Page 21 of It’s in his Highland Kiss

There was a smile on her face though, one that Marion didn’t miss. It was clear as day, and it told her that not only was Adaria considering it, but she also liked the idea.

Not long after Adaria left, the maids poured into the room, ready to scrub the grime off Marion once more. They did quick work of her, as always, and though it was still uncomfortable for Marion, she was quickly coming to terms with the fact that she would never be given the chance to bathe alone again.

Just as Adaria had promised, later that day, she returned along with the tailor and some more maids, all of them holding fabrics in their hands. They surrounded her, showing her the sturdy cottons and fine silks, all of them more expensive than she ever thought she could have.

They were all beautiful; some soft, embroidered with gold threads, others rougher but holding their shape well, and all of them in dazzling, vivid colours.

There was no way that Marion could make a choice; and even if she did, she was certain that it would be the wrong one.

She looked at Adaria, worry etched onto her face. “Help me?”

With a sigh and a good-natured smile, Adaria sat next to Marion. She began to tell her what colours looked good together, what fabrics she should choose, what silhouettes were most flattering, and Marion could only nod and try to absorb as much information as she could. Where Eiric had a wealth of knowledge regarding war, fighting, and strategy, Adaria was an encyclopaedia of taste, and she seemed eager to teach Marion everything that she knew.

The two of them spent more time in that room than Marion could count, and in the end, it was Adaria who chose all her dresses for her, despite Adaria’s own protests. She wanted Marion to choose, and yet Marion was reluctant to do so, thinking that she would make the wrong decisions and waste money.

“Ye need to trust yerself more, lass,” Adaria told her as the tailor and the maids left the room. “The truth is . . . weel, one day, ye’ll be married, and ye’ll have a house to run. It’s na easy, and I ken that better than anyone, but it’ll be yer duty one day, and soon. How will ye run an entire house if ye canna even choose a dress?”

It was a good question and one that Marion didn’t want to consider. She hadn’t given much thought to marriage, neither before coming to Scotland nor now that she was there. It was the last thing on her mind, and it seemed to be so far away in her future that it didn’t matter quite yet.

How could she be expected to run a house when she didn’t even know how to talk to people? She had never had to entertain anyone; there had never been a feast thrown for her, there had never been suitors, nothing to prepare her for such a life. Her cousin, Mary, and everyone in that castle knew how to navigate social situations. They knew everything because they had grown up seeing and doing.

Marion had grown up saying prayers and embroidering, alone in her room, away from others—away from temptation. Now those very temptations would soon become her daily job, and her mother had done nothing to prepare her for it.

Perhaps because deep down, she had never thought that she would get to marry Marion off to anyone.

“I know,” Marion said with a sigh, shaking her head. “I know, but . . . oh, I don’t know. I know nothing, Adaria. I don’t think I can be the kind of woman that I have to be.”

“Again, nonsense,” Adaria said. “Ye’ll do just fine. All ye have to do is listen to what I tell ye, and ye’ll ken what to do in nay time. I promise.”

Adaria’s words were a reassurance, though Marion could only believe them for a few moments. Then, the fear that she wasn’t good enough came back, and she had to refrain from revealing her thoughts to Adaria.

What if I’m never good enough? What if I can never truly find my place in the world?

Chapter Ten

The tracks on the dirt were clear as day. Large footsteps leading deep into the woods, deeper than Marion had ever been before. The foliage was thick, trees forming a canopy over her and blocking out the light of the morning sun.

Too obvious. Much, much too obvious.

If there was one thing that Marion had learnt while training with Eiric, it was that he never left marks that were that obvious, or at least he didn’t follow a simple, linear path to wherever it was that he was leading her.

Eiric guarded his location fiercely at all times, fearing that the enemy could find him even on his own turf. Who that enemy was, Marion didn’t know, but Eiric had made it clear without even speaking that he had plenty of them. The entire MacLeod clan seemed to have plenty of them, English officials who would love nothing more than to see the clan’s end.

But now, Marion was the enemy, and Eiric was hers. His tracks were leading to a trap, that much she knew for certain.

It was like that time, not too long ago, when he had first started training her, and had decided that it would be amusing to make her follow his tracks and trap her in a net, to show her that tracks were not always reliable. Marion had ended up upside down, limbs tangled through the net’s holes, screaming and holding onto the ropes for dear life. It had taken Eiric mere seconds to get her back down onto the ground, but Marion had been scarred for life.

Ever since, she was suspicious of clear tracks. Then again, that was what Eiric had wanted to teach her in the first place.

Instead of going any further into the woods, Marion looked around for any other sign that Eiric had been there and had gone a different way. Sometimes, he purposefully left clues for her, little things that men who were not as good as he was at hiding would leave behind. Other times, though, he would leave nothing, no tracks, no signs, nothing that Marion could follow and get to him, and she would have to either wait for him to show or find a way to track him down that didn’t involve any clear clues.

She had climbed up more trees than she could count. She had talked to more servants than she even knew were in the castle, all so that she could find him. And now, she was determined to find him once more.

Marion reached for the wooden sword that she always carried with her while she trained with Eiric, as he refused to give her a proper blade, concerned that there would be an accident, despite Marion’s insistence that she could handle it just fine, and she wouldn’t end up killing or maiming anyone, let alone herself. She held the sword firmly in her hand, knowing that Eiric could jump out from behind a tree or a bush at any moment, and then she looked around, her gaze taking in every detail on the ground and the tangle of branches around her.

Then she saw it. Whether Eiric had left it behind on purpose or by accident was a mystery to her, but it was there, nevertheless. A tiny piece of fabric with a hint of blue, like his clan’s colours, was hanging from a branch further away from the trail that Eiric had left. Marion carefully walked towards it, her gaze darting around as she went deeper into the woods.

She could hear every sound, every rustle of the leaves, every coo of the birds that called those trees their home. She was vigilant, keeping a close eye on her surroundings as she circled the trees, knowing that Eiric was close.