Show me a picnic, and I’ll show you sporting. Why, I’ll even wager I can outrace you. Take me up on it. I’ll prove it. That’s what I’ll do. Gladly.”
“Dinna’ you spend years in a finishing school?” he asked.
“You already know I did. Seven of them. Long ones. I was sent there to keep me from turning into a lad, like I wished to be.”
“It dinna’ work?”
“Oh, aye. I was finished, too. Just draft one of your pretty missives and ask them. I was barely kept from getting the boot applied. Daily. Or should I say…nightly?”
“If this is the type of conduct you displayed, I doona’ doubt that, at all.”
She stuck her tongue out at him again.
“You do that again, Madame, and I’ll take a forfeiture.”
“You have to catch me first!”
Lisle slid off the side of her horse, wondering where the expertise for that came from, hitched up her skirts, and started running. Wet grass slapped at her legs, soaking her skirts further, and she was almost to the trees before he caught up with her. He was cheating, too, for he didn’t just pass her up, but caught her up to him. Then he was heaving her over his shoulder, all without breaking stride, not even when he had to dodge and dart through shrubbery and trees that hadn’t been groomed for such a thing any time in the recent, or faraway, past.
Lisle was hooting with laughter. Then she was shuddering with the giggles. She pushed herself up from the position draped over his shoulder, and that movement forced him to a walk. Then she was sliding down into his arms, with her own wrapped about his neck, her legs gripping about the hips she’d straddled, and looking into black-hued eyes that had the strangest look about them. Without waiting permission or rebuttal, she closed her eyes and put her lips to his, in order to cling and absorb and send the power of the kiss right to him.
The drumbeat he’d spoken of had her solidly in its grasp, filling her ears and head and soul with the pounding of it. Lisle lapped at his lips as he was hers, tasting flesh and rain and salt, and everything that was manly about him. There wasn’t anything nonemotional about him as he did the same to her.
Lisle hadn’t any experience with kissing, but Langston must have, for what he was doing had everything virile and lusty and passionate, and every other description the girls used to taunt each other with, about it. Lisle sucked at the scratchy feel of his upper lip, moving her tongue along the ridge, while he did the same to her chin.
And then they weren’t standing anymore. Langston went to his knees, taking her with him, and that put hard, warm, damp, English-clothed thighs against parts of her that had never felt the like. Lisle glided along him, moaning with the motion, and heard an answering response from the chest within reach, touch, and caress of her fingertips. Lisle skimmed her nails along the muslin of his rain-wet shirt, barely hearing the sound of it, and answering every flinch of his with a corresponding twinge. Then she was pulling the ends of it from where he had it tucked into his trousers, and wadding it into balls in each hand.
“You ken…what you do?” he asked, moving his lips the span from hers he had to in order to make the words.
Lisle had him right back, pulling on the wads of shirt to make him stay in place, and locking her ankles behind him in order to make it impossible for him to move. Then she was filling her palms with the wet heat of his flesh, following the lumps of his abdomen to the mounds of his chest, and from there, to the tops of his shoulders, feeling the shirt moving and bunching as she went, in order to make a pathway for her.
The long, lonely, haunting sounds of a horn filtered through her consciousness, joining the sounds of their breathing and her heartbeat. The atmosphere was defined by the forest carpet, the sponginess, and the damp. Lisle barely heard it, and knew if Langston had, he was ignoring it as he had already this day, when they were in the meadow surrounded by clansmen and Clydesdale horses.
“I ken it…very well,” she whispered.
“I doona’ wish regret…and recrimination in the—”
“Will you stop such nonsense?” She nipped at his lip, stopping his argument with her motion as well as her words.
Her action unleashed something, and then she was down, rolling onto her back and covered over with a bulk she hadn’t experience enough to make note of, and gasping with the weight of him.
“You are one glorious woman, Lisle Monteith.”
Heartbeats filled her ears like drums, drowning out the sounds of breathing, the rain moistened leaves and limbs, and the three, short, muted, blasts of another horn.
Lisle barely heard it, and knew he hadn’t, as hands moved to her temples, holding her in place. Then he was moving, stabilizing himself on his bent elbows and looking down at her with such a tender expression that she didn’t dare blink, in case it changed.
“I will na’ do this now,” he whispered. He licked his lips.
“Why?” she asked, in a like rasp of voice.
“Because you’re special. You’re my wife. You’re the woman I have chosen for my own mate, and there is nae portion of this meadow, and this forest, and this entire estate of mine that is safe enough yet.”
“Safe from what?” she asked.
There was a loud thud directly behind her head. Lisle’s eyes opened wide on what looked like an arrow shaft, quivering with the motion of its embedding. It was gone the next instant, as Langston did a push-up motion, drawing her eye to the movement of muscle as he did so. When she looked back, the shaft was gone, but what could be the arrowhead was still there, since there was a split in the dark bark, contrasted and filled with a sliver of freshly cut wood. Langston was the only one who could have affected the change, but he wasn’t acting like someone who had just broken off an arrow shaft with his head. He was on all fours and moving away, looking back the way they’d come.
“Someone…has just fired at us!” Lisle put her shock and fright in the whisper, and was actually surprised she wasn’t screaming it.
Langston twisted his head, put a finger to his lips to hush her, and then turned back around.
Lisle was shaking. There was no disguising it. She wasn’t in control of her limbs, either, as she gathered her feet beneath her and went into her own crouch, to scoot after him. There wasn’t a thing to be heard, except the plop of rain, and the whisper of leaves as they received the moisture. There was less to be seen, and she had to do it with eyes squinted, and a hand atop her forehead to keep the droplets away.
There was nothing in the meadow behind them except the two stallions, and they looked miserable, wet, and lonely.
“Someone has fired at us!” Lisle said again, using a bit of sound to her voice this time.
“I heard nae shot,” he replied, from over his shoulder.
“With an arrow. In the tree. There!” Lisle was looking and pointing, but it was useless. There wasn’t any sign on any tree near them, at any level, that looked like it had an arrowhead recently entering it.
She had to let her hand drop when she couldn’t spot it. That was made worse when she rubbed at her eyes, moving rainwater around, a
nd not much else, and there still wasn’t anything looking like an arrowhead. She narrowed her eyes. The carpet of deadfall they’d been atop might have hidden it if the weight of their bodies had crimped it first. She moved backward to get to where they’d been, so she could push down at the sponge of it, but Langston was there first. He moved very swiftly for a man in a crouched position, she noted.
“You’re seeing things, lass,” he said.
“I am na’!”
“Keep your voice down,” he replied with a sharp tone. Then he was rising to a standing position, and pulling the wrinkled portion of his trousers apart, to give himself room to do it. She told herself to ignore it.
“Why need I do so, if there is nae arrow?” She had to tilt her head up to ask it, and blink away the wetness in order to look up at him.
“Because things are na’ safe. I just spoke on it. Give me your hand.”
“There was an arrow.”
“There could na’ have been.”
“Are you telling me I see things?” Lisle ignored the proffered hand and raised herself up to face him. He was near his stone-faced expression by the look of it, she decided.
“I tell you it was a mistake. Such a thing couldna’ have occurred, you ken? We were na’ exactly paying attention.” He tried to soften the words with a smile, although it looked forced.
“I dinna’ mistake what I saw.”
“You had your eyes closed,” he replied.
“I dinna’!”
“Hush!”
Lisle folded her arms. “Why must I hush if there’s nae arrow that was spent after barely missing your head, nae threat in the woods except from me, and naught happening save the threat of a caress or two from your wife? All I can see is a man who must be afraid of such things.”
“Afraid? Me? Afraid?”
“Aye. You. Afraid.”
He sighed heavily. “If it will save argument, I’ll admit extreme discomfort,” he replied. “And it has naught to do with fear.”
Lisle stuck her bottom lip out, caught raindrops on it, and then sucked them off. He was watching the entire thing. “Admit there was an arrow, and that it barely missed being embedded in your thick skull, which I doona’ doubt the thickness of, since that was what broke it off. Do that and there will be nae further argument.”
“Nae fool would be about with anything that could be used to shoot an arrow. They’d be imprisoned, or worse.”
“Nae fool allows his servants to wear kilts, either,” she replied.
Langston gave her his stone-faced look. “Are you naming me a fool?” he asked. He was tucking portions of his shirt back into the waistband of his trousers. She told herself to ignore that, too.
“’Tis your argument. You fill in the words.”
“You name me a coward, and now a fool?”
Lisle lifted her eyebrows and thought through it. “Aye,” she replied. “I do believe that is exactly what I have just named you. What say you to that?”
“I say that I must be both.”
“What?” Lisle’s lips parted on the surprise.
“I stand here and listen to a wife argue with words when I’ve nae time for such a thing. I’m either a fool to do so, or afraid of her temper should I na’ do so.”
“Why doona’ we have time?”
“Because we’re na’ safe, and—”
“Ha! You admit it!” she crowed.
“Hush!” he said again, this time accompanied with such a swift movement she almost didn’t see it. Lisle’s lips went past parted, and dropped open as he filled the space directly in front of her, and moved his index finger from his own mouth to hers.
“We must leave. Now.”
“Why?”
“We have to reach the horses.”
“Why?”
“Because otherwise we look like we’re hiding something. And someone might be inclined to check on what it might be.”
“What?”
“God damn my own tongue for saying anything so stupid!”
He had her hand to march her back, and there wasn’t anything subtle or hidden about the situation. Lisle only glanced back once, trying to mark the spot for further investigation. Then she turned back around. She’d never be able to find it again. She sighed in resignation. Nothing was making sense in a senseless, surprise-filled day.
It wasn’t finished with them, either.
They reached the horses, after thrashing their way through waist-high grass that clung and saturated worse, and latched onto the material of her skirt while it did worse things to him. He really shouldn’t be wearing the English-tailored clothing, she surmised, watching as it looked like the material was painted onto, rather than being worn by, him. The shirt was rippling with every movement of his back, and the tan cloth of his trousers was now a dark brown, and clinging to every bit of muscle on him. He didn’t remotely look like a man of leisure.
Now that she had that thought, she got another. He hadn’t chased her down with any difficulty, and he hadn’t hefted her over his shoulder and continued running with her with any effort, either. She wrinkled her forehead at the memory. She didn’t even recall that he’d been breathing hard, or if he was, it wasn’t because of any exertion.
Langston was a very careful, nonemotional man. He was also a very physically active, strong man. That needed looking into, she decided.
“Here.”
They’d reached the horses, and he pulled her into his arms. It wasn’t for anything other than to shove her up into Blizzom’s saddle before letting go. He didn’t wait to see if she managed to straddle the animal herself. He didn’t wait to see if she wasn’t going fall off. He moved over to his own horse and launched himself up and in with such an easy motion it looked like it was something both he and Torment were used to doing, and often.
“Ride,” he hissed when all she did was look at him.
“You have my rein,” she replied.
His stony expression was added to by a movement to make his jaw jut forward, and that had muscles in both cheeks pushing outward. If anything, he looked even more dangerous, almost like a coiled snake. It could be a product of her imagination, she decided. It could also be an illusion of the rain, but she doubted that.
“Must you argue everything?”
“Stating a fact is arguing to you?” she replied.
“Will you ride?”
“Why?”
He made a reply that sounded like it came through clenched teeth, and then added words to it. “Because we have to.”
“Why?” she asked again.
“Because we’ve been on a picnic.”
“But…we have na’ been,” Lisle replied.
“And picnics doona’ leave trails.”
Lisle held to the pommel as he moved, thinking through, and then knowing exactly what he was saying. She glanced over her shoulder at the definite pathway they had made when they’d been moving through the meadow grass. It led directly to the woods, and showed very clearly that they’d been hiding…but what?
Lisle turned back around. The only thing he’d been hiding was a tryst on a very rainy day with his wife, when they should have been finding a dry spot in which to wait out the storm. She didn’t see what the harm was in that.
They reached the other side of the meadow and from there, he had them climbing a very definite pathway around and over boulders the size of a horse belly, with shale sides that looked like the slightest slip would send it skittering down the side to join the jumble of them already littering the hill below. Lisle kept her eyes on the man in front of her, in what view the rain allowed her to, and not anywhere on the fall that would face her if she lost her grip, or Blizzom decided to act like his namesake, or a thousand other things happened.
The trail they were on topped on a rise, overlooking what could be the Moray Firth Inlet seen over the tops of trees, and could also be another view entirely, since she hadn’t any idea which direction they’d been going. Then she saw the top of a pole that
held the English Union Jack, a pole that a flag bearer for the Highland Regiment always held high enough that it was the first thing to come into sight just about anywhere they went.
Lisle’s lip curled, despite her telling it not to. Monteith brought Torment to a stop, and once Blizzom reached the back of the other stallion, her horse stopped, too. Lisle forced her mouth into a position of nonexpression that hopefully mirrored the one on Monteith’s as she watched the regiment approach in single file, marching to their drummer’s tempo, until they came to a stop right in the pathway in front of them.
Lisle hadn’t any estimation of size, but the number of troops Captain Barton had at his disposal was large enough. It looked like the line of them snaked out of view with the quantity, and only then when the column had turned onto itself twice. If she had to hazard a guess, she’d have to say four hundred…at least. She hadn’t seen him out and about with so many before. It gave her chills she’d never admit to, and started a pulse beat in the pit of her stomach that had fear at its core.
She gulped. Captain Barton put up his hand to stop the line of soldiers, although it was a moot gesture. The line had already stopped. They had to. Lisle and Langston were in the way.
“Monteith! Devilish weather to be out and about in, isn’t it?”
Lisle watched as Langston inclined his head. Then he was moving forward and clasping hands with the man, making Blizzom move.
“What but devilish weather would suit the devil’s spawn?” Langston called out the agreement with a jovial manner. If Lisle hadn’t been watching and listening, she wouldn’t have believed it.
“I see you’ve a Highland lass at your side. And—God bless you, Monteith! That’s Mistress MacHugh.”
“Aye,” Langston agreed easily, turning on the saddle and giving her an indecipherable look.
“What are you doing with a Highland lass…and worse, the MacHugh one?”
Langston lifted a shoulder that seemed to say more than his words possibly could have. Captain Barton must have intimated what he was supposed to, because he started grinning wider. The seamstress, Maggie, was wrong. The man wasn’t remotely attractive, even if he was available.