Page 17 of Highlander’s Wrath

He pointed from left to right of the landscape on the horizon. “Yonder over those hills is the village, but I will nae send the carts there again until spring sowing is finished, everyone being too busy with the harvest clearing now. If ye keek closely, ye can see the southern road, the one we came home along; sometimes ye can see ships crossing toward England on the sea.” He turned north. “Up there lies me enemy’s land, the Farquharson clan. We do no’ ride there.”

Coira turned to look north where he was pointing, saying, “I did not know you had a blood feud going, Laird. Indeed, if my parents had known, they would have refused my coming with you.”

He gave her a quick smile. “Well, then, it’s a good thing we didnae tell them then, is it no’?”

He drove his heels into Lancer’s sides and rode pell-mell back down the monadh. All Coira could do was try to keep up with him. When they reached the bottom, she shouted out to Hamish, “Slow down! This wind is sucking the lifeblood out of me!”

He turned to look back at her when she said this. His dark hair fell over his face, but not enough to obscure the flinty, penetrating grey of his eyes. They were creased with excitement and laughter. “We’ll stop at the copse, lass. There’s a mound where we can dismount and take our ease.”

And so it proved to be. Once the horses trotted between the shaded branches, they came to a clearing. There was a cluster of flat granite rocks on the ground, and after Hamish had helped Coira dismount and sit down on one of them, the stone was warm to the touch.

He saw her rubbing her fingers along the flat surface. “The stones are hot, no’ so? The sun must blast down on it enough to make the boulders retain the warmth. I used to enjoy coming down here as a lad, and lying down on it, looking up at the sky.” And he proceeded to do just that, saying, “It’s even better at night.”

Encouraged by his lairdship’s casual attitude, Coira tucked her feet underneath her skirts and said, “You sound like you were an adventurous lad. It must be where Colban gets it from.”

He chuckled. “Aye, no teacher or maid could hold me at me books when I was in the mood to go stravaig. I was untrained and untamed until Mister Abercromby came to teach me.”

Coira was listening closely to his lairdship’s latest revelations, her fingers busy plucking the thick moss off the rocks. “Father Abercromby?” she asked, although inwardly she was thinking to herself that Laird Barclay could still be called untrained and untamed, and no one would contradict that description of him.

“Nay, his faither, bless the auld man’s soul. It was he who comforted me when me own faither’s rages caused me to tremble.”

Laird Hamish picked a pebble up from the ground, threw it high in the air, and watched it fall, tumbling to the earth. Then he placed his arms behind his head and continued staring up at the sky. The noises of the forest filled their ears: the rustle of burrowing animals in the undergrowth; the cry of birds defending their tree branches; the sound of cattle lowing in the fields.

Coira looked down on Laird Barclay’s peaceful face as he lay on the rocks. Without giving a thought to how he would construe it, she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. It was a sweetly innocent kiss, born out of the need to comfort that small boy he had once been who had run to his schoolmaster for solace.

He gave her a lazy smile. “Are ye no’ afeared of what the servants might say about us?”

Now it was Coira’s turn to shrug. “I care not. They are rife with ceaseless speculation about me, and my mother always told me to never pay attention to those who labor beneath me.”

Laird Barclay stretched as though sleep was on his mind but then lowered his arms to pull her closer to him, saying, “Well then, let’s take full advantage of their conjecture and give the servants some food for gossip.”

He tugged her down to lie beside him. Not at all alarmed, Coira nestled her head in the crook of his arm and smiled up at him in the most trusting way.

“I like the way your hair smells,” his lairdship said conversationally. “What is it?”

She replied, “It’s my Castile soap. I love it too. It’s made from oils, and lavender. It comes from Spain. One day, I will go there—to the markets—and buy the soap from the people who make it. I want to go south, to Spain or Rome maybe. Where the Pope is. ”

He pulled her closer to him. “I tell ye what. If ye make an honest schoolboy out o’ Colban, I promise to take ye to Rome meself, lass.”

“Really?” She tilted her face to look at him.

He turned and kissed her. First on her forehead, then on each of her eyelids, then her cheeks, and finally, her lips. The gentle touch felt entirely different from the fevered pressure he had consumed her with that night in the nursery. When she inhaled, she could smell the wool of his plaid and the worn leather scent of his horse’s reins where his hands had held them. The feeling his lips gave her when they brushed against her face was unlike any other sensation she had ever known. Coira opened her eyes, wanting to drink in as much of this moment as she could. She found his cool, grey eyes observing her, and for a brief second, she knew what it might feel like to be the prey that takes pleasure in being eaten.

She could not help herself; she sighed, too enamored of the sensations coursing through her body to pay heed to the warning signs that a flame had been ignited inside her. She arched her back, running her hands through his tangled hair, and pulled his face closer.

Laird Barclay, however, knew very well what it looked and felt like to have the body overtake the mind.

He lifted his head, saying in a caressing voice, “Look, the sun has gone behind that bank of clouds. Time to be heading back, don’ ye think?”

But to Coira, it felt as though the sun was beating down on her with all its heat.