Page 8 of Devil’s Highlander (Clan MacAlpin #1)

He felt guilty, and it warmed his words. “It’s not that I’m angry, Ree.” He sighed. He’d never been able to stay angry with her anyhow. Like it or not, they were traveling to Aberdeen together, and he might as well make the best of it. Inhaling deeply, he announced, “We’ll need a plan.”

“A plan?” It was Marjorie’s voice again, the voice he knew, straightforward and without hesitation.

He hadn’t realized his shoulders had tensed until he felt them unclench just then. “Aye, if we’re to search for the boy, we’ll need a plan. We’re up the coast to Aberdeen, and to your uncle’s by dusk. We’ll take a turn around the quay tomorrow, at first light.”

She nodded and stilled her mare for him to catch up.

Cormac felt a fraction lighter inside. Empathy was too painful, but this planning, this he could do. He was in it now, and if he was going to do a thing, there was no sense in not doing it right. His words came more easily. “I’ll need to know about the boy. You’d said he’s a wee lad, just five?”

“Aye.” Her voice cracked. She cleared it and started again. “He didn’t know exactly, but he thought five. I’d say not more than six.”

“What’s he look like, then?” He braced himself. He would hear her response and parse it as though devising a military campaign. He’d not let himself imagine this boy too vividly. This boy who would never be found.

“He’s a wee rascal.”

Cormac heard the smile in her voice and kept his eyes trained on the path ahead. He gathered his nerves. He’d not let himself grow attached to the thought of a missing child. And more even than that, he’d not allow concerns for Marjorie to penetrate his defenses.

“He’s a little ginger-haired boy,” she continued, warming to the topic. “Smaller than the others. With freckles, and a pointing chin, and mischief to spare. From the start, he seemed to me a fey creature.”

It was clear she loved the boy. It suddenly struck him how much she’d enjoy raising a child of her own. He wondered why she hadn’t yet married.

And he realized he was oddly glad she hadn’t.

Deep down it pleased him that there was someone out there who’d turned to him for help.

More so, that it’d been Ree who had. The thought that she might’ve married, might now be relying on another man for support, sent a plume of instinctive, protective anger snaking through his belly.

He let the sensation hang briefly before pushing it away. It’d do no good to dwell on such things.

“And you’re certain he wouldn’t simply have wandered off?”

“I’m certain of it,” she said with a steadiness that made him feel a strange wash of pride.

“Evening was his favorite time of the day. Supper at Saint Machar isn’t a grand affair, by any means.

But there’s a pack of them, the youngest boys, who play in the evenings.

Such grand stories they enact for themselves.

Davie’s favorite is to relive tales of the Campbell, just as we did. Remember?”

“Aye,” he said quietly, feeling a small crack in his heart. Of course he remembered. It’d been his favorite thing as well.

Cormac’s expression softened almost imperceptibly, and Marjorie swelled at the sight.

She let herself relive memories of Davie.

“They’ll play at the same stories for days,” she said, smiling wistfully.

“Such elaborate campaigns with pretend armaments and battle plans. Fights with the Marquis of Montrose are a particular favorite. Except when Davie has to play the Campbell. Och, but he hates being the Campbell, just like—”

Marjorie stopped herself short. She glanced at Cormac, but his face was shuttered. She grew cold. Just when he’d begun to open up, she went ahead and spoiled it by speaking without thought.

Such thoughtless chatter. She cringed.

“Just like Aidan,” he finished for her.

His comment took her aback. The look on his face was calm but not cold, and her relief was profound.

“Aidan always hated playing the Campbell, too,” he said.

He wasn’t smiling, but he was speaking, and it gave her courage to press him. “Do you ever think about him?”

He was quiet. The only sound was their horses’ hooves in the gravel of the drover’s road. Geese called overhead. If she listened for it, she could hear the hiss of the sea in the far distance.

Just when nerves once again began to chill her blood, he spoke. “There isn’t a day goes by that I don’t think about my brother.”

“Of course,” she said quietly. Such an understatement. Of course he’d think of Aidan. Every day. But did he blame her for it? He’d endured such pain. His whole family, such pain. She blamed herself. He must damn her as well.

But would he speak of it? Never. He only stared, silent accusation in his eyes. She’d lived for thirteen years with the guilt, and she refused to keep it in a moment longer. It needed to erupt, here and now, to the surface. “I know it’s my fault.”

“It’s no’ your fault,” he said, his voice flat.

“Aye, it was my fault.” As she brought her darkest thoughts to light, she realized the words couldn’t come fast enough. So much time had passed; she needed desperately to talk about it. “I dared you boys to climb the chimney. You must blame me for it.”

“Ree . . .” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Ree, I can’t speak of this now. If you must talk, talk to me of the Aberdeen quays. If there were any ships newly docked, we must—”

“But I want to talk about this, Cormac.” She’d rather have his shouts of anger, of hatred, anything but his dreadful silences.

“No.”

He halted his horse, and she fumbled to bring her mount to a stop. She turned in the saddle to find his eyes flat and steady on her.

“I agreed to come help you,” he said. “And that is all I agreed to.”

His brooding hurt her, and now it was beginning to anger her as well. She would hear him give voice to his accusations, hear his sharp words, if she had to provoke them herself. “We have to talk about this.”

He merely looked at her blankly, and her fury erupted. Marjorie swung off her horse and stalked to him. She felt the words begin to boil from her and did nothing to stop them.

“We have to talk about this, but instead you just glare at me. You’re like a silent, glowering man of .

. . of stone . All these years!” She slapped his horse’s belly just behind Cormac’s calf, and the animal skittered beneath him.

He swung off and stared, standing still as granite before her, silent as stone .

It made her want to rave. “All these years and never a word from you. I was left to wonder, for years . I felt like some . . . some pathetic spy, forced to skulk in the shadows, begging word of you from your sisters, gathering news from town.”

The memory of it brought her emotions to a fever pitch. But still he remained quiet, and his silence dragged words from her lips she’d never dreamed she’d utter. She knew she’d regret airing such secret, shameful thoughts, yet she couldn’t seem to stanch her outburst.

She stepped closer to Cormac, until they stood, both ramrod stiff, mere inches apart.

“It’s like I disappeared that day. You were my .

. . my . . .” She faltered at the sharp pain in her chest. He’d been her what ?

Her dearest friend forever? Her treasured knight and protector?

The boy she thought she’d wed? Her one true love? “You were my friend .”

He just looked at her mutely.

Tears stung her eyes. Such pique, such humiliation, such agony clenched her chest, bringing her breath in short gasps. She cast off what last scraps of dignity she had left. She slapped her hands at his chest. “Say it! Just say it, Cormac! Say you hate me. Tell me once and for all.”

His hands gripped her shoulders, and she realized she was trembling. Slowly she dared to look up, fearing what she’d see.

His eyes were intense, the blue subsumed by gray, like clouds over a stormy sea. “Ree,” he rasped, and something in her slackened. “Och, Ree, it’s not you I blame. Can’t you see? I bear the shame of that day.”

She shook her head sharply, for once speechless. It was her fault. Naughty, willful, sweet, darling Aidan kidnapped. It was unthinkable. And it had been all her fault. She trembled, shaking her head harder. Her fault.

“Hush, lass,” he whispered. He cupped a hand to her cheek, stilling her. Gently, Cormac touched his forehead to hers. “I could never hate you,” he said, his voice the barest whisper.

At his words, his touch, relief swamped her, melting something deep inside. Marjorie wilted toward him. Her breasts brushed against his hard chest, and relief changed like quicksilver into another thing entirely.

Desire shocked through her, sharp and hot. Her knees buckled, and she grabbed Cormac’s arms to steady herself. The feel of his hard muscles in her hands only intensified the feverish buzzing throughout her body.

Before, she’d needed to purge the words that had festered for so long inside.

But now she needed to release an entirely different demon, something that had haunted her for years.

She wanted Cormac. She’d always wanted him near, but now that she was a woman, that craving had transformed into something hotter, darker, more powerful.

She wanted to give herself to him, to make her body an offering, just for him.

The desire stole the air from her lungs.

His breath was warm on her face, his mouth a whisper away from hers.

Kiss him. She could kiss him. She slid her hands up his hard arms, stroked them up his neck.

A fantasy flashed in her mind: Cormac, naked above her.

What would it be like to lie beneath him?

She’d seen his chiseled arms; they’d flex as he held himself over her.

She’d kiss and bite that strongly corded neck. The thought made her gasp.

Abruptly, he tried to pull away.

She almost let him. But the residual fury and shame that had been simmering, battling deep within, caught into a rapid boil, making her feel as though her heart would roil from her chest. She grabbed his shoulders, flexing her fingers into rock of muscle and bone.

“Cormac,” she said, her voice a scold, a plea.

He seemed to stop breathing. He held himself stiffly before her. She’d surely scandalized him, but Marjorie felt beyond fear, beyond shame.

“Cormac,” she breathed. She felt his muscles slacken beneath her fingers. “Cormac, I want you . . . I want you to—”

“Hush.”

She swallowed the words she’d been ready to say, wondering if she’d later regret or be grateful for the discretion.

“Ree, lass, we . . .” He lowered his head, whispering into her hair. “ This . . . this cannot be.”

This . . . them. He was right. There was too much between them. Too much fault, too much blame. Much too horrifying a history. Cormac might say he didn’t hate her, but she couldn’t believe he didn’t bear some small kernel of contempt in a distant corner of his heart.

She could never have him. Because, on some level, never would he fully accept her.

Marjorie nodded mutely. She might never have him, but she could steal something of this moment instead. She tucked herself into him.

He froze for a moment, but then his arms folded around her as effortlessly as a puzzle piece falling into place. She shuddered in a deep breath.

He held her carefully, and she let her gaze drift to the distance. They were close to the coast, and she stared blindly at a faraway and fathomless gray sea diluting into gray skies above. She thought of Cormac’s eyes.

They stood there for a time, in silence.

Cormac spoke finally, and his low voice reverberated in her chest, soothing her. “Some mornings, when I set off in my boat, I wonder what it would be to go and not turn back. Just keep going. Sailing away, with Scotland at my back.”

He paused for a time, and she remained utterly silent, wanting the moment never to end.

“Do you ken,” he said finally, “that here we’re closer to Scandinavia than we are to London? If you sailed straight from here, you’d land in Norway. And sometimes I do set off, and for a time, I don’t turn back, thinking I’ll find some icy rock where I can live out the rest of my days.”

“But you always turn back,” she said, subdued.

“Aye. So far I’ve always turned back.”

He pulled away then, and this time she let him, with more peace in her heart than she’d known in years.

“Thank you,” she said.

“For what?”

“You ease my mind, Cormac.” She wasn’t convinced he didn’t blame her. Deep in Cormac’s heart, he surely held her accountable. But he at least cared enough to try to make her feel better. “You ease me, and it’s always been thus.”

She might not have believed his words, but she’d take them. For now.