Page 8 of A Virgin for the Vicious Highlander (Falling for Highland Villains #4)

CHAPTER 8

“Well, ye’re twice as jolly this mornin’,” Lennox remarked with a sly grin, riding alongside Murdoch on the treacherous roads.

The snow had not stopped, nor did it show any sign of ceasing, falling in silent petals from the bruised clouds that cast a sepia hue over their isolated corner of Scotland. The roads and pathways down from the castle to the nearest villages had been swallowed up by the snow, the horses’ hooves the first prints in the pristine white blanket.

“Aye, and what do ye have to be so constantly ‘jolly’ about?” Murdoch snarled, though even he could admit he was in a fouler temper than usual.

Lennox sighed, sweeping a hand out. “It’s a beautiful mornin’. Ye cannae get better than this crisp air. We’re the first souls to make a mark in this snow. We’ve good food and warm fires at the castle to return to. What is there nae to be jolly about?”

Murdoch fixed his grim gaze on the near horizon, refusing to consider the idea of finding merriment in such trivial things. As far as he was concerned, it was cold, the snow was going to cause nothing but trouble—the snow had already caused trouble by bringing Cecilia to his doors—and his mother had suggested they host a cèilidh, which was the very last thing he wanted in his castle.

“I reckon there’s somethin’ wrong with ye,” he muttered, cursing as his stallion lost his footing for a moment, the snow concealing ditches and divots in the road beneath it.

Lennox chuckled. “And I reckon ye ought to be a little more like me. Ye never ken, ye might like it.”

Murdoch did not deign to respond to that, riding the rest of the way to the nearest village in silence as thick as the snowy world around him.

Arriving at the village of Strathnock, the silence grew even thicker. Those who had dared to emerge from their stone cottages and wooden homes froze like ice sculptures at the sight of their Laird, while children bundled in furs gasped and darted into the safety of their houses. Even the dogs were quiet, tucking their tails and whimpering.

Just one man dared to approach—the leader of the village. He bowed low, his breath pluming faster in the air as he raised his gaze.

“M’Laird, this is a surprise,” he said. “Ye’re welcome, of course. Can I fetch ye anythin’ to warm yerself?”

Murdoch sat taller on his majestic stallion, the beast as sturdy and intimidating as any thoroughbred warhorse. He did not answer immediately, casting his eyes across the buildings, searching for any signs of damage or trouble.

“Is the village in need of aught?” he asked, at last.

The leader of the village shook his head. “Nay, M’Laird, though I thank ye for takin’ the time to visit us.” He paused. “I ken there’s a fallen tree on the road between here and Brannock. I was goin’ to send some men tomorrow to remove it.”

“Gather some men now,” Murdoch instructed.

The other man bowed his head, though Murdoch could tell that was not what he had hoped to hear. “Aye, M’Laird. At once.”

As he wandered off to summon enough men to remove the tree from the road, Murdoch and Lennox rode toward the far end of the village.

Murdoch ignored the stares of the villagers, well accustomed to their fear of him, while Lennox smiled and waved. A few bold children waved back, egged on by their friends and siblings, before their mothers rushed to usher them into the warmth of their homes.

“Do ye think they’ll ever forget what we were?” Lennox asked, a note of sadness in his voice, as the horses plodded out of the village to wait for the men.

Murdoch narrowed his eyes at him. “It shouldnae matter what we were. All that should matter is that I’m their Laird and ye’re me man-at-arms.”

“Aye, but that’s nae how they see us, is it?” Lennox pointed out, stretching his neck from side to side. “Our time away at sea still haunts them, even after all these years of bein’ firmly on land. Ye can see it in their eyes—they think we’re goin’ to rob and plunder their villages, steal their lasses, fire our cannons on their homes.”

“At least they dinnae look at us with disrespect,” Murdoch grunted, thinking of Cecilia and her brazen attitude.

What sort of woman wandered through an unfamiliar castle at night in nothing but a cloak and a shift, following a strange noise? Did she have no sense at all? What if that noise was an enemy clashing with Clan Moore soldiers? She would have walked straight into a fight, putting herself in a dangerous situation that his men would have had to save her from.

Foolish, reckless lass.

To make matters worse, she had trespassed on his private tower, on his private pastime, snatching away any of the peace it usually brought him. And, being unable to gain that peace, he had slept poorly, so his particularly foul mood was entirely her fault.

More than anything, he was annoyed that she had seen him at his work, uncertain how much she had witnessed. Had she seen the shape of the woman he had been chiseling out of the clay?

“If the villagers want to view us as the pirates that we once were, let them,” Murdoch grumbled.

He did not care as long as they showed a healthy fear of him—healthy enough that no one would dare to stand against him, for any reason.

Nae a single one of ye kens what true fear is. I pray ye never do.

For it was not just his years at sea that haunted him.

Hands like two blocks of ice, red and raw from sawing and dragging the tree out of the road, and from aiding several other villages with supplies and repairs, Murdoch felt lighter upon his return to Castle Moore. Exerting himself had given him the peace that he had not been able to feel last night because of Cecilia’s interruption.

Hard work had always given him a sense of calm, from boyhood to that very moment. Sometimes, hauling something heavy or swinging a sword in the training yard or running until he could run no more were the only things he could rely on in moments of great strain or upheaval.

“If I didnae ken ye better, I’d say ye were finally jolly,” Lennox teased, yawning in his saddle.

Murdoch shot him a dark look. “The day ye see me any sort of merry is the day ye can summon as many priests as ye can to this place, because the devil has taken hold of me.”

“Ye dinnae feel at all like smilin’ when ye see yer pretty betrothed wanderin’ around?” Lennox asked.

Murdoch’s hackles rose, his eyes searching his man-at-arms’ face. “What do ye mean by wanderin’?”

“I didnae mean anythin’. She’s a guest. She wanders. I saw her just this mornin’, pretendin’ she wasnae as lost as a chicken in a duck pond,” Lennox replied, a puzzled expression on his face. “Och, she’s gotten under yer skin, has she nae? I’d bet me life on it.”

“Then ye mustnae put much value on yer life,” Murdoch retorted. “And if ye see her lost again, dinnae play foolish games—tell her where she ought to go. I dinnae want her endin’ up in places she shouldnae be.”

He had half a mind to scold Lennox for not being thorough enough, for it should not have been possible for anyone—much less a novitiate who did not know the castle—to be able to find him up in his tower.

But to do that might mean confirming Lennox’s assumption that Cecilia had gotten under his skin, when that could not have been further from the truth. That woman had not gotten under his skin— no one was capable of doing that.

Instead, Murdoch squeezed his thighs and urged his stallion into a gallop. The horse gave an excited snort and stretched into an elegant run, kicking up great plumes of snow, leaving Lennox in a spray of icy granules. It was not often that Murdoch gave his stallion its head, and the beast was more than seizing the opportunity.

He made it to the gates of Castle Moore, wind-whipped and breathless with something akin to exhilaration, reminding himself that he ought to do that more often. And if he had been prone to smiling, he knew that might have been one of those moments, feeling as if nothing could dampen his mood.

“Murdoch! Oh, thank goodness!” his mother’s voice echoed across the inner courtyard, drawing his attention.

Aileen hurried over with Cecilia’s aunt at her side, followed by six of the castle’s best guards, who looked as pale and troubled as her.

It took a great deal to fluster Murdoch’s finest men, and the sight of their concern troubled him more than that of his mother.

“What’s wrong?” he demanded to know, not bothering to get down from his horse.

Is it MacDunn? Has he attacked? Has someone breached our walls? Did Cecilia let them in?

He still had not quite abandoned the notion that Cecilia was a spy, despite it being a rather outlandish, unlikely theory. But if he knew one thing about Laird MacDunn, it was that he was crafty, always several steps ahead of anyone and everyone who sought to bring him down.

“It’s me niece, M’Laird,” Mairie said, breathless, her hand curled around her cross.

Aileen nodded, equally breathless and red in the face. “We’ve been searchin’ all over for her. A maid went to ask if she wanted luncheon, but she wasnae in her chambers.”

“And then another servant said that he saw her wanderin’ through the gardens,” Mairie continued as if they were part of a double act. “But she wasnae there either.”

“So, we started searchin’,” Aileen picked up, “and we heard from a couple of guards who were up on the battlements that they saw a lass head out a few hours ago. Nae long after ye left, in truth. They didnae ken who it was, so they didnae think to stop her.”

Mairie was close to tears. “A lad on a wagon just came up to the gates nae twenty minutes ago—said he saw her on the road. He asked if she wanted help, but she told him that she was lookin’ for somethin’.”

“Aye, that she’d heard cries and was goin’ after whatever it was that needed help,” Aileen added. “We were just gatherin’ a search party to head after her. Och, Murdoch, she wasnae wearin’ a warm cloak, just the one she arrived in—she’ll freeze to death out there.”

Murdoch’s lip twitched, though he could not tell if he was annoyed with Cecilia or himself. “Stay here, all of ye. I’m nae wastin’ good men when I can do it meself.”

He turned his stallion around before anyone could utter a word of protest—certain that none of them would disobey his direct command, not even Mairie—and took off in search of the missing nun.

Evidently, Cecilia had a keen ear, for she had found him with relative ease last night. But he did not yet know if he believed the tale of hearing cries, or if, perhaps, she had gone to meet someone else in the woodland that stood proud at the bottom of a shallow slope, a short ride off the main road.

“Where are ye headed, M’Laird?” Lennox called, catching up to him.

“To find that infuriatin’, reckless wee lass,” Murdoch replied savagely. “Ye ride on back to the castle. Ensure nay one leaves until I return. Och, and find the guards who saw her leavin’ the castle. I want ‘em punished for this.”

Lennox hesitated. “Yer betrothed is missin’?”

“ Stop callin’ her that!” Murdoch snapped. “Do as ye’re told, or else I’ll see to it that ye’re punished alongside those useless guards.”

Lennox dipped his head. “Aye, M’Laird. I’ll see to it.”

He rode off as swiftly as his horse would carry him, heading back up the winding road to the castle gates, following the prints that Murdoch and his stallion had left in their wake.

Meanwhile, Murdoch veered off the path, slowing his horse’s pace, scanning the dense snow for Cecilia’s footprints. The freshly fallen snow had not concealed them yet, the edges glittering in the low light, guiding him to wherever she was going.

What were ye thinkin’? Are ye so careless about yer life that ye’d… keep wanderin’ where ye shouldnae?

He thought back to the story she had told him about her life, how she had been in the convent since she was ten years old. He had thought her strangely worldly, behaving in a way one would not expect from a novitiate or a nun, but there were also things about her that suggested an overwhelming naivety. An innocence that would surely see her dead if she was not more careful.

It was I who ventured away from the castle, though. It was I who needed to be elsewhere because I couldnae keep me temper in check.

If he had been better able to control his mind and body, using his discipline instead of relying on his sculpting for peace, he would have been there to stop her. He would not be riding after her now, uncertain what he might find. Or who he might find her with.

He put a hand on the hilt of his sword as he approached the tree line and ventured into the silence of the forest, peppered here and there by the coo of roosting doves and the chirrup of robins picking fat red berries from the holly trees.

“Curse ye, lass,” he muttered, squinting his eyes in the gloom to try and pick up her trail.

Much of the snow could not pierce the canopy formed by fir trees and yew trees, her footprints less defined, dispersed by the prints of other creatures and concealed in places by the dense underbrush. But he was as skilled a tracker as he was a pirate, and he had been a remarkably talented pirate.

He followed her faint footprints deeper into the woods, noting where moss had been flattened and twigs had snapped underfoot, listening for any movement. He also listened for voices, his hand never leaving the hilt of his broadsword.

What seemed like both an eternity and no time at all passed by in that otherworldly place, the scent of the fir trees earthy and familiar in his nose, mingling with the rot of fallen leaves and the crisp, inexplicable perfume of snow.

At last, he came to a small glade, thick with snow. Cecilia’s footprints cut in a perfect arc across the clear circle, and as his eyes followed the tracks, he found her.

She was huddled in the hollow of a yew tree, her knees pressed to her chest, her cloak wrapped around her. Murdoch could hear her teeth chattering from where he was, but that was not the only sound that reached his keen ears. There was a softer, more mournful sound. A whimper that did not sound human.

Murdoch dismounted his stallion and approached with caution. It did not appear that Cecilia had seen him yet, and he did not want to frighten her. Not at that moment, at least.

His footprints joined hers in the snow… and he noticed a third set of prints for the first time. Far, far smaller, and certainly not human. His eyes knew that track all too well, which was perhaps why he had not paid attention to it before, assuming it was just another forest creature going about its daily business—they belonged to a very small dog.

“M’Laird!” Cecilia gasped, seeing him at last.

At the same moment, a little furry head poked out of her cloak. Strange eyes peered at him—one gray, one brown—while triangular ears twitched this way and that, listening intently.

As Murdoch took a step closer, the puppy mustered all of its courage and started barking at him, its growl not loud enough to scare a butterfly off a flower, much less a grown laird about to take a lass back to his castle.

“Do ye have any idea of the trouble ye’ve caused?” Murdoch said coldly, addressing both the dog and Cecilia.

What he did not show—what he would never show—was his relief.