Highland Song

by Tanya Anne Crosby

  “We lost her,” David said irritably, evidently guessing at Piers’ thoughts. “The canny wench unbound herself when no one was looking and smacked Dùghall straight in the head.” He inclined his head toward one of the men who sat, tense in his saddle, with a lump on his forehead the size of a man’s bollocks.

  “Christ,” Piers said, though more as a response to the size of the lump on the man’s noggin. “Who was she?” She had to be a hefty woman to leave a mark like that.

  “The sister of a northern rebel chieftain. She was to become a ward of the English court until she was old enough to wed. Alas, she escaped before we could reach Chreagach Mhor!”

  Piers was genuinely taken aback. “MacKinnon agreed to such a thing?” The MacKinnon laird he knew would no more be a part of such a scheme than he would have allowed his own son to remain a political pawn. He had, in fact, gone to great lengths to secure the return of his son—including stealing the daughter of his foe to barter for his son’s return. That he had made amends with David afterward was simply a testament to his temperament—and the simple fact that he’d fallen deeply in love with his English bride. But his good nature only went so far, and Piers was shocked that David would take such a risk again, when, King or not, his rule was not favored in these parts.

  David’s look darkened. Friends they might be, but he didn’t like his edicts questioned. “We have yet to tell him who she is,” he confessed. And suddenly realizing Piers would wonder why he’d risked Iain’s wrath when Piers was his strongest ally in these regions, he added. “Chreagach Mhor was the only stronghold we trusted to hold the girl until an escort arrived from London.”

  Piers knew better than to laugh. “You need a fortress to contain the girl?” He glanced again at the lump on Dùghall’s forehead and came to his own conclusions, wisely holding his tongue.

  David’s furry brows collided. “I take it you have not seen her?”

  Piers shook his head. “Nary a hair on her head.”

  “Damn! We have searched everywhere! Though I cannot believe she would have ventured this way.”

  Clearly, since they were alone, MacKinnon did not feel obligated to aid David search. Piers considered the wisdom in offering his own aid, but felt obliged to offer his liege a place to stay at least.

  “Alas, we cannot,” David refused. “Should we find the lass we’ll be needing the MacKinnon’s gaol.” He turned to calm his mount, stroking its withers. “I’ll be picking hairs from betwixt my teeth with all the arse licking I must do—damned troublesome wench!”

  Piers thought about Meghan’s brothers, and how they had fought so desperately to bring their sister home. He wondered of the missing woman’s family. Despite that it had worked out for him, he could no longer condone such heavy handed tactics as stealing a girl from her folk as these were flesh and blood people, not pawns on a chess board. “I’ll keep an eye out for her,” he promised as David mounted his steed. But he sincerely hoped he would not see her.

  David shook his head once he was mounted, and said again, “Damned troublesome wench!” And giving his men a signal to depart, they hied away, leaving both Piers and Baldwin staring after them.

  “I hate to say it,” Baldwin ventured, knowing he could speak freely with Piers. “He might have bitten off more than he could chew when he claimed Scotia’s throne. Peace between the clans will not come easily.”

  Piers watched his friend and liege disappear into the horizon and sighed heavily. “I don’t know,” he said, torn. “The land I hold was once the most precarious clearing of all, and yet we now have peace amongst the most querulous of the lot.” He didn’t have to condone it to admit, the fact. “His strategy is quite brilliant, in fact. If he can marry them off, he won’t ever have to lift a sword against a one.”

  “True,” Baldwin agreed.

  “Although,” Piers added soberly, “I pray he knows to tread softly as he goes as these are not the men to anger.”

  Cat.

  The name lifted Gavin’s brows.

  But it was just a coincidence, he reasoned. Simply because she had appeared from nowhere, looking for all the world like a graceful feline herself, didn’t mean she was any sort of fair folk, changed from a cat.

  And simply because she had raised his roof faster than any man he knew might have done it didn’t mean she had done so with any sort of magik—nor did she spin the thatch that had appeared as mysteriously as she had.

  She wasn’t a faerie.

  Gavin didn’t believe in such things. He had a hard enough time lately keeping his own faith.

  At any rate, fair folk didn’t eat the way she did—enough for a man twice her size.

  At least he didn’t think they would.

  Seated together upon the same log, he shared his lunch with the girl... or rather, he nibbled upon a single piece of cheese while he watched her gobble her food. He had spread his sack upon the ground and laid the contents out upon it for both of them to sup upon. However, considering that he had already eaten this morn and it was not yet nones, he wasn’t very hungry. Cat, on the other hand, appeared as though she hadn’t eaten for days. She sat, stuffing her gob faster than she could pluck the foodstuffs from the linen sack. Not since he had been a child with two brothers and a greedy sire at the table had he witnessed such a rush for every morsel.

  “If I ate like that,” Gavin told her, “I would be as big as this house.” Not that it was a complaint. He was simply shocked, and having lived with two brothers and a very outspoken sister, he wasn’t accustomed to holding his tongue.

  She stopped in the midst of putting a bite of oatcake into her mouth and looked at him, her expression slightly horrified, as though only now realizing how quickly she had dispatched his lunch.

  “Don’t stop,” he reassured her. “If you’re hungry there’s plenty more where this came from. I simply cannot fathom how you stay so small.”

  Cat smiled, but not before shoving another bite into her lovely gob. She swallowed, and then said, “My brother says ’tis because I am cursed by a joint eater.”

  “A joint eater?”

  She leaned to whisper into his ear as though it were a secret. “One o’ the invisible folk,” she said. “They steal your food so ye canna benefit.” She nodded, glanced at her side—where absolutely no one was seated—then placed a finger to her lips, as though to shush him.

  Gavin stared at her, nonplussed. The entire situation was growing stranger by the instant.

  She wasn’t a cat. Nor was she a faerie. And she most certainly wasn’t sharing her food with some invisible oatcake goblin thief! He didn’t believe it!

  “This is quite good!” she declared, plucking another bite of cheese and shoving it whole into her mouth.

  Gavin couldn’t resist a chuckle. Never in his life had he seen a woman eat with such unrestrained passion. Just to be sure she got enough, he pushed his portion closer to the middle. She stopped chewing, watching as he adjusted the foodstuff upon the sack, and then turned and gifted him with another of her brilliant smiles.

  Gavin felt a flutter in his belly that soared clear into his breast. Damn, but if he could witness such a thing on a daily basis, he gladly give up every meal.

  “Thank you,” she said softly. “Where I come from, if ye dinna fend for yourself, ye dinna eat at all.”

  “Me too,” he admitted, and eyed her circumspectly. “Where did ye say that was?”

  Since the moment she had appeared, curiosity had been his constant companion.

  She lifted her knees and put one arm about them as she spoke, hugging them like a child might. “Here and there,” she said glibly, though her gaze shifted to peek at him from her peripheral.

  She was hiding something.

  He sensed it, and knew it had nothing to do with magik.

  “I believe I’ve been there,” he joked, realizing she was not going to tell him the truth anyway.

  She laughed, and her toes—lovely little things—curled into the soil. “What about you
?” she asked. “Ha’e ye lived here all of your life?”

  “Close,” he replied, and he told her about his home life, about his sister’s marriage to a Sassenach—and the feud that had started it all. When Piers de Montgomerie had first claimed his clearing from David, none of the surrounding clans had been accepting of the fact. In truth, Gavin had no idea who stole the first goat, but they had begun a feud to rival that of the MacKinnon’s and MacLean’s. In the end, Montgomerie had stolen their sister and then had promptly wed her—somehow earning Meggie’s love in the process—not an easy task. As far as Gavin was concerned, that was all that mattered. If his sister was happy, so was he.

  He told her about both his brothers and their weddings—how Leith’s wife had first coveted Colin and how Seana had coveted Broc and all the while Colin wanted no woman at all. In the end, Colin was smitten with Seana and Leith lost his heart to Alison while Broc, who secretly had coveted his laird’s wife, had wed a Sassenach cousin of Piers de Montgomerie.

  The way she was looking at him suddenly made Gavin feel uncomfortable—as though she somehow sensed why he had been driven away from his home. She said not a word, but it was that shrewd look in her eyes—along with a touch of pity that was unfamiliar to him, except when he looked at himself through his own eyes.

  He explained to her about his arrangement with Seana—so that she might better understand why he was here… away from his family. It wasn’t simply because he couldn’t bear to witness so much of something he would never have.

  Gavin was two score and four years now, without ever having kissed a woman. He’d bedded only one, but regretted it immediately after, for once he’d quenched his body’s hunger, she had fled, looking ashamed, and Gavin had let her go, not knowing exactly what to do because he hadn’t loved her. He’d been just a lad with a crowing cock. And now every time they chanced to spy each other—especially in the presence of her husband—she averted her gaze.

  Thereafter, Gavin had fought so hard to deny that part of himself his brother and father seemed unable to resist. Though his brother’s heart was true enough, Colin had somehow never noticed the tears that had spilled in his wake. But Gavin had, and his soul, he had cried along with every broken heart—because he remembered that terrible melancholy in the girl’s eyes. And later, he had been so involved with his studies and scripture that women saw him coming and fled the other way. Even his sister Meggie grimaced over the prospect of a simple conversation with him, in spite of the little church she had built for him.

  He hadn’t realized how long he’d remained quiet, until Cat broke the silence. “So Seana lived out here all by herself?”

  Gavin nodded. “With her Da... til she wed my brother Colin, aye.” He waved in the direction of the forest. “Her potstill sits out yonder.”

  Cat tore a bite out of her oatcake, nodding. “I have seen it. Her uisge beatha has the scent of a verra good brew,” she told him, using the old tongue for its name. “But I didna try it,” she reassured. “’Tis verra bad luck to drink a new brew before the libation has been offered and I would never dare curse a mon’s brew—or a woman’s,” she corrected herself, and giggled. “But Seana is generous with her offerings, I think.”

  Gavin’s brows collided, remembering all the cats surrounding the potstill. It couldn’t be that she had spied Seana at work. No. It was ridiculous to think she might have been a cat. “How would you know?” he asked casually, exploring her eyes. There were so deep a green that it made a mon think of a rich, cool glade. But they weren’t cat eyes, not at all.

  Cat grinned up at him, her toes curling again. “The grass around her still is quite consumed.”

  “Aha!” Gavin allowed. It was true; not a bluidy thing grew about the potstill for at least a yard. He wondered idly what the whiskie must do to a mon’s gut, but didn’t say so.

  “Uisge beatha has the power to heal, you know? It is a gift from the gods, and only a few mortals have been charged to keep the ancient recipes. Seana is a verra special lady.”

  Gavin had never quite looked at Seana’s whiskie through those eyes. “A gift from the Gods?” he repeated, looking down at the ground, nodding though he wasn’t sure if he agreed.

  “Aye, and you’re a verra lucky mon if she shares her recipe with you,” Cat added. “Seana must trust you verra much?”

  “I did not say that,” Gavin corrected her. “I merely said I would supply her with grain and that she would share the profits.”

  She seemed to think about that a moment and nodded. “Makes sense.”

  There was one last oatcake remaining, and Gavin pointed to it, offering it to her.

  Her delicate brows twitched. “Are ye certain? You havena eaten much,” she protested.

  Gavin assured her, “I’ve had plenty lass, and your company is payment enough.”

  As he watched, her face lit from the inside. Her green eyes glittered fiercely and, suddenly compelled to, he reached out to wipe a bit of blue paint that remained upon her cheekbone—just a little smidgeon, not enough to really capture anyone’s attention, unless one was inspecting every inch of her lovely face—which he was. Every time she turned away, he found himself studying every little thing—from her luscious mouth that had a natural upward curve, to her tiny little button nose.

  She recoiled at first, and then realizing he only meant to wipe her face, she stilled, letting him rub the stain. “You’re a guid mon,” she offered suddenly. “If it please you, I would verra much like to help you finish building your home.”

  Gavin responded much too quickly, dropping his hands at once. “I don’t need help,” he said defensively, and then regretted it, because her shoulders slumped and her smile faded by degrees. “But aye,” he relented quickly, “if it please you, then you may help.”

  Her brilliant smile returned at once and she picked up the last oatcake, waving it before him one final time to give him a chance to protest. When he did not, she ate it slowly, savoring the delicious treat, and Gavin felt contented to the core of his being. Somehow, her presence comforted him, and if the truth be known, he found more pleasure in her company than he did in the building of his new home.

  He didn’t dare explore that fact too closely.

  Together, they spent the remainder of the day working on his door, and by the gloaming, there was a fine, sturdy door in place.

  “Where di’ ye learn to do such work?” he asked.

  She winked at him. “I was born knowin’.”

  Gavin frowned at her answer.

  After talking together nearly all the day long he still knew next to nothing about her.

  “Ye’ve chosen a guid spot for your house,” she said, as they stood back to admire the day’s work.

  Nestled against the bosom of the forest, the little house wasn’t conspicuously out in the open but neither was it so close to the trees that a good blaze might endanger the woodlands. And settled at the feet of Chreagach Mhor, it would escape the worst of the Highland winds. Up above, Chreagach Mhor rose against the afternoon sky, a majestic suzerain reigning over the landscape.

  Cat examined the house with arms crossed. “Cailleach Bheur smiles upon you,” she offered.

  Cailleach Bheur was the blue-faced mother of winter, who struck up mountains to shield living creatures from the bitter winds. Gavin peered up at the fortress above on the blufftop, its enormous tower silhouetted by the setting sun, and shuddered at the thought of the MacKinnon’s first wife. After handing her husband their newborn bairn, she had flung herself from that tower window. Her death had escalated a thirty-year feud and forced all the neighboring clans to choose a side. Not surprisingly, they had all chosen the MacKinnon’s. It was a joyous occasion that his new wife had now born him a new babe. At night, the grey tower, with its golden light in the high window, looked like a candle in the darkness—a guiding light.

  “Do you believe in the old gods?” Gavin asked—as much out of curiosity as to appease his own lately wondering mind. When he’d first spie
d her, she had been wearing the woad of the painted ones—something no one, not even his grandsire had ever witnessed firsthand, for those people, like their stories, had long since faded from the memories of the living. Now it seemed they were nothing more than legend, except for the strange woman at his side.

  Lowering her hands to her hips, she tilted him a questioning glance, her eyes studying him. And then she shrugged. “What does it matter what a mon believes, Gavin Mac Brodie... as long as he believes in something?”

  Gavin blinked at her answer, taken aback by the simplicity of it.

  “With faith there are no questions,” she offered, “but without it there are no answers.”

  In one fell swoop, she had slain both his curiosity and his ambivalence.

  He stood there looking at her, admiring her lovely face, her beauty completely undiminished by the dirt beneath her fingernails or the dirty smudges upon her high cheeks. “I was wondering about the woad, is all.”

  The green of her eyes glittered fiercely. “It is the way of my people,” she offered, but her expression forbade him to ask more.

  Gavin sighed. It seemed he was destined to be left wanting, because short of tying her up and torturing her for answers, she didn’t seem inclined to give any.

  When the time came for Gavin to leave, he felt a keen disappointment, though it had little to do with having to leave his nearly completed house. He found he wasn’t quite ready to leave Cat yet, though he knew he must. The woods were familiar but not so familiar that he was willing to go traipsing through the creeping mist at night.

  Somehow knowing that she would not come along with him, and hoping to find a way to keep her around, Gavin offered her the use of his house. There was no reason for a good roof to go unused, he thought—especially when she had been the one to raise it.

  Anyway, he was beginning to suspect that she had nowhere else to go, because she wasn’t in much of a hurry to get there. This time he purposely left her with his dagger for protection, his tartan for warmth and all the food that remained in the sack.