Page 3 of It’s in his Highland Kiss

She closed her eyes and finally, her lips parted, allowing the water in. The pain stopped.

There was nothing but darkness.

Chapter Two

The hand that grabbed Marion’s forearm was a vice around it, leaving a bruise behind that would not heal for days. It pulled her up, though, out of the water and onto the ground, where she lay coughing and gasping for breath.

There was someone there, someone who had saved her, and though he was talking to her as he rolled her on her side, urging her to spit out the water she had swallowed, she could hardly hear what he was saying.

Her ears buzzed, an incessant sound, and her raking coughs made her entire body hurt. Her vision was blurry at the edges, and even when she had spit out the water in her mouth, she still felt as though she was drowning.

“Are ye alright, lass?” a voice called from above her, and Marion rolled over onto her back to look at the man standing over her. She took note of his fiery red hair and green eyes, the familiar features, the Scottish accent that she hadn’t heard in such a long time.

“Eiric?”

Surely, it couldn’t be, Marion thought. She hadn’t seen Eiric in years, and the man had little reason to be there. Then again, he was Mary’s cousin too, and perhaps he had been invited to the feast, much like Marion and her family had been.

“Aye, it’s me,” he said, and Marion couldn’t help but smile. And yet, Eiric didn’t return her smile.

Once he ensured that she was alive and well, his entire demeanour seemed to change, and he stood up with a sigh, a hand running through his hair as he paced by the river. Marion stood, as well, though she did so with difficulty, her body still weak and her dress weighing her down.

“What do ye think ye’re doin’?” Eiric asked her, his tone accusatory. “What if I hadna been here, hmm? What then? Ye’d be dead by noo, do ye nae ken that? Have ye lost yer mind?”

“I . . . I slipped and fell,” Marion lied, for lack of anything better to say. She didn’t know how to explain her reasoning to Eiric, nor did she want to do so. It had been her own choice, and no one had a right to demand an explanation from her, not even Eiric.

“Nay, ye didna,” Eiric said. “I saw ye dive into the waters. I saw ye take yer shoes off and go in the river, Marion, so dinna tell me that ye simply slipped and fell. It was nae an accident.”

Marion looked him in the eyes, her own eyes narrowed, pinning Eiric down with her gaze.

“I just don’t want to live.”

It was the truth, plain and simple, and though Marion had been a coward at the face of death and had fought for her life in the end, she still didn’t want to live the kind of life that she had led for all those years. She didn’t know how she could possibly change it; all she knew was that she couldn’t live like that anymore.

She remembered the times that she had spent with him and his mother when the two of them were children. She hadn’t known it then, but those were the best moments of her life. Lady MacLeod had been as much of a mother to her as she was to Eiric while her family would visit theirs, and every night before their departure, she would beg the woman to let her stay there with them, screaming and crying.

Her mother dragged her out of the castle every single time.

Marion wasn’t expecting Eiric to reach for her, his fingers brushing a stray curl of her wet hair away from her face. He looked at her in a strange way, in a way that Marion had seen men look at other women, but not her, never her.

She couldn’t help but flinch, her entire body jerking away from him, and Eiric let his hand fall by his side, not attempting to get any closer.

“Why dinna ye want to live?” he asked her, much to Marion’s chagrin.

She had never tried to explain her situation to anyone before. She doubted that anyone would believe she was suffering, after all, since her parents were wealthy, and her upbringing must have seemed nothing less than perfect to an outsider.

What am I supposed to tell him? The truth?

She supposed she had no other choice.

“I may seem fortunate enough to you, but I don’t see it that way,” Marion said. “I grew up overlooked, uncared for. Look at this,” she said, pointing at her dress, its dull grey colour only looking worse when wet. “This is my life. And no . . . no, it’s not only about the dresses, though I’ve never worn a dress that wasn’t owned by someone else before. I . . . you’ll never understand, no one ever can, so there is no point trying to explain it to you.”

“I understand.”

Marion looked up at Eiric, blinking at him in confusion. How could he ever understand? How could he ever know what she had been through in her life?

“I remember,” he continued, a sigh escaping his lips. “Do ye? We were bairns, and yer family was visitin’ me family for a few weeks.”

“Yes, I remember,” Marion said. “It wasn’t only once. We visited a few times.”