The Highland Laird's Bride. Nicole Locke

Three

      Bram found Lioslath in the kitchens. It was night and darkness blanketed every crevice of the long spaces surrounding them. Soot covering her hands and face, Lioslath slept curled up near a dying fire with that wolf next to her. Like this, she looked soft, inviting—

      The dog suddenly growled and Lioslath woke with a start. Her hand reached out, but there was nothing there. If she were a man, he’d have thought she was reaching for a weapon.

      The dog’s ears twitched as if to flatten them and Bram pulled himself back. The dog was only a reminder of their differences, of why he was here.

      ‘You didn’t open the gates,’ he said, more gently than he meant. Her softness was now gone, but his body hadn’t caught up with his thoughts. How she barred him, denied him again, when she should be grateful he showed up at all.

      He had not expected Lioslath to open the gates without a pretence of a fight. After all, it would make no sense if she were to open the gates after denying them access for so long. When she threw the bucket of debris and the others did the same, he thought it all for show.

      Which was why he controlled his anger when some of it hit his foot. But the entire day came and went, and he didn’t see her again.

      ‘Yet, you came anyway,’ she retorted.

      Wobbling, she stood. Like this, the fire’s light illuminated what he hadn’t seen before: a black mole, small and just above her upper lip. It was placed as if a mischievous faery kissed such perfection. He knew if he were such a faery, there would be others...

      ‘What can I do to make you unwelcome?’ she said.

      Obstinate. Their encounter last night had been brief, but he thought he’d controlled the situation. After all, Lioslath was a beautiful woman and his flattering words had always been enough in the past, but it didn’t seem enough for her. Maybe flirting wouldn’t work with her. Difficult, when her beauty affected him.

      No. More than that. It was her fierceness at the platform, her throwing the debris, her contemplative observing of them. All of it affected him. But if his flattery wouldn’t work, there were other methods of persuasion.

      She took his gifts by the tunnel and he saw the state of the clan and their lands. She needed his supplies and manpower, even if she pretended she didn’t.

      The current level of desperation should be enough for him to be accepted over the winter.

      ‘Those gates are barred, but I can get inside,’ he said. ‘This is nae a real siege and it is time to end it.’

      ‘I never told you to come. I held a dagger to you and told you to leave.’

      Her amusing threat of last night. At the time he thought it a jest. Now he was beginning to think she meant it. It was still laughable, but for other reasons.

      ‘I may be unwelcome,’ he said, ‘but my supplies are not.’

      ‘You stay because of the gifts?’ she retorted. ‘You could have left them and gone. I doona even know why you’re here.’

      ‘I sent you a missive. When your father died, I would come with help.’

      ‘Only because you feel guilty for the crimes you committed here!’

      ‘I committed nae crimes here. I forged an alliance.’

      She pulled herself up, then wavered before she widened her stance to gain her balance. He looked at her feet. There was nothing that tripped her.

      ‘You bribed this clan, married my father to your sister, who at the first opportunity didn’t honour her vows and ran off!’

      ‘Careful, Fergusson. There was nae bribe to this clan. I offered a marriage and alliance between your father and my sister Gaira. I offered a total of forty sheep—twenty immediately, and twenty more after one year. It was a profitable and a stable alliance, and one which your father accepted.’

      ‘Which your sister didn’t honour! With nae possible reason, she ran away.’

      He didn’t know how to answer this. Either way, it would not be good. Something about this woman’s father, Busby, frightened Gaira, but his sister had also been hurt when he forced her marriage. ‘It matters not why she ran,’ he said.

      ‘Of course it matters why she ran. If she hadn’t, my father wouldn’t have pursued her and wouldn’t have been murdered by an English knight.’

      This conversation must be avoided. He hadn’t lied in the missive he sent to her, but he’d skirted the truth regarding how her father died and by whose hand. He knew exactly who murdered her father and he wasn’t an ordinary knight. He was also no longer precisely English. No, Robert of Dent, the famed Black Robert and King Edward’s favoured knight, wasn’t dead at all, but married to Gaira, and living in secret on Colquhoun land.

      ‘My sister ran from him,’ Bram said. ‘I didn’t order him to follow her.’

      ‘Nae, you merely threatened to take the sheep and bring the force of Clan Colquhoun down on his head if he didn’t find her.’

      He hadn’t known how else to keep Gaira, his only surviving sister, safe. When Bram made the alliance with Busby, he had concerns only for his own clan, for his own selfish desire to marry. When he made the alliance, the English massacres at Berwick and Doonhill hadn’t yet occurred. The war against England hadn’t been lost at Dunbar. How was he, how was anyone, to guess that the Scotland of only months ago would be so changed?

      If he’d known, he would have kept his family close to him. He would have spent the months preparing and fortifying his keep. He would have closed the gates and locked them all safely inside.

      Instead, he forced a temporary marriage between Gaira and Laird Fergusson. Under normal politics it would have been astute. It brought strength for his clan by having someone in the south and Gaira would be nearer to their youngest sister, Irvette.

      Irvette, the youngest and sweetest of them all, who married a man she loved. Irvette, who was murdered by the English at Doonhill.

      Since April, his family had seen too much danger, suffered too much loss. And worst of all, he could have avoided most of it.

      Now he needed to right these wrongs with this clan, but he could not be gentle any longer. Her stubbornness aside, he was laird and knew what was at stake. He wouldn’t fail his clan and family again, and he fully intended for his new plan to work.

      ‘What happened to those sheep, Lioslath? I didn’t take them and I see scarce livestock on your land.’

      ‘Why does it matter to you?’

      He felt a roiling frustration and fought to keep his patience. He would not give up his power. ‘I wrote to you. I told you that Gaira returned to Colquhoun land. I explained I’d come here to make amends.’

      ‘But you’re late.’

      ‘Dunbar occurred. I am late because our country went to war!’

      ‘Aye, but that doesn’t explain why you were late. Everyone knows you didn’t participate in Dunbar.’

      No, he hadn’t participated in that fateful battle against the English last April. Scotsmen had been slaughtered; the ones who survived hid in Ettrick Forest. His brother Malcolm was one of the survivors, but he carried a terrible wound.

      Bram could tell no one why he hadn’t participated in Dunbar. He made his choice not against his country, but for his country. King John Balliol himself ordered Bram not to participate, to stay on Colquhoun land and receive two messages. The messages, he had been told, would protect Scotland.

      Bram stayed, had advised his family and clan to stay, but he never received two messages. Balliol was defeated at Dunbar and was now being held at the Tower of London. It was the English King Edward who ruled over Scotland now.

      If Balliol expected Bram to protect Scotland, he was falling far short.