by Paula Quinn
Lily nodded.
“What should we paint?” Will asked, seemingly uninterested in the jars.
“Paint whatever ye want.” When he reached for a jar, she held up a finger to stop him. “An artist is pensive. He takes his time and draws from what’s deep in his thoughts. For some, painting is a way to express what they canna say with words.”
She left them considering what to create and exited the room with Lachlan. She didn’t want him to ask her what Lily meant. She realized it made her as frustratingly evasive as he was, but she didn’t care. She would tell him in her own time, not because she was caught saying it.
“Come, there’s something I want to show ye.”
He followed her toward the stairs, silent about what Lily had revealed. He was clever in thinking that if he didn’t bring up what Lily said, she wouldn’t bring up what Will had told her. She smiled just ahead of him. She was cleverer than he.
They entered the kitchen, and when Mailie reached the table, she realized he’d already tried his hand at untangling the heather. Some of the sprigs were practically bare of any blossoms.
She turned to him and bit her lip at his guilty expression. “In Camlochlin, heather is a symbol of love. The more perfectly intact yer sprig, the greater is yer love for whom the heather is given.”
He wrinkled a brow at her. “What does losing flowers have to do with love?”
She crooked her finger at him. He came without hesitation. She turned her back on him and reached for his hand. Bringing it around her waist, she placed a stalk in his hand. “Though heather is a hearty plant, its blossoms are verra delicate.” She moved the heather through his fingers and watched the flowers break from the sprig and fall to the table. “If ye want the most lush bouquet,” she said, replacing the sprig with a fuller, more fragrant stalk, “each stalk must be handled with the right amount of care when picked.” She covered his fingers with her smaller ones and guided them gently over the heather in his palm.
He moved closer, close enough to press the back of her body to the front of his. She could feel his thundering heartbeat echoing within herself. The drums of some ancient beat pulsed though her blood. She wanted to lie with him, to be the last woman who ever would. His breath, so warm and sweet, swept over her neck, just beneath her ear.
“’Tis more—” She stopped to relish in the feel of his free hand encircling her waist. “Difficult no’ to…lose any flowers—”
When he dipped his mouth to her throat, she let go of his hand and the heather and turned in his arms to face him. She almost wept at the warmth and the love in his eyes.
“Since I am a certain kind of man,” he said, his face bent to hers, “would ye consider me fer a husband?”
She snuggled closer into his tender yet tense embrace. His muscles trembled as if he were holding back something feral. She ached to take him on every night, for the remainder of her nights. She looked up at him and reached out her hands to touch the perfect face above her. “Are ye askin’ me to marry ye, Beast?”
“Aye, aye, I’m asking. Ye brought life back to me, Mailie.” He lowered his hands on her back and pulled her in closer to the hard evidence of his next statement. “There’s the proof.” His mouth curled into a sensual smile and finally, her knees gave out. He held her up against him. “I might have argued that ’twasn’t the life I wanted—but ’tis. I want this life with ye and them.”
“I want it too.” She coiled her arms around his neck as he pressed his lips to hers.
Tomorrow’s worries be damned, tonight she would become his.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Tonight. They would seal their fates tonight.
Lachlan slapped the herring on the cutting table and lifted his ax over his shoulder. He brought it down in one clean chop, cutting off the fish’s head.
He couldn’t wait to be alone with her, to undress her, touch her, promise her anything while he carried her to his bed. But he had to wait. The children needed their supper.
Standing near him, William watched him prepare the fish for the pan. Mailie returned from her most recent trip of delivering vases of heather throughout the castle with Lily and Ettarre.
He tried not to look at her. He couldn’t think straight when he did, and deboning herring was a meticulous task.
When he was done preparing the fish, he coated them in oatmeal and then fried them in lard. Mailie tossed in a few herbs he hadn’t used before with fish. He didn’t protest. She couldn’t seem to help herself, distracted from trying to fill the seventh vase with heather.
Finally, he agreed to let her prepare some vegetables. The intimate smiles they shared, the tender touches, powerful enough to make his bones go warm, further proved to Lachlan how much he loved having her near. He wished he hadn’t sent Ruth home so he could carry Mailie to his bed right now.
“Laird?” Lily and her doll looked up at him from her chair at the table.
“Aye, lass?”
She scratched under her nose and then cleared Lily the doll’s hair from her eyes. “When ye marry my mummy will that make ye my papa?”
“Lil!” Will scolded. “I told ye no’ to bother him with those things.” He looked up at Lachlan, then at the ground. “She doesna listen.”
“Lad—” Lachlan began.
Will lifted his eyes to Lachlan’s again. There was strength in them well beyond his decade of living. “Are we…stayin’?”
Lachlan guessed it was Mailie’s plan all along. He wondered if she was surprised at her desire to be part of what she’d created. “I hope so.” He winked at the lad. “Else we spent the day moving furniture fer no reason.”
Will’s smile widened into a grin even as his soulful brown eyes misted with tears. “I always wanted a faither, Laird. Thank ye.”
Lachlan’s heart burned like a wildfire in his chest, making his eyes and his throat sting. He didn’t know what to say. He’d been guarded by a tower of stone for so long. He looked at Mailie’s heather and then smiled at William. “I always wanted a son, and I dinna think there is a better one than ye.”
Lachlan bent to kiss the top of Will’s head and caught Mailie wiping her eyes.
“Ye did this.” He went to where she was boiling leeks and planted a kiss on her mouth that made him want more. “Ye brought life here with ye and filled these dusty halls with laughter.”
She lifted herself on the tips of her toes and pulled him down to whisper in his ear. “Thank me later.”
Damn it, he would. His gaze dipped to her hips as she turned and left him. He might even begin from behind.
Hell, she made him tight enough to snap. Better not to think of it now with the wee ones around. He continued cooking and listening to the conversations going on around him—everything from the time Ranald, or Ranny—so called by the children—Fraser called Will a fly and Will reached up and punched him in the eye.
“I broke my finger,” Will told them. “Ranny knew I was wounded and came back and left me bleedin’ in auld Hamish’s front yard.”
Lads fought, Lachlan thought, looking at him, but Ranald wouldn’t bother him again. Lachlan would help his lad grow stronger so that he never ended up bleeding in anyone’s yard again.
And she—his gaze turned to Mailie—would help their son learn that his true strength came from his heart.
He knew there were obstacles in the way of their life together. But he wouldn’t let them stop him from having this. He was a hunter. He’d hunt down Sinclair and beat Annabel’s whereabouts out of him. If she was alive, he would find her and give her the life he’d promised. He was going to have to do something about Mailie’s kin though.
He thought about it through supper, until Mailie asked him what was on his mind. Twice.
Resigned to the fact that he would no longer enjoy the solitude of his private thoughts, he told her.
“I’m so glad ye brought this up, Lachlan,” she told him. “I’ve been thinkin’ aboot it fer days, and I’ve decided to pen a letter to my fa
ither.”
“Mailie, that’s not—”
“Now, Lachlan,” she said calmly. “Ye promised to do whatever I asked.”
“What?” he laughed. “When?”
“Right here in this kitchen,” she advised him. “I was about to tell ye that I wanted to pen a letter to my faither, when we heard the children coming doun the stairs. Ye said, ‘Aye, whatever ye want.’”
Aye, he thought miserably, she remembered correctly.
She smiled at him and continued. “I want him to know I’m safe and unharmed. Hopefully yer messenger can find him and deliver it to him, and then by the time he finds us, he will be easier to talk with.”
Lachlan had stopped trying to argue. He didn’t want to deny her. Not this. Her father should know she was safe. It was the right thing to do.
“I’ll bring ye to Charlie the messenger in the morn,” he told her.
She smiled. “Thank ye.”
He winked in return. “Later.”
When supper was over, they all cleaned their own plates and followed Lachlan out of the kitchen. He looked around at his halls dressed in heather and soft golden light and felt like he’d just returned home after a decade-long journey.
There was a bigger chamber down the hall somewhere, wasn’t there? he thought with Ettarre catching up to him. Mayhap he’d make it a solar, a place where his family could come together in comfort.
When they entered the study, the children were happy to see the settee and climbed into it while Mailie picked up their small stack of paintings they had carried down from the playroom.
He and Mailie hadn’t yet seen what the children had created earlier.
Lachlan sat in his chair and had to move a vase of heather from his view of the settee.
Lily presented her paintings first. The first was a blue sky with soft white clouds, a square well set into the vivid green grass, and a small brown tree in the center. On the tree were a dozen strokes painted in various colors. “’Tis the clootie well and these are all my new wishes.”
Lachlan looked it over. She clearly conveyed what she was thinking. She’d taken her time with it and he was certain every “rag” on the tree held a wish she’d made while she painted it.
“’Tis a good reminder of our first ooting together,” he praised.
Mailie agreed and smiled at him from the settee.
Later.
His blood went hot thinking of it. Tonight, he would sleep with her—among other things—and in the morning he’d bring her to the village with her letter.
Lily’s second painting was a misshapen mass of yellow with two black eyes and a red tongue. Ettarre. He and Mailie praised that one as well.
Will stood up next. “This is heaven,” he said, holding up his first work of art. It was done in hues of blues and purples with two figures floating toward the top. “This is my mum, Alice, and this is the laird’s wife.” He looked at Lachlan with a faint smile. “I asked God to let Annabel be alive so I didna put her in the paintin’.”
Lachlan smiled at him. What had he done to deserve this family? Only his death would separate him from them. And if he were to die, he would have this day and—his gaze slipped to Mailie—this night to take with him. “That was thoughtful of ye, lad.”
Lily left the settee and climbed into his lap in the chair. She smiled at her doll, then at him.
He examined Will’s second painting, one that was clearly a depiction of him and Will sitting at the edge of a stream, fishing.
“I’ll hang these tomorrow. This one,” he told Will, holding up the second painting, “I shall hang in here.”
“What aboot my paintin’?” Lily pouted, looking up at him. Loving this little one had taken a bit more time, and only because she made him think of the daughter he’d lost, though she looked nothing like Annabel.
She was Lily—strong on the outside, not the kind to be done in by any witch. Inside, she was deeply reflective, a benefit in the day but haunting in her dreams. Dreams he’d help her conquer. She needed Mailie to help her grow into the kind of woman who would only accept a certain kind of man, and she needed him to be that example.
“I’m going to hang yer painting of the clootie well in the new solar doun the hall.”
Lily propelled herself up and wrapped her arms around his neck. She leaned in to kiss his scarred cheek, then pulled back. She set her wide, worried gaze on his and touched his scarred face with light, feathery fingers. “Does this hurt?”
He smiled and shook his head. “Not anymore.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Tristan MacGregor leaned his back against the old oak and looked up at the stars. If he had to, he’d find a way to search them when he was through with Scotland. He’d never stop looking for Mailie. He would not go home to Isobel without their daughter. Where was she?
Mercy had left him, replaced by devastating fear he’d felt only once before, and anger that gave life to madness. He was going to kill whoever was involved in taking his daughter from him. He would kill them with no mercy.
He looked away from the sky and glanced over the moonlit landscape and his companions asleep on their plaids. He was glad they were with him, gladder still that they weren’t awake to see him clearing his eyes of tears.
He’d arrived in Caithness two and a half days ago with his brother Colin and met up with Luke and some of the other lads in Wick. He’d been stunned to learn that no one had seen anything of the abduction. They had been drawn into a fight, and when it was over, Mailie was gone. Colin’s daughter, Nichola, was the last to see her. They’d been admiring fabrics a few tents away. When Nic heard the fighting, she hurried to see what was going on. She thought Mailie was right behind her.
How had Mailie’s abductor gotten away so quickly?
And where the hell was Ettarre? There was no way any man could have carried Ettarre and escaped with Mailie. Ettarre must have given chase. Was she with Mailie now or dead on the road somewhere? It seemed there was no relief from his aching heart.
He was pleased though with Luke’s decision to spread out throughout Inverness, turning over markets, entering villages, questioning everyone. And at the same time devastated that they hadn’t found her.
He’d been sure, as he raced across the mainland with eighty-eight men of Camlochlin, fourteen of who broke off at different locations to spread the call throughout the Highlands, that by the time he reached Inverness, they would have found her alive and well. Every hour without her was more torturous than the last.
He was glad Luke had gone directly to Caithness without waiting for him. For Tristan too suspected Sinclair had a hand in this. He prayed he was wrong. While the earl pestered him last year about marrying Mailie, and Luke and Adam had gone to visit him, Tristan had done some checking of his own on Ranald Sinclair. He’d never told Mailie what he’d discovered. There was no need since he knew he’d never let Sinclair marry her.
It seemed the earl had been linked to some nefarious mercenaries, loyal to the Jacobite cause. There were whispers that he’d been involved with killing a small family in England but nothing was ever proven. Tristan prayed his daughter wasn’t anywhere near such a monster.
He’d left the rest of his kin to spread the heavier search parties past Inverness and continued on toward Caithness with his brother.
But Mailie wasn’t in Caithness, and neither was Sinclair. They’d broken into his manor house in Wick and torn every room apart. He was ashamed to admit that he terrorized some of the villagers with threats of nightmarish things, but no one had seen his daughter or the earl.
On the second day of their search, they’d finally found Sinclair’s emissary, Robert Graham, who confessed his lord was visiting a small settlement in Braemore.
They’d spent the entire day searching but had found nothing. The emissary had deceived them. It further convinced Tristan that Sinclair was guilty.
“We’ll find her, brother.” Colin’s deep baritone filled the silence now. “I’ll go back
to Wick before dawn with Darach and get the truth from Graham.”
“Aye,” Tristan agreed. If anyone could get the truth from a lying tongue, it was Colin and Darach. “Tell him I’m coming back, I willna be alone, and when I’m done, there will be nothing left of Caithness and Sutherland unless I find her.”
“I will tell him and make certain he believes me,” his brother, a retired general and private executioner in King James’s Royal Army, vowed. “Ye and the others go check Dingwall as planned. We’ll meet up there in two days, mayhap sooner depending on how quickly I can beat the truth from the bastard, aye?”
“Aye,” Tristan agreed.
“We should have let Goliath have a taste of him, as I had suggested.” Adam, Tristan’s nephew, patted the huge black furry head resting on his side. “We knew he was deceivin’ us. Did we no’, Goliath?”
The giant black beast growled, then went back to sleep.
“Ye barely pay any mind to fists flying at ye.” Colin’s growl was even more deadly. “Yet ye knew he was lying?”
“Fight as many jealous husbands as I have,” Adam told him, not bothering to open his eyes, “and the need to discern the truth from a lass as to whether or no’ she’s wed becomes the talent to hone.”
Tristan smiled. He was glad to have his mind distracted for a wee bit by the men’s banter. He remembered how true Adam’s words were from his own younger, rooster years, before he met his beloved Isobel and returned to his original, more knightly path.
“As fer payin’ mind to flyin’ fists,” Adam continued with a yawn, “why should I when so few connect?”
As Rob’s firstborn, Adam would likely become the next MacGregor chief, a position he cared as much about as flying fists. He could fight but his concerns lay in seduction, not battle. Tristan didn’t blame him. Adam had the kind of face artists wanted to paint. But he was not born to be chief. Everyone knew it. Leadership should go to Abigail, Adam’s sister and the wife of the general tossing his boot at Adam’s head.