Chapter 14
On a wooden bench in the castle gardens, Nancy held Freya under the arms, her cute, tiny feet balancing on Nancy’s thighs. The baby kept sagging down onto her bottom, her legs not quite strong enough to push up, burbling and babbling all the while.
It’s weird that this is how we all start out, she mused, her heart growing heavy as she tried to picture her own mother holding her like this.
She couldn’t even begin to imagine what a monster of a baby Hunter must have been, considering how gigantic he was now. He looked like someone who had come out of the womb fighting and fully formed.
She grimaced at the idea, and the baby laughed, no doubt thinking she was making funny faces again.
“Would you miss me, huh?” she asked as she lifted the baby again, and chuckled as those little legs tried to work with the instinct to push up.
It had been a few days since Adeline had given her a dose of hope and dismay in one injection, and mixed with the cocktail of the highs and lows of her kiss with Hunter, her mind was all over the place.
Of course, she was over the moon that there was a way for her to go back, but to return to the future and never be able to reveal what she had discovered? It was an agonizing situation.
She didn’t want to be a sly journalist who didn’t care who she hurt as long as she got a good story, but there was also a sneaky little part of her that thought, How would Adeline or Jane ever know?
“I wouldn’t do it,” she lamented, pulling the baby closer and kissing her downy hair. “I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. And this Emma woman would know; she’d probably come and kick my ass. That Hellen woman, too.”
She inhaled deeply, drinking in the sweet, milky, powdery scent of Freya’s head.
As it turned out, babies did smell good, and they weren’t bad company either.
Nancy could rant and grumble as much as she liked, and as long as she did it in a sing-song voice, Freya would lap it up, giggling and babbling merrily.
“I want to go back. I should go back, but I doubt I’ll have a job when I do, and Emily is probably still on her research trip, so I won’t have anyone to tell until she gets back,” Nancy continued.
“It’s not as simple as you’d think, Freya.
At least here, I like my job. You’re definitely cuter than my boss and that—pardon my French—asshole Bob. ”
But she couldn’t be a nursemaid forever. For one thing, babies grow up. For another thing, she was a writer, a journalist, with ideas to put to paper and stories to chase, and she couldn’t very well do that with someone else’s child attached to her hip… three hundred years in the past.
However, the hardest part of the last few days hadn’t been the baby or Adeline’s bargain at all.
The hardest part was ignoring Hunter, who’d made his stance perfectly clear in the dungeons, but seemed to always be somewhere nearby, staring at her like the bird that had given him his nickname of ‘Hawk.’
She still had faint bruises on her thigh where he’d grabbed her, right as things were about to reach new heights of passion.
They didn’t hurt, and hadn’t when he made them, but every time she caught sight of them in the mirror or the bathtub, she’d remember how good she’d felt in those fleeting moments.
And she’d remember that she’d never feel that again. Not with Hunter anyway.
Who am I kidding? Once you go Highlander, what else is there?
She had to laugh, thinking of Adeline and Jane and the unknown men they’d stayed for. She knew Adeline’s husband was named Logan, but she hadn’t asked about Jane’s.
“Careful, Nancy, or else ye’ll sniff all that wispy hair right off her head.” Elsie’s cheery voice brightened Nancy’s mood. They weren’t quite friends yet, but they were getting friendlier by the day.
Nancy grinned. “I can’t help it. She just smells so good. Like… vanilla cake.”
“That sounds delicious.”
“It is.” Nancy’s stomach growled, though she’d eaten two plates at breakfast and a huge luncheon.
There must’ve been something in the Highland air that was giving her an insatiable appetite…
and not just for what was served at mealtimes.
Frankly, she couldn’t rip into a duck leg fast enough when Hunter was sitting opposite her at the dining table with his collar open and his biceps flexing, his chest partially visible through his thin shirt, his neck so tempting.
The castle was lucky she didn’t eat everything in order to stop herself from sweeping it all off the table and crawling over to Hunter, to sit in his lap, to taste the only thing that would quell her longing: him.
“Shall we walk?” Elsie suggested, her hand rubbing slow circles on the swell of her belly.
“Are you sure you want to? Aren’t you exhausted?” Nancy asked with a sympathetic chuckle as she tucked Freya into her side and got to her feet.
Elsie waved a dismissive hand. “Lady Gibson said it’s good for me and the baby to stay active. I trust her implicitly, even if most of the walkin’ will be waddlin’.”
“She’s done a lot of good around here, hasn’t she?”
Elsie nodded. “There are soldiers walkin’ now who would be dead or missin’ a limb if it wasnae for her.
I cannae even guess how many she’s saved.
” She paused. “We lost all of our healers in the war, ye see, and then Beathan mentioned the clans to the east. He sent word, askin’ for a healer, and Lady Gibson answered. ”
Nancy nodded, her mouth twisting into a fake grimace.
Why did Adeline have to be so nice, so charitable?
Why couldn’t she have been a mean old shrew, so Nancy wouldn’t feel a shred of guilt for writing a story about her?
In fact, the more she heard about Adeline, the more she knew that she’d just write the ‘and the Clark sisters lived happily ever after, backpacking across the globe’ story.
It was the least she could do.
The two women made their slow way down into a sunny patch of garden, where spring wildflowers bowed their petaled heads in reverence to the mild breeze. The bursts of color cheered Nancy up, although she was now on constant guard for bees, for everyone’s sake. The bees included.
“I didn’t know you had sun in Scotland,” she teased, their steady footsteps sinking into the lawn.
Elsie chuckled. “Och, it’s a rarity. I think we have but a fortnight of summer, but it’s the finest summer ye’ll ever ken. As long as ye daenae get eaten alive by the wee biters that come in the evening.”
“Biters?” Nancy’s eyes widened, imagining some strange and vicious creature that slunk out of the shadows after sunset.
“Wee flies,” Elsie clarified, grinning. “Ye itch for days when they nibble on ye.”
Fortunately, I’ll be gone before then.
Nancy waited for the triumph to come, the excitement of seeing New Jersey and modern comforts again, but it was slow to arrive.
Maybe she could stay until the summer. She’d never been on vacation anywhere, always too busy or too broke. Why not enjoy the beauty of 1700s Scotland before going back to hunt for jobs, pay rent, and be unable to read most of the ingredients on anything in the grocery store?
“Jack is sorry, by the way,” Elsie added, a note of shyness in her voice. “He wants to come and tell ye himself, but he’s afraid ye might turn him into a toad or something.”
Nancy snorted a laugh. “He still thinks I’m a witch?”
“Nay, but he’s worried ye might find a witch to do it for ye.” Elsie smiled and looped her arm through Nancy’s free one. “He really is sorry.”
“I know,” Nancy replied. “However, at some point, he’s going to have to apologize to me himself. It’s not even like I’m angry with him. I understand why he did what he did.”
Elsie shrugged. “Daenae tell anyone I said so, but these men… they’re nae so good at apologizin’.”
“Or saying thank you,” Nancy blurted before she could stop herself, her face warming instantly as she thought of Hunter’s ‘gratitude’ for at least the tenth time that day. And it was barely noon.
“Aye.” Elsie laughed softly, the sound turning into a surprised gasp. “Och, yer guard dog is here again. Starin’ at ye.”
“What?”
Elsie subtly pointed her chin in the direction of a coppice of apple trees just bearing fruit. Between the slender trunks, on a sort of patio, Hunter and Jack were conversing with two other guards. Yet, Nancy felt the heat of Hunter’s gaze as he briefly glanced in her direction.
“How did Freya end up here?” she asked abruptly. “I heard Jack say something about… knowing that someone would never let Hunter have her. I just assumed she was born here, but I’m guessing not.”
Elsie’s face shuttered for a moment as they moved toward a stone bench on the other side of the garden, where a little stream trickled peacefully, and laurel bushes rustled.
There was a wall beside it, and over the top of that wall, Nancy could see a natural pool a fair distance below, carved out of rock.
An open portion of the wall marked the start of the steps down to the pool, and though she relished a swim, the thought of swimming there made goosepimples rise all over her skin. Maybe when it was warmer.
“A terrible business,” Elsie said, at last. “His wife was… I daenae ken how to put it delicately.”
“Then put it bluntly,” Nancy encouraged.
Elsie managed a small smile. “The marriage between me cousin over there and his wife, Rachel, is what ended the war that me braither started.”
“Beathan?” Nancy blinked in surprise.
The man might have had backward opinions about women, but he hadn’t seemed like a bloodthirsty warmonger.
Elsie covered her mouth as a laugh slipped past her lips.
“Heavens, nay. Me other braither. Our older braither.” She paused, her laughter fading.
“I daenae ken why, but he went mad with the power of bein’ the Laird here.
He wouldnae stop. He kept sendin’ our people to their deaths, comin’ up with fatal schemes that he thought were the best ideas.
One night, years into the war, he took the councilmen’s bairns hostage and threatened to kill them all if the war wasnae won in a week.
“That’s when they asked Hunter to do somethin’. He didnae want to do it, I ken that in me heart, but he did it. He killed me braither so that me braither wouldnae murder a group of innocent bairns. But there are some who think he did it to gain power for himself, since he ended up being the Laird.”
Nancy stared at her in abject disbelief as they sat down on the bench. “Why not Beathan?”
“He didnae want it, and the council didnae want him,” Elsie replied sadly.
“But as I said, Hunter sent word to our enemy, Laird MacLeach, who sent his daughter, and they got married to end the war. She went mad a little herself, and… they accused him of killin’ her, but when the baby showed up at our gate, that rumor stopped. ”
Blinking slowly, Nancy sat back against the backrest of the bench and stared blankly at the pristine green of the lawns, where a blackbird swooped down to snatch a worm.
Maybe things weren’t simpler here at all. People were still fighting each other over nothing, and families were still insanely dysfunctional.
“How could you all forgive him for that?” she asked carefully as she gently lay Freya in the crook of her arm, the child already sleeping. “I mean, he killed your brother. That must be difficult to get over.”
Elsie cradled her bump. “If it wasnae for Hunter, someone else would have done it, and they would have made our braither suffer. Hunter did it quickly, and with good reason. I would have killed me own braither if it meant savin’ those bairns.
” She swallowed loudly. “Power changed me braither. I didnae even recognize him at the end.”
Her eyes welled with tears as she sniffed, discreetly wiping her nose with a handkerchief. It looked as if she was about to have one of her weeping episodes again, at the complete mercy of her haywire emotions. But then, she seemed to rally and turned to Nancy.
“Do ye have any siblings?”
It was Nancy’s turn to feel a lump in her throat.
“By blood? None. By choice? One. We were… in a home together. Grew up together.” She coughed in a bid to clear the lump.
“She’s a very busy, successful woman, so I hardly ever see her anymore.
But… she’s the reason I’m here. She was the one who told me about the Hawk, in a roundabout sort of way. ”
“Then ye must invite her here, so we can thank her!” Elsie chirped, clapping her hands together. “We were hopin’ to host a cèilidh soon. Ye could send word to her. I ken that I’d like to thank her. It’s nae so easy to make friends, but… I think that ye and I might be good friends indeed.”
Her cheeks pinkened with a sweet, bashful energy as she lightly brushed a stray tear from her cheek.
“I think I’d like that,” Nancy said, meaning it, as her gaze drifted toward the apple trees and the men talking beyond.
Her heart jumped as she locked eyes with Hunter. Had he been staring at her this whole time?