My vision swam red. I clenched my fists at my sides before I jumped off the rock and ran with full force at his brute of a body. He caught me easily, twisting me in his arms and holding me close. He sucked in a quick breath of air through his nose, wild eyes caged with mine, before he breathed, “Don’t. Tempt. Me.”
I stomped on his booted foot, a smile cracking his features before he spun me out of his grasp and let me fall in a heap in the heather. My bottom hurt, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to tackle him again.
“I’ll do your chores.”
“No! Don’t give in to him, Roderick. He’s only a bully!”
Alaric’s eyes flamed at me, his chest heaving before he growled and pushed Roderick into the heather beside me. “You deserve worse.”
With that, Alaric stalked off.
When Roderick’s father found out about his secret date at the fairy pools with me, he flew into an uncontrollable rage.
The next morning, Roderick enlisted with the 33rd Infantry, his fate sealed.
Olympia
“I’ll make heroes of my sons yet! Macgregors are nobility. How dare they leave a dark mark on one of the greatest houses of Scotland? The blood of our ancestors spilled all over this land, and for what? For our sons to marry peasants? So they can mix royal blood with trash? I don’t care how hardworking her mother is, she deserved to be fired.”
“She’s been the lead for nearly all of twenty years at Leith.” Roderick’s mother’s soft tone attempted to calm Baron Macgregor.
“Death would be a kinder fate.”
Roderick’s eyes widened as he clutched my hand with his own. We were crouched under Baron Macgregor’s library window as he stalked in front of the fireplace and spoke every unkind word he could think of about his sons.
Roderick had thrown pebbles at my window until I’d come out after dark to discover the disturbance. And there he’d stood in his royal enlistment uniform, handsome as could be, with tears streaming down his face. I hugged him for as long as I could before he’d walked me back to Leith to hear his father’s lunatic ravings.
“Let’s run away from here, Olympia. Just you and me. We’ll have a little cottage on the top of a hill, a few sheep, and a few babies. We’ll be happy. I can make you happy. Just give me the chance.”
“Roderick…” Tears spilled down my cheeks as I thought of my next words.I don’t love you.Could loving him save his life? Was giving up my own future worth saving his? And did he really love me, or were these the ramblings of a scared boy afraid to die on a far-off battlefield?
“I love you, Olympia. I love you so much.” Roderick’s lips covered my skin. I held his head close to mine, so although I couldn’t utter the words, he would know I loved him too.
I did love him; he was my childhood best friend. But I suspected love meant different things to both of us. I didn’t yet know that I’d experienced love at all, beyond schoolgirl crushes on brooding older brothers. My mother had already lost her employment at Leith because we’d disobeyed Baron Macgregor’s rules. It was out of my control what happened next.
I let Roderick hold me late into the night. With the crickets burning holes in my eardrums, Roderick slept halfheartedly on my shoulder while I resisted the urge to run. I’d come to hate myself in the minutes and hours since our happy threesome had been caught. In the moments before dawn finally broke, I shook his shoulder to wake him.
He looked up at me with dreamy eyes still filled with sleep and cooed that I was even more lovely in the morning light.
I cringed before breathing out, “We should get up, or we’ll be caught.Again.”
“Good idea. We have a lot of ground to cover today. Maybe we could be in Inverness by tomorrow, and I can make you my wife by Friday. Have you been to Inverness?”
“Inver—? What? No, no, Roderick… I can’t go with you. I’m staying here. Mother needs my help more than ever. She’ll lose her cottage if I don’t stay to pay the tax—”
“What?” His face dropped. “W-what is this, then? Why did you seduce me and let me think…” His eyes flared.
“I-I didn’t seduce you.” I gathered the skirts of my dress and stood. “I’m leaving. Good day, Roderick Macgregor.”
“Olympia, wait, no. God, I’m just crazy with fear about going off to war and leaving you and—heck, I’d do anything to stay. I’ll act crazy, make my father think I’m positively mad and—”
“Roderick.” His eyes held mine, imploring me to give him the answer he sought.“No.”
* * *
“It’s my fault,”Alaric husked one week later.
Anger rippled through me. “You’re right.” We stood side by side at the edge of the loch just out of view of Leith. “But it’s mine too. I should have just told him I’d marry him.”
