The Devil Highlander’s Nun (Nuns of the Highlands #1)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

“If ye daenae wash yer carrots, the stew will taste like dirt,” Emilie called out, glancing over her shoulder to where some of the other girls were working.

“We heard ye the first time,” Nieve chided, giving Emilie a playful swat with the cloth towel that she was holding.

Emilie, however, just shook her head, turning her attention back to the potatoes she had been dicing just a moment before. The sound of chatter filled the kitchen of Caledon Abbey, just as it did every evening when the novice nuns cooked supper for the entire nunnery.

Nieve stood beside her, her white, muslin habit slipping down onto her forehead a bit. Emilie reached up, scratching at the edges of her own white habit, the fabric of it itching as it clung to her sweaty brow.

“Ye’re always so pious, Little Emilie,” Laura quipped from across the room. “Next ye’ll be spoutin’ nae about muddy soup, but about how cleanliness is the command of the Lord.”

“Well, ye ken what Sister Agatha says,” Emilie supplied, not looking up as she carefully diced the spud on the table before her. “‘To be pure, ye must first be clean.’ And ye’ll nae be clean if ye’ve got mud on yer insides.”

She heard one of the other novice nuns scoff at her words, but Emilie did not care. She did not take their chiding to heart. Not when she knew their intentions.

When she finished chopping the potatoes, she piled them into her apron and walked them across the kitchen. Tall, beautiful Laura was standing at the stove, hand gripped around a ladle as she stirred the stew they were slowly creating.

“An offerin’ for the pot?” Laura asked, arching a thick, dark brow as she watched Emilie approach.

“An offerin’ of the finest order,” Emilie answered with a smile, using her apron to lift the potatoes and toss them over the rim of the pot.

A splash of hot liquid jumped over the rim, landing directly on Emilie’s arm. She winced at the shock, her other hand flying up to cover the spot and rub it until the pain abated.

“Are ye all right, Emmy?”

Young Poppy’s voice was high and clear, and when Emilie glanced up to look at her, she found the young girl’s face lit with worry as she stared at her.

“Of course I am, lass,” Emilie said, walking forward to ruffle Poppy’s black hair affectionately. “It just was a bit of a shock. But look, now ye cannae even tell where the soup splashed me.”

Poppy’s sky-blue eyes studied the skin on Emilie’s arm, scouring every inch for any imperfection. But just as Emilie had advised her, she found none.

The young girl nodded, her face relaxing a bit as she turned back to the green beans that Kayla was helping her cut.

Emilie was crossing the kitchen, readying herself to start working on preparing the meat, when a knock on the kitchen door grabbed all of their attention.

The conversation and giggling that just moments before had been filling the stone room died out entirely, every eye swiveling toward the threshold.

Sister Agatha was standing there, a stern look on her wizened face as her vivid green eyes roved the girls, stopping only when they landed on Emilie.

“Emilie, lass, ye have a visitor and ye need to come with me,” Agatha advised, nodding her head over her shoulder to indicate the way in which she’d just come.

Emilie cocked her head in question.

“A visitor?” she parroted.

“Aye,” Sister Agatha nodded. “Yer parents are here. Now come.”

Emilie’s mouth popped open in surprise. Seventeen years prior, her parents had taken her to Caledon Abbey, delivering her to the nuns. In the entire time that she had been here, never once had they, or anyone else, come to visit her.

Why are they here now? What could they want from me?

She wanted to ask Sister Agatha those questions and more, but the nun was giving her a stern look. It was a look that reminded Emilie of the vows that she would someday make. A vow that promised obedience, among other things.

Color rushed into Emilie’s cheeks, her head immediately bowing in deference as she moved forward in steadied steps.

“They’re in the library,” Agatha explained, “they’ve asked if they can see ye in private. The abbess agreed.”

Emilie just nodded, knowing that was the only response that Agatha expected.

She kept her head bowed the entire time. Emilie did not need to look up as she walked through the halls. She knew them so well she could, and often did, traverse them at night without so much as the guidance of a lantern.

Emilie did not raise her gaze as they entered the library. She even kept her head bowed when she heard Sister Agatha closing the doors behind her, leaving her alone with the parents she had not seen in nearly twenty years.

“Well,” her mother’s cold, severe voice rang loudly in the large space of the library. “Are ye just goin’ to stand there starin’ at the cobbles? Or, are ye goin’ to greet yer maither and yer faither?”

Dutifully, Emilie raised her gaze.

Prior to that moment, she would have claimed that she hardly even remembered what her parents looked like. But the second her eyes landed on them, it all came rushing back to her.

Her parents were sitting in two high-backed reading chairs, two of the best ones in the library. Her father’s gaze was as cruel as she remembered. And her mother’s face was just as pinched, her mouth pressed firmly into a taut line as if she had just sucked on something sour.

There were tells of the time, though. Gray streaks in her father’s otherwise dark hair, and new wrinkles at the corners of her mother’s eyes and mouth.

“Maither. Faither,” Emilie said as demurely as she could muster.

I cannae let them make me forget who I’ve spent seventeen years tryin’ to become.

“Ye look well,” her father surmised, his eyes sweeping over her from head to boots.

If Emilie wasn’t mistaken, though, there was an air of distaste about him. As if he found something about his daughter’s appearance incredibly lacking.

“I am well.”

Emilie’s words were simple, filled with little to no inflection. She did not know how to interact with them.

Her parents were strangers to her now.

There was a long pause, the awkwardness of it falling over Emilie like a thick wool blanket. It was suffocating, causing her to shift from foot to foot as she waited for one of them to speak next.

“Is that all ye have to say to yer parents?” her mother finally hissed, her eyes narrowing as she stared at Emilie. “After all these years?”

Frustration bubbled up within her, a sensation that Emilie was unfamiliar with. Her brows knit together.

“I’m nae certain what else there is to say,” she quipped back, more venom in her tone than she had intended. “I’ve nae seen ye in so long. Ye’ve never visited, and ye made it clear when ye left me that I was an unwanted burden. I daenae ken why ye’re here. So I daenae ken what to say.”

She winced when the words were done falling from her mouth. She hadn’t meant to be that harsh with them. And the moment she saw the darkening of her father’s eyes and the way her mother turned up her nose, she knew that she had made a mistake.

“Is it nae possible that yer parents missed ye?” her father bit back, gaze narrowed on his daughter.

Remember yer vows. Ye cannae get angry. Ye must remain chaste, ye must….

“It doesnae matter why we’re here,” her mother said, her voice cutting through Emilie’s spiraling thoughts. “What does matter is that we’ll be takin’ ye home with us. Ye’re leavin’ the abbey.”

It took Emilie a moment, her mind running in circles as she tried to make sense of what her mother had just said. The moment she could think clearly, however, dread began to spool low in her belly.

“I cannae be leavin’,” she argued, shaking her head as if doing so could rewind time to when her mother had not yet spoken. “Caledon Abbey is me home.”

“It is nae yer home,” her father corrected, his tone as cold as ice. “It has merely been where ye were livin’. But now, ye’ll be livin’ somewhere else. We’ve found ye a husband, and ye’re due to marry him in a few days.”

“A husband?” Emilie could not stop the shriek that escaped her.

She took several steps back, shrinking away from her parents and their cruel, unseemly words.

“I cannae take a husband,” she stammered. “What about me vows?”

“Ye have nae taken any vows,” her mother hurled the words at her. “Ye are a novice nun. Or are ye so daft that ye daenae ken what that means?”

“I’m nae daft,” Emilie fired back.

There was some part of her that knew she shouldn’t be arguing with them. It went against one of her primary tenets to obey. But she couldn’t help it.

Did her parents truly expect her to just accept this?

That she would allow them to storm in here after abandoning her for so long, demanding that they go with her so that she could marry a man that she did not know?

One who, surely, would expect her to break the vows she intended to make to the Lord?

“I’m nae goin’,” Emilie insisted. “I’m nae goin’ and ye cannae make me.”

A cruel, almost serpentine smile tugged up the corners of her father’s lips as he leaned forward. He placed his elbows on his knees and rested his chin on his fist.

“That, me sweet daughter, is where ye’re wrong.”

Ice filled her veins at his expression and her words. She knew without a shadow of a doubt that what he said next would shock her to her core.

“If ye daenae come with us, we will burn this abbey that ye love so much to the ground.”