CHAPTER FIFTEEN
John rode ahead of her, his back as stiff as a pike. He hadn’t said good morning, or even looked at her before they rode out. He’d let Callum see to her.
Was it any wonder? The MacLeods had closed around her, formed a protective circle that excluded John. Though John understood Gaelic, her men did not include him in their conversation. It was like having a wall between them, a border. Gillian had no intention of spending the entire journey listening to her kinsmen tell the same exaggerated stories and jokes about how brave, strong, and clever they were. At least they saved the ones about their prowess with the lasses until she was out of hearing—or almost—mindful of her shyness. Surely they knew her better than that. She’d been born and bred in the Highlands, the same as they had.
When she overheard Keir telling Ewan in a whisper that could have been heard a mile away how he’d kissed Katie MacLeod in a barn at a ceilidh, she recognized the same tale he’d told Tam two hours earlier. Gillian kneed her garron forward and squeezed between the two Highlanders to catch up with John. He barely glanced at her before he turned back to scan the track ahead.
“It isn’t safe for you up here. You should be with your escort,” he said.
“Aren’t you part of my escort?”
He frowned and didn’t reply. He nudged his horse to ride faster, and she did the same, keeping pace. “We can’t spend the whole journey in silence. What shall we talk about?”
“I don’t wish to talk,” he said crisply.
She ignored that. “We could talk about the lovely weather we’re enjoying, or the scenery, or the fine, fresh Highland air,” she suggested, though low clouds hung over them.
The sky opened so suddenly she gasped at the icy water against her skin.
Lachlan and Tam rode forward at once with an oiled cloth to hold over her. John looked at her with one brow raised. “What were you saying about the weather? And it’s impossible to see the scenery through the rain, and the fine, fresh Highland air smells of wet horses and sodden wool.”
She peered out from under her canopy, tempted to laugh, though he didn’t look amused. He was wet through, his blond hair dark against his brow. He slicked it back out of his eyes, and the rain poured down his face, dripped from his jaw. She bit her lip, awareness humming in her veins.
“It’s just a summer shower. It won’t last long,” she said, but he spurred his horse forward again, leaving her with Tam and Lachlan, and the silence resumed.
* * *
John had thought her pretty by moonlight and candlelight, but she was beautiful in the rain. Before the MacLeods could cover her, rain had soaked her hair and turned her skin to wet silver. Droplets beaded on her eyelashes, and her eyes were all the greener for being surrounded by the wet leaves, moss, and pine of the forest. She looked like a fairy nymph. If the MacLeods hadn’t gotten there first, he’d have wrapped her in his own cloak, though it had been as instantly soaked as everything else in the downpour. He squinted up at the sky, looking for a break in the clouds, saw blue sky ahead, and rode on. They were mere miles from Carraig Brigh, only hours into their journey.
Ten more days . . .
The rain slowed them, and they made camp in the hills the first night. John wondered if Gillian had ever slept on the ground before, wrapped in her plaid like an ordinary Highland lass. Probably not. She was used to soft beds, warm blankets, and the protection of strong walls.
Her escort efficiently saw to everything. One man tethered the garrons and fed them. Another found enough dry firewood under rocky ledges to start a fire. Two others tied ropes to trees and draped them with plaids to make a private shelter for Gillian. Another set out bannock and dried beef, and gathered water from a stream. The last man scouted the area around the camp for danger and took the first watch.
Given Fia’s warning about her sister’s delicate nature, John expected Gillian to shiver until her teeth chattered, or to refuse to eat the tough dried meat, or to complain about the chill in the air and demand another blanket. Instead, she was as calm and quiet as she’d been in her sister’s hall. She slipped into her makeshift shelter to change into dry clothes and emerged in a simple russet gown, looking every inch the Highland lass. She added her wet plaid to the line strung near the fire, where it steamed with everyone else’s as it dried.
She took a place among her men on the ground beside the campfire. She drank the water from the same container as her clansmen, ate her cold supper, and smiled as she did so. She used the dirk in her sleeve to cut kindling with deft, sure strokes. She didn’t blush when her clansmen belched after their meal or left the circle to relieve themselves in the dark beyond the firelight.
John sat with his back against a tree, slightly separate from the MacLeods. He felt Gillian’s eyes on him from time to time, though he avoided looking at her. She was silent as her kinsmen conversed in low tones. They cast sly glances in John’s direction, and he heard their laughter and knew some of their jokes were at his expense. It didn’t matter. He was used to being an outsider. He shut his eyes and pretended to sleep, though he was too aware of Gillian to do so.
He heard her rise, murmur good night, and slip into her shelter.
John stared at the cloth walls that enclosed her. Was she cold? Was the ground too hard? Was she afraid?
It wasn’t his place to ask, or care.
As the moon rose and the stars came out, the man on watch was replaced by one of the others, and one by one the MacLeods rolled themselves in their plaids and lay down to sleep.
Still John lay awake. He imagined meeting Gillian’s groom, having to smile at the man as he led Gillian to him, gave her to be that man’s lawful wife, to have and to hold. He was probably a man so broad and handsome he put her MacLeod kinsmen to shame. He hadn’t bothered—or wanted—to listen to the gossip at Carraig Brigh about her groom. He wondered now. Did she love him? Did he love her? Not that it mattered to him, of course.
His ears pricked when the woolen folds of her shelter parted, and Gillian slipped out of her bower in the middle of the night. Her soft footsteps seemed as loud as thunder in the silence, but her guards lay snoring peacefully as she stepped over them and walked into the dark forest.
It wasn’t safe in the wood in the dark, and John was on his feet in an instant. He’d keep a discreet distance, wait for her, make sure she didn’t meet a wildcat or any of the other dangers that lurked in the Scottish woods at night.
“She’s got her dirk,” Callum MacLeod said in a low voice from where he was sitting in the shadows on watch. “And her bow.”
“I don’t intend to harm her,” John said sharply, but Callum chuckled.
