The Love of Her Life (Highlander Heroes Book 6)

by Rebecca Ruger

  “Are they giants, too?” Henry wondered.

  The man shrugged. “Bigger than your hound, aye.”

  “Do they—”

  “That’s enough, Henry,” Katie interrupted. “The man likely wants to sit quietly and prayerfully over his friend.”

  ALEC LEFT THE COTTAGE early in the evening, having no sense that the woman was foolish enough to bring harm to Malcolm while he was gone but a few minutes. He crossed the stream behind the house and gave a short whistle, which brought Simon out of hiding.

  “Watch the front door, make sure she and her boy dinna run,” he said.

  “Boy?” Simon had helped carry Malcolm inside initially, had seen only the woman.

  “Aye, hiding under the bed,” Alec told him, then moved into the woods, relieving himself first and then finding the MacBriars camped in a small clearing some fifty yards inside the tall pines.

  His officers gathered to him when they realized his presence, Aymer, William, Nigel, and Elle.

  He updated them about Malcolm’s condition, heartened that his captain had awakened enough to take sustenance and whatever medicine the healer had forced down his throat.

  “Might be a few days though,” he said. “I’ll stay inside. Keep two posted at all times—put one on the west side as well. Send someone back to Rutherglen in a day or two, buy or steal a cart. He will no’ be able to ride when we leave.”

  They discussed their return route, what roads they might travel and through which counties—and more specifically, which friendly clan lands—to finally get home to Swordmair. Ranald interrupted to offer Alec more bread, which he ate while they talked. When they were done, Alec collected his flask and saddlebags from his horse and returned to the cottage, pausing just a moment to wash up a bit at the creek.

  He spied Simon close and inclined his head to send him back into the woods and then returned to the tiny cottage, wondering how she could stand living under that small roof—the thatch in dire need of repair, he noticed—and in only that one room.

  They were, mother and son, as he’d left them, huddled together on the bed, this time sitting and facing each other, a task between them, mending he thought.

  He wasn’t returned more than ten minutes when a voice called out, “Katie Oliver!”

  Alec jumped up. He hadn’t heard a horse approach. Standing beside the small window, he peered through the linen to see a gangly man walking across the field in front of her house, his hands tucked primly behind his back.

  When he turned, he found Katie and her son watching him, their eyes wide.

  “Who comes?”

  “Gordon Killen.”

  “What does he want?”

  “He’s courting Mam,” Henry supplied helpfully.

  Katie’s cheeks pinkened while she returned Alec’s hard frown. Something must have shown in his gaze just then that she leapt from the mattress and came very close to him.

  “Please don’t kill him. He’s a very nice man. He hasn’t done anything to you.”

  “Get rid of him,” he said, his jaw tight for her assumption that he randomly killed people without provocation. He tipped his head toward the door.

  She nodded shakily, her hands wringing, and passed a quick glance over her son before stepping outside, closing the door behind her.

  “He’s verra old,” Alec commented absently, spying through the window, shifting so that the man and Katie were both in sight. They stood facing each other, a good six feet separating them, and many yards from the front door.

  “He’s the steward up at the castle,” Henry said.

  The boy had not left the bed, was busy with a thread and needle. Alec scowled at him, for both having no interest in what his mother was about and for his industry—bluidy Hades, the lad was sewing.

  Alec returned his gaze to the pair outside.

  “I wasn’t expecting you to call today, Gordon,” Katie Oliver said, sounding uneasy.

  The old man—honest to God, Alec thought he might be more than sixty years of age—chuckled softly and replied, “Hence my shout. Dinna want to startle you by rapping on the door.”

  “Is there a need up at the castle?” She wondered.

  The man shook his balding head, showing about as much hair as Alec had on one leg. “Nae, ma’am. All are well. I was thinking, that is, I’d been told, well sometimes I hear that...” he brought his hands from around his back, shoved a messy bouquet of wild flowers at Katie Oliver but added no more words to his presentation.

  Aye, but he was pitiful, Alec thought, snarling. To reach that age and not be able to put sentences together in front of a lass. God love him.

  “He come around often?” Alec asked of Henry, his gaze constant on the pair, reading well the body language: the steward, not much bigger than the lass herself, shuffled his feet and wouldn’t, or couldn’t, meet her gaze; the lass only seemed anxious, wringing her hands, and then appeared awkward at the sight of the gift, stepping forward to retrieve the bouquet when the man seemed only rooted to the ground. She took the flowers and backed away, resuming their initial distance.

  All very peculiar, Alec thought.

  “More than most, ‘cept Farquhar,” Henry said, still more interested in his work than Alec’s questions or his mother’s visitor. “Mam dinna like Farquhar, though. We hide under the bed a lot when he comes ‘round.”

  This turned Alec’s face from the window. “Why dinna she like him?”

  Henry shrugged. “I dinna ken. Told me no’ to get friendly with him, said he was only using me.”

  Returning his regard to the window and beyond, Alec said absently, “Your mam’s right. You should be careful who you befriend, lad. Always ken the why of it.”

  “He was kissing her once, I saw, when I came back from the creek. It was gross. My mam dinna like it either, I ken. She was hitting him. That’s when we started hiding under the bed.”

  Alec’s scowl returned. Farquhar, he catalogued.

  She was vulnerable, Alec realized, and not merely to him and his party crashing in. She was bonny, and likely drew plenty of attention, those willing to overlook the witch part, to have her. Her vulnerability made her a greater target even than her beauty, he supposed. Neither Henry nor the hound were fit to protect her.

  Wasn’t his problem, yet he felt a little remorse for the fright he’d visited upon her. Obviously, she had her hands full with her suitors, kind and otherwise. Mayhap when he finally returned to Swordmair, he’d send down one of his hounds, for added protection. Those beasts, part wolf, would rip a man’s hand off if he dared touch the lass. He’d consider it additional payment for the disruption caused to her just now, for the aide she’d given.

  He couldn’t hear much of what was said, but at no time did the little bald man lift any worried gaze to the cottage, as if she’d tried to alert him of the soldiers in and around it. He hadn’t suspected she would have dared; self-preservation made all her decisions. She wouldn’t risk her son’s life with any pitiful hope that this slight man might save her.

  Alec squinted out, focusing more, wondering what they were saying now that Katie Oliver raised her hand toward the man, still many feet away. Her entire posture, dropped shoulders and tilted head, seen in profile by Alec, hinted at sympathy. She curled the fingers of her raised hand and returned her fist to her skirts.

  And then he very clearly heard her say to the bowed-head of the steward, her tone suddenly high-pitched with her disquiet. “I’m sorry, Gordon. I didn’t expect...I couldn’t. I’ve...I’ve had already my life’s love. I haven’t more to give beyond Henry. It would be unfair to you....” She let that drift away.

  The man mumbled something, and Katie said again that she was sorry and a minute later, the steward turned and walked away, trudging listlessly through the tall grass of the meadow.

  Very strange and very interesting, Alec concluded, taking the chair again when the lass turned to enter the cottage. Out of the corner of his eye, pretending no great interest in her return, he
watched her stride to the small cupboard where a previous bunch of flowers sat wilted and dead inside a short and narrow crock. She only stood there, though, her back to Alec, did not remove the old and replace with the new. Her head was bent, mayhap staring at the man’s gift, mayhap rethinking her refusal.

  His curiosity was piqued enough he almost suggested that a husband, even an old and fragile one, might provide some security to her. He didn’t though, just watched her struggle with it, saw that one hand was white-knuckled around the edge of the cupboard.

  And then she turned, her face devoid of any expression and said, her voice only hopefully bright but barely that, “Come along, Henry. We’ll wash up at the creek for the night.”

  Henry lifted his attention from his chore and scrunched up his face. “It’s early yet. And we haven’t had our walk.”

  “We won’t be allowed to walk tonight, I fear.”

  “Walk where?” Alec asked.

  “Up and back,” Henry answered, which was no answer at all.

  Alec lifted a brow to Katie Oliver.

  She waved a hand with some residual weariness. “Up and back, along the stream. We collect the roots and plants.”

  Industry and exercise, he guessed, getting her work done and tiring out the lad before bedtime. “Go on, then,” he said. He stood and opened the door again, stepping outside. Another sharp whistle showed Robert now, closest to the house. “Sit inside with Malcolm. She needs to gather plants and such. I’ll take her up along the stream.”

  He turned, expecting the woman and her son to have followed. Stepping back upon the threshold showed both of them, sitting at the side of the bed, changing from their shoes to their taller and heavier boots. The lad jumped up first, grinning back at his mother, suggesting it had been some race tying the laces of their boots. He annoyed her then, as lads were wont to do, Alec supposed, stepping on the toes of her boots while she laced them. In retaliation, the woman yanked at one of her son’s laces, pulling it loose.

  “Argh!” Growled Henry playfully, going onto one knee to fix this.

  Katie stood and proclaimed with a glorious smile, “I win!”

  “You cheat!” Henry accused, but he was smiling.

  Alec caught himself before he might have grinned, stepping back outside, not sure why he should have liked that little scene so much. But he did. Henry was very comfortable with himself for a seven year old, and Alec appreciated this small snippet of interaction between mother and son. And if he were honest with himself, he was very appreciative of how playful she’d just been with the lad—he’d not seen anything thus far in her personality that would have hinted at such ease within her—and then there was her smile, which was fascinating in that it transformed her wholly, erasing every furrow and frown, beautifying her yet more.

  Mayhap she’d smiled once at that old steward, mayhap that had been what had entrapped and enchanted him, that he’d come courting—though that seemed to have ended today, Alec reminded himself.

  Katie and Henry withdrew from the cottage, a wide and shallow basket now slung over her arm, and without waiting him, walked around the side of the house toward the stream. Alec followed leisurely while Henry bounded ahead. The hound raced past Alec as well.

  He kept his distance, telling himself that he had no interest in this pair, in their daily lives, what they might get about, the charm of their routine, how quickly Henry had acclimated to the strange army essentially holding them hostage, and the half-dead man on the table in the middle of his home. Alec certainly had no interest in Katie Oliver of the splendid smile and those moody blue eyes. He took barely any notice that out of doors her hair was indeed much lighter, the very light brown streaked liberally with true blonde, matching her son’s wayward locks. She was very thin, likely more a product of her circumstance, constant labor and hunger, than anything else. She was a nervous person, regularly casting glances over her shoulder to gauge his position. He thought this was done not with any hope to catch him unawares and grab her child and flee, but rather with a desire not to be alarmed by his closeness, if he dared to encroach further.

  Alec was surprised that they were out for almost an hour. Henry darted all around the creek and all the area on either side of it, and now Alec understood the need to don his sturdier boots. The lad splashed with the hound and lifted rocks in the creek bed to inspect beneath. At one point he picked up a broken limb, bare of leaves, dead for quite some time, and twirled himself until he was dizzy, letting the short and chunky branch fly away from his hands indiscriminately that it sailed close enough to his mother that she was forced to duck to avoid being clubbed by it. As soon as he saw it’s trajectory, Henry clapped his hands over his mouth, his head sinking into his shoulders, expecting a calamity. Even Alec winced, seeing where it was headed. When she moved, barely in time, she slapped one hand on her hip and gave her son a meaningful glare.

  “Sorry!” Called Henry.

  Alec recognized the laugh that wanted to burst from the boy and decided he was rarely punished, certainly not severely, that he had no fear of his mother.

  They must know some predetermined spot, and only walked that far every evening, that Henry crossed the creek and began walking back without having to be told. And his mother, bent with her knife attacking some plant and root, turned and followed him when she stood again.

  He let them catch up to him. Henry bounced to a stop in front of Alec and pointed upward, lifting Alec’s gaze into the nearby conifers.

  “That’s where the goshawk screams from. She must be gone now, or she’d be yapping to everyone that we’re here.”

  “She nests up there?”

  Henry nodded. “Four chicks this year, but we found one down here, dead.”

  “Must’ve fallen out of the nest,” Alec guessed.

  Henry shrugged and darted away. Boswell followed, coming from nowhere, disappearing again into the trees on the south side of the creek.

  Katie Oliver trailed after them along the stony bank of the creek. Alec fell into step beside her.

  “That’s quite a lad you’ve got there,” he said to her.

  She jerked so abruptly, narrowing her eyes at him, that Alec was instantly put in mind of what Henry had said earlier, sharing some hint that men might try to get close to her by way of her son.

  While he’d been sincere, he’d rather not be lumped into any lot that would use a boy to get to his mother. Alec had no designs on Katie Oliver.

  He said, “Of course, you’re ruining him.”

  Chapter Three

  She stopped suddenly and appeared about to question this. She didn’t though, only clamped her lips and began moving again, marching stridently now, her arm swinging.

  “He’s coddled too much, you ken. Nice mam he has, but sewing and mending? You’ll no’ make a man of him that way.” Alec walked behind her, easily keeping pace with her, not sure why he felt the desire to rile her.

  She continued to ignore him, marching on.

  “Does he spend time with anyone but you? Lad needs to be around other boys at least, men at times as well. Do you ever let him out of your sight?”

  “He’s seven,” she said, her voice as harsh as her walk.

  “Hell, at seven I could already peg a squirrel from twenty paces. He ever go hunting? Fishing? Practice swordplay?”

  She whirled on him so quickly that he stopped abruptly as angry strides carried her back to him. She stared him down as she approached but gave no words immediately to accompany what he supposed was to be her intimidating glare.

  He dared yet more. “I’m right, aren’t I? He’s never out of your sight.”

  She barked a surprised laugh. “Do you have children, sir?”

  He shook his head, not surprised by this query. Her eyes, in natural light, were absurdly blue.

  “Aside from the fact that you were once a boy, have you any experience at all raising a child?”

  He shook his head again, enjoying the fire that lit her gaze now.

 
; “Were you born to privilege?” She asked. “I think you must have been, to so readily be able to tell others how to live their lives.”

  “I’m only thinking that it must be—”

  “Are you a single woman, living in a shack in the woods? Was your husband killed before your child was even born? Do you ever wonder where your next meal will come from?” With each question, her thin brows rose further into her forehead and her voice grew angrier. “Do you worry that you won’t be able to keep your child from freezing to death on a cold winter night? Have you ever been nearly raped in front of your child?”

  Alec’s brows drew together at this last query.

  “I didn’t think so. Do not judge me. Do not presume to lecture me about the correct way to raise my child. You don’t know me, and I certainly don’t want to know you. Let’s not pretend otherwise.”

  Well and truly chastised—and more, rightly made to feel like a really huge arse—he watched her walk away, still unsure why he had provoked her. He knew nothing about the woman, but he could read people, and her face so readily displayed every single emotion that played across it. Thus, he understood her intent, that such marvelous revelations had not been slung at him to garner sympathy, but to show him that she would survive him, survive what trauma he now brought to her. She’d done it before, she’d just revealed, had slogged through more suffering than he might ever bring to her; she’d do it again.

  He dismissed Robert upon their return, saw his man give the two Olivers a quick and apprising glance before ducking out of the cottage.

  Malcolm remained as he was, but the woman said they must force him to ingest more of the medicinal broth, and they spent the next several minutes doing this.

  Hours later, the house was dark and quiet, the only noise the quiet snoring of both the hound and Malcolm. The woman and her child had both climbed into that narrow cot, fully clothed, and exchanged many minutes of dialogue, whispered and secret, its content hidden from him. They’d been quiet now for some time, presumably asleep.