4
While Lindsey slept soundly, Tavish dreamed of the day it all went wrong for him. Lilias brought him flowers. By the end of the day he was on trial for murder.
He was fishing in his favorite spot, sitting beside the water and staring out at the perfect stillness. The only place he could get away from giving orders and resolving disputes, dealing with all the stresses of clan life.
The surface reflected the blue sky, a single cloud slowly drifting by, soon to vanish behind the distant mountains.
The peaks were topped with snow. Even at the height of summer, some peaks never thawed. He recalled the first time his father took him up there. He’d been eight years old when plague struck.
For six months they lived off the land away from the village, waiting to see if the symptoms emerged. Only when spring turned into summer did his father decide they were safe. Somehow, they had survived when the rest of the village had perished. All his fault. A guilt he would bear to his death.
“We’re fortunate,” his father told him when he asked if they could go home. “We have been given a chance for a fresh start. We shall travel to Castle Sinclair. Fortunes are made there, my boy. One day you’ll be laird.”
Tavish smiled but he knew it was nonsense. The lordship passed from father to first son, never to a distant relative raised in poverty and unknown to any at the castle. Still, what harm in letting his father dream?
First, they climbed the mountain, Fingal offering thanks to God from the highest peak for saving his son from the ravages of illness that regularly swept the Highlands. When he was done, the two of them descended the steep slopes to the worn track that led east to the castle.
The mountains watched over him and his father as they settled into life at the castle. His father’s skills as a blacksmith were put to good use while Tavish was taken into the laird’s household, taught the manners of a squire.
When they saw how good his skills were with a sword, he went from potential squire to potential knight. By the time he was fifteen he was being tipped for future laird, having made himself indispensable during several skirmishes with rival clans. Then it all went wrong. All because of one twelve-year-old girl and her flowers.
She brought them back from the island. “Orange heather,” Lilias said, almost stumbling out of the boat when it scraped the bottom of the loch. She ran up the shore to him, flowers held out in front of her. “I got them for you.”
Tavish patted the ground next to him. He needed to do this gently but tact had never been his strongest characteristic. “Ye know you’re no supposed tae row out there alone. What if you’d fallen in?”
“Then you would have come and saved me. It would have been magical.”
“I didn’t even know you were there. Ye would be deed and bloated in the water.”
“You would have saved me.” She looked up at him with the utterly certain conviction of hero worship. He never knew why she’d latched onto him. For the last year, she’d been bringing him more and more flowers, sweetmeats from the kitchen, even fetching water from the well for him while he sweated in sword practice. No matter how many times he sent her away she kept coming back.
He got to his feet. It was time to end this nonsense once and for all. “Take those flowers tae Margaret.”
“Are you going to marry her?”
Tavish shook his head. “Whatever gave ye that foolish idea?”
“I saw the way she was looking at you when she arrived.”
“I’m a blacksmith’s son. She’s a princess.”
“So? You’re going to be laird one day. Everyone’s saying it. Then you could be king and her your queen.”
“It’s not that simple, Lilias. Margaret is going to marry Edward Caernarvon.”
“So, who are you going to marry?”
“I’m not going tae marry anyone.”
“You could marry me. Hey, where’s your locket gone?”
Tavish felt for his neck, his hand touching nothing. He couldn’t tell her that Margaret had snatched it from him that morning. How could he tell anyone the heir to the throne was a thief?
“I must have lost it.”
“You gave it to her as a keepsake. I knew it. You love her, not me.” She was on her feet in a shot. “I see how you’re looking at me. You think I’m just a stupid child who doesn’t know how the world works. You’re going to marry the stupid princess and you should have just said so.”
She stormed off up the beach. “Lilias,” he shouted after her.
