The Bonny Bride

by Deborah Hale

  So that was it. The change that had come over Harris.

  Jenny clutched his hand. “Didn’t I tell ye? I just knew it must be something like that. Oh, Harris, I’m so glad ye’ve learned the rights of it at last.”

  She made a halfhearted attempt to retract her hand, but he clung to it.

  “This changes everything, Jenny.”

  “Changes?” Somehow the word got trapped in her throat and only escaped as a fluttery whisper.

  She tried again. This time her voice regained its power. “What does it change? And how?”

  The golden glow of the lamps and the silvery rays of moonlight played over his face, every plane and curve of which had become so dear to her. Fiercely Jenny prayed that Harris would find compelling reason for her to stay with him. Yet her heart ached with the certainty that he would not.

  Was that a hopeful light that shone in Jenny’s eyes? Harris wondered as he worked up the nerve to speak. He had promised her and sworn to himself that he was done with any thought of winning her. At the ceilidh, he’d thrown himself into charming every lass who so much as glanced at him. He’d relished the novelty of their esteem, but something about it felt hollow. For all they mattered to him, the lassies might have been an assembly of animated scarecrows.

  Even as he coaxed Morag McGregor into a dance, he realized that the common bond of their scars was no basis for deeper feeling.

  Jenny had asked how learning the truth about his mother had changed things. Harris himself was not certain. He only knew, with slightly tipsy conviction, that it did.

  “I thought…” He struggled to put into words what he had not fully framed in his own mind. “I thought my ma left because of me and how I looked. Now I’ve come to find I was mistaken. When ye ran off from Richibucto, I thought it was a sign that ye didn’t care for me. Was I mistaken in that, too, Jenny? I have to know.”

  She pinned her gaze to the open throat of his sark, stubbornly refusing to look him in the eye. “Oh, Harris, don’t make me say it. Tomorrow I’ll be out of yer life for good. There’s plenty of lasses who’d be happy to have ye. Ones who’d make ye a far better wife than I ever cou—”

  Perhaps it was the whisky working on him—Harris could not restrain himself. He grasped Jenny by the arms and let the force of his emotions take him.

  “Get it through yer head, lass, I’m not like yer Mr. Douglas—in the market for a wife and not particular about who’ll fill the post. Just starting out like I am, a wife’s the last thing I need. But I want ye, Jenny Lennox, and not just in the way I said last night. Now if ye don’t love me and never can, say so.”

  She turned her face away and uttered not a word. In that moment it seemed to Harris that every source of light and warmth in the world had flickered and died. Unwillingly, he withdrew his hands from the tender flesh of her arms, trying to choke out some civil words of parting.

  Then, the moonlight glinted on a tiny bead of moisture rolling languidly down her cheek. A hopeful breath stirred the fading embers of everything Harris had ever wanted from life. That one tear whispered Jenny’s answer more eloquently than any words.

  Reaching up, he skimmed her cheek with the backs of his fingers, bringing them to rest on her chin. A gentle nudge tilted her face up to him. More teardrops clung to her dense dark lashes, like beads of dew on a cobweb at dawn.

  In tones of hushed awe, he murmured, “Ye do care, don’t ye, lass? And ye care too much to deny it.”

  “Yes!” Jenny burst out. “Yes, yes, yes! There. Are ye satisfied now, Harris Chisholm?”

  “Aye, I’m satisfied.” Subtly adjusting the pressure of his fingertips on her chin, he held her face still to receive his kiss.

  Their lips tentatively brushed in a salute with no more substance than a wisp of smoke rising from glowing coals.

  With a restraint of which he hardly believed himself capable, Harris waited. Waited, as every whisky-roused masculine urge in his body spurred him.

  In all their past encounters of this nature, he’d been the active party. Thief. Supplicant. Seducer.

  He’d coerced Jenny’s unwilling confession that she loved him. Now he craved more positive proof.

  So he waited.

  Slowly, as if fighting a powerful current of resistance, Jenny raised her hand and brushed the palm against his newly grown beard.

  Her lips pressed on his with mounting urgency. They parted and, with beguiling mobility, entreated him to do likewise. Her tongue fluttered in sweet, uncertain thrusts. The silk of her skirt grazed his bare calves in a provocative whisper. Harris’s rigid, swollen desire exulted in the freedom afforded by his borrowed kilt.

  By unspoken consent, he and Jenny melted onto the satiny carpet of grass beneath the maple tree. Lost to everything but the night.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Caw!”

  The crow’s raucous rasp split the air—and Jenny’s head. It focused the vague pain into a single, deep throb.

  When she forced her eyes open, the fierce morning light stabbed them. She clenched them shut again. Not quickly enough to miss the black bird scavenging a gobbet of meat from what was left of the roast sheep. Jenny’s stomach heaved to disgorge its contents, and almost succeeded.

  Her mouth felt dry as straw and tasted like the innards of a haggis, gone bad. When she made a feeble effort to raise her head, the world spun and tilted.

  She tried to think through the heavy ache in her head, to figure out where she was and how she’d got here.

  Nearby she heard snoring, and the flap of heavy wings—more crows, no doubt. From farther off came the howl of a hungry infant and the tortured sounds of some poor soul retching.

  By painful degrees, Jenny extracted memories of the previous day—and night. Father in heaven, what had she done?

  Raising her eyelids to mere slits, she looked around.

  Harris lay beside her, snoring as peacefully as on that morning aboard the St. Bride, when she’d woken to find him sleeping on her pillow. His kilt had hiked up to an almost indecent degree, baring a shameless expanse of lean-muscled thigh.

  Had they…? Did she let him…?

  Though admittedly green where men were concerned, Jenny suspected that if Harris had relieved her of her virginity, something else should be paining besides her head and her stomach. Perhaps she hadn’t lost her senses entirely, last night, under the influence of Ewan Menzies’s cursed brew.

  But neither had she been in her right mind.

  Swathed in seductive shadows and beguiling moonlight, McGregor’s homestead had seemed a pastoral paradise. Where the warm night air hummed with fiddle music and lilting laughter, and cups overflowed with the water of life. In that enchanted place, Jenny had been able to believe that nothing mattered between a man and a woman but love.

  Love?

  Another spasm gripped her stomach. Jenny rolled over and vomited.

  Romantic love was a temporary enchantment as potent as moonlight or moonshine. Making everything seem beautiful. Making anything seem possible.

  Jenny whimpered.

  In the night’s sweet, dark magic, she had lost her head. She’d found it again in the bleak light of day. And how it hurt!

  Aware that someone else was stirring, Jenny glanced up. Several women had begun clearing away the carnage of the ceilidh. Sluggish, uncertain movements betrayed the sorry state of their own heads and bellies, but that did not matter. There was work to do, chores to tend, children to feed.

  The wedding feast had been a once-a-year respite from the drudgery of their lives. The rest of the time, a woman’s lot in this frontier society must be heartbreaking, as well as backbreaking.

  Steeling herself against the pain and the dizziness, Jenny lurched to her knees. Damned if she would live the life her mother had lived, or die the death her mother had died. Not even for the sake of the compelling attraction she felt for Harris Chisholm. She’d fled Scotland to escape it, and she would not be caught in its rapacious web with salvation so near at hand.<
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  She’d adored Roderick Douglas once, with the fierce intensity of first love. When she saw him again, that feeling would surely revive. Wouldn’t it?

  Casting a final, regretful glance at Harris, Jenny staggered to her feet and went to recover her bundle of clothes from one of the outbuildings.

  “Which way to Chatham?” she croaked to one of the women.

  “Yonder,” came the reply, accompanied by a weary nod toward a gap in the surrounding trees.

  Weaving her way in that direction, Jenny stepped over several prone bodies, all snoring off the grim aftereffects of the ceilidh. Every step jarred her aching head and made her stomach roil menacingly, but she did not care.

  Five more miles would bring her to Chatham. Five more miles would bring her to Roderick Douglas. Five more miles would bring her to a safe haven from the cruel realities of life.

  Harris woke to the cruel reality that Jenny had gone. At first, he nurtured a vain hope that he might be mistaken. Perhaps she was just helping the other women clean up after the feast. As time passed, however, and he saw no sign of her, a clammy chill descended on his heart.

  Finally, mastering the agonies of morning-after, he staggered to his feet and approached Morag McGregor.

  Without any opening pleasantries, he demanded, “Have ye seen Jenny Lennox?”

  Morag eyed him coolly. “This morning, ye mean?”

  “Aye, this morning,” Harris snapped. He had neither the time nor the humor for quibbles just now. “I ken well enough where she was last night.”

  She wrinkled her nose at the smell of his breath. “So do I, and a queer location it was for a lass promised to someone else.”

  His whole face flamed. “I reckon a lass has a right to change her mind until the moment she makes her vows.”

  The woman recoiled as though he had struck her. “I reckon so,” she finally choked, in a subdued tone. “It was no business of mine, anyhow. I haven’t seen Miss Lennox since last night, but I’ll ask around if any of the others have.”

  Harris watched her approach one of the other women. After an exchange of words, the woman shook her head. Morag went to ask someone else.

  Spying a whisky jar on a nearby table, Harris picked it up and tilted it from side to side. A faint splash of drink sounded from within. Bracing himself, he tipped it back for a quick swig. Though he’d always been a temperate drinker, he knew fellows who swore by the curative powers of “a hair of the dog.”

  When Morag returned, she cast him a reproachful look. “Nan Cameron just spoke to Miss Chisholm a few minutes ago. She’s headed for Chatham, by the sound of it.”

  Harris lurched to his feet. “Not without explaining a thing or two, she’s not.”

  He lumbered off in the direction Morag pointed him. His head pounded its protest of being upright. His eyes smarted from the punishing sunshine and rebelled at his insistence they function properly. His stomach threatened vomitus revenge for every step he took.

  He did his best to ignore them all. Jenny Lennox had plenty to answer for and this was his moment of reckoning. Spying a pair of her on the path ahead, he squinted until a single Jenny came into focus. As he stumbled after her, the agonies of his head and belly stoked his rage.

  Fueling it almost as intensely as the pain in his heart.

  She seemed unaware of his presence as he caught up with her. Wasn’t that just like Jenny? Oblivious to him and his feelings, as if they counted for nothing.

  Grabbing her by the arm, he spun her around to face him.

  “Damn ye, Harris Chisholm!” She jerked away from his grasp. “Won’t be satisfied until ye scare me out of my wits, will ye?”

  “And ye won’t be satisfied until ye’ve ripped my heart out and spat on it,” Harris growled. “Where d’ye think ye’re going?”

  “Where does it look like? Ye’re so blasted clever, ye cypher it!” She turned from him and took a few more steps toward her destination.

  A couple of Harris’s long strides put him squarely in her path. “Ye’re not going anywhere until I’ve had my say. No more raising my hopes, then stealing away the minute my back’s turned. How can ye be heading off to Chatham after last night? Blast it all, Jenny, ye said ye love me.”

  Against his will, his voice softened on those last words and he reached for her.

  “Folks say all kinds of daft things when they’ve had too much to drink.” Jenny squirmed away from him, stubbornly refusing to meet his pleading gaze. “Last night…that was the whisky talking.”

  “Fiddlesticks!” snapped Harris. “That’s rank nonsense and I reckon ye know it. Folks don’t lie when they’re tipsy, they only say the things they want to say but wouldn’t dare if they were sober. Ye do love me, Jenny. Don’t deny it.”

  She flashed him a look then. Harris almost wished she hadn’t. Her blatant scorn flayed his budding confidence and pricked his long-suffering pride.

  “There’s more to getting on in this world than love, Harris. Ye said yerself, a wife and family is the last thing ye need, just starting out like ye are…”

  “So it’s back to the money again, is it, Jenny? Ye ken Rod Douglas’s gold will buy ye happiness.”

  “Not happiness, Harris—security, at least, and peace of mind. A climate where love might stand a chance.”

  She had struck at the core of his manhood—his ability to provide for his mate and his young. Harris flared back with primal fury, spurred by his mounting nausea and the throbbing in his temples.

  “Fine, then. Fine! If ye don’t trust me to make a decent home for ye and do everything in my power to make ye happy, I’m well rid of ye. If ye hanker so bad after a rich husband, ye needn’t run away from me. I’ll tote ye on my back the rest of the way to Chatham and present ye to Rod Douglas with a red ribbon tied ’round yer neck.”

  “Oh, Harris. It’s not that I don’t—”

  Save her cold consolation. Harris cut her off. “Douglas has bought and paid for ye and as far as I’m concerned, he’s welcome to ye!”

  “Ye won’t even try to understand, will ye?” she stormed.

  The gall of her casting him in the wrong!

  “I don’t know what I ever fancied I saw in ye, Harris Chisholm.” She turned away. Not before he saw the tears in her eyes. They unmanned him entirely. Inflicting pain on her did nothing to soothe his own.

  He reached for her. “Jenny…”

  “I’m going to Chatham.” She hurled the words back over her shoulder. “If ye so much as try to lay a hand on me…” Her voice thickened with every word. “Ye’ll be sorry, Harris Chisholm!” came out on one great gust of a sob.

  Before he could say or do anything to stop her, Jenny bolted away at a speed he could never match in his present condition. What was the use in trying?

  Harris crumpled to the ground.

  He wanted to crawl inside a whisky jar and never come out. He wanted to put his fist through something solid. He wanted to lay his head on Morag McGregor’s shoulder and bawl like a wee babby. In spite of her admission that she cared for him, Jenny had left. This was not the first time she had led him on, only to push him away, or run from him.

  Suddenly, as if conjured by his need, Morag knelt beside him. “Come back and sleep off the drink,” she urged.

  “Women!” Harris snarled. “I was right to steer clear of the lot of ’em for as long as I did.” This was how he’d always feared a woman would treat him, if he ever let one sink her claws into his heart. “More’s the pity I didn’t keep on with it.”

  Morag did not flinch from his outburst. A look of obvious pity softened her face. Once it would have burned him like lye. Now it soothed his soul like healing ointment.

  “Why did she have to go away?” he asked, not expecting an answer. Uncertain whether he was talking about Jenny, or his mother…or both.

  “I ken she had her reasons. Ye said yerself—a lass has a right to change her mind. That goes for ye as much as it does for the man she’s promised to.”

  R
eluctantly Harris acknowledged the natural justice in that. He knew Jenny had been pulled in two directions at once. What did he have to offer her, after all, compared to a man like Roderick Douglas? If he truly cared for her, perhaps the kindest thing he could do was let her enjoy the affluent life she craved with the man she’d adored since girlhood.

  Stirred from his melancholy musing, Harris realized Morag had asked him a question. “How’s that again?”

  “The man Miss Lennox is promised to—I asked ye his name. I may know him.”

  “I’m sure ye know of him.” Harris heaved a gusty sigh. “Jenny is to marry none other than Mr. Roderick Douglas.”

  He braced himself for some brusque remark about how it was no wonder Jenny had made her choice. Instead, a strange, unnatural quiet met his announcement.

  When he glanced at Morag, her ivory complexion had gone almost blue-white, as though every drop of blood had been drained from her veins. The angry scars on her cheeks flamed in livid contrast.

  “What’s the trouble, Miss McGregor? Are ye feeling ill? Can I fetch someone for ye?”

  Before he could stir himself, she reached out, clutching his wrist. Harris winced. Her massive, ax-wielding father would have been hard-pressed to exert such force.

  “Ye must go after her.”

  “I’m done with that. Like ye said, she made her choice.”

  “Ye must go after her!” Morag insisted.

  “I’ll go. I’ll go.” He was prepared to promise anything, if only she’d loosen the crippling grip on his arm. “If ye’ll just tell me why?” Though he hadn’t known her long, he sensed Morag would not make such a demand lightly.

  Something haunted and hunted looked out at him from her pale green eyes. “I can’t say,” she whispered. “I daren’t.”

  The sound of that word sent a shiver down his spine. What danger had Jenny fled toward this time, like a moth to a flame? A pang of guilt stabbed him in the conscience. Whatever the threat, he had driven her toward it.

  “For my sake and yers,” continued Morag with compelling force, “and especially for hers, go to Chatham and stop Miss Lennox from marrying Roderick Douglas.”