Beloved Highlander

by Sara Bennett

  “His mind’s gone, then?”

  Gregor didn’t answer him, turning instead to the duke. “Your Grace?” he called, but still the man in the chair did not turn. He was at least twice as old as Meg, and not handsome, although his features were aristocratic. Only his chin, which was receding, spoiled his looks, making what might have been a strong face into a weak one.

  The Duke of Abercauldy was not a man who was in control of his emotions; they were controlling him.

  Something had happened. Had his mind always been weak? Gregor suspected so. From the rumors about him, the duke had always controlled women, used them. And then he had wed Isabella, a woman who sought to control him. He had loved her to madness—she had made his life hell, but still he had loved her. Some people did love like that. When Isabella died, whatever the means of that death, the duke had felt lost. And then he had found Meg, fixed upon Meg—but it was not Meg he had wanted, it was Isabella. He had seen Meg as another Isabella. And he had meant to reclaim her, whether she wished it or not. He had worked upon the general in his devious fashion, tricking him into signing the marriage papers, thinking he had won. But he had reckoned without stubborn Meg.

  And he had reckoned without Gregor Grant.

  Gently, Gregor returned the locket to Abercauldy’s hands. The narrow fingers clenched hard about it, and he made keening sounds as he lifted it to his lips, kissing the cold silver and whispering to himself, words that made no sense nor had any meaning, except to him.

  “He is mad,” Malcolm Bain said with disgust. “For three weeks he has been like this? So Lorenzo has ruled in his stead.”

  “Who was it dressed the duke, cared for him?” Gregor asked, looking over his shoulder at Calum Anderson, who still appeared dazed by what he saw.

  “Lorenzo. He guarded his privileges like a rabid dog.”

  “Then he’s still playing valet, even though his master is beyond knowing, or caring, what he looks like.”

  “Where is Lorenzo?” Malcolm Bain asked, looking about, as if he expected to see the black-clothed servant appear in a puff of smoke.

  “Where, indeed.” Gregor moved towards the door. “And where is Barbara Campbell? Perhaps it is time we found them.”

  “I wish to see the duke! My uncle is the Duke of Argyll and he has sent me to fetch home Barbara Campbell. Do you not understand plain Scots, you fool!” Airdy was growing frustrated. They had been waiting at the gate for some sign that they were to be allowed in, but as yet none had come. The single soldier on guard above them simply ignored them, after calling out that they would be allowed in when the Duke of Abercauldy said so.

  Meg wondered what they could do if the gate was not opened to them. How could she find Gregor then? The thought that he was inside there, somewhere, was awfully frustrating. Would she and Airdy storm the walls? It seemed a mite unlikely, although since she had been in his company, she had come to believe that Airdy Campbell was capable of anything.

  He was muttering insults now. Words Meg had never imagined could be strung together. What on earth was a yellow-livered bullyhuff?

  “Ah!”

  Airdy moved forward expectantly, as the gates began to open. Meg hurried to follow, determined not to let Airdy take charge. Gregor was in here somewhere, she knew it in her heart. He needed her, and she would not leave without finding him….

  “Lady Meg.”

  That familiar sneering voice! It was the black-clothed Lorenzo, resplendent in his frilly cuffs and lacy shirtfront, and his gleaming black boots. He was standing slim and straight on one side of the curling double staircase that led to the grand front doors.

  “Lorenzo,” Meg said, trying to be calm. “I have come to discuss my wedding plans with the duke, just as you asked me to. Will you take me to him?”

  But Lorenzo smiled and very gently shook his head. “The duke is indisposed,” he told her smoothly. “I am afraid he cannot see anyone.”

  “How can he be indisposed?” Meg retorted, trying not to let her desperation show. “I have come all the way from Glen Dhui to see him! Take me to him now, Lorenzo. He will want to see me, and he will be angry with you if you send me away.”

  Lorenzo’s smile did not waver—it was as if it were painted onto his face—but his eyes grew bleak. “The duke loves me, lady. He will not be angry with me for protecting him from a woman who is unworthy of him. He wanted to wed you, to raise you up higher than you could possibly imagine, but instead you turned to another. A soldier,” he spat. “No, he will not see you. Go home now. Go home to your soldier, you are nothing but a soldier’s whore.”

  He had never been so openly insulting. This was not a good sign. And yet she could not give up, she would not. She would not leave without Gregor, and if she could not find him…What was the point in going home at all?

  “There is nothing common about the Laird of Glen Dhui,” Meg replied with dangerous quiet, “and there is certainly nothing common about me. Take me to the duke, Lorenzo, or you will regret it. Believe me. I will not leave until I have seen him.”

  Lorenzo laughed, opening his mouth for more insults.

  “Shut up!”

  Meg had forgotten about Airdy, and clearly Airdy had had enough of this conversation. For once she was glad of the interruption and watched with interest as Airdy pushed forward on his dun horse, his voice rising dangerously.

  “I dinna give a bugger about your duke, you stupid man. I want my wife! Where is Barbara? Take me to her, you wee bastard. Now!”

  Lorenzo looked surprised to be the target of such aggression, from a man he didn’t even know. His eyes narrowed. “Your Barbara is happy here. She and the duke have become very close. I don’t think she will be going home with you, whoever you are.”

  “You ill-favored cur!” Airdy dug his heels in, and was suddenly riding at a hard gallop. Meg squealed as he sent his dun horse up the curling stairs, straight at Lorenzo.

  The servant spun about and ran, with Airdy close after him. Meg turned a wide-eyed look on her men, where they had formed a protective half-circle about her, and found them similarly astounded. For a brief moment she considered following Airdy, on horseback, into the Duke’s house. But it would not do.

  Hurriedly she dismounted and ran up the staircase, into the castle. Ahead she could hear Lorenzo screaming, a high-pitched sound that rang throughout the many rooms. There were other voices, too, calling out in confusion. Airdy was furiously cursing and, as Meg stopped and watched in amazed wonder, he sent his horse up the magnificent inner staircase and started firing his pistol.

  Plaster fell from the ceiling. A glass jar shattered.

  “Barbara!” Airdy bellowed. “Barbara, come to me!”

  Above the sound of the horse and the screams and the pistol, there was a thudding, as if someone were battering down a door, and above it Meg could hear Barbara Campbell’s shrill squeals for help.

  Airdy forgot all about Lorenzo. He turned the dun horse down a corridor, shouting Barbara’s name. Lorenzo, taking his chance, made his escape up a second, much less grand staircase, and reached another landing just as a man stepped out. Lorenzo ran straight into his arms.

  The man was Gregor Grant.

  With a low moan, Lorenzo promptly fainted, leaving Gregor holding a lifeless, dangling puppet.

  Behind him, Malcolm Bain gave a snort of disgust. “He is yellow-livered after all,” he said, and removed the offending article from his laird’s arms.

  Gregor looked over the banister to where Meg now stood on the lower landing.

  “Was it you who brought Airdy, morvoren?”

  “I’m afraid so,” she said, with a breathless laugh, her eyes brilliant at the sight of him. She wondered she could speak at all. She was trembling with happiness and relief.

  “Och, well, he came in useful.”

  She gazed up at him, wondering when it was that she had last seen anything so wonderful. His clothes might be grubby, and he might be pale and tired, with the beginnings of a fine beard, but he wa
s her beloved husband. Her beloved Highlander.

  “Oh, Gregor…”

  “Wait there, Meg. I’ll come down to you.”

  And he did, taking the stairs two and three at a time, straight into her arms. He promptly picked her up, and whirled her around until she laughed and cried, and then he simply held her.

  “You should not have come, Meg,” he scolded her softly, tenderly. “You should not have left the safety of our home.”

  “Home isn’t home without you in it,” she snapped, and then wished she could cut out her sharp tongue. How could she speak so to him, at such a time as this?

  But Gregor gazed down into her eyes and smiled his delight and his agreement. “No,” he said. “It isna.”

  “I thought you were locked up,” she whispered, tears spilling down her cheeks, as she remembered that mournful, lonely call in the forest. “I thought you were in prison. I could not leave you like that, Gregor. I had to come and save you.”

  “You have saved me,” he said, kissing away the tears. “And I love you for it, Meg. I love you.”

  Meg pressed her face against his chest, breathing him in. He loved her. Gregor loved her. Could her heart get any more full?

  “Next time you go to fight a duke,” she said, struggling for equilibrium, “then I am coming with you, Gregor Grant.”

  He smiled, his handsome mouth curling at the edges. “Och, Meg,” he murmured, “I wouldna have it any other way.”

  “It was truly a bedlam,” Malcolm Bain told his son Angus, the day after he returned home. “Airdy Campbell found his wife locked in one of the salons. It seems that when Lorenzo realized he had kidnapped the wrong lassie he was furious, but he was too stubborn to let her go. Probably embarrassed, too. But with all the servants gone, he was lonely, and he began to treat her as a guest rather than a prisoner. He and Barbara spent many an evening together, sipping the duke’s wine and sharing their troubles.”

  Angus chuckled, glancing up at his father shyly. “And what of Airdy? What of him?”

  “Well, Airdy saved Barbara, in a manner of speaking, so she flung herself at him and climbed atop his horse, and they rode back down the stairs together. We dinna see them again. I dinna know if Airdy’s still taking up his post at the pass. I suppose the pair of them will be happy enough, until the next big argument, eh?”

  “And the Duke of Abercauldy was truly insane, was he?”

  “Aye, something had happened to him. When he came out of his faint, Lorenzo told us that the duke truly had loved his wife, Isabella. It had been like a madness with him, as if he wanted to own her body and soul. There had been other women in the past who did not like the duke so well, and when he was weary of them he…” Malcolm Bain cleared his throat, “Well, that is not for yer ears, Angus. He was an evil man. I can tell ye, though, that Isabella must have been crazy herself, to stay with him. They were two of a kind, the Duke of Abercauldy and his wife. Lorenzo told us that they liked nothing better than to tie each other up and…” He cleared his throat again. “Well, anyway, they spent their time trying to best each other, until Isabella fell…jumped…was pushed to her death. Who knows the truth?”

  “I dinna suppose the duke will tell us?”

  “No, Angus, he canna say. If he pushed her, then she has had her revenge on him, because without her he is a shell of a man. He thought with Lady Meg he could relive his life with Isabella, make it turn out differently, but when Lorenzo told him that she’d wed another, he realized at last that it could never be, and he sank into his madness. Lorenzo tried to pretend he was all right. He was afraid that if the servants found out, they would tell the world that the duke was mad. Lorenzo couldn’t have that—he would lose his own position, his own power. It was all he lived for. So he played pretend. And now the duke is put away in a bedlam of his own. Poor Lorenzo.”

  “Poor Lorenzo!” Angus cried indignantly. “He locked ye up in the dungeon, Father!”

  The word Father stilled Malcolm Bain for a heartbeat. Shocking and yet wonderful, the name hung in the air between them. Realizing what he had said, Angus went red faced, making Malcolm aware that it would be a long journey before they could truly be comfortable with each other and their relationship. But it would be a journey that was very worthwhile, every moment of it.

  “Aye, he did lock me up,” Malcolm went on evenly. “He dinna want us finding out about the duke. And I think, too, he wanted his wee bit of revenge upon the laird, for locking him up.”

  “So now what will happen to him?”

  “I dinna know, Angus. The laird said mabbe he would send him to prison, but I dinna think Gregor Grant would do that to any man, not even Lorenzo. Mabbe he’ll go home, to whatever place he comes from. Not Italy, I know that for sure!” he muttered to himself.

  “Aye, let him go home.” Angus nodded his head, preferring that ending. “And what of the laird and the lady,” he added, with another bashful glance.

  “They are verra happy, and all is well.”

  “And what of my mother and…and…”

  “Your mother and I will be happy, too, Angus. We are happy now, but with every year we will grow happier. And I will grow uglier, and she will grow rounder.”

  “Enough of that, Malcolm Bain!” Alison’s hand tapped him on the shoulder, but it did not hurt, and a smile lurked in her angry Forbes eyes. “I think we have all had enough of fairy tales for one night.”

  “Whatever ye say, my little oatcake,” Malcolm Bain replied blandly, and winked at his son.

  Angus chuckled, and glanced from his father to his mother. And it was clear, that for him, the fairy tale had just begun.

  Epilogue

  One year later

  Meg looked out upon Glen Dhui, watching the sun sinking over it. All was well.

  The past year had been a good one, the crops had been bountiful, and there had been no great sickness in the glen. The people were happy and content.

  There had been one sadness: The general was no longer with them. Meg thought of him every day and mourned his loss, but she knew he had lived his life and had left her in the clear knowledge that she was well protected and well loved. Alison had foreseen his passing.

  And Gregor, her husband the laird, had reclaimed his position as if he had never left it. No, that was not quite true. Gregor treated his position as laird with a genuine joy and gratitude that he probably would never have felt if he had not lost it for twelve years.

  The baby stirred in Meg’s arms, and she stroked the soft, velvet cheek. Her son, hers and Gregor’s. His fine hair was darker than his father’s, but she had the feeling it would end up like Gregor’s—certainly there was no fire in it. But his eyes were definitely hers, blue and clear, and she had a feeling that they would stay so.

  “They’ll change to gold,” Gregor had insisted.

  “Maybe the next one.”

  “Och, Meg, how can you speak of another so soon after this?” Gregor asked, genuinely shocked. He had been anguished at the birth, suffering more, Meg suspected, than had she. That had been four months ago, and he hadn’t seemed to want to touch her since, as if he were afraid to…

  Meg rocked the baby in her arms, singing a soft lullaby.

  A warm arm slipped about her, and a warm voice murmured, “My bonny wife, keeping her sharp eye on the glen.”

  “Someone has to watch out for the people of Glen Dhui,” she replied evenly, and turned her head to smile at him.

  He smiled back, his eyes moving over her face, memorizing each feature with an intensity she would never grow used to. An artist’s eye, she supposed, for Gregor was always drawing her. He saw her in a way that she had never seen herself; when he sketched her, Meg was beautiful.

  His gaze dropped to the sleeping baby, and his smile softened into a mixture of love and pride.

  “His eyes are still blue,” Meg murmured.

  Gregor frowned. “Aye.” He glanced at her and away, as if there were words he had to speak and yet did not quite know how to. “
Meg, it has been four months now, since the baby.”

  “Och, Gregor, are ye wanting another already? Just so that ye can have a babe with golden eyes?” she teased.

  He laughed at her imitation of his accent, but his eyes held doubt. “No, Meg, ’tis not that I want another, although I do, when you are ready. I am thinking of…” He sighed, impatient with himself. “Och, Meg, I want ye! I am burning up for ye. ’Tis been four months, six if we count the two before, when ye were unwell. I have been hard as a sword for weeks now. I dinna know if I can go on much longer without ye in my bed again.”

  Meg stared at him, feeling the color slowly heat her cheeks. He wanted her. He had wanted her for six months, and she had thought…How could she have been so foolish? He had been giving her time to recover, probably waiting for her to make the first move.

  Gregor rubbed a hand over his eyes. “Mabbe I’ve spoken too soon,” he said, but there was disappointment in every line of him.

  Meg’s heart overflowed with love. Carefully, she chose her words, making each one special.

  “Gregor, I have been lying in my bed thinking of you every night since our son was born. Sometimes I get out of my bed and go to the door and stand there, thinking of you. I have been afraid to go to you. I thought, well, I am a fool. I thought maybe you did not want me any more. So I waited. We have both been waiting, and wasting time.”

  He was watching her with that same intensity, reading her expression, searching her eyes. And now whatever he saw there made him give his beautiful smile. “Meg, my Meg, how could I no’ want ye? I will always want ye; my body hurts for yours. Without ye I am nothing.”

  “Does it?” she whispered. “Does it hurt for mine?”

  He moved closer, his mouth brushing hers and then deepening into a long and passionate kiss. They both groaned when it ended, trembling with need.

  “Gregor, come to me tonight,” she sounded breathless.

  “I will, morvoren.”

  “After supper, Gregor.”

  “Aye, Meg.”

  “Immediately after supper.”