Page 19 of It’s in his Highland Kiss

“Alright,” she said in the end, agreeing with a soft sigh. “I’ll give him another chance, but only because I know that he is your friend. Had it been anyone else, I would have never spoken to him again.”

“Understood,” Eiric said. “And thank ye, lass. It means a lot to me that ye’d do that for me.”

I would do many things for you. I don’t even know what I would do for you.

“Of course,” Marion said, instead of what she was thinking. What good would it do, telling Eiric the truth? She had become too attached to him, and it had all happened too fast for her to even properly realise what she had been doing. She reasoned that it was to be expected, since he was the first person to ever truly care for her, the person who took her away from that life that she hated with such vigour, but even if her reaction was reasonable, she didn’t like it.

She didn’t want to be too dependent on him. She wanted to become her own person, to not have to rely on anyone for anything.

“Weel, shall we try this?” Eiric asked, and Marion had no idea what he meant until he took off his glove and shoved it onto her own hand, much to her shock and, admittedly, fear.

“What are you doing?” she asked. “I can’t call Mungo! I can’t even . . . I don’t know what to do!”

“Dinna worry, he kens what to do,” Eiric assured her, and then called the bird once more, just as he had done before.

Marion’s heart jumped in her chest. A myriad of scenarios ran through her mind, thinking that the raven would somehow claw her eyes out if she so much as moved wrong, and she was paralysed with fear.

That was until Mungo landed on her hand. He certainly hadn’t clawed her eyes out, and she couldn’t even feel his claws through the glove. Her heart was still beating fast, pumping blood to her head in an alarming rate, but she felt giddy with it.

“I did it!” she said, strangely proud of herself. She knew that she had done little, if anything at all, to help Mungo land on her hand, but she was proud, nevertheless. “Eiric, I did it! He landed on my hand.”

“Aye, lass, ye did,” Eiric said. “Ye did verra weel, much better than I did the first time I had a raven land on me hand. I was screamin’ like a wee bairn.”

Marion thought that Eiric must have been lying to make her feel better about her own lack of skills, but she laughed regardless. Focused as she was on Mungo, though, she didn’t get to see the pride and affection in Eiric’s eyes.

Chapter Nine

“Look at ye, ye’re full of dirt! Come, come noo . . . we’ll have a bath drawn for ye, lass.”

The look in Adaria’s eyes was one of pure disgust when she saw Marion and the state of her clothes, but Marion could hardly blame the woman; she was covered in dirt from head to toe, her shoes tracking mud into the castle, her dress dusty, though not beyond repair. A good bath would fix both her and it.

“Oh, it’s alright,” Marion said. “Eiric was teaching me how to train the ravens and how to fight!”

It seemed like the wrong thing to say, as Adaria turned to look at her son, who was standing next to Marion, her eyes aflame with anger. “Ye did what noo?”

“I taught her how to fight,” Eiric said with a small shrug of his left shoulder. “What’s so bad about that?”

“She’s a lassie,” Adaria said. “She should be taught how to dress and how to fix her hair.”

“Ye ken how to fight,” Eiric pointed out.

“Aye, and much good that did me!” Adaria huffed, placing her hands on her hips as she looked at her son. “I havena held a sword in years, but I spend every day lookin’ for what to wear. Did ye even ask the wee lass if she wants to ken how to fight?”

“Oh, I’d like to learn,” Marion piped up before Adaria could berate her son any further. Besides, it was the truth. She didn’t care how dirty her clothes and hair got, nor did she care about dresses and hairstyles. Fighting was exciting, and so was raising and training ravens; they were things that her mother would have never allowed her to do, and things that most girls, especially in England, never got to learn.

At Marion’s reassurance, Adaria seemed to become mellow once more, giving her a smile. “Weel, if ye like it, then I can hardly stop ye from doin’ it. It’s good to have somethin’ to do here, to keep busy. But ye’ll come with me noo, and we’ll get you out of those clothes and into a tub.”

Marion couldn’t protest even if she wanted to. Adaria needed to do little to convince those around her to do her bidding.

With a quick goodbye to Eiric, she followed Adaria up the stairs, the two of them heading to her chambers. Soon, Marion would be subjected to that dreaded bath procedure, but it seemed to her as though Adaria was happy to sit and talk for a while before leaving her to the maids’ mercy.

“Do ye like it here, Marion?” Adaria asked her, as she took a seat in the chair that sat by the window. She always seemed so regal, Marion thought, even as she stretched onto the chair, getting comfortable.

How does she do it? If it were me, I would look improper, surely.

But Adaria was looking anything but. Perhaps now that Marion lived there, she would learn how to act like a woman of her stature, much to her mother’s chagrin, of course.

“I do,” Marion said, as she perched herself on the edge of her mattress, careful to not get any dirt on the expensive covers that were draped over her bed. “I really do. Everyone has been very kind to me here, and Scotland is very nice.”