Highlander Mine. Juliette Miller

their admiring glances and lascivious comments to understand that much. But now standing here next to Christie made me feel less like a womanly treasure and more like a prize-winning heifer. “Once you’re settled, feel free to stroll the gardens as you like,” she said. “A meal will be served at midday, in the hall. You’ll hear the bell. When Knox is ready to see you, he’ll send someone.”

      With that, she left us to it. I washed my face with some cool water and brushed my hair, tying it in a loose coil, but Hamish was too energized to stay cooped up in our room.

      “Let’s go, Ami. I want to explore the orchards and see if any of the fruit is ripe enough to pick.”

      “I would think it’s still too early for the fruit.”

      But I was soon pulled at his insistence out the door and down the stairs. The workers took no notice of us. They were likely accustomed to guests and visitors. We found our way out-of-doors and into the day. The light was clear and golden, slightly hazed with the climbing heat of summer. The orchards themselves were something akin to a wonderland of lush green. Soft, waving grass carpeted the expanse. Compact, leafy trees created inviting little curling paths so exquisite that if someone had told me faeries were hiding among their branches, waving magical wands and leaving gold-dust trails, I would have believed him. Hamish ran ahead. I called to him, but he had disappeared. He wouldn’t have gone far, I knew. Let him be, I thought. He needed to play, to run. To be a child for an hour or two.

      I strolled along, thoroughly enjoying myself, taking a deep breath and feeling the air in my lungs and the sun on my face for the first time in...perhaps ever. This was a different sun from the muted light of the city. This sun felt healthy and restorative. I unpinned the clasp of my shawl to feel the warmth on my skin.

      I heard laughter. From somewhere up above me.

      “Come down from there,” I told him. “You’ll fall.”

      “I won’t fall. You should come up here, Ami. I can see over the orchards. And at the very top of the tree, the apples are turning red.”

      “Pick one for me.”

      “There’s one right above you,” Hamish exclaimed. “On that branch there. You could reach it if you climbed across.”

      I looked to see where he was pointing. A thick, low branch was within my reach where it met the trunk of the tree, rising at an inclined angle as it grew outward. At the end of it was a very big, very red apple. It nearly glowed with its luscious rosy ripeness in the dappled sunlight. “You get it,” I said.

      “I’m all the way up here. You’ll have to.”

      I’d never picked an apple straight off a tree before and eaten it when it was still warm from the sun. It simply looked too good to resist. This truly was Eden, I couldn’t help musing, and I was Eve, overcome by temptation. Laying my shawl on the grass, I reached up and slid my palms over the comfortingly rough bark of the tree branch. Placing one hand farther, then the other, I inched my way along it until I was hanging several feet off the ground. My arms were already getting sore from the effort, but I was now determined to reach my apple. And I was almost there.

      I was close enough to reach out, through the leaves...I almost had it. My fingertips brushed against its smooth, perfect surface. But then I heard a sound. Someone was clearing his throat. The deep rumble was so close behind me it startled me and I lost my grip, tumbling to the ground in an unruly heap.

      Slightly dazed from my fall, I looked up to see the most striking vision I had ever laid eyes on.

      A man.

      He was very tall and backlit by the sun so that his lit silhouette was framed by a wash of bright, molten gold. The shape of him was somehow superb, as though he’d been carved by a master. I could see the colors of him and the details of his white shirt, loose and open at the neck to reveal the tanned skin of his throat. His shirt was exceptionally well made and of high-quality cotton but worn to the point of visible softness. Strapped around his waist was a thick leather belt that holstered two weapons: a gold-handled hunting knife and an exceedingly large sword that was not sheathed in a scabbard but slung bare and shiny into its looped harness. That exposed blade seemed to signify something, purposefully advertising not only its gargantuan size but its artful craftsmanship. He has the biggest sword of them all. His leather trews were tucked into tall boots. On his wrist was a wide leather band adorned with gold ornamentation and he wore a gold chain around his neck that was mostly hidden from view inside his shirt. His hair was a deep midnight-black and hung past the collar of his shirt in thick, sun-glinted skeins, curling slightly at the ends. He wore a small braid at either temple, as his traveling guards had also done: a Highlands warrior custom. I noticed all these details abstractly; it was his face and his demeanor that riveted me most of all. His posture was upright but relaxed, utterly confident. Power seemed to radiate from the wide set of his shoulders in heatlike, shimmery waves. The features of his face were bold but aristocratic, from the wide, straight nose to the carved, masculine jaw roughened by the light shadow of stubble. Strong, black, expressive eyebrows arched slightly with a note of absorbed assessment. And his irises, arresting in their charcoal-rimmed pale gray glow, as though alight from within. Long, thick black lashes brushed almost elegantly against his cheeks as he closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them again, there was a flash of bemused satisfaction. His full lips curved in an arrogant pout that wasn’t a smile.

      “And who,” he said, his deep voice curling into me with unusual effect, “might you be?”