Highlander's Hope: A Scottish Historical Time Travel Romance (Called by a Highlander Book 2)

by Mariah Stone

  Marjorie’s cheeks burned. “Ye mean, women may nae get with child after…”

  He looked at her, his eyes dark. “Exactly.”

  “Ye make it sound so fine, the life in the future.”

  “It’s a damn convenient life, but we have problems, too.”

  Marjorie fingered an indent in the table. She really wanted to see all that for herself. It was impossible, of course.

  “Ye’ve given me much to dream about at night, Konnor,” she said.

  He locked his eyes with hers, and her mouth went as dry as sand. “Trust me, you’ve given me plenty to dream about, too.”

  She let out a small laugh. He was as relaxed as she’d ever seen him. And she hadn’t felt at ease like this in a very long time. It was as though they were on their own small island, and no one else existed.

  “Tell me,” she said softly. “When ye said ye dinna want to inflict yer darkness on a woman, what did ye mean?”

  His face fell, and the invisible cocoon around them threatened to break.

  “I—”

  But she couldn’t back down now. “Please, Konnor, I see this weight on yer shoulders. I’ve told ye the worst thing that has happened to me, the thing I’m ashamed of, the thing that broke me. Almost.” She shifted her hand closer to his but didn’t touch it. “I want to ken yer darkness, too.”

  He frowned, anguish on his face. She found the courage, reached out, and covered his hand with hers.

  “Will ye tell me?”

  His mouth curved crookedly downward. He kept looking at her, obviously torn.

  “I’d love to, Marjorie, but I can’t. You’ll never look at me with that wonder in your eyes again.”

  She shook her head. “I dinna care. I want the truth. Ugly. Monstrous. Soul-shattering. Tell me the worst.”

  He inhaled sharply and nodded. He took the jug with uisge and two cups and rose to his feet.

  “Come, take a walk with me.”

  Chapter 18

  They climbed the stairs of the castle wall, Konnor trying not to watch Marjorie’s round behind swinging from side to side before him. Once on the wall, she asked the two sentinels to move to another side, telling them she and Konnor would take the watch.

  The sun was setting behind the mountains on the other side of the loch. It decorated the still surface of water in a golden, pink, and purple glow, leaving the mountains as black forms. The air chilled Konnor’s skin, the wind bringing the aroma of lake water. He breathed in the scent of grass and trees and flowers. It would always remind him of Marjorie. The Highlander warrior queen from the past.

  He stood at the parapet and leaned against the merlon, the stones cool under his palms. His ankle ached slightly now, but it felt much better. Still, he avoided putting weight on it. He’d need all the strength he had for the battle.

  He looked at Marjorie, who stood by his side, her lush hair cascading down her shoulders and back, the slightest breeze playing with her locks. She turned and met his gaze, a small smile on her lips. The wind brought a single strand of hair across her face, and Konnor itched to reach out and move it away.

  Instead, he poured the moonshine into their cups. For homemade liquor, this was excellent. But he missed the good Scotch he knew from the twenty-first century.

  “Cheers.” Konnor clunked his cup with hers and the contents slipped down his throat, leaving a pleasant burning trace.

  Was he really going to tell her? He had decided downstairs in the great hall that he would, but even though she’d said she wanted to know his darkest secret, he doubted she’d accept it.

  When she found out that he carried the darkness she was so afraid of, he wouldn’t be able to stand the look of horror and disgust on her face.

  Still, he wanted to tell her. The need itched and pained like a wound in his soul. She’d trusted him with her deepest trauma, and he wanted to do the same. He wanted to give her everything, to be everything for her. To take her pain away. To make her feel safe. To help her see how truly powerful and magnificent she was, this medieval Highlander woman with the most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen.

  “Tell me, Konnor,” she said.

  He took in a lungful of sweet air. “When I was six years old, my dad died, leaving my mom and me alone.”

  Deep sadness saturated Marjorie’s expression. “I am sorry. I ken what ‘tis like.”

  They looked at each other for a long moment, something connecting them deeper than ever before. “Your mother?” he said.

  “Aye. My mother died before I could remember her. My father remarried soon, a sweet woman called Christina, the mother of Owen, Domhnall, and Lena.”

  So she had a stepparent as well… Konnor had never in his life talked about this with anyone, not seriously, not with the possibility of connecting with people about this. At school, he’d been this brooding kid who’d rather solve a problem through violence and acting out than by talking. He’d been a troubled kid and surely on his way into the United States penal system. That had been his way of dealing with the violent situation at home, the one he couldn’t change.

  It was only when his mom made him join the soccer team at the age of twelve that he’d learned to channel that violence into soccer. He’d even became a team captain, though only for his soccer skills, not for his ability to make friends.

  Konnor fiddled with the cup in his hands. “So you have a good relationship with her?”

  “Aye. She’s my second mother.”

  He nodded. “That’s good. God knows, you’ve had enough trauma to deal with in your life. I wasn’t that lucky. My mom remarried two years after my dad died. A guy named Jerry. We moved in with him pretty quickly, and about a week after that, he started to—”

  His throat contracted. He’d never said the words out loud, not even with his mother. They avoided talking about Jerry altogether, but he’d been there, between them, invisible, and omnipresent.

  He swallowed what felt like a boulder stuck in his throat. “He beat her,” he spat out.

  With an effort, he looked at Marjorie. Her eyelashes trembled, and two tight lines formed around her mouth.

  “I was eight years old,” Konnor said. “And I watched him do that, not able to do a damn thing about it.”

  “Did he beat ye, too?” she said with an emotionless voice, though her eyes were wet and glistened with the mixture of anger, compassion, and bottomless pain.

  “Yeah. But she often ended up taking the hits intended for me.”

  A tear rolled down her cheek. “Konnor…” she said in a broken voice.

  How could his name sound so much like a prayer? How could it resonate in his chest like a painful crack of thunder?

  His eyes prickled with burning tears, and he shook his head to shake them off. But too late. The emotion, her compassion, the fact that he was talking about the biggest trauma in his own life for the first time weakened the chains on the door he’d locked the monsters behind.

  They spilled out in a roaring, raging, clawing wave of memories that scraped his insides and hollowed him out.

  “That’s why I must go back to her.”

  “Oh.” She bit her lip, a mournful expression on her face. Didn’t she want him to go?

  “I couldn’t protect her then, Marjorie,” he said as though he felt the need to justify himself. “I must protect her now,” he rasped.”

  “Aye. Of course, ye must take care of yer mother.”

  She was an angel for saying that, but he still felt like he needed to explain, to make her understand. “I tried to shield her from him. Once. The first time.”

  Tears burned his eyes, and he pinched the bridge of his nose, willing for them to stay back.

  She lay her hand on his shoulder blade, warm and heavy and soothing. “Ye were an eight-year-old lad…” she said. “What could ye have done?”

  “Something. I should have called the police.”

  She didn’t reply, and he looked back at her. Right. The puzzled expression. She didn’t know who
the police were. “They’re a law enforcement agency. They make sure there’s order and that people follow the law.”

  “Oh. Aye. Ye should have those. The chief punishes those who break the law, steal or murder.”

  “Mom told me not to,” he said. “She told me it’s just a phase. That Jerry wasn’t well, and he’d get better. When I grew up, I realized we needed the money. She’d sold our house when we moved in with him, and she quit her job. She’d given him all the savings we had.”

  “Could her da or her brothers help?”

  “There was no one.” He sighed, pushed himself off the merlon and ran both his palms through his hair. “Just her sister, Tabitha, but I don’t think she ever knew. Not until Jerry died and my mom started therapy.”

  “Therapy?”

  He looked at her. “Healing of the soul,” he said softly. “That’s what my mom calls it.”

  Marjorie nodded and took a small sip of her uisge. “Aye. ‘Tis necessary. I wouldna have done it without my brother Owen and Isbeil. They were the two who helped my soul to heal. And Colin, of course.”

  “How was it for you to be pregnant with your attacker’s child? That couldn’t have been easy.”

  Marjorie pursed her lips, and they reddened against her alabaster skin. “Aye.” She lowered her head, and her cheeks blushed. “I hated that bairn every day. The thoughts I had of it in my womb— I’m ashamed of them. Thoughts of ill will. Wishing it the worst… Wishing it the unspeakable.”

  Konnor’s skin chilled. He couldn’t imagine Marjorie wishing ill on anyone, let alone her own son.

  “But once that wee bairn was in my arms, and I looked into his eyes for the first time, all that disappeared like a bad dream. I saw that there was nothing in him but goodness. I saw that he was a gift of our Lord Jesu Christ. And that he had nothing in common with his evil father, and he never would, as long as I had a say in it. I had to pick myself up and start to live. I had a reason to do so, thanks to my son.”

  The sweetest smile spread across her lips.

  “He’s the reason I’m a warrior and nae a ghost hiding from the world in my tower.”

  Konnor’s chest tightened in a sweet ache. What would it be like to love a child like this? He’d never know. Was he even capable of love like that?

  “He’s a great kid,” Konnor said.

  Marjorie’s eyes widened. “Kid? A goat’s bairn?”

  Konnor chuckled. “We call children kids where I come from.”

  Marjorie laughed softly and wiped the remnant of a tear. “Aye, well, he is a wonderful goat’s bairn.”

  Konnor sighed with a big smile.

  “But, Konnor, if ye were afraid to tell me that ye and yer mother were beaten and abused by yer stepfather, ye didna need to worry.”

  He clenched his jaw and swallowed hard. “That’s not the darkness I was talking about.”

  The lightness of the moment would make what he was about to say easier. He met her eyes. Konnor gulped the last of the moonshine. The anguish in his chest numbed a little. She looked at him with compassion, with care. She stood so close he could smell her scent, the one he’d recognize in a crowd. She cared about him. She wanted to know his darkness.

  Oh damn.

  Was this the last time she would want to stand near him? Would want to talk to him? But there was no way back. He had to tell her the truth. His breath caught, and his gut tightened like he was about to jump into an abyss.

  Marjorie, don’t hate me.

  “I killed him, Marjorie.”

  Marjorie’s face went blank. He’d expected her to gasp in shock or cry or widen her eyes in horror.

  No, she was completely frozen. Still like that loch. Silence hung between them. Only crickets chirped, and the leaves rustled gently in the trees. The slight buzz of voices came from down in the great hall.

  Fear went through him in cold quivers. There. He’d blown it. It shouldn’t matter. There’d never been a chance at a life together for them anyway. But damn it, he felt something for this bewitching woman. Damn it to hell.

  “Do you hate me?” Konnor said.

  “Hate ye?” Her voice came out with a rasp. “Nae. Of course nae. Craig killed Alasdair. If he didna, and if I’d had strength to, I’d have wanted to do it myself.”

  He sighed. Relief flooded his veins. But maybe it was only because she didn’t realize what it meant.

  “I endured his beatings for ten years. One evening, when I was eighteen, I realized I didn’t have to anymore. I could fight back. Something snapped in me. A wild anger that I’d harbored for so long took over. I saw red. All I could see was red. I shoved him against the wall and beat him and beat him until my hands were slippery from his blood.”

  Marjorie’s face was as still as a stone mask.

  “I looked at my bloody hands, at his face beaten to a pulp, and I hated myself.” He closed his eyes, willing to swallow the next words, regretting that he’d said this much out loud. “I became him.”

  Silence fell between them, thick and palpable, like an invisible wall. Planets could’ve been born and died in the seconds that passed by.

  And then she broke it with one word. “Never.”

  “He was not the first man I’d hit. I was violent after my mom married him, even as a kid Colin’s age. If I hadn’t gotten into soccer—it’s a team sport—I would’ve kept on getting into fights and stealing stuff. Then I enrolled into the Marines. I’d always wanted to because my dad was a Marine.”

  He swallowed a painful knot. “As a Marine, I didn’t hesitate to kill people, Marjorie.”

  “Neither did my grandfather, my father, my uncle, and my brothers.” She swallowed. “Neither will I when the MacDougalls come. ‘Tis the way of a warrior.”

  “But—”

  “Have ye ever raised yer hand to a woman or a child?”

  “No.”

  “Then ye dinna have a thing in common with him.”

  Konnor exhaled shakily. Her words seeped through him like a cool balm on a burn wound.

  “Disgusted by my actions and afraid I’d finish him, I left the house,” Konnor said, “He was alive when I left. I later found out that he made it to his car and tried to drive—probably to a hospital. But on his way there, another car hit him, and he died.” His gut churned. “Had I not beaten him, or had I taken him to the hospital, he might be alive today.”

  The words and the guilt burned his gut like acid.

  “I believe ‘tis destiny that brought us together,” she said. “We share this darkness, this experience with violence. Mayhap because of your care for an abused woman, ye’re the first man I’ve felt safe with besides my brothers.”

  She lay her hand on his chest, and Konnor’s heart thumped against it. Did she think of him as a brother? His shoulders dropped with disappointment. He wanted her to think of him as a man. But she felt safe with him. That mattered more.

  “Ye make me want to have a normal life.” She stepped closer so that their hips and stomachs touched. Konnor sank into the depths of her slanted eyes. In the twilight, they were the color of a forest after the rain, and he lost his breath, mesmerized by their magic and mystery.

  “Ye make me want to love someone,” she whispered. “To kiss someone.”

  Konnor’s blood buzzed. “Do you want to kiss me?”

  She exhaled. “Aye. Verra much.”

  Konnor lifted his hand and cupped her warm, smooth jaw. “I’ve wanted to do this from the first moment I saw you.”

  Her eyes sparkled with excitement, anticipation, and desire.

  Slowly, to give her the chance to jump back if she changed her mind, he leaned towards her without breaking eye contact. Then gently, he covered her lips with his.

  They met him with such softness he thought he would lose his mind. She smelled like a field of wild flowers, of wind and of freedom. He touched her lips softly, then again and again. The silk of her warm mouth and her scent made his head spin and his blood boil.

  She gave a barely
audible sweet moan.

  Damn it.

  He wrapped his arms around her, bringing her closer, and pressing his lips against hers harder. She didn’t run away. In fact, she wrapped her arms around his neck. He stroked her lips with his tongue, and she parted them.

  With a groan, he dipped his tongue into the depths of her mouth to meet her tongue and lick it, play with it. She tasted like magic, like the uisge and her own sweetness.

  She responded as he teased her. But then suddenly, she stepped away, leaving him empty-handed with coldness spreading in his core.

  Chapter 19

  Marjorie panted. Her heart beat like an army of Celtic drums. Her cheeks flamed with heat, and her breasts ached with longing. A slight warm breeze cooled her cheek, and she inhaled the air hungrily, hoping it would calm her down.

  What was this witchcraft? Could a kiss cause this?

  Aye, it could. And the worst was, she wanted more. Where was the fear she’d expected? There was only curiosity now, wonder, hunger.

  “Too much?” Konnor said.

  His eyes dark with the mixture of desire and worry, his body stiff with helplessness. He looked like he wanted to step towards her and take her into his arms, but he restrained himself.

  “I…” She breathed out. “I dinna ken. Aye, too much, but also nae enough.”

  “Have you not been kissed before?” Konnor said.

  “Nae like this.” She turned and leaned her back against the merlon. “Before Dunollie, I had two kisses, and neither resembled anything like this. And then, Alasdair…”

  His kisses had left blood. His touch left bruises. Konnor’s brought healing and wonder and magic.

  He stood by her side so that his shoulder connected with hers. Even through her tunic, she felt that he emanated heat like a furnace—or maybe it was her. The touch caused a wave of tingles to race through her arm. His lovely scent in her nose, his deep voice caressing her… She was losing her cool, and she flattened her palm against the stone merlon to calm herself down.