Beloved Highlander

Now Gregor looked about him at the cramped, pungent cell. This was Lorenzo’s revenge, the revenge he had promised. But Lorenzo had been locked up under far different conditions than this, and he had been promptly released following the wedding. Gregor was beginning to lose track of how long they had been down here.

Did Lorenzo intend to take them to see the duke? And, of more concern, did the duke even know they were here? Lorenzo was quite capable of keeping this as his own little secret for weeks. Or even months…

“That wee man isna from Italy,” Malcolm Bain mumbled from the shadows. “Who does he think to fool with that monstrous accent?”

“The Duke of Abercauldy,” Gregor replied. “No one else’s opinion matters to Lorenzo.”

Malcolm Bain grumbled more insults, but Gregor didn’t pay much heed. Instead, he leaned his head back against the wall, uncaring of what might be creeping upon it, and closed his eyes. He was weary of prisons, they were all the same: Dark, dank, and evil-smelling.

Why couldn’t he and Abercauldy sit down like sensible men and talk this thing through? Why did everything have to come down to a bloody fight? He had asked his father that, when they were riding toward Preston during the 1715 Rebellion. His father had looked at him as if he wasn’t quite sure what he meant. Gregor had realized then that, to his father, there was glory in battle, in shedding blood for one’s cause, in dying for futility.

Gregor had never understood the point of dying for a lost cause.

Fighting for those in one’s care, for those one loved, that was different. He would fight to the death for Meg and Glen Dhui.

How he longed for Meg now. What was she doing at this moment? Was she thinking of him? He tried to imagine her, to put himself there with her, as he had once imagined himself home in Glen Dhui when he had been imprisoned after the Battle of Preston.

The ability had not left him.

He could see himself, walking up the stairs from the Great Hall, hear the ring of his boots. And there she was, smiling as she looked up from her desk, surrounded by her books and papers and pens.

“Gregor!” she would cry, her mouth curling up in a smile of pure joy. Her blue eyes, so blue they hurt him sometimes, and her flame hair loose about her creamy shoulders. She would smile at him, so that he could see that little gap in her teeth that pleased him so much, and he would lift her into his arms, and kiss that lush mouth, and lose himself in her.

He groaned, softly, and covered his face with his hands. “Meg, oh, Meg, I love ye,” he murmured. “Let me only be free of this place, and I will come home to tell ye so. I have had enough of prisons and pain.”

She was there, in his head. He smelled her, heard her voice, touched her skin. And suddenly the cell could no longer hold him—he felt his spirit soar. Out of the darkness and up into the light.

Airdy wasn’t cooperating.

“I am not here on my uncle’s business,” he said for the third time, “so why should I say I am?”

“Because if you say you are come on your uncle’s orders to fetch Barbara home, the duke will be obliged to let her go,” Meg answered him for the third time. “Your uncle, the Duke of Argyll, is an important man here in Scotland. The Duke of Abercauldy will not want to displease him, will he? So he will release Barbara, and then Gregor can come home, too.”

Where was Gregor? Was he being looked after properly by Abercauldy? Meg feared it was not the case. She feared he might be locked up or hurt. Not dead, though. She was certain that if he were dead, she would feel the loss of him, in her heart.

Last night she had heard him call her name. His voice on the wind, soft with longing. And then he was gone again, and she was left, sitting up in the darkness, gazing at the stars, more alone than she had ever been.

“Gregor Grant is nothing to me,” Airdy was saying. “He can rot in the dungeons for all I care. Aye, I’d like him to rot. He deserves to rot.”

“Then your wife will rot, too,” Meg said sharply, losing patience with him. “Do you want Barbara to rot?”

Airdy shook his head, slowly, frowning. “I love Barbara,” he said, and to Meg’s horror his eyes filled with tears. “Why does she no’ love me?”

Meg could have given him several good reasons, but thought it prudent not to. “Fetch her home,” she said instead, “and then maybe she will love you, Airdy.”

He sniffed and wiped his hands over his face. “Och, verra well! You go on and on, woman, until a man can take no more. I dinna know how Gregor puts up with you.”

Meg bit her lip on a smile. Grego

r found her sharp tongue a delight, and that was another reason why she loved him. And then all urge to laugh was taken from her, as they reached the top of the hill and looked across at Abercauldy Castle.

She had never been here before in her life, and although she had known it to be large, this seemed even bigger than her imaginings. As for the castle’s appearance…it looked grotesque, like a madman’s nightmare.

Please, she thought, let Abercauldy be sensible for once. Let him listen to reason, and agree to leave us be.

“Come on then, woman!” Airdy called impatiently, pushing ahead. “What are you waiting for?”

Meg stabbed him with her eyes, and, with a kick of her heels, she followed him down.