Page 24 of Proven By The Highlander (Highlander Forever #15)
CHAPTER 24
I t was midday before they reached the village, and she was surprised by how warm the walk had made them. The sky had come over cloudy and overcast, but the sun was still bright even through the thick cloud cover, and the humidity was doing a lot of work to keep her sweating. They took lunch under a tree on the outskirts of what Caelan had optimistically called ‘the village’, a bundled-up parcel of some cheese and dried meat. She thanked him sincerely for sharing what he had, regretting even more fiercely that she hadn’t brought to bring any food along from the Keep. Then again, she hadn’t really expected this situation to unfold, had she?
The fishing village was quiet at this time of day, with most of the men taking advantage of the decent weather to be out on the Loch. But there were a few women and children still at home, and Leanne took a deep breath before she knocked on each door. The people who answered were understandably suspicious of her, and she didn’t get a great deal of information out of any of them… with the exception of one woman, who confirmed that a man matching the description she gave had been sighted in the village a few years ago. Leanne’s heart leapt into her throat and she pressed the woman for more information… only to feel herself crumple in defeat when the woman explained that he’d been a watchman, asking around after the body of a man who’d died after falling from a boat in the Loch. The man had matched Bram’s description, alright… it had been Caelan.
She returned to him feeling utterly defeated and flopped down in the grass beside him to tell the tale of her failure. He chuckled at the story of the last woman she’d talked to, shaking his head ruefully as he realized where her false hope had come from. “She has a good memory on her, that woman,” he said with a grin. “I’m glad she’s still doing well.” Some of Leanne’s anxiety must have shown in her face, because he leaned over to press a sweet kiss to her cheek that definitely went some way to improving her mood. “There are more fishing villages than this one, Leanne,” he told her gently. “Who knows? Maybe the answers you’re looking for lie ahead of us.”
Maybe this was a tactic she could use, she thought as she watched him climb to his feet and dust off the grass from his legs. If she pretended to be losing hope, maybe he’d try to boost her spirits… and hell, she wouldn’t even have to pretend too much if their progress continued to be this slow. They headed off beyond the fishing village as the morning gave way to afternoon. It wasn’t long before Leanne glanced uneasily over her shoulder.
“Shouldn’t we think about turning back? It took us this long to walk this far, didn’t it?”
But Caelan shook his head, gesturing to the rucksack on his back. “No, lass. We’re doing a full lap of the Loch, remember? We’ll camp just before dark then strike out again on the morrow. For now, though, we’ve some searching to do.”
He flashed her one of those bright smiles, and she followed him happily enough down toward the water’s edge, grinning to herself. They’d only been together for a day, but she could already tell that her company was improving his mood. She knew from her own experience as a stressed grad student that having a social life was an essential part of one’s mental health… it seemed counter-intuitive to take time off study to socialize, but she’d always done better work when she’d given herself socializing breaks. Getting out of your own head and spending time in someone else’s company was very important for maintaining a good mood, and she could tell that a lot of Caelan’s misery had come from his isolation. Her heart ached at the thought of him, freshly alone and still grieving the loss of his brother, isolating himself even further by leaving the social group of his brothers in the Watch.
Speaking of which… she kept glancing up and down the road as the afternoon wore on, worried that Hamish and his men would be back on the hunt despite their late night. Caelan was keeping a sharp eye out, too, and she felt his eyes burning into the back of her neck at one point and turned to catch him smiling at her.
“What?”
“It’s nice to have someone else watching out for me, that’s all,” he said with a shrug, turning back to the rocks he was examining. “That person was always Bram. Never quite did get used to not having someone there with me.”
“Well, now you don’t have to,” Leanne said cheerfully. She’d meant it casually, in terms of the days ahead, but as the words left her lips she realized belatedly that it would be very possible to interpret them as being a lot more serious than that. A lot more long-term. Had she meant that? she wondered. Surely not… but at the same time, part of her wouldn’t have minded being at Caelan’s side indefinitely. Provided, of course, that didn’t mean that both of them were headed for prison for the rest of their lives…
Caelan crossed the rocky ground between them to scoop her into a passionate kiss, and she melted into his embrace, confident that they wouldn’t be seen on this remote, isolated part of the coast. She lost track of how much time had passed, so distracted was she by the feeling of his lips against hers, the heat of his arms around her waist, the stirring of her body that was suddenly making unexpected demands… if only there was another cave around here, she thought faintly, feeling bereft as he regretfully pulled out of the long, lingering kiss.
“Maybe if I’m lucky, I’ll have two people at my side,” he said softly, holding her eyes as he squeezed her arms gently.
She smiled back at him, feeling another pang of worry. The idea of finding Bram had seemed like a reasonable thing to bring up, back when she was doing everything she could to talk him out of storming straight out into the Loch with an iron spear in his hand… but now she was worried that he was getting his hopes up for something that might not be possible.
Well, too late to worry about that now, she told herself firmly as the two of them headed onwards. And she wasn’t going to let herself lose hope, not until they’d finished their trip around the Loch. Stranger things had happened than a man finding a new home and not letting his family know about it… there were any number of explanations for Bram’s disappearance beyond simply being eaten by a creature that had never expressed any interest in harming members of the Watch before. They hastened onward with new energy after their brief dalliance on the shore, and the shadows were stretching long by the time they reached the next fishing village.
Leanne was ready to march right into the middle of town and start asking questions… but Caelan stopped her with a hand on her arm, a frown on his face as he held one hand up. There, on the muddy dirt road beneath their feet… her eyes widened a little as she saw what he was looking at. The road here had been churned up by the hooves of multiple horses — quite recently, too, to judge by the water that was still pooling in the holes that the hoofbeats had dug into the soft surface of the road.
“Could they be horses that belong to the fishermen?” Leanne suggested in a whisper. But Caelan was shaking his head, his eyes already on the village ahead of them.
“There’s maybe two horses in that town in total,” he whispered. “This kind of mark was made by at least four, maybe more… and they were headed into town, not out of it. I’d bet my eyeteeth that this was Hamish and his little search party.”
“What do we do?”
“We find somewhere to set up camp,” Caelan said with a regretful little sigh. “And we skip asking around in this village, at least for the time being. Who knows what Graeme or Hamish might have told the locals about us?”
Leanne gnawed on her lower lip as the two of them began a wide circle around the village, keeping trees and rocks in the way of their being sighted by anyone who might be looking down toward the water. She didn’t like the idea of skipping a village like this — what if someone in there had seen Bram? But Caelan was right… they couldn’t risk alerting the villagers to the fact that Caelan was a deserter, and Leanne was… well, a horse thief, she supposed. Caelan could clearly sense her dismay, and he reached out to touch her shoulder once they were clear of the village.
“I know it’s frustrating to take it slow,” he said with a soft smile. “Believe me, I’ve had plenty of experience grinding my teeth about it. But this is for the best. And besides… think about it. If Graeme and his men are searching for me, they’re bound to give a description in the village.”
Leanne frowned, not making the connection. “So what?”
“So — they’ll be describing Bram, won’t they?” He smiled, only a touch of pain in his eyes as he spoke his brother’s name. “So if anyone’s seen him, they’ll tell the search party. I begged Brandon to send out search parties just like this one when Bram first went missing,” he added with an aggrieved sigh. “I suppose this is a very roundabout way of finally getting what I wanted…”
“Yeah, you should’ve just asked a woman from the future to help out back then,” she said, nudging him playfully in the ribs.
He grinned back at her. “That’s true,” he acknowledged. “I truly wish those Fae had thought to drop you off to me a few years earlier than they did, Leanne Orbach.”