Tess and the Highlander

by

Tess and the Highlander

May McGoldrick

ISBN: 0-06-000486-x

Copyright © 2009 by Nikoo K. and James A.
McGoldrick

All rights reserved. Except for use in any
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forbidden without the written permission of the publisher: May
McGoldrick Books, PO Box 665, Watertown, CT 06795.

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For Cyrus and Samuel, our own young
heroes…

The Isle of May, off the Firth of Forth

Scotland, March 1543

Tess poked at the corpse with a stick and
backed away.

Her unbound auburn hair, already soaked from
the driving rain, whipped across her eyes when she leaned in to
look closer.

The Highlander appeared to be dead, but she
couldn’t be sure. Long, dark blond hair lay matted across his face.
She looked at the high leather boots, darkened by the salt water.
The man was wearing a torn shirt that once must have been white. A
broad expanse of plaid, pinned at one shoulder by a silver brooch,
trailed into the tidal pool. From the thick belt that held his kilt
in place, a sheathed dirk banged against an exposed thigh.

A dozen seals watched her from the deep
water beyond the surf.

With the storm growing increasingly wilder,
she stood indecisively over the body. In all the years she’d been
on the island, she’d never seen a human wash up before. Certainly,
there had been wrecks in the storms that swept in across the open
water, and Auld Charlotte and Garth used to find all kinds of
things—some valuable and some worthless—cast up on the shores.
Never, though, had there been another person—at least, not since
the aging husband and wife had found Tess herself eleven years
earlier.

Tess pushed aside those thoughts now and
crouched beside the man, placing a hand hesitantly on his chest. A
faint pounding beneath the shirt was the answer to her prayers…and
her fears. She didn’t want anyone intruding on her island and in
her life. At the same time, she could not allow a living thing to
die when she could save it. Or him.

The surf crashed over the ring of rock that
formed the tidal pool, and the young woman pushed herself to her
feet. She drew the leather cloak up to shield her face from the
stinging spray of wind-driven brine. When she looked back at the
body, the wave had pushed the Highlander deeper into the pool,
immersing his face.

Tess immediately dropped her stick and
lifted his face out of the water. Glancing over her shoulder, she
eyed a flat rock at the far side of the pool. It sat higher than
the tide generally rose. Rolling him forward slightly, she held him
under the arms just as another wave crested the pool’s rim. The
surge of water lifted the body, and Tess quickly dragged him
through the water toward the rock.

He was heavier than she thought he would be.
Out of breath, she finally succeeded in getting him partially
anchored on the rock.

Auld Charlotte had once told Tess that
they’d found her nearly drowned in this same tidal pool. The
thought of that now flickered in her mind. She tried to recall the
storm and the ship and the day, but those memories had long ago
faded into nightmares. Now, it was all buried too deeply within her
to recollect. She wondered if it was a day like this one.

The dirk at the Highlander’s side caught her
eye, and Tess reached down quickly, yanked the weapon from its
sheath, and tucked it into her own belt.

The wind was howling, and the salt spray was
stinging her face. Tess looked out at the frothy, gray-green sea,
hoping to see some boat searching for the Highlander lying
unconscious beside her.

If they came, she wouldn’t let herself be
seen, though. She wanted no news of her presence be carried to the
mainland.

She had only been six years old when the ship had
sank and she had washed ashore. But the little she allowed herself
to remember from the time before that day was too painful. Tess had
no desire to face that horrifying past ever again. There was no
place else that she ever wanted to be but here. This island was the
only home she had left.

For eleven years, the reclusive couple had
kept her existence a secret. And now, with both of them dead, she
could only pray to continue her life as before, undisturbed.

Her plan was the same as the one she’d
followed dozens of times since washing up on this island. Whenever
there was a chance of a fishing boat or some pilgrims coming
ashore, Garth and Charlotte would trundle Tess off with plenty of
food and blankets to the caves on the western shore of the island.
She would remain there in safety until all was well and the
visitors were gone.

The only difference now was that she would
have to use her own judgment about when it would be safe to come
out.

Ready to push herself to her feet, a tinge
of curiosity made Tess reach and push the Highlander’s wet hair out
of his face. Instantly, she was sorry for the action, for the man’s
features took her by surprise. Even unconscious, or perhaps because
of it, he was an extremely handsome man. A high forehead, a
straight nose, a face devoid of the beard that she’d assumed all
Highlanders wore. He had a face not even marred by scars…yet. Only
a few scratches and bruises from his time in the surf.

Angry for allowing herself to be distracted,
she started to get to her feet, but one foot slipped, and she had
to brace a hand on his chest to catch herself.

His eyes immediately opened, and Tess’s
breath knotted tightly in her chest. Blue eyes the color of a
winter sky stared at her from beneath long dark lashes flecked with
gold. She didn’t blink. She didn’t move. Holding her breath, she
remained still for the eternity of a moment until he closed them
again.

She edged off the rock and ran as fast and
as far as her legs would take her.

The taste in Colin Macpherson’s mouth was
foul as a dried up chamber bucket.

Rolling onto his side, he felt his stomach
heave. He tried to push himself up. He couldn’t see. As he turned,
Colin’s hand slipped off cold wet rock, and he tumbled into a
shallow pool of water, banging his ribs hard on the stone as he
fell.

“Blasted hell,” he groaned, pushing himself
onto his knees. Holding his head, he blinked a few times, trying to
clean the sand and salt out of his eyes.

Rocks. More rocks. And water. And bobbing
heads. He pushed back a long, twisted hank of hair that had fallen
across his face, obstructing his vision. He tried to focus on the
creatures moving on the rocks.

Seals—a dozen or so—were staring at him from
the rocks rimming the pool and from the sea beyond. Their brown
eyes were dark and watchful. The image of a woman’s face
immediately flashed before his mind, and he struggled to push
himself to his feet. A couple of seals barked a warning to those on
shore.

“H…HULLO!” he called out, only to have the
surf and the wind slap the greeting back into his face.

His entire body ached. It had taken great
effort to get the words out past his raw, scratched throat, but
Colin tried again. He was certain someone
had
been there
only moments before. Or was it hours?

“HULLO!”

This time a shriek of seabirds was his only
answer. Taking in a painful half breath, he tried to move his feet
in the shallow pool. They moved, though it felt as if they were
made of lead. Colin succeeded in taking only three steps before he
had to sit down on the edge of a rock. The world was spinning
around in his head.

Water. Rocks. And on each side of the protected
tidal pool, rock-studded banks dotted with occasional patches of
sea grass sloped upward from the turbulent sea.

The Macpherson ship had been sailing north when the
weather had taken a turn for the worse. It shouldn’t have been
unexpected, though. The Firth of Forth was famous for its foul and
quickly changing moods.

Half o’er, half o’er, from Aberdour. It’s fifty
fathom deep. And there lies good Sir Patrick Spence, with the Scots
lords at his feet.
Well, Colin thought, at least he had washed
ashore…wherever he was.

The last clear memory that Colin had was shoving one
of the sailors to safety in the aft passageway. The lad was nearly
unconscious after being slammed against the ship’s gunwales as the
great vessel had continued to heel before the tempestuous blast of
wind.

The storm had come on fast and hard, but they’d been
riding it well. Colin and Alexander, his eldest brother, had been
standing with the second mate at the tiller when he’d seen the
young man go down. The sea sweeping across the deck had nearly
carried the lad overboard.

Colin fought the urge to be ill. The foul, salty,
bilge taste rose again into his mouth.

The lad had no sooner been secured when Colin had
heard the cries of the lookout above. The dark shape of land
appeared, not an arrowshot to port. And then the ship’s keel had
struck the sand bar.

He remembered being bounced hard across the deck,
only to have the sea lift him before plunging him deep into the
brine. After a lifetime thrashing in the dark waters, he’d finally
sputtered to the surface. All he’d heard then was the howling
shriek of the wind before another crashing wall of water drove him
under again. Somehow he’d survived it all, though he had no idea
how.

He stared again at a seal, who was watching him
intently. For an insane moment, thoughts of legends told by sailors
clouded his reason.

A gust of cold wind blasting mercilessly across the
stormy water instantly sobered him. He was soaked through and
chilled to the bone. Colin managed to push himself to his feet and
climb out of the tidal pool.

Another image of dark eyes looking down at him
flashed through his mind. The eyes of a young woman. He remembered
more now. Someone pulling him through the water. Propping him on
the rock. She had been no apparition. Colin braced himself against
the wind and let his gaze sweep over his surroundings.

“WHERE ARE YOU?” He shouted over the wind. There was
not a boat or person, not even a tree in sight, and the rising
slope of rocky ground straight ahead hampered Colin’s vision of
what lay beyond.

“And where am I?” he muttered to himself.

The Macpherson ship had been too far north for him
to wash ashore on English soil. The storm could not have driven
them as far east as the continent. This had to be Scotland.

Colin knew he could die of the cold once night fell.
He had to determine his whereabouts and find a protected place to
wait out the storm.

He looked around again at his surroundings. He
couldn’t shake the sensation that he was being watched, and he
didn’t think it was just the seals. There was no one else in sight,
though. His hand reached for the dirk he always kept at his belt,
but it was missing. He picked up a solid branch of driftwood and
started up the rise.

His trek was slow, but the distance was short. Upon
reaching the crest of the brae, he sat on a boulder jutting through
the long grass. One look and he recognized the place.

Colin Macpherson had grown up sailing aboard ships.
Standing on the stern deck beside his grandfather, his uncle, and
lately his older brother, he’d covered this coast many times over
the years. Colin was familiar with every port, every inlet, every
island from the Shetlands to Dover in the east, and from Stornaway
to Cornwall in the west. He’d sailed from Mull to France and back
again a dozen times. And he knew the history of this Scottish coast
as well as he knew his clan’s name.

He was on the May, a small island east of the Firth
of Forth. It was well known to sailors as a graveyard for errant
ships. Many vessels, passing too close to the jagged rocks above
and beneath the surface, had met their end along its western shore.
And the sand bars to the east were just as deadly. A hill, the
highest point, rose up almost at the center of the island. To the
west sharp bluffs dropped off to the sea. To his right, he could
see the sloping stretches of rock and sea grass that ended at the
water. To his left, the low walls and the five or six ruined
buildings of an abandoned priory.