Highlander of Mine (24 page)
R
ory mingled with the people from Durness at the impromptu gathering at Mrs. Cameron’s front garden, even if it was abysmally hot. Lord, would this awful and bizarre weather ever end?
Apparently, the “earth laid upon the corpse” rite wasn’t enough for the townsfolk, for they lingered after Mrs. Cameron was buried. It was as if the dwellers couldn’t get enough of Duncan and Lady Fleur. They still fretted over the big man. All of the attention put a mighty stopper on his plans. Still, Rory wanted to go forward with his strategy.
Jesus Christ, but those wee orphan lads who fancied Fleur were everywhere. If she asked for just a cup of water, they’d all race each other to get it for her.
Rory nodded at some of his troops who gloomily smiled back at him. They were heartbroken for their lieutenant. And something in Rory snapped a cold warning. Did the young soldiers care for Duncan enough to ask about him if he went missing?
Or were they here because he’d ordered them to be here?
Whose allegiance would the troops bow to when the time came?
Rory took in a deep breath, realizing worrying about his troops’ loyalty was for naught. In time the remaining men would bow to him, and if at first they didn’t, he’d have enough English soldiers at his command to force them.
Aye, the deed was already done. Well, almost.
Setting up the alliance with the captain of the English army had been easier than Rory had thought. Probably made that much easier since he’d sold several of the troops as indentured servants to them. What a lofty amount he’d made too. Then Rory had somehow talked his brother into leaving for France to visit their mother, ensuring when Rory leveraged his way to the lairdship hardly a soul would be in the way.
Of course, he’d have to worry about Duncan. He would have some sense of loyalty to John, the laird. Or would he?
Rory considered for a moment about having Duncan ally with him. He was a good soldier, already had years of experience, and if the huge mercenary guarded
him
as laird, and Rory was sure the coup would work, well then, he’d feel safe from his brother’s sure retaliation. Further, Rory wasn’t too certain if Duncan was loyal to much, which meant Rory could buy him. He’d been a mercenary for so long, surely that was how the man operated now—who paid the most.
However, watching Fleur with Duncan as he sat on a rock a little outside Mrs. Cameron’s back garden, made Rory quake with jealousy. Rory had been there for the burial. He hadn’t thought anything untoward regarding Fleur and Duncan, but she was awfully attentive. She stood beside the big man, talking to him, although he stared at a piece of dirt. He didn’t nod, didn’t even seem to acknowledge her presence.
Arse.
If his mother died, Rory thought, he would never ignore the beautiful wee princess. Her dark hair swayed from whispers of a warm breeze. She wore it up, but those black tresses of hers always managed to free themselves, just a few, and framed her face, her neck, and her thin shoulders, making it difficult to stare at anything but her.
“Captain MacKay, sir.” A lad stood beside Rory, making him jump slightly from the invasion. The young soldier of his didn’t seem to notice and continued. “Sir, I—er, sir, I was just wonderin’ when we should get back into trainin’?”
This young man might be exactly what Rory had hoped for. Enthusiastic. Always good to have a few troops eager for more.
He shrugged, affecting an air of concern. “I appreciate yer eagerness, I do. But I think we should wait for Lieutenant MacKay to grieve a bit more.”
The lad nodded and glanced around Rory at Duncan. “’Tis sad, it is, his ma dyin’ and all. If my ma died, I’d...I can’ even think ‘bout it, sir.”
The young man, probably no more than seven and ten, more than likely had stopped living under his father’s roof when he enlisted to be a soldier for Rory. Just a lad really. But, Rory considered, the lot of them should toughen up, stop crying for their mamas, as Duncan did. It truly disgusted Rory that the big man was such a bairn about his mother.
Rory nodded though and forced a smile into place.
Thinking of the multitude of excuses to take his leave, Rory felt a small tug on his shirt’s sleeve.
And there she was. In all her dark glory. Fleur. Bonny Fleur. She smiled sadly up at him, and instantly he had his arms around her faster than he thought possible, faster than he thought of the consequences.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she whispered, then released him too soon.
Rory tried to stop touching her, but the skin of her wrists was so soft, like silk, the caress from her errant tresses beckoned to him. His cock tightened thinking of how good she felt, how good it would feel to have her whenever he wanted. To have her as his, once and for all.
She turned slightly, and Rory saw past her to Duncan approaching. His red brows furrowed slightly, but when their gazes met the man nodded slightly, politely.
Rory extended his hand to him. “Duncan, I’m so sorry for yer loss.”
Duncan caught his hand and squeezed the dickens out of it for a spell, but then released it with a nod. “That’s kind of ye, sir.”
“I’m so sorry ‘bout yer ma too, Lieutenant,” the lad beside him said timidly.
Duncan shook his hand too. The young trooper pulled away from the shake, slightly wincing, flexing his fist as if to have the blood flow back into his fingers. So, Rory thought, he wouldn’t take it too personally that Duncan was a bit rough today.
“I was just sayin’ to the captain that if it were my ma that died—if—I—er...oh.” The boy shut up, looking down at his feet, his cheeks about the same color as Duncan’s unruly hair. “I’m sorry.”
Duncan clapped him gently on the shoulder. “Thanks for the sentiment, Charles.”
The lad nodded, cheeks still aflame, gaze still affixed on the ground. “I...I think I’ll have more whisky.”
“Oh, I have to get more,” Fleur said as if she were a common serving wench.
Rory stared at Duncan. The man didn’t do a damned thing. Fleur could not retrieve the beverage. Duncan had to stop her. But he merely stood there like a troll.
“I’ll get it from the cellar,” she sang as she walked away, smiling, as if she were fit for such a thing, fetching the whisky. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, this was spectacularly wrong.
Now he was fairly certain he’d throw Duncan to the English dogs for that. Fleur was made for council, for her intelligence, and for that beautiful body to be worshipped on bended knee. She was not made for serving whisky.
“What?” Duncan finally asked. “Where’s she goin’?”
“To get more whisky,” Rory almost roared, but held in his disdain. Barely.
“I’ll do that. Jesus, what am I doin’?”
Duncan took a couple giant strides when the young man, Charles apparently, said timidly, “I ken. I—I lost my da when I was younger. And my ma was the same way. It’s hard to hear when ye’re grievin’, eh?”
Duncan had twisted to look at the lad and slowly a smile grew on his somber face. “Aye. That’s right.”
Charles looked up, his own foolish grin spread wide. “I ken it. We all understand, Lieutenant MacKay. Yer Lady Fleur is takin’ real good care of ye. She kens what ye need and the like, right? She kens it even though ye sometimes can’t hear, sometimes can’t talk. I was like that for my ma after my da died.”
Duncan blinked and swallowed.
Hell, damnation, and eternal unrest! Did the snot of a soldier just try to insinuate that Duncan had some sort of ownership of Fleur? Some sort of possessiveness?
Yer Lady Fleur. Yer?
What else was Rory to think?
He watched Duncan while he held his breath, wondering if he would murder the man right then and there.
“Lady Fleur...she’s not...I...Lord, I need a drink.”
The oaf then twirled away in his dark green plaid, stomping the same direction as Fleur. Well, what Duncan had said was vague, which made Rory worry, but then calm settled in. Duncan—hell, any man—would be proud to have Fleur as his. Except Duncan, it seemed, had tried to correct Charles for the assumption.
Then a thought roiled through Rory’s stomach, one overlooked consideration: The idiotic English thought Indians were sub-human. They thought the majority of Highlanders were too, the self-righteous arses. But they were willing to deal with Rory, since Rory was selling them Highlander lads with the promise of no further rebellions. It was a steep price, peace, but Rory thought it worth the cost, especially considering the English were supporting him to become laird, and soon he’d sell enough of his troops to rebuild Tongue, mayhap begin building a home as lovely as Mrs. Cameron’s. Wait, with Duncan soon gone, he could have Mrs. Cameron’s home himself. That would be good payment for dealing with the bloody English.
Rory knew that to continue the concord, he’d have to placate to the English’s backwards ways. So he’d have to keep Fleur, his love, a secret. Mayhap Cromwell’s cronies would eventually want him to marry some twit of an English lass, further ensuring peace. Well, he’d then be able to marry her. All the while Fleur would have his heart. And his cock. The English might have his brain and his allegiance, but Fleur would be all his.
“Oh, sir, I—everyone is leaving,” Charles said, interrupting his thoughts.
Rory nodded, noticing that the town’s people were in fact slowly departing. It made sense, since Duncan suddenly vanished and hadn’t been much of a host in the first place.
With the promise that he’d return soon to exact his plans, Rory began to unhurriedly step in place with the crowd of well wishers. He felt like chattel, but soon enough he’d be their laird. He’d never walk with the people like this ever again. They’d follow him.
T
o retrieve more whisky, Fleur took each stair of the earthen cellar slowly, holding the lantern above her head, but still she could hardly see a thing. The underground storage was built a few steps from Helen’s kitchen, yet seemed to be a world away with its dark and musty scent and the dirt floor and walls. Suddenly, Fleur stumbled. She caught herself soon enough but had scraped the back of her ankle on a stair in the process. Balancing against the moist wall, she felt the welting skin. It hurt, but it didn’t compare to every time she thought of Helen—her heart twisted in shards of itself.
Granted, something in her had thought Helen’s passing would be an eventuality, but she hadn’t expected it while she stayed here in the Highlands. She hadn’t expected any of this.
As she found the last step into the cellar, the lantern’s light bounced off the walls and seemed to intensify. Gathering her courage, she ventured into the dirt storage space, only to stop when she saw a spinning whisky bottle on the ground. Her heart thudded in her ears loudly as the lantern’s light brightened all the more, revealing a man with long black hair sitting cross-legged in front of the wheeling flagon. The bottle stopped, pointing at her.
Coyote laughed. “Ah, too bad. I don’t kiss taken women.”
With all the sadness and mourning, seeing the trickster god was like seeing the sun after a hailstorm. She lowered the lantern to the ground and sat across him, the whisky between them. “That’s good. I don’t kiss old men.”
He shot a hand over his heart, feigning wounded pride, but silently laughed.
“You do remind me of my grandpa.”
At that he grunted from his
wound
and fell over backwards. “You injure me so. Old man...grandpa . . .” He sat up suddenly. “I don’t look it, do I? I mean, if you weren’t taken with that giant red head, you’d think I was still hot, right?”
She smiled at him then slowly shook her head.
He winced, yet through it all grinned.
“You seriously do remind me of my grandpa. He died when I was little, but I remember him some. He had gray in his hair, even though you don’t, but he looked a lot like you. I think you’re more my grandma’s type.”
Coyote’s smile grew a tad more serious. “Now, there was a woman. Not that you aren’t, but your Na was...she was one of my favorites.”
Fleur’s heart pinched, she looked down at the cold, damp earth. Picking up some in her hands, she played with it. “I can understand that. She was my favorite too.”
“Until the red head.”
Fleur caught his gaze for a second, but then resumed fingering the earth. “I can’t list my favorites in hierarchical terms. They’re just my favorites.”
Coyote was silent for a long while, making Fleur finally look up at his speculating face. “I like you like this, you know?” He pulled some of his hair over one of his mighty shoulders. “I like how strong you are now. I like your sass. Oh, and I’ve stopped time for a bit. So we can talk. Talk as long as we want.”
Fleur’s jaw dropped. “How—how—how can you do that?”
He shrugged.
Fleur couldn’t help but gawk then smile. He had complete control over the physics of the universe, and he just shrugged it off, as though it was as possible to do as breathing. Further, it wasn’t until then that she had questioned the time-leaping thing. How the hell did it work? Event Horizon here on earth? Photon Sphere? She’d taken a few physics courses—for the math, because who didn’t enjoy a good Kerr metric puzzle
?—but she’d never quite comprehended the theory behind the calculations.
“So, little sister, what do you think of your
glimpse
now?” Coyote asked, interrupting her thoughts.
Fleur pondered if she should shrug too, but she didn’t. She was much more honest. “It’s tough. I didn’t expect Helen...sweet Helen to . . .”
Coyote nodded. “I thought she would pull through too. I’m sorry. I know you two were getting close.”
Fleur rubbed over her heart while she nodded. “I loved her.”
“It’s an easy thing to do, love people.”
Fleur shook her head. “No, it’s not. Not for me. I don’t let myself feel like that.” She had far too much rawness in her voice. She was angry and missed Helen so much, also every second of the day she feared being taken away from Duncan.
Coyote’s face fell into complete stillness. Then he nodded. “At the risk of sounding like a head shrinker, how do you feel about that? How do you feel about letting yourself
feel
?”
“Letting myself feel for another human and then having her ripped away from me? How does that make me feel?” She was almost yelling.
Coyote nodded solemnly.
“Like shit, you—you ass. How do you think it makes me feel?”
Coyote kept nodding. “But you didn’t break apart into a million pieces. You’re still standing, Fleur. Well, sitting now, but you know what I mean. You’re still alive.” He swallowed and lowered his voice. “It’s a funny thing, trauma. Your Na worried that forcing you to leave would traumatize you. And it did. But, Jesus, what a decision to make. You have this glorious brain that understands bits of science and math better than the majority of human beings, Fleur. Your Na understood that. She knew you had a gift to give to the world, and if she held onto you—well, you know. You were there. Still, she knew it would traumatize you to let you go when you were so young.”
He took a deep breath and scooted closer. Utterly surprising her, Coyote’s dark eyes instantly filled with tears and spilled down his face. “My people are not strangers to trauma as you know. Sometimes the trauma is as huge as the desolation of a tribe, of many tribes. Sometimes the trauma seems small. But trauma is trauma. One reason why Na decided to let you go was because she thought you were strong enough to take it, to take on this world without her.”
Fleur swallowed, her throat so tight.
Coyote frowned. “You know, Na will forever regret her decision.”
That killed Fleur, to think that Na, in whatever realm she was in, had a regret. That like Helen, she lamented making a major decision. Two smart, capable women trying so hard to make a wise decision, when there wasn’t a right or a wrong.
Regret
...would she regret decisions in her life too? When Fleur lay on her deathbed, what would she regret?
Being a coward and not telling Duncan how much she loved him.
“I,” she took a deep breath, “I want to stay here.”
“In Scotland? In the Highlands?”
Shaking her head, she amended her wish, knowing that Coyote was a charlatan at times. “Wherever Duncan is, I want to be with him. Always.”
Coyote straightened his back, narrowing his eyes. “Why? Why would you give up your science? After everything Na sacrificed for you—”
“She made the sacrifice to give me a better life, and I know it. Now it’s my turn to make the hard decisions, to decide what’s right for me. And that’s Duncan. I’m not going anywhere without him. Got it? He’s mine. And you can tell those two redheaded muses the same.”
Coyote slid a one-sided smile into place. “That’s my girl. There you are.” He nodded. “I’ll pass on the message to the muses.”
“No. You’re going to tell them I’m staying with Duncan. Tell them. Order them. I have to be with Duncan.”
“Does he have any idea how you feel about him? That you’re willing to give up your job for him?”
She shook her head. “It’s—it’s not like that.”
“But it’s exactly like that.”
She sighed and looked back at the earth in her hands.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to give up your life for him, to sacrifice your job. You can contribute so much with your work.”
She huffed. “Don’t you get it? I don’t have a life without him!”
“You love him then?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then why haven’t you told him?”
She pursed her lips. “Because I’m a weakling.”
He reached out, holding her hand. “No, you’re not.”
She relaxed her shoulders a little.
“You’re a brave woman, Fleur. With everything that happened you just forgot how brave you are. Were. You were once a firecracker of a girl, sassing your cousins and kicking their little asses. In Texas you learned a different way to survive that wasn’t good for you, repressing and suppressing your emotions and instincts. But now you’re changing all that. You want Duncan. There’s no repressing that, huh?”
Fleur gave him a small shy smile.
He took a quick inhale. “You know, I love manners. It makes it easy to find prey for some of my pranks. People who are so filled with politeness, they overlook their instincts. I always wonder about that. I wonder how it gets drilled into their heads that being polite is better than listening to their instincts and letting me make a complete fool of them.”
Fleur frowned. “What are you getting at? You think I’m not listening to my instincts? I know what I want. I’ve never wanted anything more than I want Duncan. He’s mine. Got it? You can’t take him away from me.”
Coyote held his palms out to her. “Okay. Okay. I got it. Wow, talk about a warrior spirit. See, you’re quite the fighter. But I’m not talking about your heart being connected to Duncan. What you feel towards him is loud and it vibrates through all your bones, into your cells.”
“Down to my last mitochondrion I want him, need him to be in my life.”
Coyote laughed. “Understood, geek girl. But I’m not talking about those instincts. Love can be so big and noisy like that. It helps you learn, or relearn in your case, how to listen to your other instincts, the instincts that are often smothered by rules of politeness, not rocking the boat, not wanting to think through what your instincts are whispering to you.”
Fleur thought quickly. “Well, yeah, I get it. If I stay here, times will be tough. Cromwell’s approaching.”
“The New Order Army is already here in MacKay Country.”
“What? I have to warn Duncan.” She rose to race away.
Coyote pulled Fleur back down. “Yes, you do. But I need you to listen to your instincts, the ones you’ve made quiet because you’re too scared of being impolite.”
Rory.
The one word, one name floated through Fleur’s mind. She’d hugged him earlier and didn’t know why she’d done that. She hadn’t wanted to. She just thought it would have been rude otherwise. He’d been so kind to her since she’d gotten here. She thought she owed him...What? What did she owe him? She felt guilty because her heart had always been Duncan’s. So why would that make her feel uncomfortable?
Finally, the answer came: She guessed Rory had a wee crush on her and felt bad for not reciprocating the feeling.
“I—I might have made a man think he had a chance with me. And now—”
“You strung him along?”
“Well, no.”
“Then . . .?”
“I didn’t outright tell him to leave me alone. I mean, he wasn’t rude to me, so why be rude to him?”
Coyote nodded for a long time. Finally, he squinted his eyes. “Right, why be rude?”
Fleur snorted. “You expect me to be rude to the man, although he’s done nothing to me?”
He shook his head. “No. What I hoped was that you would tell that mammoth of a man you love your feelings. He’d tell you his. Afterwards, when Rory doesn’t take the obvious gesture that you and Duncan are meant to be, then be rude.”
“You mean, if.
If
Rory doesn’t take heed of the gesture.”
Coyote narrowed his eyes all the more but then finally smiled and nodded.
Fleur’s heart raced in nervous anticipation at the way Coyote smiled.