Highland Wrath

by Madeline Martin

  “I’m so tired.” Her words slurred together.

  Footsteps clattered through the hallway toward the room. People were finally coming. Perhaps they could help. Perhaps Kyle or Percy had some method of healing to make this better.

  “Stay with me, my angel.” His throat clogged with emotion. “Dinna leave me, my love. Help is coming.”

  He curled his hand over her slackening fingers.

  “I love you,” she whispered, and her eyes fell closed.

  •••

  The sharp scent of vinegar and rosemary pricked at Sylvi’s awareness.

  She wrinkled her nose and immediately winced at the pressure of pain all over her face. All over her body. A slow groan rose from deep in her throat.

  It all came rushing back to her then, the discovery of Ian’s father, the fight, the fear. And Ian had been there, cradling her, his body strong and safe.

  She opened her eyes and found the room either shaded in early evening or lit by very early morning. A chair creaked and pulled her attention to the right of her bed.

  Ian.

  Sylvi’s heart soared at the sight of him, healthy and handsome. He leaned toward her from a plain wooden chair. Shadows of exhaustion showed beneath the eager gleam in his eyes.

  “Sylvi?” His voice was the same wonderful deep timbre she knew so intimately.

  Her throat constricted at the sound of that beautiful voice, at the wonderful sight of him.

  He slipped off the chair and onto his knees beside her bed. “Thank God ye’re awake. I’ve been so worried.” He caught her hand in his and pressed his mouth to it in a long, loving gesture. The prickle of his beard against her skin was as welcome as his affection.

  “Ian.” Sylvi’s voice rasped with disuse.

  His hand lifted to her face, but he stopped and dropped his hand to clutch her fingers in his once more instead. She flinched inwardly. Her face must look a fright if he wouldn’t even touch her.

  “Ye dinna need to talk,” he said. “I’m just—” He looked away, and when he returned his gaze to hers, his eyes were glossy with unshed tears. “I’m just glad ye’re awake finally.”

  Finally?

  She cleared her throat to eliminate some of the hoarseness. “You act as though I’ve been asleep for days.” She tried to smile, but doing so made her face pound in time with her heartbeat.

  Ian bent his head over her hand. “Ye have. Three days, my angel.” His voice cracked. “This morning would have brought the fourth.” When he finally raised his head, a tear crept down his cheek.

  Sylvi’s nose tingled, and her eyes went warm with tears. Three days. Almost four.

  “I thought I was going to lose ye,” Ian said softly. “I thought—”

  “No.” Sylvi squeezed her hand around his. “No, I’d never leave you. I love you too much. I would fight the angels of heaven rather than let them take me from you.” She touched his face and tried not to imagine what her own must look like. “You taught me love. You made me whole again.”

  Ian pressed her palm into his cheek. “I couldna live without ye, my angel. I know it’s difficult to see how broken I was beneath this charming exterior.” He winked at her in a way so familiar, it almost ached. Certainly it did ache when she laughed. “But ye saved me. From a life of running, from always being alone.”

  He looked down and hesitated. A bit too long, in fact.

  Sylvi straightened. “What is it? Is it my face?” She gently touched her cheek and found the skin there warm and tender to the touch. Her fingers were ice cold in a contrast so soothing, she wanted to press her open palm to her entire cheek.

  He put his hand over hers, caressing her face through her own touch. “Even bruised, ye’re beautiful, Sylvi. I dinna touch ye because I dinna want to hurt ye.” His brow flinched. “It’s just—Why dinna ye tell me?”

  The sun was rising outside the window and casting a golden slant of sunbeams through the shutters. It fell over Ian’s arm and made the skin of his forearm glow with warm light.

  Sylvi regarded her husband with a sudden edge of wariness. “Tell you about what? Your father?”

  He shook his head. “Though he is now dead.”

  “If you had not, I would not be here.”

  “Ye mean ye’d be beating angels in heaven to make yer way back to me?” Ian winked, and her heart swelled with the familiar gesture.

  Sylvi chuckled. “Of course that’s what I meant. How is the clan now that your father is dead?”

  Ian smirked. “They’re looking to me as their new laird. Word spread quickly about how we’d been found, with ye near death and my father killed. He was a friendly man, but he made a lot of enemies through the years for the harshness of his punishments. Like the one he meted out to Simon’s father.” He paused and pressed his lips together. “He is now avenged, as are many other people who my father wronged.

  “Will you be laird then?” Sylvi asked.

  “Will ye be my lady?” Ian grinned. “I canna do it without ye at my side.”

  Sylvi had never thought of taking a place as Lady of Dunstaffnage. But wherever Ian would be, she would be. And life would be much safer for Percy and Liv. She was done with death and fighting. She nodded. “I would be honored to be at your side, so long as I’m not forced into wearing dresses and creating fancy dinners for guests.”

  He chuckled. “I know better than to even try. And I dinna want a woman who wears dresses and plans dinners for guests. I want a woman who has saved me, my angel, a woman with white-blonde hair wearing black trews on an arse that makes me want to grab her to me. A woman I love.” He gave her a cautious gaze. “But ye know that’s no’ what I’m talking about.”

  Sylvi eyed him right back. “I really don’t.”

  He put a hand over her stomach, his touch tentative and overly careful. His palm hovered there for a moment before he let the warmth of it cradle the swell Dunstaffnage’s good cooking had put there.

  “Ye’re going to be a mother.” The smile broke out into a wide grin. “And I’ll be a da.”

  She stared down at his hand for a long moment, her mind stunned into shock.

  “Are you sure?” she asked.

  Ian gave a gentle chuckle, and she knew he didn’t mock her. “Percy had had her suspicions before and checked after ye were injured to ensure the babe was all right.”

  Sylvi continued to stare at her stomach. There was a baby in there. Something fragile and vulnerable nestled in the protective shell of her body. The offspring of a line of shieldmaidens to be sure after surviving the beating she’d taken from Ian’s father.

  How could she not have known?

  But then her courses had never been regular. She hadn’t been at her full capacity since her arm had been broken. Granted, her appetite at Dunstaffnage had increased, but she had attributed it to the fine cooking. Apparently it was a babe growing in her belly that had made her so hungry.

  A baby.

  Ian’s brow furrowed. “Ye’re crying. I’ve no’ ever known that to be a good thing.” He spoke gently, and she did not miss how his hand cupped over her stomach, as if guarding the child from potential hurt. Did he think her disappointed?

  Tears trailed hot down Sylvi’s cheeks and stung her lip where it’d been split. “Ian, we’re going to have a family. It’s … ” She faltered and searched for the right word before finally saying what sang in her heart. “It’s so wonderful.”

  Ian bent over her and pulled her into his arms. “Aye, my angel, it is.”

  Sylvi rested her hand over the top of his so they embraced the baby together. “But I’m still going to train. My arm was finally to the point of healing where I could.”

  He gingerly tilted her face upward. “Ye know I’d no’ ever try to stop ye. Though promise me ye’ll let yerself mend a bit first, aye?”

  “And that’s one of the many things I love about you.” She smiled beneath the warm press of his lips against hers.

/>   Her heart swelled with bliss, an incredible completeness she never had thought possible. All the hurt she’d endured, all the years spent so filled with hate and vengeance, it all had been replaced by happiness and love.

  “One more thing,” Ian whispered against her mouth.

  She kissed him. “Anything.”

  He leaned back and grinned down at her. “How much did they pay ye to kill me?”

  Chapter 35

  The sun filtered from the window and cast a golden light on the battered journal in Sylvi’s lap. It hadn’t seemed fitting to read it before this point. Even after Reginald’s death, something in Sylvi’s gut had known things were not resolved.

  Now though, now her parents had been properly avenged and her life as a mercenary had come to a close. It seemed only fitting she end that portion of her life the same as she’d begun it—with My Lady.

  Her fingers caressed the worn leather before she pulled the cover open.

  A neat script lined the yellowed page of the inside flap: The Journal of Elsie Seymour.

  Elsie Seymour.

  Sylvi ran her fingers over the name. Such poignancy seemed to require raised lettering or gilt. And yet it was flat to the page with the basic black of average ink.

  She turned the page to find more of the neat writing.

  February 1584

  My husband and my daughter are dead.

  I cannot reconcile this in my heart any more than in my head. One day my husband was at my side and our daughter cooing and happy in my arms, and the next they are dead from a highwayman on the side of the road.

  They say that while Gerald’s death was intentional, that of our daughter was quite by accident. No one will give me details no matter how often I ask.

  I want to find the man who did this to them, but that information too is kept from me. So, I am left with no details and nothing to focus on but their incredible loss.

  I keep expecting to hear Gerald’s lovely deep voice in my ear, whispering his silly little love sonnets as he is so wont to do. Was so wont to do. I walk past my dear Isla’s cradle and expect to see the top of her silky blonde head. And yet, each time I find it empty, the sheets smooth from never having been used, each time I find naught but silence at my ears, it is a punch to my heart.

  The healer has suggested I take to these pages to ease the melancholy in my heart, as it overwhelms me daily. I cannot eat, I cannot sleep, I cannot exist. I am nothing.

  Forgive me, I find I can write no more today.

  The beautiful script blurred, and Sylvi swallowed at the tightness in her throat. She put a hand to the small bump of her own stomach. Though it had only been days since she knew, a bond had already formed between herself and the child growing within, bound by protection and love. And to lose both, child and husband, at once. The very idea of losing Ian put Sylvi on the losing side of clearing her throat from the clog of emotion.

  She turned the page, reading her mentor’s pain, scribed in terrible, aching detail. After months of this pain, creditors arrived, seeking payment for a life well lived and poorly managed.

  In the following passages, recorded intermittently, with some spanning weeks and months between, My Lady’s life fell apart, casting her downward to the threat of debtor’s prison.

  August 1585

  I have been given an opportunity to save myself, to be free of these woes I cannot handle alone and be liberated from this pain I live on a daily basis. I can offer no details, but trust that I will no longer be Elsie Seymour. I shall abandon her as a snake sheds its skin, leaving behind a woman who had become nothing more than a shell.

  What is more, I have been offered something else no one has given me—an opportunity for vengeance.

  Sylvi balled her hand into a fist. My Lady understood so much more than Sylvi had ever realized.

  The following entry was not until over a year later.

  November 1586

  It is imprudent of me to keep this journal still, and yet I find I cannot rid myself of it no matter how many times I try. It’s as though burning these pages will make the memories of Isla and Gerald curl into ash and blow away.

  I have uncovered the details of their deaths. Gerald was shot in the heart, and my dear Isla was dropped from a horse in the chaos. My loves, their murders senseless.

  The pain of their loss stays with me, though I have been given other things to occupy my attention. It has been helpful. My instructor tells me that when I am ready to lose my suffering, I will. What he does not understand is that it is my suffering that makes me so very good. For it is my suffering that leaves me without fear of death, and that is what makes me excel.

  The handwriting in the following entry was more slanted, less careful, as though it had been written in a hurry. Or perhaps a frenzy.

  December 1586

  I have found him. The man who did this to my family, who destroyed everything I hold dear—a magistrate’s son, protected by the power of his father’s position.

  All this time, his father knew, and he kept anyone else from knowing. Coins and lies blanketed a path of betrayal. I followed the trail of it into a dark window in the dead of night.

  Today I had my vengeance.

  The following passages were reminiscent of the first ones—rife with the pain of loss. My Lady suffered as Sylvi had done when she’d killed Reginald, hollow with the reality of revenge not matching the anticipation.

  Killing did not bring back loved ones, it was simply more people dead. The next entry was not until nearly five years later.

  March 1591

  A girl has been following me. She believes she is being discreet, the poor dear. I know I should not get attached, and yet there is something to the pale blonde hair that reminds me of my Isla.

  This girl is about the same age my daughter would have been. It may be what has made me warm to her so. Or perhaps it is the raw, ugly scar stretching the width of her impossibly slender neck.

  She has obviously known pain, and in that we are alike.

  Sylvi put her hand to her heart. This was her. She was the girl My Lady mentioned in this entry. And it was her who was mentioned on and on again in the following entries. Again, they were intermittent, sometimes months or years apart, never detailing My Lady’s missions, always about Sylvi.

  The respect My Lady had for Sylvi’s tenacity, her ability to quickly learn, the fierceness of her determination, and the incredible sense of maternal protectiveness she roused in My Lady. Sylvi had to smile. For never once had any of their interactions indicated the feelings so baldly written on the page.

  March 1601

  The girl is finally ready to truly train. Or rather, I am finally giving in to her constant requests. I have tried to hold off, to keep her from this empty life I lead, and yet she stubbornly persists. The same as I was in my determination to learn more of Gerald and Isla.

  Certainly I cannot fault her, and so I will teach her.

  The passages were then written with more frequency, detailing out the length of their sessions, their training, and My Lady’s immense pride at Sylvi.

  Through it all, Sylvi kept her tears at bay. It was the final entry, however, that finally caused her to weep.

  May 1605

  After several years of training together, the girl has finally confessed to me why she works so diligently. What she has told me is too horrible to even write here.

  This poor girl has endured such suffering. And so it is here, in the place of my heart’s truest confessions and lamentations, I vow to aid her in finding this man with half an ear and destroying him. In doing this, I hope it is the first step in the direction of her healing, a means of repaying her for everything she’s done for me.

  This young woman, who went through so much more than any child should suffer, who is the very age my own precious child would be, who somehow worked her way into my heart and helped me begin to finally heal. She has filled in for me as child as I have filled
in for her as family. I may have become lost after Gerald and Isla, but I have been found because of Sylvi.

  Epilogue

  There had been a lavish wedding among them after all—even if it took several years for Liv to find love. But then, she was not the typical bride, and it was not a typical lavish wedding.

  Sylvi approached the delighted couple, smiling with a giddiness she couldn’t tamp down.

  Liv looked up at her new husband, Beathan—Ian’s Captain of the Guard and the man she had fallen in love with over countless hours of standing watch together. They were a beautiful couple, him with golden hair to complement her copper sheen, his frame almost twice the size of Liv’s. They were powerful and stunning.

  She whispered something in his ear. He caught her face in his palms and kissed her sweetly. She turned and strode toward Sylvi, the airy white fabric of her skirts floating around her like shimmering clouds while the sun glinted off the metal breastplate she wore.

  Fianna padded along beside her, a string of small white flowers draped around her neck. Most likely at the doing of Sylvi’s daughter, Isla. Truly, Fianna was the most patient feline in all of Scotland.

  Sylvi had initially thought to name her Elsie. But the more she thought of the journal, the more she realized My Lady would be best honored with Sylvi naming her daughter after the child she had never stopped loving—Isla.

  “I’m so very happy for you.” Sylvi embraced Liv.

  The new bride grinned at her. “Who would have thought I would have ended up married after all these years. After … ” She trailed off. She didn’t need to say it. Sylvi knew how much her earlier years had caused such hurt, the sort one feels is irrevocable.

  A large, pink satin belly appeared between them. Percy smiled at them both, her face full and beautiful with the glow of her much-anticipated pregnancy.

  “I’m so glad you’ve found happiness, Liv.” Percy rested a gentle hand on the side of her stomach, caressing the child within. Her eyes misted with tears. “You deserve this joy, this love.”

  “Are you going to start crying again?” Sylvi asked warily.