Beloved Highlander

Duncan gave him a sickly smile.

“I have not seen you since you came to the prison, after my father died,” Gregor went on, as if his head were not threatening to cleave in two halves. Duncan had not fought in the 1715—he had remained at home, to take care of Gregor’s mother and sister, and estate matters. Duncan had traveled to the prison after Gregor’s father’s body was buried at last in the ground of his ancestors. He remembered it so well, Duncan’s gloomy face, and the word picture he’d painted of Gregor’s father’s burial when he came to see Gregor.

He had described the black-draped bier carried in turn by the loyal Grant men, the women wailing, and the piper’s lament like a shroud about them. It had been, said Duncan, a fitting end to a Highland chieftain, no matter how misguided his politics. Gregor had wept, genuinely mourning his father, even if he had never shared his Jacobite fanaticism. The Stuarts had brought greatness to the Grants—the family had been loyal to Queen Mary, who had gifted them Glen Dhui in the first place. But the Stuarts, in the form of the Pretender James, had also been their ruin.

Duncan was still watching him with quiet, dark eyes. “Do ye really not remember last evening, sir?”

Gregor rubbed the ache between his brows, trying to ease it, trying to clear his befuddled mind. “I remember it well enough, Duncan.” He took a shaky breath. “Sit down, man, you make my neck hurt.”

Duncan sat carefully on a sturdy chair. As the chair looked substantial enough, Gregor could only assume his caution was because he really didn’t want to be there.

“Where is Malcolm Bain?”

“He said he was going to the barracks,” Duncan replied, pursing his lips in the same way he had always done when something didn’t please him. Some things didn’t change. Gregor bit back a smile.

“We need ye to come home, Gregor Grant. We need ye to stand up for us. Lady Meg needs ye….”

Gregor managed a creaky laugh. “The redheaded termagant? If it has not escaped your notice, Duncan, I am already in employment.”

Though for how long, once Airdy had his way?

“’Twas not yer fault ye lost Glen Dhui, sir.”

Gregor felt his face stiffen. What Duncan said was true enough, but for all that, he didn’t want to hear it. When the Stuarts had called from across the water, his father had answered, and so it was that Gregor and his father had gone out in the 1715. They had lost, and with their loss had come the staggering weight of fines and the confiscation of their lands and all personal belongings.

With his father dead, Gregor had borne the brunt of it.

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Newly released from prison, seventeen years old, Gregor had had no choice but to pack up his mother and younger sister and find them lodgings in Edinburgh. His mother had landed on her feet, she always did, and his sister was young enough to adjust. But Gregor had felt as if a part of himself had been ripped out.

He was no longer Gregor Grant. He did not feel like himself, but rather he was a stranger, embittered and lost. He had only fought because it was his father’s wish, because he was the Grant heir and his father was his chief, his laird. He had fought for his father, but his interests lay elsewhere. The land, that was what drew Gregor. The seasons bleeding into each other, the cycle of life and death in the glen. The constancy of it, and the comfort. He had understood it, felt a part of it. The glen had been his world; it was all he had ever wanted.

When he left…Well, he had survived, he had stayed alive, but he had never again been the same man.

Duncan moved, uneasily, and Gregor realized he had been silent for a long time. He scowled at the smaller man, not caring what he might think of his former Laird. It was time Duncan understood that Gregor was not the boy he had once known, the obedient, malleable boy. That in his place stood a man, toughened and hardened by circumstances, whose troops might fear his tongue and look askance at him when he smiled, but who at least knew his own mind.

“Glen Dhui is mine no longer, Duncan.”

“Mabbe not, sir, but I think ye’ll find it’s harder than ye think to extinguish the memory of the Grants after so long in the glen. Twelve years away is but a drop of water in Loch Dhui. Ye are still the laird to us, and will be until we die. We look to ye for help, sir. Will ye no’ consider it?”

The pain was quick. The memory of all he had lost. Gregor rubbed again the spot between his brows; he did not want Duncan to see his emotion. It was still too raw, too painful, even after all this time. He had thought himself over it. He should be over it! He did not want to go through the pain of loss again. His new life may not be perfect—In fact, he knew it was far from that!—but he had learned to put Glen Dhui behind him.

“I’m sorry, Duncan, but the answer is no. I am not one for retracing my steps. Whatever the trouble is, you must find another way.”

Duncan looked nonplussed, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he had just heard. He opened his mouth to answer, but just then a sharp, impatient tap sounded on the door. Duncan cursed under his breath. “Not now, blast the woman!”

“Captain Grant? Are you awake?” The woman in question was waiting outside, and by the tone of her voice she would not wait very long.

Bemused, Gregor looked from the door to Duncan and back again. He recognized the voice, and when the door opened a crack and a woman’s face appeared, he recognized that too. Her eyes were so blue they were blinding, so that he actually blinked against their brightness.

“Captain Grant? I wish to speak with you. Are you decent?”

Gregor wondered whether it would have mattered if he weren’t. He had the feeling she would still have come in. Carefully, he drew the covers farther up his chest, reminding himself that she could not see that he was naked beneath.

“Lady Meg,” Duncan said loudly, “it would be better if ye waited until I am done. This is men’s talk.”

Lady Margaret gave this comment all the respect it deserved, by pushing open the door and marching in. “Nonsense,” she said briskly. “There is no time to be lost.”