Page 20 of The Highlander’s Hunted Wife (Legacy of Highland Lairds #2)
20
D espite her bedraggled appearance, certain she resembled some manner of bog witch that had never dragged a comb through her hair, Katie chose to delay her appointment with a hot bath. It wasn’t a choice at all, really, once Flynn told her that her siblings were with the visitors at that moment.
Walking into the Great Hall ahead of Hector—who trailed behind as if seeing the visitors was the very last thing he wanted to do—a cry of excitement went up from somewhere beneath the enormous feasting table.
“Katie! Katie, ye’re here!” Bonnie ducked out of the sturdy hiding place, haring across the flagstones to throw her arms around her sister. Pipkin wasn’t far behind her, wagging his tail, barking his welcome.
Katie’s arms were already wide open, catching the little girl and swinging her around, before pulling her in a tight, relieved embrace.
“I thought ye’d gotten lost,” Bonnie whispered into Katie’s shoulder. “I nearly sent Pip out after ye. He’d have found ye in… oh, about two-and-a-half minutes, I think.”
Katie chuckled, forgetting every unpleasantness for a moment. “I dinnae doubt that, lassie.” She kissed Bonnie’s cheek. “But what, pray tell, are ye doin’ under the dinin’ table?”
Setting her little sister down, she crouched to scratch Pipkin’s thick neck, paying attention to the spots under his ears that made him thud his foot on the floor. As she crouched there, she tried to peek under the table to get the answer to her question.
“Hidin’ from barbarians,” Bonnie replied with a casual shrug. “They’d captured our castle, so we were takin’ shelter in a fairy cave. Pipkin is a Cù-sìth , keepin’ us safe.”
Katie played along. “Dear me, but I just heard him bark thrice!”
“Aye, but ye’re his friend, so it doesnae affect ye,” Bonnie said, giggling.
The Cù-sìth was said to be an enormous dog with shaggy green fur that warned of tragedy and death, if it wasn’t causing it with its snapping jaws and jagged claws. As the legend had it, the beast would bark three times, so loud it could be heard across whole territories, and if the person who heard it didn’t reach safety before the third bark, they’d be overcome with a terror so immense, so violent, so unyielding, that they’d die from it.
Katie had always wondered if it was just a gigantic wolfhound that had rolled around in the grass, amused by the thought.
“I was just tellin’ Rosie the story,” Bonnie said proudly, her little chest puffed out. “I dinnae tell it so good as ye do, but she liked it… and might be a bit scared of it.”
Katie laughed. “And who is Rosie? Do I need to tell her the part where the beastie is ever so friendly to wee lassies, and if he licks ‘em, they’ll have good luck for years?”
Their mother had been the one to tell stories of Scotland’s myths and legends—at the dinner table, by the fire in the evenings, on the riverbank in the heat of summer, at the children’s bedside before they went to sleep—and when she died not long after Bonnie was born, Katie had taken it upon herself to keep that tradition alive.
A girl crawled out from underneath the table, protesting, “I’m nae afraid!”
Pipkin padded over to the girl, adopting a protective stance as she jumped to her feet. She reached for him, keeping her small hand on his stocky back as she walked toward Katie.
The child’s huge, blue eyes, as big as an owl’s, were the first thing Katie noticed. Her dark hair was held back with a ribbon, studded with flowers, her skin milk-white in comparison to Bonnie’s ruddy complexion, as though she didn’t play outside too often.
Katie frowned, sensing something undeniably familiar about her.
“Ye must be Rosie?” She held out her hand. “I’m Katie. This wee rascal’s older sister.”
The little girl took Katie’s hand, shaking it with a shy chuckle. “Pleasure to meet ye.”
“And ye.” Katie smiled.
Withdrawing her hand and hugging Pipkin around the neck, Rosie eyed her more intently. “Are ye supposed to be dirty? Papa says I must never be dirty.”
Katie laughed heartily at her bluntness. “I just came back from a very difficult journey. Ye heard the storm last night?”
Rosie nodded.
“I was caught right in the middle of it. Saw sheep flyin’ around in the wind and a selkie swimmin’ in the rain—it was that thick. Och, and me companion and I had to fight off a band of hobgoblins with our bare hands, so ye can imagine how dirty that made me,” Katie told the girl, secretly delighted when her big eyes widened in awe. “I’d have taken a bath to make meself presentable, but I just couldnae wait to meet ye.”
Meanwhile, Bonnie frowned. “Did ye really battle hobgoblins?”
“A horde of ‘em,” Katie replied with a wink.
“And ye really saw a selkie swimmin’ in the rain? And sheep flyin’ about?” Rosie asked, breathless with the excitement of such a thing.
Katie nodded seriously. “Certainly, I did. Ye must have seen them on yer journey, or did ye get here before the storm?”
“It just started when we got here,” Rosie replied, pouting a little. “Och, I wish I’d seen the selkie. I long to see a selkie.”
“A few of ‘em live down there in the river. If ye’re lucky, ye might see one before ye leave,” a different voice interjected, drawing Katie’s gaze up.
Relief struck her like a punch, jolting her to her feet, her arms pulling her wayward brother into a fierce, slightly punishing hug.
“Ye had me worried, Catkin,” Lyall murmured, using the nickname he hadn’t uttered for years, having ‘grown out’ of such things.
It warmed her heart to hear it again. “Aye, same to ye.”
“I was already plannin’ to come back when that puffed-up peacock grabbed me by my collar and told me I was to come to the castle, or else he’d tie me to his horse and drag me,” Lyall said, his tone half apologetic, half irritated.
“Which peacock?” Katie pulled back.
Discreetly, Lyall gestured across the Great Hall to where Flynn stood guard by the door.
Katie stifled a laugh, struggling to imagine the soldier being intimidating at all. Lyall was at least as tall, and would soon be as broad, but perhaps Flynn had a scary streak that she hadn’t been privy to yet.
She was about to return her attention to her siblings and the little girl, Rosie, when she noticed Hector. He wasn’t where she thought he was, lurking by the doors in an ill temper. Rather, he had moved closer to her and the children, standing halfway down the long table, watching.
And his expression…
She saw it for just a moment before he turned his face away, unwilling to hold her gaze, unwilling to let her see. But she knew what she had witnessed—a softness, a sadness, deep as the waters of Loch Ness.
Nay, I willnae have that. If ye think ye can look and nae be involved, ye’re sorely mistaken.
“M’Laird, show the wee lassie what the hobgoblins did to ye!” she called out.
Hector’s back stiffened, his shoulders so tense that she could see every muscle tighten beneath his shirt, his arm flexing as he gripped the back of the chair he stood beside.
“Who is he?” Rosie whispered.
Katie could have sworn she heard Hector’s breath catch, almost a choke.
She crouched back down to Rosie’s eye level and pointed to him. “Ye remember I mentioned a companion?”
Rosie nodded.
“Well, that’s him, but what I didnae tell ye is that he’s actually a hero,” Katie whispered, loud enough so he could hear. “He’s been fightin’ monsters for years, keepin’ Scotland safe. There’s nothin’ he cannae battle with his magic sword—cuts right through all evil. Is that nae true, M’Laird?”
A cord throbbed in Hector’s neck, his knuckles white on the back of the chair as he slowly turned his head toward Katie, the children, and the dog.
“I’m nae a hero,” he replied thickly, “but I have been kenned to fight monsters.”
Bonnie nudged Rosie in the ribs. “He’s the good monster I was tellin’ ye about. The Laird of this castle.”
A frown creased Rosie’s face. “He cannae be the Laird of this castle. The Laird of this castle is me uncle.”
All at once, Katie understood why the little girl looked so familiar. Her eyes might have been a different color, so rich in their blueness, but her silky dark hair was unmistakably of shared heritage, her features not identical to Hector’s but definitely similar.
She hadn’t realized that the ‘visitors’ were the Marsdens, since Hector and Flynn hadn’t elaborated, talking in vague language that only they seemed to understand.
Oh dear… oh dear, this isnae good at all.
Casting a guilty glance at Rosie, she wondered if the poor child knew about the Blakes—one, in particular. Surely not, if she’d been playing with Bonnie so merrily.
I’m sorry, sweet lassie. I’m so sorry for what me braither took from ye.
Katie didn’t dare to say so out loud, in case the child knew nothing. It wasn’t her place to reveal what had happened to her mother.
“Aye,” Hector said, neither confirming nor denying his identity to the little girl. His niece.
Just then, a couple came through the doors of the Great Hall, the man as handsome as the woman was beautiful. The former’s eyes were identical to Rosie’s, his dark hair suggesting that the little girl’s hadn’t all been inherited from her mother, Hector’s sister.
As for the woman, she was extraordinary, with an elfin face, honey-brown eyes as large and gentle as a doe’s, and lustrous brown hair that fell in wavy tendrils to her waist, kept off her face by a silver circlet.
Oh…
In following the tendrils of hair downward, Katie noticed the swell of a child that was coming, rounding out the bottom edge of the bodice and the panel of petticoats that showed between the skirts of the lady’s expensive gown.
The couple approached, the man dipping his head to Hector. “Laird MacKimmon.”
Hector didn’t echo the movement. “Laird Marsden. I wasnae expectin’ ye.”
“Nay?” Laird Marsden frowned. “I received word that ye wanted to meet yer niece. The letter indicated that we ought to arrive in time for the spring equinox. I wasnae certain it was wise, but Alison insisted.”
A sudden frostiness sprang between the two men, reducing the temperature of the room. Evidently, no one had informed the pair that they were supposed to be in the midst of peace and ought to act accordingly.
“It is our pleasure to be here,” the lady, presumably Alison, said diplomatically, inclining her head to Hector. “Of course, we had to come. She is yer family, too, Laird MacKimmon. It is her right and yers to be acquainted. Isnae that so, love?”
Katie noticed Alison’s sharp elbow to her husband’s rib, stifling a laugh.
“Aye, she’s right,” Laird Marsden replied with a tight smile.
At that moment, Alison turned her doe-eyed gaze toward Katie. Katie froze, worried that the new Lady Marsden had heard her laugh, terrified that the beautiful woman knew, immediately, who she was related to.
Instead, Alison cast a curious glance from Katie to Hector and back, before extending her hand. “Alison Forrester, Lady of Clan Marsden.”
Katie took it hesitantly. “I… dinnae think ye’ll want to hear who I am, M’Lady.”
“Whyever nae?” Alison furrowed her smooth brow.
Katie swallowed past the lump forming in her throat. “I cannae say it in front of the wee one. She’s in the midst of hidin’ from barbarians with me sister, protected by a noble Cù-sìth . Perhaps we could let them return to hatchin’ a plan of attack, and talk elsewhere?”
Alison seemed to understand, turning the handshake into a gentle, encouraging grip, and leading Katie away from the children. “I saw some pretty gardens through the windows. What do ye say we go there?”
“I’d like that, M’Lady,” Katie replied, hoping the beautiful woman wouldn’t exact her revenge and bury her under the snowdrops.
Even Hector raised a dubious eyebrow as the two women passed by, not helping her nerves at all.
Dinnae pretend that ye care now, M’Laird. I willnae believe it.