Page 10 of The Story of his Highland Bride (Dancing Through Time #4)

10

T he blood-curdling scream chilled Jackson to the bone. His thighs squeezed harder against the sides of his loyal stallion, his throat unleashing a frantic “hyah!” to urge the horse into a faster gallop, as man and beast tore through the forest, heading for that awful sound. The stallion, named Claymore for his sleek, silver hide—as shiny as any blade—was as surefooted as any mountain pony, but the tangles of roots and branches threatened to fell horse and rider at any moment as they charged through the underbrush.

What was she thinkin’, eh? Jackson fumed, keeping his body as flat to Claymore’s back as possible, in case a low-hanging branch tried to swipe him from the saddle.

As a second, strangled scream pierced the air, Jackson forgot his anger and raised his head just a little, to see ahead of him. Whatever Eloise was, and no matter how dangerous she was, he did not want any harm to befall her. He had made that decision no more than a few minutes after being sent from her bedchamber by his grandmother, his mind haunted by the memory of her devastated expression.

Indeed, whatever that unnatural stone had been, he kept wondering if he had made mistake in breaking it in half. It seemed to mean a great deal to Eloise, for the wildness in her eyes when she had attempted to seize the two pieces had not been borne of just anger, but of pain and sadness: an emotion he recognized only too well.

Just then, Claymore sailed through the trees and landed with a snort in the middle of a glade. Once upon a summer, it had been the favored spot of his mother; she had always brought him there to take their luncheon in the cool shade, and when his father was not occupied by his Laird duties, he had often joined them. So, to see Eloise cowering by the trunk of an oak he knew well, being stealthily approached by three rangy-looking wolves; it jarred his heart somewhat.

“Oi!” Jackson bellowed to distract the wolves, as he unslung his bow from across his chest and plucked an arrow from his quiver.

He fired a warning shot, the arrow thudding into the dirt between the wolves and Eloise. She turned to him in terror, her eyes widening to the whites, her mouth agape. But whether she was more afraid of the wolves or of him, after his last display of bullish behavior; he was not sure.

Urging Claymore toward Eloise, he clenched his powerful thighs against the horse’s sides, and leaned out until he was almost horizontal, his hands reaching out for her. She appeared to understand his intention at the very last moment, reaching for him in return.

He grasped hold of her hands and hauled her to her feet, before grappling one arm around her. With all of his strength, his stomach muscles on fire with the strain, he hoisted her up onto the saddle. She managed to swing a leg over Claymore’s neck, riding as a man would as she settled into the saddle, sitting just in front of Jackson.

He wasted no time in wheeling Claymore around, and with his bow and arrow still in hand, he fired two more arrows in quick succession. One skimmed the rump of one of the wolves, sending it running into the forest with a yelp. The second landed just shy of another wolf’s paw, aimed on purpose to give the creature a chance to flee. It was not a foolish beast, and with a yellow-eyed glare in Jackson’s direction, the wolf took off after the first, with the last wolf loping away after a moment or two.

It's nae their fault, Jackson knew, noting the thin bodies of the wolves. It’s been a hard winter for us all, and it’s only goin’ to get harder. Still, he would have to arrange for soldiers to patrol the woodland, chasing off any wolves that dared to get too close again.

As Claymore headed back into the dense forest, plodding at a safer pace, Jackson put away his bow and arrow and slid his arm around Eloise’s waist once more. The way it narrowed like an hourglass did something peculiar to his stomach, making every muscle tighten until he could feel the grip of desire, pulsing deep in the center of his loins. And the swell of her buttocks, pressing up against those loins like soft cushions, almost made him stop the horse and take her into his arms properly. Indeed, with the wolves gone, the glade would have been the perfect place to free her of her garments and see her in her full, ethereal beauty in the silvery moonlight.

“Have ye taken leave of yer senses?” he said instead, using his anger at her escape to temper his longing. “Even if ye were desperate to leave, nay sane lass would walk in the forest at night by herself, especially nae in winter when all the beasts are half-starved and frantic for a bite of some tender flesh.”

And yers would be so very tender, his mind whispered, as she shifted in the saddle, pushing her backside harder against his loins. It was almost too much for him to bear, for if she was the powerful witch that he suspected her to be, she had certainly bewitched him already. And he did not know how to free himself from the spell she had weaved around him. Just the sweet scent of her, though faded somewhat, drove him to distraction.

“I thought that was what you wanted?” she replied quietly, shivering in his arms.

He paused, pulling her tighter against his chest. “Lennox saw ye leave the castle, and kenned ye’d get yerself in bother. If ye runnin’ off was what I wanted, I wouldn’ae have raced after ye like there were hounds of Hell on me tail.” His gaze flitted down to the curve of her neck, and the deep dip of her collarbone; his lips burning to taste her skin. “What were ye thinkin’, eh? Nay matter what was said between us, ye could’ve made yer escape in the daylight.”

“Is that what you wanted?” She twisted around to look at him. “Should I just twiddle my thumbs all night at the castle, and try again in the morning?”

He puffed out a frustrated breath. “That’s nae what I’m sayin’. I’m… sorry if ye thought ye were nae welcome. I was thinkin’ only of the good of me people, but… I daenae want ye dead, Lass. If I did, I’d have handed ye over to Father Hepburn when I first found ye.”

“Who is Father Hepburn?” Eloise narrowed her eyes, not realizing that the rub of her thigh against Jackson’s was pushing him toward the brink of a very particular, delicious and dangerous kind of madness.

Jackson swallowed thickly. “The priest in this corner of the world,” he explained, concentrating on a diamond of freckles on the apple of her cheek to try and ignore the sway and graze of her body against him. “There’s naught he likes more than burnin’ witches, makin’ an example of anyone that doesnae follow his ways. He hasnae quite realized that there are many of us who will never fully relinquish the old ways, but he’ll be damned if he’s goin’ to let us get away with bein’ “ungodly” as he calls it. He’d have ye burned in the blink of an eye, even if he’d only seen that tunic and them trews of yers.”

“We had a vicar in our village who was like that, without the witch burning,” she said softly, turning her gaze away from him and shifting back around, facing forward. “Where I’m from, no one burns witches anymore. No one burns anyone because they’re a little bit different.”

“On the Isle of Man?”

She laughed, but it was not a cheery sort of laugh. “I told you, that’s not really where I’m from. If you were listening at all, you’d put the pieces together and finally realize that the last story I told you was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. If I can accept it, albeit reluctantly, there must be some part of you that can accept it, too.” She sagged in his embrace. “I’m not a witch, not a priestess, not a mystical spirit—I’m just a writer, thrown over three hundred years back in time where, apparently, there are still wolves roaming free in Scotland. In my time, they’re in zoos and wildlife parks, though I think I read somewhere that they’re thinking of releasing some back into the wild.”

“What is a… zoo?” The word felt strange in Jackson’s mouth.

“It’s a place where people go to look at animals that they’d never normally be able to see—lions, tigers, gorillas, aardvarks, bears, wolves. I’ve never liked zoos, really. Always thought those animals should be back where they belong, in the wild, but after coming face to face with a wolf, I’d definitely prefer to just see them from behind a fence.”

Jackson’s brow furrowed in disgust. “Sounds cruel to me.”

“There are plenty of people who’d agree with you, but it’s cute for the kids, I guess.”

As they rode and he held her close, he allowed himself to think about what she was saying, using her words to draw his attention away from the way that she felt. She had asked him to listen, and after their last encounter had led her to flee and almost get herself killed, he was determined to try.

She’s still sayin’ the queerest things, he mused. Things I havenae heard before. Things I couldn’ae even imagine. But… she said she was a writer. What if the things she says are just stories she’s conjured? After all, his mother and grandmother were two of the finest storytellers in Scotland, crafting detailed, wonderful, impossible tales that he lacked the imagination to create for himself.

If she was not a witch, and not an envoy of the Old Gods, then maybe she was just a writer with a wild imagination, who wanted to believe that she had come from a different time. Although, that still did not explain her peculiar garments and that black stone he had rent in half.

And if I cannae explain it, perhaps she’s tellin’ the truth —

“Tell me what happened to ye at the Cairns again,” he asked, lightly gripping her waist with his hand. He liked the way her skin gave a little beneath his fingertips, and the manner in which the subtle fullness of her breast rested upon the side of his thumb. It sparked a craving in him to feel more, but this would have to be enough. He did not want to scare her more than he had already.

With her mouth stretching into a nervous yawn, she began the tale again, adding in details that she had not mentioned before— details that, even now, he could not get his mind to comprehend, for he did not know what half of her words meant.

“I rented a car and drove it all the way up to the Highlands on a whim, after a letter came from the wedding caterers, demanding final payment,” she explained. “It was the last straw, I suppose you could say. I needed to be away from everything that reminded me of my betrothed. So, I came here—well, I came to a bed his heart pounding like there were unseen hands clenched around it, squeezing it hard.

“You do?” She twisted around again.

“Aye. It’s a… sentinel stone. It’s there to protect the cairns and the dead beneath,” he explained hesitantly. “Me grandmaither and me maither always said there was ancient magic buried there, too, but me faither always teased them, tellin’ them they were like two old fishwives, tellin’ frightenin’ stories around the fire in winter. He had his beliefs, I’m sure of it, but he dinnae believe the way me grandmaither and maither did. Indeed, me maither once said that she had a strange experience at those Cairns—said she heard voices, as ye just said.”

It pained him to speak of the parents that he had lost. It pained him even more to have to wonder where they were now. Could they see him from their afterlife? Were they watching over him through the black eyes of the crows that perched on the branches overhead? Were they now the two doves that cooed in the sycamores? Or were they just wind, wafting wherever the breeze took them? At least with Father Hepburn’s version of Heaven, the particulars were simple: if they had lived a good life, which they had, they would enter God’s Kingdom; if they had not lived a good life, they would burn in eternal Hell.

“Is your mother at the castle? Does she know more about Clava Cairns? Perhaps, I could speak with her, and find out what it was that she heard?” Eloise’s eager voice was like a dagger to his heart.

He cleared his throat. “She’s gone. Her and me faither, both.”

“Oh—” It was the sound of someone who understood keenly: a sorrowful expression of shared loss. “I’m sorry to hear that, and not just because I can’t talk to her about the Cairns. It’s a bittersweet thing, to meet someone who gets it, someone who has had the world pulled out from under them, too.”

He could not have phrased it more appropriately if he had tried, but hearing the whisper of his own heart, spoken aloud in her voice, it was a struggle for him not to give into the grief he had been keeping at bay. Her presence had delayed his mourning period, yet knowing she had experienced his suffering herself, he felt… comforted for the first time in years. Like he was not alone.

“Could you stop for a moment?” she said.

He pulled lightly on the reins, and Claymore slowed to a halt. “Are ye unwell? Do ye need to catch yer breath?”

Eloise twisted around in the saddle once more, and before she had even attempted to answer his questions, her arms slipped around him. She pulled him tightly into her embrace, burying her face in his shoulder as she held him. The sensation startled him, stealing the breath from his lungs and prompting his heart to forget to beat. No one had held him like that in a very long time.

“Thank you for saving me, and… thank you for sharing your pain,” she whispered against his skin, for the collar of his leine had slipped slightly. It was so akin to a kiss that his skin tingled, willing her to graze her lips against that spot again. “I know it’s not easy to be vulnerable, especially with you being a big Laird and all,” she added, smiling against his feverish flesh. “But, for a second or two, I didn’t feel so out of my depth. No matter what era it is, there’ll always be fellow lost souls, you know?”

Both of his arms encircled her against his will, his head dipping until his temple pressed to hers. A punch of her rich scent hit him squarely in the face, dazing him. His lips parted, his tongue eager to taste the curve of her neck, where the scent was the strongest. It would take but half a second to kiss her the way he desired to, in that moment, and every fiber of his being screamed for him to give into that want.

Restrain yerself! he scolded himself. Ye’re nae a wayward wee lad who cannae control his urges.

“Daenae try to flee again,” he growled, releasing her. “Ye could’ve got us both killed if there’d been more of them wolves, and they’re nae behind a fence. Whatever ye are, and whatever yer purpose here might be, ye cannae be wanderin’ as ye please. From now on, ye wait in yer chambers until I give ye permission to leave. And when ye do leave, it’ll be me guidin’ ye back to wherever ye’ve come from.”

It was not the sultry, passionate reassurance of protection that he had hoped to give, but then his tongue never did as it was told. Still, he could hear how harsh he sounded, and as he pulled back, he saw a renewed fear upon her beautiful face.

“So, we’re back to that?” she said stiffly.

He squeezed his thighs and urged Claymore back into a lope. “If ye mean me makin’ sure ye’re nae a danger to yerself or me clan, then aye—we’re back to that.”

As they rode on, he felt her pull away from him. She shuffled forward in the saddle, gripping the front edge to make sure she did not accidentally move backward. And as she removed his arm from around her waist, he knew he had fallen back into a bad habit that had begun when his parents had died—he had pushed her away, and he doubted he could ever pull her back into his desperate embrace again.

It will be for the best, for both of us, he told himself, while his lonely heart yearned for what he would never allow himself to have.