A Very Highland Holiday

by Le Veque, Kathryn

  “We come bearing gifts,” the smallest of the men sang out. He was a disreputable fellow, who removed his hat to reveal sun-bleached brown hair. His skin had the tough brown hue of old leather, but his smile was wide, his teeth whole if stained. “Is that not what ye do when ye see a star guiding ye to an inn at Christmastide? Is there a wee babe in the stables we should visit?”

  The men in the smoky common room laughed. Through the din, the innkeeper, Balthazar, stroked his beard with his fingers. “There’s already one wise man here, Gair Murray, and I’d not let ye within ten feet of a wee babe.”

  “Ye know me, then?” Gair’s smile widened. “And ye bandy me name about, do ye? Worth a free jar, I’m thinking.”

  “Everyone knows ye, Gair. You’re among friends here.”

  Not likely, Fiona thought as she wrapped her hands around her cooling mug of tea. Gair Murray, a smuggler, had no true friends, not really. He did favors for men up and down Scotland, but for pay, at the same time on the lookout for anything he could lift for himself.

  His only friend in the world, if he could be called so, was the thin but much taller man next to him. Padruig looked out at the world with one gray eye, the other, lost in some long-ago battle, covered with a leather patch.

  Both men wore cloaks over their coats, Padruig’s black, Gair’s brown with a stripe that made it appear suspiciously like an old tartan. Fiona hoped he wouldn’t be caught wearing a forbidden plaid.

  Padruig, as usual, said nothing as the more garrulous Gair bantered with the innkeeper.

  Fiona regarded the third figure with growing tension. He was a huge bear of a man, a Highlander without doubt, his hair a strange shade of black. Soot, she realized as a streak of it came off when he removed his hat. He was trying to disguise the true color.

  He was muffled to his ears in a plain gray scarf, he the only of the three not to have a cloak wrapped about him. He hunched his back as though trying to conceal his height, but he did a poor job of it. This was a man used to standing straight, proud, arrogant.

  Perhaps his spirit had been broken, as so many of them had been. Fiona had once been a proud Highlander herself.

  And still am. We are defeated, not gone.

  The man had to pull down his scarf to drink the tankard of ale Balthazar shoved onto a table for the three men. More soot smeared from his hair, which shone like a streak of sudden flame.

  Only one man had hair that brilliant shade of red. But he was dead, captured by the Hanoverians after Culloden, taken prisoner, vanished. Fiona’s heart had died that day. He’d have been executed by now. Fiona’s nightmares had showed her his death so many times in the last eight months that she was certain of it.

  Until the man turned his head and looked at her.

  Blue eyes like summer skies skewered her, and the firm mouth that had once kissed like fire pinched into a frown. He rose from the stool he’d just taken, as though unable to stop himself.

  Stuart Cameron.

  Her brother’s enemy and the man who’d stolen her peace before he’d run off to join the doomed army of Teàrlach mhic Seamas.

  Padruig eyed Stuart in concern, though Gair continued telling the men next to them some tale he was inventing about their travels. Gair’s constant banter kept people mollified until too late to recognize his perfidy.

  Fiona Macdonald shouldn’t be sitting in a wayside tavern in the middle of the Scottish Highlands with English soldiers hunting down any they even thought smelled like a Jacobite. She should have taken ship months ago to France or the Low Countries, or at least be home with her brother, anywhere she’d be safe. It was typical of her to decide not to flee or hide.

  Stuart could not stop himself crossing the tavern to her. The room was crowded, so much so that none paid much attention to another weary traveler pushing through their midst.

  The eagle-eyed maid, Una, glared up at Stuart as he approached. So she was still with Fiona. Loyal of her. Fiona sipped tea as though she noticed no one.

  Stuart knew Fiona had seen him and recognized him. Best to corner her before she burst out with his true identity … not that the Fiona Macdonald he knew would do such a thing, although she might in her surprise. Or Una might, indignant at his return.

  Stuart came to a halt next to Fiona, pretending to warm his hands at the fire. His heart thumped with Fiona’s nearness, the fire nothing to the slow heat that churned through his body.

  It had been so long since he’d seen her, touched her, simply enjoyed her presence. He’d dreamed of her, the image of her face, her smile keeping him from the very bottom of despair.

  “What are ye doing here, lass?” Stuart asked in a quiet voice.

  “What are you?” Fiona’s answer came as quietly. She rested her mug on her lap. “You’re alive, I see.”

  “Aye. Barely.”

  “What happened to ye?”

  “A guest of his majesty.” Stuart shrugged, trying to maintain the stance of a servant who mooched along after Gair and Padruig. “Then France.”

  Fiona’s eyes widened slightly. She had the loveliest eyes, green like jade in sunlight, which set off her very dark hair. He saw her realization that he’d been a prisoner—and she’d never know all of that horror if Stuart could help it. Escaped by the skin of his teeth—and with the help of the Mackenzie brothers—over the Channel to France. He’d rested and recovered there, but he’d soon longed to be back in Scotland, and so had hunted up the expert smugglers Gair and Padruig, and hired them to provide him passage.

  “Ye should have stayed.” Fiona’s voice was barely above a whisper.

  Did she mean in Paris or prison? Stuart let the corner of his mouth pull into a half smile. “Missing home.”

  “Home isn’t safe.”

  “Is it safe for you?” Stuart countered.

  He saw the flinch Fiona tried to hide, though Una didn’t bother to smother her scowl. Not much older than Fiona, Una had the flaxen hair of a Viking and the demeanor to match. She guarded Fiona like a lioness. For that, Stuart would forgive her scowls.

  “Safe enough,” Fiona said. “The soldiers don’t always stop a woman.”

  “More fool they.” The greatest fault the Hanoverians had was to underestimate Scotswomen. The English kept their own women so sheltered and subdued they assumed their northern neighbors did the same. “I thought ye’d be on a ship heading across the seas.” Without your waste of a brother, he finished silently.

  “Broc is ill,” Fiona said, the gleam in her eyes telling Stuart she knew what he was thinking. “He never recovered after his injury at Falkirk.”

  “Does he still claim it was me who shot him?” Stuart allowed the smile to form.

  Broc Macdonald, who’d stubbornly thrown in his lot with King Geordie, had suffered a leg wound at the Battle of Falkirk and had been carried, wailing, from the field. So Stuart had been told. He hadn’t witnessed the injury.

  “Yes.” Fiona’s own smile flashed then vanished. “Though I told him ye couldn’t have.”

  “Loyal woman.”

  “’Tisn’t loyalty. I know the truth.”

  Stuart barely heard her. Fiona’s smile transcended her drab garments, shawl, and the faded cap she wore under a broad-brimmed hat. The ensemble made her look like an ordinary farm woman, instead of the laird’s sister she was. Her beauty was like a breath of air in this musty place, returning the memory of her laughter, her quick wit, her sparkling eyes.

  He recalled dancing with her in her brother’s house not long before Prince Teàrlach marched on Edinburgh, her warm hand in his, her lithe grace as they moved in the patterns of the reel.

  He recalled her red lips that neared his as they turned, hand in hand, then moved tantalizingly out of reach. The kiss on the terrace after that, when he’d wrapped his plaid around her and warmed them both.

  “Still,” Stuart made himself say, “kind of ye to put in a word for me.”

  “You didn’t shoot him because you were keeping Duncan Mackenzie alive.” Fiona’
s sudden frown almost matched Una’s in severity. She hadn’t liked Duncan’s recklessness and had feared he’d be Stuart’s death. Duncan had perished on Culloden Moor, the poor bastard. He’d had all the arrogance but not the quick thinking of his younger brothers.

  “For my sins.” Stuart leaned closer, returning to the pretense of warming his hands. “But what are ye doing here, lass? In the middle of nowhere the day before Christmas Eve?”

  Fiona glanced behind Stuart and folded her lips. Hmm. She didn’t want to say in front of anyone who might hear. He saw none but Highlanders in the room, but one couldn’t be certain which way any man’s loyalty lay.

  If she were any other lady, Stuart would shrug and not pursue it. But this was Fiona Macdonald, and she never did anything not worth learning about. He’d have the secret out of her. Perhaps later, in a dark chamber, with the door locked …

  A distinct presence made itself felt—or smelled—at his side. Both women winced, and even Stuart took a step away. Gair rarely bathed, and the heat of the close room made him ripe.

  “The question I ought to ask,” Fiona said, pretending to ignore Gair. “Is why are you in such disreputable company?”

  “Ah, she breaks me heart,” Gair said with a dry chuckle. “We’re saving his life, lass, is the answer. Spiriting him across the land to his home.”

  “Spiriting?” Una wrinkled her nose. “Ye couldn’t spirit anything but whisky, Gair Murray. From the smell of things, ye’ve had a lot of it.”

  Gair laughed without malice. One thing Stuart liked about the man was that he knew exactly who he was and had no aspiration to be anything else.

  “A fine reunion ye’re having,” Gair said. “But it’s time to pay the piper. Not that I play the pipes. Can’t abide the things.”

  Stuart straightened in puzzlement. “I paid ye, Gair. In advance. Every bit of silver I had. Ye insisted, I remember.” He still felt the sting of handing over the last coins he had in his sporran. He hoped the king’s armies hadn’t stolen the rest of what he’d stashed at home.

  “Aye.” Gair returned the look without shame. “That was my payment. Now for Padruig.”

  Bloody man. Stuart had always known he couldn’t trust Gair. To smuggle Stuart into Scotland and across the country without betraying him, yes. With his money? No.

  “Ye don’t share your take with Padruig?” Stuart asked, as though surprised. “I’d reconsider, Gair. He’s a dangerous man.”

  He and Gair glanced as one at Padruig. The man leaned his left elbow on the table near a large tankard of ale, while he amused himself twirling a dagger in his right hand. His lank and long hair, worn leather eyepatch, and the concentration in his good eye did not lend reassurance.

  Gair’s humor didn’t fade. “Oh, he’s happy with what I give him. This is something special, he tells me.”

  The innkeeper had vanished, tending to whatever innkeepers tend to, but the common room remained crowded. A few lads ran about serving the loud Highlanders, while the window grew dark with the cold midwinter night.

  Stuart smothered a sigh and gave Fiona and Una a truncated bow. “Excuse me, ladies.”

  Gair guffawed and followed Stuart across the room to the table. Padruig flipped the blade through competent fingers and let it land, point down, buried a half inch into the wood.

  “The landlord won’t be happy with that,” Stuart remarked as he slid onto a stool.

  Padruig said nothing. Where Gair could talk the hind leg off a mule, Padruig was silence itself.

  “What do you want?” Stuart asked him. “I’ll have no more money until I reach home, and even then I might have nothing. The bloody English will have confiscated everything.” Possibly not the cache of jewels he’d hidden well before he’d left to join the Jacobite army, but Stuart wasn’t fool enough to mention jewels in front of Gair. “Take your share out of Gair’s hide.”

  Gair went off into gales of hilarity, but Padruig’s face remained impassive.

  “’Tis nae coin I want.”

  Padruig so rarely spoke, that when he did, he drew attention. Even Gair ceased his laughter. Padruig opened the tankard and took a loud sip of ale.

  “What then?” Stuart asked impatiently.

  Padruig sipped again, set down the tankard, and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

  “A sgian dubh.”

  Stuart’s brows climbed. “A knife? Is that all? Cumberland’s men might have taken all of those from my home as well, but likely I can find one stashed somewhere.”

  “No.” Padruig’s harsh word dried up Stuart’s relief. “One particular sgian dubh, lost at Culloden Moor. Bring me that, and your debt to me will be paid.”

  Chapter Two

  Fiona neared Stuart’s table in time to hear Padruig’s words. She ought to have remained quietly in the corner—Una hissed for her to remember what they were there for—but Fiona was drawn to Stuart like an arrow to its mark.

  Even hunched into his coat, his hat restored over his awful hair, he held a power that filled the room. Fiona could no more keep from him than she could cease breathing.

  “Oh, aye?” Stuart demanded as Padruig studied him. “Ye wish me te crawl about on me belly in the grass at Culloden, pushing aside the bones to look for an eating knife?”

  “Perhaps it is special to him.” Fiona slid onto a stool next to Stuart’s.

  Stuart jumped, but Gair and Padruig, who’d seen her come, accepted her without comment.

  “’Tis.” Padruig nodded at Fiona.

  Gair shrugged. “First he’s told me of it. But if he wants a sgian dubh, I suggest ye find it for him,” he said pointedly to Stuart. “He won’t let you loose from the bargain without it.”

  “Then I never will be,” Stuart growled. “What ye want is bloody impossible.”

  The anguish in Stuart’s voice as he talked about searching Culloden Moor was similar to what she’d heard in other Highlanders she’d spoken to since that battle. They’d seen horror, and while they’d survived, they’d never completely recover from it.

  “Not necessarily.” Fiona set her mostly empty tea mug on the table. “The innkeeper’s daughter has collected things from the moor and keeps them in a room here. She calls it her Chamber of Sorrows. Perhaps she’s found your sgian dubh.”

  Stuart’s blue eyes skewered her. Fiona wished she still held her mug so she could hide behind it. Stuart gazed straight into her soul.

  She hadn’t quite adjusted to the fact that he’d returned. Alive. Part of her was in shock, believing him a ghost who’d vanish as soon as she touched him. The other part sang in heavenly thanks, that Stuart had escaped and was whole. A quarter of an hour ago she’d been mourning him. Now he was here, and joy was burgeoning. When the shock faded, she’d be giddy and incoherent.

  What they’d be to each other after a year apart, if anything at all, remained to be seen, but for the moment, it was enough that Stuart was here.

  Now he continued to stare at her as though he had no idea what she was talking about.

  “Oh, aye?” Gair answered her.

  “I’ll ask her if you can look,” Fiona offered. “She’s an agreeable young woman, I’m finding. Though be careful, Gair. She has made no secret of the fact that she’d like a husband.”

  Gair burst out laughing, which had the unfortunate consequence of him spitting droplets of ale across the table. “No fear on that score, lass. Gair’s not the marrying kind.”

  Fiona had spoken in jest. Carrie, the innkeeper’s daughter, had made it known she’d prefer an Englishman who could take her to softer living, so Gair was safe, but she did not explain. None of the three men at this table would have any use for Englishmen at the moment, even theoretical ones.

  “You do that, chaileag.” Gair took another slurp of ale. “Padruig will be grateful. I imagine this one will be too.” He jerked his thumb at Stuart, carefully not calling him by name.

  Fiona said nothing about Gair addressing her as girl, or of him using the forbidden Erse tongue. It was
not easy to cease conversing in a language you’d spoken all the days of your life.

  Stuart kept his gaze on Fiona. Unnerving, that. She longed to ask him what had happened to him, how he’d escaped, how he’d survived. And to tell him what she’d been doing since the day last year when they’d parted so stormily at her brother’s house. She’d been travelling the Highlands too, though she’d returned home from time to time to rest and plan. But she’d tried to stay away from her brother as often as and for as long as she could. Handy to know so many women in the Highlands with sentiments similar to hers.

  They couldn’t discuss such things, though, not here, in a tavern any traveler might enter.

  I missed you, Stuart. I feared for you, my heart.

  Fiona lifted her tea mug and drank the last bitter dregs, but she couldn’t avoid Stuart’s scrutiny.

  Stuart followed Fiona into the Chamber of Sorrows located in the rear of the inn—Fiona had somehow persuaded the landlord’s daughter to admit them. Though Stuart hadn’t heard what Fiona had said to Carrie when the young woman had returned to the taproom, he wasn’t surprised Fiona had arranged it. She had a way with her, did Fiona Macdonald.

  When she’d said sgian dubh, the words soft on her tongue, Stuart’s entire body had become incandescent.

  Fiona was a true lady of the Highlands, her speech holding the unmistakable lilt. Far gentler than the harsh voices of the men he’d been surrounded by, her consonants almost a whisper against the liquid vowels.

  Stuart had missed her until he ached. He hadn’t realized how much until he’d been trussed up in that dark building in the farmlands of southern England, unsure whether he’d live or die. The thought of never seeing Fiona again had been almost as bad as the creative torture the English bastards had inflicted on him.

  To find Fiona here, in this wayward place, far too close to the field where so many of his friends and family had perished was … odd. Why was she here? Fiona never did anything without a reason, and Stuart would have to pry out of her what that reason was.

  The chamber was filled with sorrows indeed. Swords and pistols hung on the walls, and tables and boxes held knives, buckles, and other smaller relics. So much. A testament to the many who’d fallen.