Choosing the Highlander (15 page)

Being here, with Wilhelm, was refreshing. But she would begin to miss Chicago. Once the sense of being on vacation vanished, she would want to return to her job and her busy life. Already she missed having resources and control over what happened to her.

“Aye. ’Tis.” he said simply. His nostrils flared, and his gaze intensified. “Your loyalty is not to him. Let us not pretend otherwise.”

She reeled back as if he’d slapped her. “Excuse me?”

“He is taken with you. Mayhap this prevents him from using caution. Mayhap he gives you his trust too easily. This is not commonly his way.” A hint of worry softened his eyes.

“I would never hurt him. He saved my life. I’m going to Inverness to help clear his name. And yours,” she pointed out. How dare this man question her loyalty?

He dares because he loves his cousin,
whispered her conscience.
And he’s right.

Her first loyalty was to herself. She would help Wilhelm, yes, but her foremost goal was to return to Chicago and Leslie and a job she was darn good at, even if it wasn’t exactly heaven on earth. She had to break up with Milt. Her father had a retirement party in a few weeks. She’d been helping her mother plan it. Of course her loyalty was to her home and family. She wouldn’t let this near-stranger make her feel guilty about the fact.

“Nevertheless, your loyalty is not to him. If I didna ken better, I might suspect you of casting a spell over him.”

She gasped.

“I said, if I didna ken better. You’re no witch. I doona abide such nonsense. But you’re also nay English. Ye sound English, but Will says your speech is different when you are alone with him.”

She opened her mouth to argue, but he silenced her with a cutting motion of his hand.

“
Whist.
I’ll no’ have ye taking umbrage with me for acting on Will’s behalf. He’ll be taking you to Inverness, and that’s that. I say this to you, though. If you raise a hand to him or bring any ill fate down on his head, I will hunt you down and repay you in kind.”

Her heart missed a beat. Never before had a man threatened her with violence. For all Terran’s joviality, underneath, he was a warrior. That was the side he showed her now. If provoked, he could be a dangerous man. She suspected that went for Wilhelm too. She must not underestimate him simply because she found him attractive.

“I said I would never hurt him,” she said, relieved her voice didn’t betray her sudden intimidation.

“See that you hold to that, lass, and we shall get along fine when we meet again.”

They wouldn’t meet again. She would be long gone by the time Wilhelm rode home to Dornoch and reunited with Terran and Aifric.

Pasting a smile on his face, he continued down the path. “Hail, Will!” he called, voice upbeat, as if he hadn’t just scared the bejeezus out of her. “That the pony you found in the village?” When he reached the barn, he tied up the cargo Anselm had given her onto the back of the gray horse’s saddle.

“Aye. A beauty, he is. A fine gelding for a fine lady.” The horse was for her? Wow. Thanks to riding lessons all through high school, Connie knew her horses, and this was, as Wilhelm had said, a fine one. He must have cost a pretty penny.

She couldn’t wait to ride him.

“Come, Constance. ’Tis time we mount up. If we make haste, I ken of a place to lodge tonight out of the rain.” Wilhelm linked his hands at the gelding’s side to help her.

She’d been away from him for an hour as Anselm helped her prepare for their journey. Laying eyes on him again was like the sun coming out after months of winter. He’d had the kilt on for the wedding. Since then, he’d fastened on his armor and wrapped a blanket-sized length of kilt around his armor and head for warmth. A war helm hid his blond hair. He was clean shaven, and his blue eyes filled her with warmth as he looked expectantly at her.

Heavens. I’m about to ride across historical Scotland with an actual Highland warrior.
 

She put her foot in his hands, the first step in her journey home.

#

Connie hadn’t been on a horse in years, but her muscles remembered what to do. It took a few minutes, but eventually, her spine began working in concert with the gelding’s energetic walk, and she felt one with the animal.

Wilhelm rode ahead of her on a black gelding that looked like a cross between a draft horse and a solid riding breed. A warhorse, he called it, by the name of Justice. If her horse had a name, he hadn’t gotten it from the seller. She would have to think of something to call it, but she would need to get to know him a little first.

Patting the horse’s neck, she spoke quietly to him. Riding hunt seat had been a passion of hers when she’d been a teenager. Her parents had bought her a Thoroughbred named Monica’s Journey, and Connie had won many ribbons jumping the mare in shows. The time for such entertainments had passed, though, once Connie graduated high school. She had done the sensible thing and arranged for the horse’s sale before leaving for college. She missed Monica, but her life didn’t have room for frivolities like riding and showing.

She focused on the horse beneath her because thinking about Terran’s warning made her tremble inside. His words reminded her that even though she sometimes felt she was on vacation, her presence in the past wasn’t a game. If she said or did the wrong thing, it could mean the difference between life and death. Hers or Wilhelm’s.

She’d meant what she’d told Terran. She would do everything in her power to help Wilhelm. But Terran had been right. Her first priority was returning home. What if she had to choose between helping Wilhelm or helping herself?

No. She wouldn’t go there. There were other, more likely problems for her to deal with, like what she would say when Wilhelm finally asked her all the questions she’d been anticipating since waking up in the monastery.

While he seemed to have thawed toward her since their initial meeting, he would still expect her to tell him who she was and where she was from. If he didn’t like her answers, he was capable of overpowering her, of hurting her if he wanted to. She didn’t think he would, but then, she wouldn’t have thought Terran would threaten her, either.

Atop his warhorse, Wilhelm seemed more imposing than ever. Straight backed and armed with a double-headed axe in a sling between his shoulder blades, not to mention the Highland broadsword at his hip, he was the quintessential Scottish warrior. If she were a villager and he a knight riding through with a cadre of men, she would be terrified.

Maybe a small part of her
was
terrified, but not of the warrior in Wilhelm. His kindness and softness frightened her more. Why she couldn’t figure out and decided to put it from her mind.

Wilhelm rounded a copse of trees. She followed and found him angling his warhorse toward an open vista. She did the same and found herself looking out over miles of farmland. They’d been riding ever so gradually uphill, and here at the top of a ridge, they had a perfect view of their starting point.

“It’s the monastery,” she said.

The collection of stone and wood buildings huddled in the rain on the edge of a sodden grazing pasture. Black patches of wooded areas wound between flat green fields. Beyond was the village where Wilhelm had gotten her horse. Past the village a body of water shimmered in distant sunlight like a spill of molten aluminum.

“Loch Tay.” Wilhelm’s voice was close and deep. He’d nudged his horse alongside hers. Justice was a good hand taller than her horse. This resulted in her thigh nestling just under Wilhelm’s as the horses nearly touched, probably enjoying each other’s warmth. She wouldn’t mind enjoying Wilhelm’s warmth, but there was no time for cuddling—thank goodness. They had an afternoon of riding ahead of them.

Besides the horses’ heavy breathing, the only other sound was the patter of rain on their tack and cloaks. Wait, no. There was another sound, a dull roar.

“That rushing you hear is the Falls of Moness.” Wilhelm lifted his chin toward a wall of tall, leafless birches.

Now that she concentrated, she recognized the sound of a waterfall. She couldn’t see it, but clearly, it wasn’t far beyond those trees.

“’Tis said Queen Joan stopped there with her son, the soon-to-be-crowned king, after her husband’s assassination. She was wounded in the coup in Perth and fled to the north to hide. Later, she appeared in Edinburgh, healed and with a healthy James the second in tow. But rumor has it the lad had been injured and was treated by a monk they met at the falls when they stopped to drink.”

“Maybe a monk from Anselm’s monastery,” she mused.

“Mayhap. Would have been more than forty years ago, before Anselm’s tenure.”

Who needed a travel guide when she had a real-live Highlander to show her around?

“Fascinating,” she said, feeling lighter than she had since her talk with Terran.

Wilhelm glanced her way with a hint of smile. “Aye,” he said, and she had the impression he wasn’t talking about Queen Joan’s flight from Perth. He clucked, and his horse returned to the path.

Her cheeks heated as her horse followed automatically. This man made her feel like a school girl with a crush. Even when she’d been a school girl, she hadn’t had crushes this potent.

Ah. That explained the fear.
Having a crush on a man gives him power over you, Connie girl. Rein in your emotions or the next few days are going to leave a mark.
 

“You know a lot about this area,” she said, giving him an opening to boast. She needed him to reveal some kind of personality deficiency quick before she fell any deeper in lust.

He only grunted. It could have been assent or disagreement.

She wouldn’t give up that easily. She’d find another way to get him to expose some critical failing that would kill her attraction to him.

They rode in silence while she thought about that night at Ruthven’s home. It hadn’t escaped her attention that it had been a castle. Ruthven was well-to do. And Wilhelm had been present, apparently by invitation. Why? If Wilhelm was the moral, kind man she thought he might be what was he doing at the house of a cruel man like Ruthven?

“Is Ruthven an acquaintance of yours?” She had to raise her voice to be heard over the rush of the falls.

He nodded and glanced at her over his shoulder. “And my father’s before me.” His dark expression reinforced her suspicion that he and Ruthven might be acquaintances but they were not friends.

The path was wide enough that she could ride alongside him, so she clucked to get her mount to speed up until it was neck and neck with Wilhelm’s horse.

“You are competent in the saddle,” he commented, mild surprise on his face.

“Yes,” she said simply. “But I want to hear more about how you know Ruthven. Who is he? And what were all those well-dressed people doing at his home?”

With a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold, she remembered the eager anticipation on the faces in the crowd. Those people might have looked civilized, but they’d wanted to see her burn.

“I will tell you, if you will tell me where you learned such horsemanship.”

“Agreed.”

He grinned as though he’d won a concession. But he hadn’t, really. She could tell him about the riding instructor her parents had hired without admitting where—or when—she was from.

“Well?” she demanded. “Out with it.”

Wilhelm chuckled. The sound turned her insides to jelly. Despite her best effort, she liked amusing him. She liked
him.

“Ruthven is a baron, like my father, but that is where the comparison ends.” His voice darkened. “Ruthven’s a corrupt deceiver of men who seeks naught but his own gain. My preference would be ne’er to deal with the likes of him, but he has alliances my father canna match. Being so near to Edinburgh, Ruthven travels in circles I canna hope to touch until I attain a seat in parliament. As that is a long way off, I must occasionally seek supporters under the noses of my enemies. That is why I was present at Castle Ruthven.”

Wilhelm was a politician? He wanted to be in parliament? She hadn’t even known Scotland had a parliament in the fifteenth century. It had to be a young system. Goodness, might Wilhelm have a hand in shaping the very political climate of Scotland? Her heart thumped hard at the thought.

“I thought you were going to be laird one day. Why do you want a seat in parliament? Do you hope for power? Riches?”

Wilhelm laughed. “Nay, lass. Such goals would be sooner reached by serving my clan as laird alone and cultivating alliances and resources from Dornoch. ’Twill be the more rigorous path, dividing my time between clan and country, but improvements willna come without good, moral men supporting the crown.”

“Improvements for your clan?”

“Aye,” he said with a shrug. “But for all of Scotia as well. If our nation is to survive and thrive alongside England, she needs reform.”

Darn the man for sounding both logical and compassionate. She could find no fault with him, and that was saying something because she could always find fault with someone if she set her mind to it.

“For example,” he went on, “the judicial act my father and I hope to bring before the spring assembly would require all children of the nobility to obtain education from the age of nine until qualified for university. If such a law had been in place when Ruthven was young, he might be less ignorant. One can hope, at any rate.” He smirked her way.

Great. He had a sense of humor too.

“Such an act would vastly decrease the injustices plaguing our judicial system,” he went on. “What nearly happened to you would become rarer and rarer.”

“Uh huh,” she said. She’d lost the ability to think clearly, because in the past five minutes, her world had turned upside down.

Milt had fit most of Connie’s requirements for what her prospective life partner should be like. Most, but not all. He’d been kind, motivated, attractive, sensible, and successful as a lawyer in the Chicago District Attorney’s office. He’d had a promising legal career ahead of him.

But Connie had always imagined that if she married, she would like her husband to have political aspirations. She’d grown up watching her mother organize fund raisers as a hobby. She’d shaken hands with the senators and congressmen her father supported. Participating in the political engine, even in her small supportive role, excited her. She’d always imagined finding some way to continue those endeavors while having her engineering career.