THE GIFT: A Highland Novella Read online

  “I’d best feed ye first, aye?” He helped her sit up, then gave her a piece of dried venison from the bag tied to his belt. “Ye must be hungry.”

  She ate it like a starving creature. While her attention was focused on the venison, he continued his examination of her. She was a wee thing, with lovely, delicate hands. He could not discern her shape in the oversized clothes, which must have been her intent, but it was not hard to imagine that the beauty of her face extended to the rest of her.

  “How old are ye?” he asked.

  “Two and twenty,” she said.

  That much was a relief. At least he wasn’t having untoward thoughts about a lass who was too young. But what in hell was he going to do with her? He had an important mission to complete for his chieftain, and he must not tarry. Yet he could not leave her here to die.

  When she finished eating the small strip of venison, she leaned against him, as if exhausted from the effort. His heart did an odd flip.

  “A bit more whisky will help, lass.” He lifted the flask to her lips and held her close to keep her warm.

  Thump-thump, thump-thump. At the sound of hoofbeats, he slammed her to the ground.

  “I travel with strangers,” he said an inch from her face. “’Tis best they not discover that ye are a lass. Understand?”

  “Aye,” she said, and her breath tickled his lips.

  For a dangerous moment, he stared into her remarkable green eyes and forgot where he was and how he came to be lying half on top of her. By the saints, how could any man be fooled by her disguise? He picked up her cap and began stuffing her hair into it. If the others caught a glimpse of her long, wild locks, the chance of deceiving them would go from poor to none.

  “No one else has found me out,” she said, as if she’d heard his thoughts.

  With deft fingers, she tucked the curls he’d missed out of sight under the cap.

  He sat up in time to see the Douglas men appear over the hill. “Here they come.”

  As she craned her neck to see over the tall grass, she leaned against him, startling him with her touch. He wondered again why she trusted him so easily. She shouldn’t. When she turned to look at him, her expression was alert, but not frightened, despite the half-dozen warriors who were nearly upon them.

  “We’ve no time to agree upon a story,” Roderick said, speaking quickly. “I’ll tell them something. Just don’t contradict me.”

  “I won’t.” She gave him a solemn wink, then closed her eyes and went limp in his arms.

  “Jesu,” he said under his breath as he looked down at her, “who are you?”

  ***

  Lily was not on regular speaking terms with God, but she sent up a prayer of thanks that it was the handsome man with the bluest eyes she’d ever seen who found her, and not one of these other men. As she listened to their voices above her, she knew in her bones that she would not have been safe with any of them.

  Her rescuer had hair as black as the devil and a startling number of weapons strapped to his tall, muscular frame. She should have been frightened by him, but when she awoke to those dark blue eyes staring intently into hers, she saw kindness in them and trusted him at once.

  “Who’s the lad, Highlander?” one of the other men asked.

  “How am I to know? He’s too weak to speak,” her rescuer said. “We’ll have to take him with us until we can find someone to care for him.”

  The voices of the others rose, insisting that he “keep to the task” and “leave the lad behind.” The Highlander simply waited until they ran out of words.

  “Do as ye please,” he told them, “but I won’t leave a half-grown lad to die.”

  He scooped Lily off the ground, and the next thing she knew she was sitting in front of him on his horse. Her bag, which was still tied to her by its strap, came with her and slapped against her hip. Though she had ridden in a cart before, she’d never sat on a horse’s back. It all happened so quickly that she barely managed to stifle a scream. A trifle late, she remembered to loll her head forward—and prayed her cap stayed in place.

  “I’ll take the lead,” the Highlander shouted to the others, then he whispered in her ear, “We’ll get some distance from them so we may speak freely. Hold on.”

  The sensation of his breath on her cheek and the deep rumble of his voice through her back made her slow to take in his words. An instant later, the Highlander’s arm tightened around her waist, and she was slammed backward against his chest as the horse bolted forward.

  Suddenly she was flying over the ground, with the grass a blur beneath her and her rescuer’s body enfolding hers as if they were one. Her heart pounded and she felt breathless.

  Had her ordeal addled her mind? She was on a horse with a wild Highlander, going God-knew-where with men even he did not trust, and yet she found it…thrilling.

  It was not as if she had never been close to a man before. She had touched plenty of men, intimately. She had looked down their throats, felt their bellies for tumors, and applied poultices to their weeping wounds. Once, she’d even treated an infected cock. Now that was disgusting.

  Despite all her experience as a healer, she was quickly discovering that having a healthy and handsome man’s body touching hers from her head to her heels was an altogether different sensation. Of course, many women had told her as much when they came to her begging for love potions. But as a healer, she knew every sort of trouble men caused women, and she’d never met a man she thought was worth the risk.

  After the Highlander slowed the horse to a walk, he handed her his leather pouch, which she opened to find hard oat biscuits and dried venison.

  “Ye must eat some more,” he said, “but do it slowly.”

  That was good advice, but her stomach had shrunk so from her ordeal that she doubted she could eat much anyway.

  Each step the horse took caused the Highlander’s thighs to rub against hers, which in turn sent tingles of awareness coursing through her body. She liked the sensation far more than she wished. While she could never abide the thought of being chained to a husband for life, she began to understand why a woman would take a lover.

  “Feeling better now, lass?” the Highlander asked, the rumble of his voice sending another unexpected thrill through her.

  “I am, thank you.”

  She looked down to find the leather pouch in her lap was empty. She had been so distracted by the unusual course of her thoughts that she had eaten it all without realizing it.

  “You’re warm enough?”

  She swallowed. “Thoroughly warm.”

  “Then perhaps ye can tell me now how an English lass came to be wandering alone in the hills of Scotland?”

  She could not very well admit that she left London for fear of being burned as a witch.

  “’Tis a long story,” she said, making her voice faint, “and I fear I’m still a bit weak.”

  “Hmmph. Ye must at least tell me where ye were headed, or I cannot help ye get there.”

  Now that her blood was moving again and she had some nourishment, Lily remembered her journey only too well. When the boat left her in Edinburgh, she should have stayed there. She knew how to survive in a city, even an unfamiliar one where the people had such an odd way of speaking English.

  “I was on my way to Northumberland,” she said, deciding it was safe to tell him that much.

  “Walking. All that way. By yourself.” The Highlander added something in a language she could not understand, which she surmised was a curse.

  “How else was I to get there?” She certainly was not getting on a ship again after what happened the first time. “I heard tell of a famous healer who lives near the border. As I’d be passing by, I intended to stop and pay her a visit.”

  “Why did ye wish to see this healer?” he asked. “Are ye in need of a cure?”

  Tension vibrated from his body, a warning that her answer was important to him, though she could not imagine why.

  “I hoped to learn new cure
s from her,” she said, deciding to tell him the truth, for lack of a better idea. “You see, I’m a healer myself.”

  ***

  Women who had the gift of The Sight were very often healers.

  His grandmother’s last words returned to Roderick like a thump on the head. Ye won’t find the lass ye need until ye stop looking for her.

  He had stopped looking for her. Despite his suspicion that his grandmother was confused when she spoke about his journey in the same breath as the clan’s need for a seer, he had been alert to the possibility of meeting a seer while he traveled through the Highlands on his way to the Douglas stronghold. As soon as he crossed into the Lowlands, however, he put the idea out of his head.

  The Sight was a magical gift, so it never occurred to him that the gift would be strong in a Lowlander. An English seer seemed an utter impossibility. No one lacked imagination like the English.

  Yet he could not dismiss the notion that this lass dressed in breeches could be the seer his grandmother foretold. Finding an English lass lying on a Scottish hillside so many miles from the border was strange enough to have a touch of magic about it. When the lass awoke in his arms, her vivid green eyes cast an enchantment upon him, for certain, though he suspected that was the common sort of women’s magic that caused men trouble every day.

  He considered asking her outright if she had The Sight, but he did not believe she’d be forthcoming about being a Seer. Even in her weakened state, she had been careful not to tell him why or how she came to be wandering alone through Scottish hills.

  “What is your name, lass?” he asked, deciding to start with an easy question and work his way up to it. “I am Roderick, son of Teàrlach of the MacDonalds and Muireall of the Clanranalds.” He left out prior generations, though being a good Highlander, he could recite them back a couple hundred years without straining his memory.

  He leaned to the side to get a better look at her as he waited for her to respond in kind. She had a soothing stillness about her that he admired, but he wanted answers now.

  “Lily,” she said.

  A lass who would not even share her family name had secrets she intended to hold on to.

  “’Tis a lovely name,” he said. “Where is your home, Lily?”

  She paused so long this time that he had given up expecting a response when she said, “London.”

  “London? Ach, that’s a fair distance.” He had assumed she lived near the border. Now it was an even greater mystery how she had come to be on that hillside. “I fear it won’t be easy to get ye home, lass, especially with the winter storms upon us.”

  “I can wait.”

  She must be running away from something. Or someone. She had put a good deal of distance between herself and London, and she was not anxious to return home.

  “What am I to do with ye in the meantime?” he asked, though he was already forming a plan.

  “Set me on a road to Northumberland,” she said. “I have a friend there.”

  “Are ye dimwitted? I’m no’ leaving ye along a damned road to die of the cold, if you’re not murdered first.” He took a deep breath. “Northumberland is a long way from here, and I’m traveling in the other direction.”

  “Then leave me in the first town we come to,” she said. “I’ll do fine anywhere there are folk who need healing and are willing to trade for it.”

  “Hmmph.” As if he could leave her to fend for herself among strangers—and Lowlanders at that.

  “I’ll have ye know that I’m a much sought after healer in London,” she said.

  Then why did she leave? And why, after nearly meeting her death here, was she not begging to go home? Once again he wondered what awaited her in London that she preferred to risk her fate with strangers.

  He took this as another sign that she was, indeed, the lass he was supposed to bring home to serve his clan. Whether she was or not, he was responsible for her now.

  CHAPTER 3

  “Time to wake up, lass.”

  The low whisper in her ear woke Lily with a start. It took her a long moment to recall how she came to be leaning against a man’s chest and why the seat beneath her was rocking. She could not say which surprised her more—that she fell sound asleep on a horse’s back or that she did it enfolded in this huge Highland warrior’s arms.

  She must have slept a long time. The hills were silhouetted against the sunset, and the sky was rapidly growing dark. She shuddered as she remembered the previous night, when she had curled up, hungry and freezing, on a barren hillside.

  “Ye can go back to sleep after we set up camp and have our supper,” he said, squeezing her arm. “Until then, ye must have your wits about ye.”

  “I will.”

  She sat up straight and felt around the edges of her hat to be sure no long strands had escaped, then leaned to the side to look behind them. The dark line of Douglas warriors following them through the valley looked menacing in the fading light.

  “I don’t trust these men,” she told him.

  “But ye trust me,” he said. “Why?”

  She shrugged. “I just do.”

  He was quiet for a long while, as if contemplating her reply. Let him wonder. She was not telling a man who prided himself on being a fierce warrior that she trusted him because he had kindness in his eyes.

  “If these men discover you’re English, it will make them uneasy,” he said. “Uneasy men are dangerous.”

  “Then I’ll speak the way they do,” she said, doing her best to mimic their accent.

  “Better not attempt it,” the Highlander said with a laugh.

  The low rumble of his chest vibrating against her back was oddly comforting, though she failed to see the humor in her situation.

  “I’ll tell them you’re a Highlander,” he said, “and that ye only have the Gaelic.”

  “The what?”

  “The language of the Highlands,” he said. “When I speak to ye, just nod and pretend ye understand.”

  “I don’t mean to insult you,” she said, “but that sounds like a poor plan to me.”

  She regretted speaking so bluntly. But instead of being angry at the insult, he laughed again, a loud, reassuring sound that spilled over her and left inexplicable sparks of joy in its wake.

  ***

  Roderick was grateful that nightfall came early this close to Yuletide and laid out his extra plaid for Lily well outside the circle of firelight. Pretending she was too weak to fetch her own meal, which was not far from the truth, he brought her supper to her there. The Douglas men would soon forget about “the lad” asleep in the dark behind them and quit grumbling about Roderick bringing “him” along.

  He wanted to avoid trouble with them if he could, especially now that he had the lass to worry about. To make the men feel more at ease with him, he exchanged tales, threw dice, and drank with them through the long evening until finally all the Douglas men lay down for the night, rolled up in their cloaks and blankets.

  Roderick stretched out on the ground next to Lily, careful not to wake her. Away from the fire, there was a sharp bite in the night air. They would wake up to frost in the morning. He lay awake long into the night, alert to every sound—the snorts of the Douglas men, the wind in the branches overhead, the hoot of an owl, and the soft breathing of the lass who slept an arm’s reach away.

  Who was she? Did she have a man she was running from? Was she the seer his clan needed? What did she look like under her ill-fitting clothes? Though the last question was the least important, it occupied most of his thoughts.

  He must have finally dozed off, for he awoke with a start when Lily rolled into him. It was lucky he realized that the soft body pressed into his was Lily’s, or his blade might be between her ribs. The thought made him break out into a sweat.

  The lass must be cold. Still, he could not risk letting her stay tucked against him, lest one of the others discover them like this. With a sigh of regret, he eased her a safe distance away.

  The day h
ad been long, and this time he fell into a deep sleep. He awakened slowly, dragged from a dream of a green-eyed lass who smiled up at him as she lay in his arms. Sensing she was about to tell him something important, he fought to hold on to the dream long enough to hear it…

  Roderick’s eyes flew open. By the saints, she had done it again. The full length of her body was pressed against his—and now, the sky was turning gray with the coming dawn. He covered Lily’s mouth and leaned over her.

  “Ye cannot lie next to me as if we’re lovers, or they’ll know you’re a lass,” he said in a hushed voice.

  The thought of them being lovers sent a surge of lust through his veins and made him suddenly aware of every inch that their bodies touched. He would swear he could feel her heart beat against his.

  When she nodded beneath his hand, he paused a moment too long before releasing her. Then he sat up and glanced around the camp. The others were still asleep, praise God. He drew in a deep breath.

  “Quickly now,” he whispered, “go take care of your needs before the others are up and about.”

  He pointed to the thick shrubs that grew along the burn and watched her disappear into them. If it would not cause the Douglases to suspect some sort of treachery on the part of his chieftain, Roderick would steal away with her while they still slept.

  The other men soon began to stir, so he got up and rekindled the fire. What was taking the lass so damned long? After nearly dying yesterday, surely she would know better than to run off on her own. But could she have gotten lost? The burn was only a few yards away, but the lass obviously had an abysmal sense of direction.

  The Douglases were all up and ready for breakfast when he finally saw Lily’s small figure appear through the bushes. The tension between his shoulders eased until he noticed the distinctly feminine way she walked, swaying her hips and minding where she put her feet to avoid the mud, rather than charging ahead like a lad. When she joined him by the fire, she looked up and gave him a bright smile.

  Ach, she had scrubbed her face clean. No lad of thirteen would do that. Worse still, her face looked even lovelier without the dirt to hide it.