Beloved Highlander

“Not me,” Malcolm Bain said grimly. “I bumped into Alison Forbes.”

“Oh.” Gregor Grant hesitated, questions in his eyes, and then carried on. “’Tis barely dawn. What do you want?”

“Aye, and there are already some men down in the yard awaiting ye. Duncan spread the word that ye were back, and that we mabbe in for a fight. They’ve brought their weapons to show ye, as ye requested.”

Gregor groaned and ran his hands over his face. “I dinna mean at first light! Verra well, I’ll be down in a moment. Fetch me some water to wash in, Malcolm, so I can feel half alive.”

“There’s always the pump in the yard,” Malcolm suggested slyly.

His master eyed him uneasily. “I prefer my water warmed, if I can get it. Find a maid and send her for a ewer.”

But Malcolm Bain lingered, shifting from foot to foot and glancing furtively at the door. Gregor’s mouth kicked up at the corner. “Are you afraid, Malcolm Bain?”

“No!”

“I think you are. You’re afraid wee Alison Forbes might be waiting for you out there. With a big carving knife.”

Malcolm shuddered. “I wouldna put it past her.”

“She’s not forgotten your leaving her then?”

Malcolm’s shoulders slumped in defeat. “No, she hasna forgotten. She has it in her head that I wronged her.”

“You should have stayed. I should have made you stay. If I’d been thinking straight at the time, I would have.”

Malcolm eyed him in surprise. “Ye were but seventeen years old, Gregor, and I was your man. I was your father’s man before that. I couldna leave ye to face matters alone, I wouldna been able to live with mysel’, to sleep sound at night, if I had.”

“So you put my welfare before your happiness?” Gregor sighed and sat up, rubbing his arm where the bandage encompassed it. “I am grateful, Malcolm—don’t let yourself be persuaded otherwise—but I’m sorry you had to make such a choice. If I’d thought…If I’d been capable of thinking at the time, I would have sent you home. Can I help smooth matters over between you and Alison?”

Malcolm scratched the stubble on his jaw. “I dinna know,” he said moodily. “She hates me now. She’d like me dead, lad. I can see it in her eyes.”

“Give her time. She’ll get over it.”

Malcolm nodded, but it was clear he didn’t believe it. He took a deep breath, cracked open the door to check all was clear, and left the room.

Gregor sank back against the pillows, gathering his strength and ordering his thoughts for the day ahead.

Had the general really asked him to marry Meg? For her sake and the sake of Glen Dhui? Had he really offered Gregor the one thing he had longed for these twelve endless years? The one thing he had never in his wildest dreams thought to possess again?

But to marry Meg…Meg!

Gregor doubted she would be very pleased with her father’s grand plan. Would she want to marry him? She had told him she did not want to marry anyone, had only agreed to Abercauldy because her father had placed her in an impossible position. Her love for the general had driven her to accept something she would not otherwise have contemplated, let alone have agreed to. And what would her marriage to Gregor give her that she didn’t already have? Freedom from the duke’s attentions, for a time, but who knew what would come after? In this way were Highland feuds begun….

But maybe there was more than the prospect of her own safety, and the safety of the glen, to sway her. Gregor remembered now the manner in which she had looked at him, when he had stood knee-deep in the cold loch outside Shona’s cottage. Looked at him as if he were her whole world. There had been desire in her eyes then, he had not been mistaken about that. She had wanted him, needed him, but her feelings had frightened her. He had frightened her. Could desire bind two people together, for a time? Could desire make a marriage, and hold it firm? Gregor didn’t know, but it was a temptation.

She was a temptation.

Could he persuade her to say yes? Did he want her to say yes? Did he want what the general had offered him? With an uncomfortable feeling in his belly, Gregor knew that the opportunity was too good to resist.

Meg peeped out of the upper window at the wide lawn on the side of the castle. There were men everywhere. She recognized them, for they were all Glen Dhui men, some dressed in their best Sunday clothes, others in their everyday kilts. They had come to see Gregor Grant, and they had brought their weapons with them.

Old, rusty claymores and swords, ancient muskets and pistols, pikes and dirks that had seen better days. They had brought whatever

they had, and they were eager to show Gregor what they were capable of. As Meg watched, hand over her mouth, eyes brimming with laughter, old Jamie Farquharson did a stumbling run with his broadsword, shouting fit to wake the dead.

If enthusiasm could win a battle against the Duke of Abercauldy, then surely Glen Dhui would be victorious.

The laughter faded from her eyes and she sat down on the window seat with a sigh. This was no laughing matter. When she arose this morning she had intended to go and see her father, to demand he tell her whatever it was he had told Gregor. She had meant to insist, to force him to tell her. Instead she was here, lurking in the small room she used for adding up the accounts and interviewing the tenants. And for hiding. This was her sanctuary, her retreat.