The Highland Laird's Bride

She felt the weight of her loss rise and settle in her chest. Her father was dead. It wasn’t the English knight who had killed him who bore the full brunt of her wrath. No, the man she hated above all had better be breaking his camp or she’d throw the first bucket of debris today.

‘You rise late again.’

Lioslath stopped to face Aindreas, the hunter’s son. As usual, Aindreas’s appearance was marred by his thickly tangled brown hair.

‘Does it matter?’ she retorted. But it mattered to her; she had never woken late in her life.

‘You’re rising later and sleeping in the keep. You’re becoming a lady of leisure. Already the men and I cleared the debris into buckets. They are ready to throw on command. I also checked and reinforced the snares in the back, and re-limed the branches to catch the birds.’

She snorted in derision, but she envied him his duties. They had given him a purpose. She felt lost in here. ‘You had to wake up early to do the snares because you’ve never been good at them.’

‘I’ve improved since we were five, and since you sleep late I’ll be a sight better than you the next time we hunt.’

Hunting. It was what she lived for. In her childhood, Aindreas’s father, Niall, had been the chief hunter for the clan. When Lioslath’s father had remarried, her stepmother had prohibited her from staying and then sleeping in the keep. She’d followed Niall like a shadow until he showed her his skills. Aindreas was only a year older and they had become like siblings.

‘You have been making snares for years. You couldn’t possibly become better than me in only a few weeks,’ she said. ‘You’d have a better chance using a handful of your own tangled hair.’

Aindreas cocked a brow. ‘The lasses have nae trouble with my hair.’

She saw the curve to his lips that displayed the familiar dimple. The one that made all the Fergusson lasses sigh with want.

‘That’s because they didn’t have to listen to your mother lament about you never combing it.’

Those years in childhood at the hunter’s cottage had been the most precious to her. It had been a chance to be around a family, since she didn’t have one of her own.

Except...she did have a family now. Maybe not her father or mother, but her half-brothers and half-sister. They were here.

‘The whelps have already risen,’ Aindreas said, seeming to know her thoughts. If her brothers and sister had risen, she had more pressing concerns.

‘Have they been fed?’ she asked, looking around her.

‘Do you truly care?’

‘Aye, if someone else looks after them, I doona have to.’ She gave him a pointed glare. ‘Your continual calling them puppies won’t make me tend and care for them.’

He shook his head. ‘They think matters are different now.’

She didn’t want to think of her father’s death or what that meant to her younger half-sister, Fyfa, and two half-brothers, Eoin and Gillean. She was still adjusting to being trapped inside the keep with them when, for her entire life, they’d been kept separated. ‘Even if matters are different, what would I do with them? They’re...idle.’

‘They’re not idle. They play.’

‘What would I know of play? Other than it accomplishes nothing.’

‘Just because you weren’t given the chance—’ Aindreas’s eyes softened. ‘You wouldn’t have to do anything with them. Simply be their sister.’

She didn’t know how to play or be a sister because she’d never had a childhood. So how could she understand theirs?

‘You can’t avoid them forever, Lioslath.’

‘I’m not avoiding them.’ It was impossible to. They were always underfoot, playing, laughing. Her clan’s tentative smiles and wary looks continued to startle her. Her siblings’ open smiles and constant chatter terrified her. ‘Will you take them today?’

‘You know I will.’

‘Just keep them away from the platform.’ She didn’t care how he took her words.

‘Caring if they get hurt? You are becoming soft.’

‘Nae,’ she said, wondering if that was why she said it. ‘I doona need the annoyance of tending injuries on top of everything else I have to do today.’

‘What is it you’re doing today?’

Turning away, she said over her shoulder, ‘Saying goodbye to the Colquhouns.’

She heard the camp outside before she reached the steps. Grabbing a bucket, she listened as icy frustration and hot anger coursed in opposing rivulets inside her body. Bram wasn’t breaking camp. Already knowing which unstable steps to avoid, she bounded up the stairs. Before she reached the top, she heard his laughter and gave a feral grin. Bram made such an easy target.

Chapter Three

Bram found Lioslath in the kitchens. It was night and darkness blanketed every crevice of the long spaces surrounding them. Soot covering her hands and face, Lioslath slept curled up near a dying fire with that wolf next to her. Like this, she looked soft, inviting—

The dog suddenly growled and Lioslath woke with a start. Her hand reached out, but there was nothing there. If she were a man, he’d have thought she was reaching for a weapon.

The dog’s ears twitched as if to flatten them and Bram pulled himself back. The dog was only a reminder of their differences, of why he was here.

‘You didn’t open the gates,’ he said, more gently than he meant. Her softness was now gone, but his body hadn’t caught up with his thoughts. How she barred him, denied him again, when she should be grateful he showed up at all.

He had not expected Lioslath to open the gates without a pretence of a fight. After all, it would make no sense if she were to open the gates after denying them access for so long. When she threw the bucket of debris and the others did the same, he thought it all for show.

Which was why he controlled his anger when some of it hit his foot. But the entire day came and went, and he didn’t see her again.

‘Yet, you came anyway,’ she retorted.

Wobbling, she stood. Like this, the fire’s light illuminated what he hadn’t seen before: a black mole, small and just above her upper lip. It was placed as if a mischievous faery kissed such perfection. He knew if he were such a faery, there would be others...

‘What can I do to make you unwelcome?’ she said.

Obstinate. Their encounter last night had been brief, but he thought he’d controlled the situation. After all, Lioslath was a beautiful woman and his flattering words had always been enough in the past, but it didn’t seem enough for her. Maybe flirting wouldn’t work with her. Difficult, when her beauty affected him.

No. More than that. It was her fierceness at the platform, her throwing the debris, her contemplative observing of them. All of it affected him. But if his flattery wouldn’t work, there were other methods of persuasion.

She took his gifts by the tunnel and he saw the state of the clan and their lands. She needed his supplies and manpower, even if she pretended she didn’t.

The current level of desperation should be enough for him to be accepted over the winter.

‘Those gates are barred, but I can get inside,’ he said. ‘This is nae a real siege and it is time to end it.’

‘I never told you to come. I held a dagger to you and told you to leave.’

Her amusing threat of last night. At the time he thought it a jest. Now he was beginning to think she meant it. It was still laughable, but for other reasons.

‘I may be unwelcome,’ he said, ‘but my supplies are not.’

‘You stay because of the gifts?’ she retorted. ‘You could have left them and gone. I doona even know why you’re here.’

‘I sent you a missive. When your father died, I would come with help.’

‘Only because you feel guilty for the crimes you committed here!’

‘I committed nae crimes here. I forged an alliance.’

She pulled herself up, then wavered before she widened her stance to gain her balance. He looked at her feet. There was nothing that tripped her.

‘You bribed this clan, married my father to your sister, who at the first opportunity didn’t honour her vows and ran off!’

‘Careful, Fergusson. There was nae bribe to this clan. I offered a marriage and alliance between your father and my sister Gaira. I offered a total of forty sheep—twenty immediately, and twenty more after one year. It was a profitable and a stable alliance, and one which your father accepted.’

‘Which your sister didn’t honour! With nae possible reason, she ran away.’

He didn’t know how to answer this. Either way, it would not be good. Something about this woman’s father, Busby, frightened Gaira, but his sister had also been hurt when he forced her marriage. ‘It matters not why she ran,’ he said.

‘Of course it matters why she ran. If she hadn’t, my father wouldn’t have pursued her and wouldn’t have been murdered by an English knight.’

This conversation must be avoided. He hadn’t lied in the missive he sent to her, but he’d skirted the truth regarding how her father died and by whose hand. He knew exactly who murdered her father and he wasn’t an ordinary knight. He was also no longer precisely English. No, Robert of Dent, the famed Black Robert and King Edward’s favoured knight, wasn’t dead at all, but married to Gaira, and living in secret on Colquhoun land.

‘My sister ran from him,’ Bram said. ‘I didn’t order him to follow her.’

‘Nae, you merely threatened to take the sheep and bring the force of Clan Colquhoun down on his head if he didn’t find her.’

He hadn’t known how else to keep Gaira, his only surviving sister, safe. When Bram made the alliance with Busby, he had concerns only for his own clan, for his own selfish desire to marry. When he made the alliance, the English massacres at Berwick and Doonhill hadn’t yet occurred. The war against England hadn’t been lost at Dunbar. How was he, how was anyone, to guess that the Scotland of only months ago would be so changed?

If he’d known, he would have kept his family close to him. He would have spent the months preparing and fortifying his keep. He would have closed the gates and locked them all safely inside.

Instead, he forced a temporary marriage between Gaira and Laird Fergusson. Under normal politics it would have been astute. It brought strength for his clan by having someone in the south and Gaira would be nearer to their youngest sister, Irvette.

Irvette, the youngest and sweetest of them all, who married a man she loved. Irvette, who was murdered by the English at Doonhill.

Since April, his family had seen too much danger, suffered too much loss. And worst of all, he could have avoided most of it.

Now he needed to right these wrongs with this clan, but he could not be gentle any longer. Her stubbornness aside, he was laird and knew what was at stake. He wouldn’t fail his clan and family again, and he fully intended for his new plan to work.

‘What happened to those sheep, Lioslath? I didn’t take them and I see scarce livestock on your land.’

‘Why does it matter to you?’

He felt a roiling frustration and fought to keep his patience. He would not give up his power. ‘I wrote to you. I told you that Gaira returned to Colquhoun land. I explained I’d come here to make amends.’

‘But you’re late.’

‘Dunbar occurred. I am late because our country went to war!’

‘Aye, but that doesn’t explain why you were late. Everyone knows you didn’t participate in Dunbar.’

No, he hadn’t participated in that fateful battle against the English last April. Scotsmen had been slaughtered; the ones who survived hid in Ettrick Forest. His brother Malcolm was one of the survivors, but he carried a terrible wound.

Bram could tell no one why he hadn’t participated in Dunbar. He made his choice not against his country, but for his country. King John Balliol himself ordered Bram not to participate, to stay on Colquhoun land and receive two messages. The messages, he had been told, would protect Scotland.

Bram stayed, had advised his family and clan to stay, but he never received two messages. Balliol was defeated at Dunbar and was now being held at the Tower of London. It was the English King Edward who ruled over Scotland now.

If Balliol expected Bram to protect Scotland, he was falling far short.

Then, his brothers, Malcolm and Caird, arrived whilst Bram waited for Lioslath to open the gates. The messages that were supposed to have come to the Colquhoun clan became clear. They were not actual messages, but a dagger and the legendary Jewel of Kings.

Though the jewel was safely in Malcolm’s hands, he now fled to Clan Buchanan land to secure the dagger. He took a spare horse to make the journey faster for him. Bram was all too aware it might not be fast enough. As long as the jewel remained in the open, his brother, his clan, were in terrible danger.

For now Bram must stay on Fergusson land for the winter and await news about the jewel. Come the spring, he would know whether he was to ride north to the safety of his land, or south and commit treason with Balliol in the Tower of London. Either way, King Edward would find him then.

‘It matters not whether I was at Dunbar. It delayed my arrival,’ he continued. ‘But I’m here now.’

‘And I want you to leave.’ She waved her hand towards the door and he knew he didn’t imagine her unbalance.

‘What is wrong with you?’

A hesitation. ‘Nothing that your absence wouldn’t cure.’

She lied. There were dark circles under her bright eyes, the natural angle of her cheekbones sharply exposed because of the hollows of her cheeks.

‘I’ve given you food,’ he said.

‘I took your food.’

He narrowed his eyes. ‘But you haven’t eaten it.’

‘What is it to you what happens to it?’

‘Have the others eaten?’

‘Again, I ask, what is it to you what happens to it?’

Too much. He never would have been waiting outside the gates if he thought anyone inside was suffering. ‘Answer me.’

She crossed her arms around her midriff, which outlined the smallness of her frame and...her ribs?

He cursed. ‘You little fool, you haven’t eaten.’

‘Fool? Better a fool than what you’ve become. You didn’t participate at Dunbar. You’re a traitor. So, too, what of your acts for this clan? You probably knew your sister would run away and endanger my father!’

Traitor. He was no traitor, but he’d have to get used to being called one.

‘I could not prevent your father’s death,’ he said instead.

‘I’ll never believe you! Without him, without his protection, just look at what has happened here!’

‘What do you mean what has happened here?’

He knew it. Something worse than poor management had caused the damage here. For the first few days, he questioned the villagers, but they ignored him and his clansmen. So he observed them instead. Their homes were in tatters; the crops were burned. It was too early for the crops to be burned. He thought...he hoped...they harvested early. That the winter supplies of food were locked safely inside the keep. But Lioslath stole food from him and she looked half-starved. She had no food inside the keep. There could be no food anywhere.

This year, he committed more wrongs than he could ever mend. Irvette had died and he’d broken his trust with his sister Gaira. He was committing treason, but not because he hadn’t fought at Dunbar, as Lioslath or any of his fellow countryman believed. Still, he paid the shaming price of it. Now, with the jewel in their hands, his family held another secret and this was far more dangerous than he, than any clan, than a king, could prepare for.

Whilst Malcolm carried the jewel with him, the thought that Bram wasn’t there to protect him weighed heavily on him. And that didn’t end the list of his wrongs.

Although he hadn’t killed Lioslath’s father, Busby would be alive if they hadn’t made their alliance. He might not be able to bring her father back, but he could help this clan prepare for winter. He bore too many wrongs. For once, he would make amends and he would do that here with this clan.

‘Answer me,’ he bit out. He wouldn’t be able to hold back his anger much longer, and if he did, he’d lose control entirely. He never lost control in negotiations.

Something seemed to snap in her as well. ‘Answer you? The all-mighty laird wants me...depends on me...to answer him. You doona deserve my answers.’ Swaying, she unfurled her arms and clenched her fists.

‘You’re not dependable, you doona honour your vows. You want to make amends? You’re too late to make amends!’

She raised her fist. Her intent clear. She didn’t have a dagger, but she would hurt him. She took two steps before her eyes suddenly closed, her legs crumpled beneath her and he rushed to catch her fall.

Chapter Four

Jostled, and held too tightly, Lioslath woke. With long strides Bram carried her through the Hall.

He was too close. She noticed the shades of red in his hair, the blonde tips of his eyelashes. She could smell the scent of leather, of outdoors...of him. It was almost as jarring as him carrying her.

‘Put me down.’

‘Nae, you little fool. How long have you been like this? How long did you think you would last?’

Bram cradled her against him as if she was no more than a babe. She shouldn’t have felt him through the layers of clothing, but she did. She felt the hard planes of his chest, and the grace and strength of his legs. His arms had no more give than the rest of him, and yet he held her gently.

She couldn’t remember if she had ever been carried or held like this. He was Laird Colquhoun and his holding her should have felt uninvited and unwelcome. At the very least it should have felt foreign. Instead, he felt...warm.

Fighting the warmth, she turned her head and saw the light through the Hall’s doors. A spike of fear woke her up. ‘Put me down,’ she ordered again.

The keep would wake soon. She didn’t need her two brothers seeing her. At six and five, they would ask too many questions. Her sister, Fyfa, at eight, would think it romantic. Lioslath knew that would be worse.

Brows drawn, Bram didn’t look at her, but she felt the flexing of his fingers against her arm and leg. ‘Not until we reach your bedroom.’

She was too weak to fight him, but she wasn’t too weak to hold herself rigidly. She felt the tightening of his hold and saw his frown, though he ignored her tiny defiance. When he laid her on the bed, she sat up, and his frown deepened.

‘Stay there.’

She wouldn’t take his orders. ‘This is ridiculous.’

‘You fainted.’

Forget the room or her siblings, her fainting was the most embarrassing bit of all of this. Worse, because an enemy had seen it and carried her. ‘I didn’t faint—’

He quirked an eyebrow.

‘Or if I did, it’s over with. It’s daylight. The keep will wake soon.’ Her eyes darted around.

‘Your dog stayed in the kitchens. Shouldn’t he be protecting you?’

‘As if you were a threat?’ How did he know she wanted Dog and why wasn’t Dog protecting her? The edges of her vision wavered and she put a hand to her head. ‘You need to leave or you’ll be discovered.’

‘We’re in your room. I’ll take the tunnel.’

By now the platform by the gates would be manned. ‘Someone will see you.’

He tilted his head, studying her. ‘Worried for me?’

Looming over her, he was everything arrogant and domineering. His red hair waved loose to his shoulders, but it didn’t hide the broadness of his jaw or his eyes, which were grey, like the colour of the sky before a storm broke. His sun-browned skin highlighted the soft dusty colour of his lips. His jaw was broad and square. His nose looked as though it had been broken and straightened many times, but it didn’t disfigure his face. In fact, she found this part of him...interesting. It gave him a certain fierceness she wasn’t expecting of the weak-kneed Colquhouns.

Like this, Bram looked like the warrior he was reputed to be.

She felt a fluttering in her stomach and her skin flushed. But was it from hunger or fear? It couldn’t be fear. Her father had been a giant of a man and had ruled the keep with intimidation and punishments. When he loomed over her, never once had she felt this sort of helpless breathlessness before. It must be from hunger.

Bram shook his head. ‘Not worried for me. You’re worried for your tunnel. Why is there a tunnel and room beneath your bedroom?’

He didn’t need to know about the tunnel, or the empty storage room beneath. He didn’t need to know this wasn’t her bedroom. All he needed to know was—

The door burst open. Bram, ready to fight, leapt in front of the bed.

Two muddy boys were chased into the room by an older girl. Lioslath’s gasps of surprise and anger were drowned by the girl’s shrieking. Gleeful, the boys taunted the girl until they were all fully around the bed. Just as the boys swerved to run out again, they spied Bram.

‘The giant outside the gates!’ the littler boy cried, dashing out of the room.

Bram lunged for the door to trap the other two inside, then turned to face his captives.

Curiously, the children hadn’t run to Lioslath for protection. Instead, they stood on the other side of the bed, their hands locked together.

Unlike the boys, the girl’s appearance was immaculate. Her hair was freshly brushed and a rudimentary ornament held back tiny plaits around her face. Her dress was thin, overly mended and far too short for her, but it was clean. As was the girl herself, except for one long drip of mud from her left cheek that stretched down and along her gown.

The boy standing next to her looked as though he’d emerged from a mud puddle; the girl looked as though she’d never seen a mud puddle.

There were now witnesses to his being inside the keep. He didn’t know who they were, but he suspected.

Lioslath stood when he closed the door. She looked as though she’d never seen the children before, but there was no mistaking their similarities. The children had brown hair with golden highlights, but their eyes were Lioslath’s.

She waved to the children. ‘Leave now!’

‘I think it’s too late for that.’ Bram heard footsteps. This would not go well.

‘Are you smiling?’ she choked out.

Bram stepped aside before a man stormed into the room with the littler boy at his heels. When the man saw Bram, he brandished his axe.

‘Aindreas!’ Lioslath cried.

‘Get away from her!’ Aindreas bit out.

Lioslath’s embarrassment over fainting was now swamped by frustration and fury and a helplessness she’d never felt before that made it all worse. Too late she realised that when Bram stepped away from the door, he’d stepped towards her. It only reinforced the damage done.

She felt like kicking Bram, shouting at Aindreas and shoving the children out the door, but she could do none of it. She was trapped.

‘Are you harmed?’ Aindreas kept his eyes on Bram.

‘Nae harmed—merely plagued.’

‘What is he doing here, Lioslath?’ Aindreas asked. ‘How did he get here?’

Neither question could she answer and already she saw the children’s comprehension that Bram was inside the keep, though the gates were closed. ‘It’s not as it seems,’ she said.

‘Not as it seems!’ Aindreas almost roared. ‘He’s in your—’

‘The children!’ she interrupted.

Aindreas clenched his jaw as his eyes, warning of retribution, returned to Bram. ‘Did you harm any?’

‘Nae harm and I came alone,’ Bram said calmly, yet there was no mistaking the silent challenge in his words. Lioslath and Aindreas had observed Bram training his men. He was daunting from afar, now, up close, he was formidable.

‘Why are you here?’ Aindreas said.

‘That is between Lioslath and me,’ Bram said.

‘Not while I have breath in my body, Colquhoun. You are leaving. Now.’

‘Why would I do that?’ Bram said.

Aindreas raised the axe again, his stance widening. He was skilled in axe throwing, but Bram stood too near to Lioslath and her siblings were here. He couldn’t throw it and he couldn’t attack. They all knew it, but Aindreas looked as though he was beyond caring.