The Outcast Highlander (2 page)

      
He could leave the lass to her own devices and let her miss Duncan altogether. But then what kind of older brother would he be? Why leave Moray at all? Why abandon his mission to stay hidden forever? Why continue to lubricate the locals for information on his family if he ignored the outcome?

Just as he was about to put her out of his mind, she took another eastern turn that set her on the path of a large bog, and one that was well-disguised if you didn’t know the area. Since she already appeared lost, the odds were good she was bog-bound.

With a disgruntled jerk of weathered leather, he urged Gaidel down the hill toward the MacLeod girl, pulling his heavy cloak around him in hopes he could hide his worn kyrtil. The air wasn’t cold enough for the clothes he wore, but then, most men didn’t sleep in caves and hovels.

As he approached the lass, minutes later, she didn’t turn on him or even glance in his direction. Even a well-trained horse like Gaidel couldn’t conceal his hoof beats entirely at this slow pace. Surely, she’d heard him.

Instead of watching for strangers, she looked up into the hills ahead, and spoke to herself aloud in what sounded like French—he vaguely recognized the shape of his mother’s words in this girl’s frustrated rambling.
It
was
her. Lost in the Highlands, looking for her intended
.

Without warning, she pulled her red roan to a stop, and his reflexes allowed him to halt Gaidel, just a few feet behind her. He could hear her squeal in frustration, first in French, then in Gaelic tinged with a foreign tongue.

With a flash of gray stone and the smell of rosemary, he remembered the first time he’d heard that voice. And the judgment it had carried over him. A familiar tightness overtook him. Remembered shame. Not unfamiliar for his childhood memories, but he shook it off. He wasn’t that boy anymore.

Broc pulled at Gaidel’s bridle and the horse protested. “A real lady shouldn’t curse like that.”

The lass wrenched her small red mare to face him, her face white with petrified surprise. Her long, dark hair feathered around a heart-shaped face with perfect, rounded, blushing cheeks and a pert nose. The intensity of her beauty stilled his breath. How could he have forgotten to prepare himself for this moment, after all these years?

Her girlish beauty had woken his heart as a boy, but the woman she had become was far more arresting than the pretty girl he remembered.

Kensey MacLeod was not dressed for polite company, with her nearly-black hair hanging in loose curls to her saddle, rather than being braided or bound. She wore a plain blue dress with no shape to it, but the way it highlighted the blue undercurrents in her green eyes held his attention.

“And a real gentleman shouldn’t take a lady off her guard.” She jerked at the reins of her nervous horse, her mouth twisting into a tiny, frustrated line.

Broccin caught himself sliding his gaze down from her face. This was not just any lady. She was his brother’s intended wife.
Keep yourself in check.
He shook his head and bowed, swinging his arm out without thought in a gallant gesture.

“Apologies, my lady.” When he looked up, he noticed her eyes lingered first on the scar on his left arm, then on the swath of cloth across his chest. He reached for the edge of his cloak and pulled it back over his tattered tunic. “I meant no disrespect.”

“You are forgiven.” Her eyes still lingered on his arm. With an elegant gesture, she swept her dark, loose hair around one shoulder.

“You must be the girl returned from France. Looking for the MacLeod bothan, no doubt.”
And Duncan
. His heart skipped a beat when she furrowed her eyebrows and pinned him with those big, lost eyes.

“How do you know these things?”

“I thought as much,” he said, avoiding her question. “I can show you the way.”

“I believe I can find the place myself.”

Her impertinence made Broc’s blood rise. She was a full valley in the wrong direction, and growing farther in her mistake with every step of her surety. “Oh, you do?”

“I grew up here, sir. And I have explicit instructions from my brother about how to find this place.”

“If it was this brother of whom you speak leading you thus far, then he’s taken you astray, my lady. And if it is another’s directions you follow, perhaps you have missed a marker. For the MacLeod bothan is behind you, and in the valley to the west.” Broccin pointed to his right.

A deep pink spanned her cheeks and down the side of her exposed neck. After several seconds, she said, “Thank you.” A deep breath. “It would appear I am, indeed, lost.”

“I can take you to the place you seek.” Broc pulled Gaidel around and began to retreat slowly. He did not wait for her to follow, for fear he would continue to gape at her like an untried boy.

He was a man now, and while her assumption of his status was correct, his manners left something to be desired. His father would have given him a backhand if he’d gaped at a pretty girl like that in the old man’s presence.

Then again, his father rarely passed up the opportunity to give Brock the back of his hand, no matter how he treated women.

When he heard the hoof beats behind him, he breathed a thankful sigh, but kept his pace. Surely, if he kept to the flats, he could stay just ahead of her and preserve her integrity for his brother—as though Duncan deserved such a beauty.

Not that Broc deserved her any more.

Of course, Duncan was the heir now, with their father gone. He deserved whatever he could secure. A lord’s daughter, educated in France, ready for the English court, and beautiful as a vision would be more than Broc ever thought had been his own due. Nothing would be too good for Duncan. And no one.

His father would have seen to that.

***

Kensey MacLeod barely managed to keep up with the giant, bearded stranger on his beast of a horse. Brid was no match for the long gait of the black stallion, and Kensey hadn’t ridden a horse on the open country in years. Her legs already ached from the hours spent on horseback yet this morning.

“Thank you,” she ventured as he rode on ahead of her. “Sinclair?” She added the name as a curious afterthought, wondering if her suspicions were true. When he turned his head and slowly nodded, a thrill chased up her spine. Her father had warned her away from him, from them all. The Sinclairs in the wilderness. The castaways. She had not been allowed to hear the story of how they had been stripped from their families and homes. No doubt, her father thought it too scandalous for her ears. But now she was faced with one, she must know the story.

“I’ll accompany you.” He held his reins in one hand and pointed off into the, apparently, western distance. “I’ll deliver you intact, as any honorable man should.”

She did not say as much, but she was glad for the escort. There was so much of the country she didn’t yet recognize, and he had really rescued her from wandering the hills until something looked familiar. He quickened the pace gradually, and rode a bit ahead.

Kensey kicked Brid’s side to catch up with him, but her small, young mare was no match for the deft Highland stallion he rode. She lagged behind him for quite a stretch, until they finally crested the large hill they had been climbing and she began to recognize their location.

“In those trees, right?” she asked as they stood, looking over the small valley together. He nodded, pointing ahead where two hills came together and between them, hidden inside a pocket of trees, would be the small shelter. In the distance behind the two hills, she could see the purple-blue outline of the mountains. This, she remembered.

And had missed.

His voice boomed. “Now, can you find your way from here?”

“You will not come all the way with me?” she asked.

Now they’d stopped, she noted he wasn’t as old as she’d initially imagined. The beard and his sheer size made her assume he was in his thirties, or even older, but his face was so young, still unweathered. His light brown hair, shaggy and feathered down past his shoulders, held no trace of age, and his dark eyes sparkled youth. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-four, and she guessed even younger.

Albert was twenty-four, so perhaps she just compared everyone to him. That familiar tickle crept up the back of her throat.
Don’t cry. Please, just don’t cry
.

Instead, she met the Highlander’s eyes. She wanted to know his story more than she’d ever wanted to know another in her lifetime. Her mother would be scandalized, of course, but she longed to know exactly how this man had left the protection of his clan. And yet why he stayed so close. The ghosts of the misty mountains. She saw them as protectors, these cast-out warriors, not as the highwaymen her father assumed. This man was no criminal. He’d saved her day, maybe even saved her life, if she’d been lost enough.

The man turned away and surveyed the area, breaking into her fantasy of his heroism. He spoke without looking at her. “I trust you can find your way, and I should leave you to your companion.”

“How can I ever thank you, sir?” Kensey asked. Right now, the thought of him riding off into the hills again made her unexplainably sad; although the thought of him remaining as her companion filled her heart with a tightness she couldn’t explain and quickened her breath with nervous anxiety.

“Try not to get lost again.” He pointed toward the bothan. “I’m sure he will help you find your way home.” With that, he was gone again, galloping down the hill they’d just crossed. He did not turn around and she felt herself warming at the memory of his eyes on her. After grieving for so long, the prospect of another man, even a stranger, was more welcome than it should be.

Chapter Two

Kensey dismounted at the bothan warily, studying the unknown horse for signs of its owner, and finding none. She wished again that the Highlander had stayed, at least until she’d laid eyes on Duncan.

She tied Brid to a different tree and rounded the small hut, keening her ears for some clue as to who was there. Her brother had warned her the bothan might be in use, and with the English about, a lass couldn’t be too careful.

With a shaky hand on the dagger sheathed at her waist and concealed in the length of her hair, Kensey approached the door. Before she could close the distance, the weathered wooden barricade swung open and a young man stepped out.

A smile curved his lips. “Kensey.”

She hadn’t known she was holding her breath until she exhaled with such relief, she almost toppled herself. “Duncan.”

They hadn’t seen each other in so long, she wouldn’t have known him. He was a full-grown man now, not the boy who once promised to marry her.

Duncan Sinclair was dressed for heavy travel, in a weighty brown cloak and high boots, his long braids cascading in dark red. He carried a bag with what looked like more clothing in it, and another parcel that must have been food and water. His sword was strapped to his back and the handle protruded over his head with menacing readiness.

“It is good to see you.” He dropped the parcels near the door, took her hand and bowed over it. “I have heard of little else from Fiona as she prepared to have you back in Scotland.” His voice was heavy, and his face carried something familiar. The curve of his nose, perhaps, or the set of his golden eyes. Likely, she just saw echoes of the boy she’d known.

At the mention of Fiona, Kensey faltered. A silent sadness passed between them and Kensey wanted to touch him, to reassure him they would find a solution. It was so improper, but he felt so much like her brother, there could be nothing wrong in it. She resisted only because he moved beside her and put his hand under her elbow.

“I worried at the late hour.” He led her into the bothan and the earthy, musty stench of the years tickled her nose. “Where is your chaperone?”

Kensey squirmed and pulled at the edge of her sleeve. It wasn’t proper for her to be without a chaperone, but when she’d arrived at Inverness to find neither her mother nor her father or brother waiting for her—only her father’s steward—she had known the days of the proper Miss Kensey MacLeod and the French Court were behind her. War was upon them, and some matters were too important to bother with waiting for appropriate chaperones.

“There was no one to accompany me. Mother is still too ill to be moved and I sent my attendants back to France, where they would be safe.”

Duncan’s head bowed, as though some sadness were weighing it down. The unplaited strands of his red hair rustled in the low wind that passed through the small, open windows.

“It is not safe in Scotland,” he agreed.

“If we had not been meeting in secret, I would have brought my brother.” At the mention of Robert, Kensey’s stomach lurched and she walked past Duncan to the small table at the other side of the hut.

“You were so ambiguous in your letter.” Duncan produced the worn piece of parchment with her broken seal on the back.

“I wasn’t certain it would come to you, and I needed to know first, if you were on our side, or an enemy.”

Duncan’s hands were rough on her shoulders and he turned her around with uncanny speed. “You mean you wrote that letter and then came alone, not knowing if I would capture you or aid you?” He searched her eyes, but must not have found what he was looking for, because he continued to gape in confusion.

“Duncan, you must understand. I’ve come home to a different world than I left.” She pulled at his wrists and he released her. “I couldn’t risk Robert, not my father’s heir. There was no one to come with me, and my father…” Her voice quivered and she held back tears once again.

“Och, lass.” He shook his head and stepped back. “But of course, you’re right.”

Kensey’s head reeled for a moment as she took in all that she’d just said. She was utterly and truly alone in this fight. Fiona, who’d been Duncan’s own betrothed and Kensey’s oldest friend, would instead be given to an Englishman.

“When I boarded that ship in Calais, I brought not only my attendants, but my friends. We spent the journey to Inverness dreaming of long days in the Highland sun and long nights filled with feasts and music and boys to parade before, to mitigate my… quite public grief… with some happiness at last.” She exhaled loudly, feeling a burn in her lungs. “Instead, I find my father in prison, my homeland filled with lawless brigands and English soldiers, my mother near death, and my dearest friend, who should have been well-married to the Earl of Caithness with a Scots baby in her belly instead practically a prisoner in her own home. Set to marry a known brute, and an Englishman at that, and abandoned to her fate by a father who now makes peace with the marauding English in order to preserve his title.”