Enraptured by the Highlander

She looked up to the iron bard, the bare ceiling and then dropped to the cold floor they were sitting on, “It’s all around you. What man would choose to put people in a dark dungeon? Someone had to think of this, someone has thought of how to make a man’s life miserable. Does that not count as true barbarianism to you?”

McLagen lips were thin, but there was a quirk of his lips at the end. “‘Tis true, Me Lady.”

Adelaine nibbled on her lips, “At least my brother was not locked away in a place like this.”

“Nea,” McLagen said. “He wasnae locked away in a place like this but sadly, he died in a place like this.” He sighed and his eyes dimmed as they rested on the floor. “It willnae leave me mind when I woke up to find him dead. His body was mottled from the poison that had gone to his blood.”

She swallowed tightly.

“He dinnae even make a sound in his agony,” McLagen’s voice was tired. “And there is nay question he was in agony. Nay one killed that way would go without any pain.”

Somehow, though it was hard to think about her brother suffering the pain of death without speaking a word, it was not hard to imagine it was true. Peter had a will to fight but he always hated to put people out of their way, and to put his problems on someone else. She could see Peter gritting his teeth and swallowing his pain.

Her eyes were stinging with the unshed tears and her chest felt tight to the point of suffocation.

Peter…oh God, Peter.

“Did you get to touch him or see if anything else had happened to him?” Adelaine asked as she came nearer to the bars.

“Nay,” Caelan shook his head. “Men from yer faither’s forces came in just at that moment, dawn.”

She felt wetness on her cheeks but her tears didn’t pass her cheekbone. A rough fingertip brushed her cheek and her eyes darted up to see McLagen’s hand under her nose and his finger on her cheek.

“Ye can cry, Me Lady,” he said and she swore she saw the brightness of tears in his eyes. Perhaps it was the tears in her eyes, blurring her vision, that was making her believe he had teared up too.

But feeling his touch was just a bit too much and she darted to her feet. She was up the tight staircase before the coldness of the walls that her hands were brushing against registered. She pushed the door to the keep open. Her eyes were still stinging.

The pain of her brother’s death still felt like tiny heated jabs inside her chest but it was the touch of McLagen’s finger that had her head spinning.

She found herself in the garden and began to wander through the bushes, bared of their bright summer flowers. Winter was coming in faster and faster and the cold chill in the air was getting more permanent.

Her eyes were stinging for another reason now. The air was getting colder and she wondered if an early snow was about to fall. She glanced up at the house looming over her. The rugged brick and dark wood, the gabled roofs, cast an eerie shadow under the drab sky. Every large window, divided into smaller mullions, was dark. Not a single light glimmered through the glass.

She turned to the dark jutting form of the keep and knew that down deep below in the bowels of that building, was a man she had probably misjudged.

No, there is no probably about it, I have misjudged him. If what I saw in his eyes was real, he felt the pain of my brother’s death just as I have.

It was getting too cold for her to stay out and she reluctantly went inside. The warmth ran over her as she entered the manor. She took the steps to her rooms and sank to the edge of her bed. Her fingers were hesitant when she lifted them to her face and though she aimed for her still-stinging eyes, her finger rested on her cheek where McLagen had touched her.

There was no sensation now, but she knew she had felt it then. A warm caring touch. But how? How could he care about her? She who had abused him so viciously.

“My Lady?” Martha came into Adelaine’s room, her brow furrowed with concern. “Did something happen? Are you hurt?”

“No,” she fanned her maid away weakly. “I’m not hurt, but something did happen.”

Martha sat beside her and took her right hand. Adelaine’s hand was cold and she absently reminded herself to use mittens the next time she went out this late. Her cold fingers tightened around Martha’s. “I think…at this point…I don’t know what to believe anymore. I wish someone would make sense of all this.”

With no one to answer, her request rang out hollowly in the air.

Chapter 6

He could feel the change in the air—the little he got from the high window anyway. The air was so cold it almost burned as he breathed and he could taste frost on his tongue. The worn blanket was no barrier from the cold and no matter how he curled into a ball to keep his body heat close to himself, he felt he was losing it anyway.

Never before had he felt like a mongrel dog nor had he had to act like one. But this was just a matter of survival and a man had to do whatever it took to prolong his life. So, he curled into a tight ball with his knees pressed to his chest and his arms wrapped around them. The blanket was stretched taut over his shoulder and around his tightly-folded frame.

The lass hasnae come back again.

It was almost a day since the Earl’s daughter had come to visit him. He liked Adelaine, and was not afraid to admit he was attracted to her but nothing could grow out of either. For all purposes, he was a prisoner, just waiting on his inevitable punishment.