Highlander´s Angel: A Historical Scottish Romance Novel

by Matie Cole

  “You are terribly green,” Ray snarled, his face twisting up into something ugly. The sight of him like this scared Maisie in a strange, unexpected way. He kind of looked like he was a snake... the snake from her nightmares... but as much as she wanted to, she could not get caught up in that terror. “I do not like that.”

  “I cannot...” She wanted to defend herself, but the sensation of illness was too much.

  “Urgh, she is disgusting.” Ray cowered away from Maisie. “Lauren, she really is ill. I do not like it.”

  “We are not stopping,” Lauren growled. “We need to get away from that place. I do not trust him.”

  There was a whole bunch of fear bursting around in Maisie’s brain. She knew that all of this was not right, she was afraid by Lauren’s words, but the dizziness was too much. She could not quite work everything out. Maisie leaned forwards and put her head between her knees, trying to stop the intensity of the painful butterflies flapping around in the pit of her stomach, but it did not work one bit.

  Who did she not trust? Who was she trying to get Maisie away from? What was going on?

  “I need to stop,” Maisie insisted in the strongest voice that she could manage. It did not matter that it was barely a whisper. One of the brother sister duo had to pick up on how serious she was. “I cannot do this any longer. I need to stop, or I will end up throwing up all over the carriage, all over you.”

  Those words were enough to freak Ray out. He was not in the mood to have Maisie’s sick all over him. He insisted that they stop the carriage so forcefully that even Lauren listened to him.

  “I am not happy about this,” she said over and over again, making it obvious that it was an inconvenience. “I am not happy about this at all. I do not see why we have to make this break. It causes problems for us, you know that. The sooner that we get back and deal with things, the better.”

  But it was too late now. The carriage had stopped and Maisie was in the process of staggering out onto the hard floor. She needed to stand on the earth, to have the solid ground underneath her, to be steady at last. She no longer cared about Lauren and her nastiness, there was a sickness inside of her that absolutely needed to get out. There was nothing that she could do to stop it.

  “Do not be long,” Lauren yelled out as Maisie vanished around the other side of the carriage to puke in private. “We need to get going again as soon as we can. We do not have time for this.”

  As Maisie bent forward and grabbed on to her knees, to finally allow the vomit to spill free from her, tears rolled down her face some more. She tried to put the crying down to not liking being sick, but that was something no one enjoyed, the tears were really related to everything that she had left behind.

  Bryson. Every single time that she thought about him, the sadness washed over her in waves. She wished that she could be back with him, back in his arms, back where she needed to be. When she thought of him, she yearned to redo everything without the shock, so she could tell Ray and Lauren that she wanted to stay with Bryson. She wept as she thought about everything she should have done. She could have told Ray that any promise she made to him before she lost her memory no longer mattered. She should have insisted that she stay with Bryson and Anice because she loved them. She loved them and felt like a part of their family more than she ever could the pair of them. They were so unwelcoming.

  Eventually, Maisie felt like all of the vomit was gone, that she was done being sick, but she was not ready to step back into the carriage. She had lost the ability to care about Lauren’s rant. Just because she wanted to leave at the speed of light, did not mean they had to. Maisie was allowed some fresh air before she had to sit back in the horrible atmosphere within that carriage.

  She stepped away from the carriage for a while and gulped in as much air as she could, wondering what way her life should go next. This was a crossroads in her life, she had a choice right now, and she needed to make the right one. Maisie grabbed out her medallion and held it tightly between her fingers as she attempted to choose. She did not want to let her family down, she always wanted to be right by her father, but he was no longer alive. Some accident had killed him, so she could not ask him to give her permission to change her mind and who she wanted to marry. It was a decision that she needed to make herself.

  I could continue to make my father proud, she told herself. I could go along with what he wanted for me, or... well, I could chose the man who I know will love me forever more.

  When she put it like that, it did not seem like a challenging choice. Of course, she should go with what she wanted because it was her life to live and she certainly wanted to be happy through it. She could also rationalize that her father would want the same for her and would say so if he were alive, but the whole idea made her nervous. Here she was, in the middle of nowhere, deciding whether or not to leave the man she had agreed to marry at a time of her life when she could not remember. Not only that, she was also going to have to deal with Ray’s terrifying sister, who clearly liked things to go her way.

  “This is ridiculous,” Lauren shrieked at a volume where Maisie could hear her, like a terrible reminder that nothing from this point onwards would be simple. “How long does it take to vomit. Check on her, Ray. I do not care if you are averse to seeing vomit. We need to get out of here quickly.”

  “If I do not face them now, I shall have to listen to that screaming forever.”

  Maisie instinctively knew that Lauren was very involved in Ray’s life. It was why they seemed so close. Clearly, she did not have a husband of her own or it would have been very unlikely that she would go out on the mission like she did. Maisie did not want to listen to Lauren’s yelling forever.

  “I could run away,” she whispered to herself. “I could be at Goraidh Castle very quickly.”

  Her feet already wanted to run. She wanted to take off and just keep on running until there was nothing but dust behind her. She wanted to lose Lauren and Ray right now, forgetting about them forever more, but even in her muddled dizzy and sickly state, she knew it would not work like that. If Ray had fought so hard to find her once, then it was likely he would do so again. She needed things to be done for good this time. Maisie hardly wanted to spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder in fear.

  “I will never be free unless I speak to Ray right now,” she realized. “I have to tell him that I am leaving.”

  She sucked in a couple of deep breaths, trying to swallow down the intense ball of fear that lodged itself in her throat. It should not have been this hard to say how she was feeling. If Ray really did love her then he would want her to be happy, even if it did not mean she was with him. However, it did not feel that way.

  She stepped slowly, trying to brace herself for the awkward conversation that was to come, pausing every single time she heard Lauren screaming something else obscene about her. The screaming might have been frightening, but it merely reinforced what she needed to do. She needed to get out.

  It was surely alright to break an engagement if it was not right. She was confident that her father would agree. The more that she settled on her decision, the more she decided that she was right. The tighter that she held on to her medallion, the more convinced she was that she could feel her mother’s love and support. Everything was going to turn out alright. Now, she simply needed to pick her moment.

  “I am sick of this whole debacle, Ray,” Lauren growled, a little quieter this time around, but Maisie could still hear every single word. “I do not like pretending. It is hard to act like I do not hate her.”

  “I am not sure that you are acting well,” Ray laughed. “I think Maisie has already worked out that you are not too fond. At least I am keeping up the pretense that we are in love. She is really falling for it.”

  What the hell? Maisie’s blood ran ice cold as she heard those words. What was going on? Falling? For what? What were they acting about?

  “Yes, well you are good at acting like a heart throb, Ray. I have alwa
ys said that about you. In the past you have been too good. Do you remember how many times we almost got caught out?”

  They giggled, the pair of them, and it was a strange sound. Not the sort of laugh that a brother and sister should have been sharing. But Maisie was not in her right mind, was she? She had been ill, so she could not trust her own judgements. Perhaps this was completely normal in their hometown and she had simply forgotten. She had been at Goraidh Castle for too long so assumed everything there was normal.

  Well, even if life with Bryson was not the most normal, it was what she wanted, so she still needed to speak with Ray, to cancel their engagement once and for all. Maisie just wanted to wait for the right moment. She did not want to get in the middle of something weird here. This would be difficult enough.

  Any minute now, she said to herself and her heart pounded wildly against her rib cage. Any minute now...

  Chapter 16

  “Y ou are a bad boy, Ray.” Maisie could not ignore it, the strange flirting tone in Lauren’s voice. It was too weird for words. This was his sister, she herself was his fiancée. It was disgusting. And the story that they had given her had to be the truth or why else would they bother trying to find her the way they had done? “A very bad boy. I do not know what I should do with you out here in the woods.”

  “Just act exactly as you would if we were back in the castle,” Ray purred back, somehow managing not to sound like his sister was freaking him out with her nonsense. He sounded a lot too much like a man who actually liked it. “She will be gone for a long time. I believe we have a moment.”

  There was a pause in the conversation, aside from some strange noises. Maisie knew that this was her moment to brave peeking around the corner to see what the hell was going on. Unfortunately, she found herself frozen to the spot, absolutely unable to do anything. Much as she wanted, no, needed to see, she was much too afraid. She knew now for certain that she should have remained with Bryson. These people were odd, even if there was a flickering of recognition within her, it was not enough. They were strangers to her, and she did not like them. She did not want to be with them any longer.

  “I do not think that I can undress you rapidly here,” Ray suddenly declared, sounding much too disappointed. “I would love to see that naked flesh of yours, but this is not the place.”

  “It might not be the place for that,” Lauren shot back. “But there are plenty of other things that we can do here. I mean, take a look around. I might not have wanted to stop here initially, but actually little miss forget the world might have a good point. It is a nice empty clearing in a woodland, but far enough from anywhere, so that we will not be disturbed. I even believe that we can hide whatever we need to.”

  What would they need to hide? None of them really had anything with them. Not that Maisie was aware of, anyway. But then again, it seemed like she did not know anything that was happening around her.

  “Ooh, I do like it when you whisper into my ear,” Ray chuckled loudly. “Tell me more.”

  Maisie felt like she needed to lean forward quickly, to find out what was going on before the whole world imploded around her. She was on the edge already, it seemed like she was on the verge of losing her damn mind, so there was nothing left to hold her back. She needed to overcome her fear and just see. So, she edged herself, slowly, trying not to make any sort of sound. Maisie knew she could not be seen...

  “Oh, my goodness.” But any need to be sensible and smart simply floated away the moment she spotted what was really going on between Lauren and Ray. Much as she had suspected it, it was another level of horror to see it happening before her very eyes. Brother and sister were kissing, kissing like there was no tomorrow, kissing with a similar passion to what she shared with Bryson...

  Maisie clapped her hands to her mouth with shock. This was too much for her. She could not marry a man who spent time kissing his sister, that was horrible. There was no way that her father would want her to get mixed up in a family like that. He could not have known what was going on with these two...

  Unless... all of a sudden, the fog cleared from her brain and she began to realize just how stupid she had been. They were obviously not brother and sister, or family at all. Bryson had asked for proof that they knew Maisie, but he did not think to enquire their family link. And why would he? Unless he thought that they were tricking her. Clearly, that was exactly what they were doing. They wanted all of that money and land her father had before he passed away. Everything that Lauren had informed her Bryson wanted from her, it was actually the pair of them. Ray would marry her and then they would have it all.

  “You want to do that here?” Maisie snapped back into her hiding position as the kissing broke apart and Ray began asking questions to Lauren which Maisie did not understand. “I suppose...”

  “It is perfect, if you think about it,” Lauren replied. “And we are going to have to do it fast. Who knows what memories you sparked by mentioning the silly girl’s parent’s names in front of her?”

  Maisie sucked in and held a breath, now more terrified than she had ever been before. Ray discussing her parents had not shaken a lot, but she did get a feeling then that he was being honest with her.

  “I had to discuss her parents. We needed Bryson to believe us, did we not?”

  “And what exactly would you have done if she recalled everything there and then? How could we have gotten out of that mess? I will admit that your risky strategy did pay off, but it was a scary moment.”

  “So, because of that, we need to put our plan into action right away? That is what you think, Lauren?”

  Maisie’s fingers curled around the waist of her wedding dress simply because she needed something to grip on to, to remind her that this was in fact real and not some horrible nightmare that she was caught in the middle of. There really was something horrible going on here, and unfortunately, she needed to work out what. She no longer needed to explain to Ray why she was leaving, he was not the nice fiancé that she first assumed he might be, but this was her past and she needed some truth.

  “We cannot allow her to regain her memories, Ray, you know that as well as I do. The closer that we get to home, the more chance there is of her remembering everything. We came to get her to make sure that she does not recall who she really is or that would ruin everything for us, so why not here?”

  “Why not here?” Ray repeated, with little to no hesitation in his tone. “I suppose you are right.”

  “You need to seduce her, you know, Ray,” Lauren declared with a teasing to her tone. Maisie’s stomach churned. There was no way in hell that she would allow Ray anywhere near her, much less seduce her. “And when you get her far enough away from here to somewhere you can hide her, you must stab her.”

  Maisie let out an audible gasp of shock. She clamped her lips shut tightly, praying that no one had heard her, and thankfully, it seemed immediately like no one was coming after her. Lauren and Ray must have been so wrapped in one another that they did not notice her. Thank goodness.

  They were planning to kill her... of course they were. Now that she had heard it coming from their mouths, it was utterly obvious that was what they wanted to do with her. Although Maisie could not understand why they wanted her dead now. Surely, it would work out better for them to get Ray married off to her first. They would not be able to access anything without her, they would be entitled to nothing.

  “I have to be the one who kills her?” Ray moaned. “But why does it have to be me? You are so much better at it. You have the stomach for it, my love. Since you have killed before.”

  Maisie’s head spun wildly under this brand new, very unpleasant knowledge. She was with killers, people who did not care who they got rid of to get to where they wanted to be, so she stood very little chance. If they decided to come at her, she would be killed where no one could hear her scream.

  “But I know how much you hate Maisie, and all of Ferguson family, so the honor is yours.”

  “I do h
ate them with an intense passion,” Ray agreed, much to Maisie’s dismay. What could she have possibly done to deserve such a visceral reaction? “But I do not need to be the one to kill her.”

  “I have had enough killing.” Lauren sounded a little angrier now. Maisie could tell that she was growing increasingly frustrated with Ray. What Maisie did not understand was why she had not run yet. “I have had plenty of killing in my lifetime. You think that it was easy to murder my husband?”

  “I think that you found it very easy to kill Duncan Ferguson.” The name made Maisie freeze. That name was all too familiar. It was the name given to her by Ray, the name of her father. Lauren was married to him? She was... was her stepmother? That made Ray... well, Lauren’s lover, she assumed. And they killed her father and now wanted her dead as well. Her mother must have died a long time ago...

  Which means there was no accident. Not for her father at any rate. That could explain why Maisie remembered her father and not her mother. Lauren was not Ray’s sister, Lauren was a cold-blooded killer and she needed Maisie dead before her memories came back so... oh God, so that she could claim Maisie’s father’s estate. She did have a claim to everything after all. And Maisie was the only thing standing in her way. The faster that Maisie put the puzzle pieces back together, the more she feared.

  Her life was in danger, that much was the truth. She really needed to get away.

  “You killed that old bastard like he meant nothing to you,” Ray continued with a little laugh as if this was all just a joke and not related to someone’s life at all. “You were coldhearted, Lauren, just as I love you, and I think that you could be just as coldhearted with that bitch as well. I believe in you.”

  “I am not killing her, Ray,” Lauren insisted, like they were arguing over a pack of cards or something. “You are going to kill her because we both need to commit murder. That is the only way I can be sure that we are in it together. So, you are going to take this dagger and get rid of your little wife, now.”