The Lost Laird from Her Past
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Jeanine Englert
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HarlequinChapter One
The acrid smell of smoke filled the air as Garrick MacLean, Laird of Westmoreland, reined in his horse and crested the final steep incline on the dirt road to his home just beyond Loch Linnhe. The grey puffs buffeting amongst the rising full moon blocked his view of the majestic profile of Westmoreland, giving him a longer reprieve from facing the painful truth seeing his ancestral home would rouse in him. That he had failed his family and failed in his duty as laird to protect his sister.
As his horse climbed, Garrick slid back in the saddle. The cool weight of his sister’s silver crucifix pressed against his neck where it hung from a loose chain. The solitary heirloom was a heady reminder of what he had lost and of what little he could bring to his mother to grant her peace. He knew it would be no comfort, but he had nothing else to give. At least his sister, Ayleen, had been buried in the place she had given her life to protect, even if he hated God for it.
The smell of smoke intensified and heat flushed his limbs as it triggered the memory of his arrival in Perth a year ago in search of his sister...
‘Ayleen!’ Garrick yelled at the burning abbey. He ran towards the structure and hit a wall of heat and flame he couldn’t pass. He jogged alongside it, searching for an opening, any opening, in the fire.
His heart sank. There wasn’t one.
Panic screeched along his limbs. What if he was too late?
He heard a scream and turned.
Ayleen.
Reivers had her. Their faces were covered in blood and etched in cruelty and hate. She was kicking, flailing, and trying to fight them off. He froze, his legs tree trunks he couldn’t move, his limbs stone. She met his gaze and smiled at him, the relief at seeing him evident in her eyes.
His chest tightened but still he couldn’t move. He just stared and her smile faltered.
‘Garrick!’ she yelled.
Finally, his legs gained feeling and he ran to her. A reiver sank his blade into her gut and fled. Agony rippled along her face and her eyes closed as she crumpled to the ground. Garrick ran and ran, skidding to her in the grass on his knees. Please be alive. Please, Ayleen. Scooping her up into his arms, he knew his prayer had been discarded. She was dead, her eyes wide and staring into the heavens above.
His scream burned his throat. What had he done? He could have saved her, but he’d done nothing. When it had counted most, he’d frozen.
‘I’m sorry, sister,’ he whispered in her ear as he rocked her in his arms. ‘I failed you.’
Garrick shifted on his mount, clutching the reins to smother the tremble in his hands as well as the shame and horror of that day. If he’d not encouraged her to follow her heart and calling to the church, but had arranged a marriage for her as he should have as her older brother and laird of the clan, his sister would still be alive. Perhaps even happily married with her own bairn by now, and he an uncle. His gut tightened and he ground his teeth. Only fools followed their hearts. He knew that now.
Yet another reason it should have been him rather than his elder brother Lon to die of fever years ago. Garrick didn’t know how to be laird, just as his father had long suspected. His heart was too soft, his feelings too deep. But not any more. He’d learned his bloody lesson.
His dark stallion continued its steady plodding along the dirt road and Garrick attempted to shake off the ghosts of regrets surrounding him. Dusk pitted the sky with shadow and the Highlands began to hide her secrets, one of the things she did best. He flipped up the collar of his overcoat to block the wind from his neck and shifted from the road to the grass to avoid the slick pockets of ice shimmering in the gouges of the worn road. The crunch of the frozen stalks beneath his horse’s hooves was a signal December was near. The budding winter winds and first snows of the season would press mercilessly upon them in the coming weeks.
Not much had changed within the villages and towns he had passed on his return from Perth, but he had. When he’d left Westmoreland over a year ago, he’d believed himself invincible, and that his will alone would help him rescue his sister from the bloody skirmishes along the Borderlands, but he’d been wrong. He’d arrived too late to protect her from the heartless reivers who had risen like ash from the forsaken land and destroyed it once more. Nothing had been the same since.
As Garrick began to descend, he spied the shell of an overturned carriage resting precariously along the grassy slope of the glen below. He narrowed his gaze. Flames licked down the sides of the wide wooden frame as the fire burned itself out. Empty horse tethers rested along the ground. Gooseflesh rose along his skin. Something wasn’t right. He slackened his hold on the reins, scanning from left to right, his gaze sweeping methodically over the scene as it would on a battlefield. Caution and instincts kept a man alive, not weaponry. He’d learned that early on.
When he spied a shadowy mound at the edge of the path half covered in grass and overgrowth, Garrick guided his mount to a stop. It could be part of a planned ambush. Or it could be a wounded man in need of assistance. There was no way to know until he got closer. Shifting the reins to one hand, he pulled a dirk from his waist belt. So much for an uneventful return home this eve.
He dismounted, tethered his horse to a small sapling nearby and approached, his eyes fixed on the dark form, the edges of it sharpening into focus with each step closer. His heart picked up speed. The man had been cleaved in the chest and gut and stripped of anything of value. He was sprawled without shoes or coat like a large X upon the ground. The awkward and unnatural twist of his limbs left little doubt. He was dead.
What Garrick had first thought an accident from afar now appeared otherwise. He scanned the area and found another body in the grass not far away from the first. It looked as if the man had attempted to outrun his attackers, to disappear into the glen and forest below for cover. The man hadn’t got far but had been downed by a single blade to the back by a skilled thrower, or perhaps a man schooled to kill quickly, as he was. Garrick turned the body over and cursed. The lad looked the age of his younger brother, Cairn, who was scarce old enough to take a blade to his cheek.
The boy’s wide, glassy brown eyes stared back at him, unseeing and full of fear. Poor lad. He’d not been dead long. His limbs were still floppy and loose. Garrick guided the boy’s eyelids closed with his hand, saying a brief soldier’s prayer for a quick release of his spirit to peace. He sighed. Such a loss for no reason. Years ago, he might have felt a twist of anguish in his gut at the sight of the dead boy. Now, he accepted it as a part of existence. The Highlands had changed, England had changed and he had changed along with them. He wasn’t the same man who had left this hillside over a year ago, full of certainty for his future.
Now he was certain of...nothing.
A noise stilled him. He paused and listened, closing his eyes to determine the direction of the sound. A soft whimpering, almost like a gentle mewling from a wounded animal seized his ears and he held his breath, concentrating on only the plaintive cry. He opened his eyes. It was coming from the carcass of the overturned carriage that still smoked. He crossed the road with his dirk poised and ready.
He slid down a patch of slick grass and landed on a bevy of boulders that appeared to be holding the carriage in place. Careful to avoid the weak, winking flames, he peered through what was left of the window of a once fine carriage. He could smell and see the remnants of black varnish paint and the faint outline of a gold crest on the door.
He frowned. Such finery wasn’t often seen in the Highlands this far north, and the fools within had made themselves a target by travelling so late and without adequate protection. People in the Highlands were desperate, hungry and willing to take what they needed these days. Moonlight winked against the shattered glass, glittering along an ice-blue silk gown. He sucked in a breath.
Deuces.
There was a woman inside. Why had she been abandoned? He froze. Unless she was dead. He shoved the thought aside. He sheathed his blade and yanked on the carriage door, but it was jammed shut. Cursing under his breath, he rammed his shoulder into it once, then twice, until the wood gave way, splintering from the force. The carriage yawned under the shifting weight and threatened to roll down the hill, crushing them both. He leaned his weight against it and forced himself half inside. He’d not leave her to be scavenged by animals, even if she was dead.
The woman appeared lifeless, but the moaning from her lips convinced him otherwise. Saints. She was alive. His heart picked up speed. Westmoreland was not far. If he rode hard, he could be there in less than an hour. Bloody, dark, matted hair from a head wound obscured part of her face, but otherwise she seemed unharmed. Perhaps he could save her yet.
Sliding his arms around her torso and the billowing folds of her silk skirts, he scooped her up as he held the weight of the carriage at bay using his leg. She snuggled against him and wrapped an arm around his neck. The feel of her faint whisper of breath along his cheek awakened a small seed of worth and want in him. After a very long time of not feeling needed by anyone, and falling short of those who had, it filled him with a sense of purpose. Maybe he could save her, even if it had been far too late for him to save his sister.
He pulled her out of the carriage and quickly shifted out of its path, shielding her with his body. Without his steadying weight, the wooden carcass of the carriage rocked and then careened past them down the hillside before crashing into the bottom of a ravine, splintering into bits. If he’d been seconds longer, they would have been crushed with it along the forest floor. He shook off the thought and continued, clutching the woman as tightly as he dared due to her unknown injuries. She smelled of lavender and rose... He stilled, arrested by the flash of memories the fragrance provoked.
The woman’s size and hair colour were familiar.
He breathed in again. His body tightened in longing. He shifted her in his arms, desperate to get her face in the moonlight for a better look. It couldn’t be, could it? Surely time was playing tricks on his senses and crushing fatigue confusing his mind? His heart pounded, his mind demanding to know if his fear was true. Finally, a cloud passed and the moonlight allowed him to see her more clearly.
Lord above.
The sight of her landed a solid punch to his gut and his legs tingled. He stared down at the woman in his arms as his heart slammed into his chest.
‘Brenna?’ he asked. ‘Is that you?’
There was no answer but that of his heart. He knew it was her, as he knew this road and the smell of the Highlands in winter—the pert tip of her nose, the single mole along her neck and the feel of her in his arms. But how could it be? She lived south-west of here at Glenhaven with her father and brother. And who were these men escorting her? Where was her chaperone, and why weren’t Laird Stewart’s men guarding her? He gently pushed back some of the matted hair from her face. None of it made any sense.
‘Wake. You must wake,’ he pleaded, gripping her face to rouse her.
I cannot lose you twice.
He leaned down to kiss her cheek but checked himself and pulled away in time. He didn’t dare.
It had taken all of his strength to let Brenna go the first time. And he’d done so with calculated and deliberate force after Ayleen’s death, when he’d realised he couldn’t truly protect anyone or be of use to her as a husband. He’d not sent word to Brenna, as he’d promised when he’d left, had but stayed away long after he’d planned to return.
He’d enlisted his honed skills as a soldier to fight along the Borderlands. It suited him far better than his new role as laird, and he knew that. Rage had fuelled every cut of his blade into the enemy, and with each death he’d been able to pull back further into his armour as a warrior and away from his life in the Highlands. He was good at killing. Good at detaching. At least, when it didn’t matter. When it mattered, he choked and did nothing, as he had with Ayleen. And, as the days and weeks had ticked by, the old Garrick had fallen away like an old skin shed by a snake.
He’d wanted Brenna to believe him dead and seek out a new life without him, and the only way to do that was to disappear from them all. Should he have written to her and helped her let go of any hopes she still had in him and their future? Aye, he should have. But he’d not been strong enough to lie to her and pretend he didn’t still care for her. So, rather than lie, he’d denied himself all feeling and attachment to her, and it had worked. For the most part, anyway.
He’d been a coward. Yet another thing to hate himself for. He’d add it to the bloody list of his failings that was becoming as long as a scroll. He was no longer the man that could love, cherish and protect Brenna for the rest of her days, as he’d believed but a year ago. He’d given up any hopes of a future with her the day he had lost his sister. Brenna deserved to live the happy and full life he had once promised her with a man who could protect her.
His chest tightened. Even if such happiness rested with another man.
She didn’t wake or move. Panic clawed along the edges of his spine. He had to get her care. And quickly. Who knew what additional injuries she might have sustained other than her head wound? The gulf between them now didn’t matter, only her life.
If he could save her, he could redeem some small part of the man he’d once been and make up for the pain he had caused her this past year. All he needed to do was maintain his distance. He’d done so for a year already, and he’d have to face her soon enough. Once she was at Westmoreland, he would send word to her family. They would come to collect her and then they could continue on without one another, as he’d planned.
No doubt she would be filled with ire at the sight of him alive. And he would use her rage to maintain their estrangement. He deserved her hate and disdain.
He carried her to his stallion and rested her across his mount before untying the reins from the small tree. Then he gently pulled up behind her, readjusting her in his arms with an extra tartan wrapped about her for warmth and protection. She was chilled to the bone. Who knew how long she’d been exposed to the elements?
He held Brenna tightly and rode as fast as he dared to Westmoreland. The sharp wind in his face was an intoxicating reminder that he was alive, as was she, and that all was not lost.
Not yet, anyway.
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