His Convenient Highland Wedding
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Janice Preston
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18,4K
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24
HarlequinPrologue
‘But... Father... I can help... I can help you to think of ideas—’
‘Out!’
Flora McCrieff flinched at her father’s roar, but he did not raise his hand to her. This time. Her younger brother, Donald, pulled a mocking face from behind their father’s back. Father would listen to Donald’s ideas, no matter how stupid they were, simply because he was a boy and would be clan chief one day. But that didn’t make him wise...his ideas were always foolish, like the time he persuaded their two younger sisters, Aileen and Mairi, to sneak away with him to explore a wreck that had washed up in a nearby cove. He’d not even thought about the tide turning and cutting them off and if Flora hadn’t followed her instinct that something was wrong, and gone in search of them, they would all have been drowned.
Not that her father had ever acknowledged it.
She left her father’s business room without another word, shutting the heavy iron-studded door behind her. It was no use trying to change his mind once it was made up. The air in the room had swirled thick with her father’s anger and she’d sensed he was battling to rein in his temper. Better to leave before he lost control. Financial worries, made worse by the slow but steady loss of tenants—leaving the Highlands to try their luck in America and Canada—had made his temper touchier than ever.
A sense of injustice pounded in Flora’s chest. Her head was full of ideas and she knew, if only he would listen, that she could help Father find new ways to raise money for the clan and to repair Castle McCrieff, their home and the ancestral home of the McCrieffs. But no one ever paid her any attention, unless it was to order her about. It had always been that way. Lasses should be seen and not heard—one of Father’s favourite phrases and Mother never contradicted him. Not about that. Not about anything. Well, Flora knew she had more sense in her little finger than Donald had in his entire brain. At eleven, he was only a year younger than her, but when it came to common sense he was more like five years her junior.
Flora stood irresolute in the hall, which covered much of the ground floor of the keep and where a fire was kept blazing day and night, summer and winter, in the huge fireplace with its carved-stone mantel. The castle remained much the same as when it had been built, centuries ago, with a few additions. She shivered. It might be fanciful, but sometimes she imagined she could feel those people of long ago—their joys and their heartaches; their passions; their rage and their laughter—their emotions absorbed by the massive stone walls that were still hung in places with faded tapestries in the old style.
‘There y’are, Flora, lass.’ Maggie bustled from the direction of the kitchen, a tray in her hands. ‘Will ye no’ take this to your mother and your sisters for me? We’ve a mountain of food to prepare for the evening meal yet.’
Without waiting for a reply, Maggie thrust the tray, with its three bowls of broth and plate of bannocks, into Flora’s hands and hurried away. Flora sighed. She didn’t mind helping Maggie, their cook, but she was so tired of being overlooked by everyone.
When I am married I will be a fine lady. I will rule my household and everyone will pay attention to me and marvel at my ideas and have respect for me.
It was a favourite daydream of hers. Father was an earl and, as the eldest daughter, she would marry a man of her own station, which would mean she would be a countess or even higher. Maybe even a duchess.
She trod carefully up the stairs, heading for her mother’s sitting room, where her little sisters were keeping warm as they recovered from influenza. They were much better now, but lacked the energy to do much other than sit by the fire while Mother read to them.
The bowls of broth safely delivered, Flora left the room and then hesitated. It was bone-chillingly cold outside, with a brisk wind blowing ragged clouds in off the sea. If she went downstairs, for certain Maggie would find something to keep her busy, but that resentment at her father’s dismissal of her still lingered, making her restless. She turned away from the staircase and wandered along the passageway, pausing at a window to gaze out over the hills to the east. It was a majestic view, but a lonely one. She pulled her woollen shawl closer around her shoulders as a shiver coursed across her skin.
A movement from below attracted her attention—Father, clad in his black greatcoat, striding for the stables, followed by Donald, his shorter legs scurrying in an attempt to keep up with Father’s longer stride. Bitterness scoured Flora’s throat. Donald always got to do the interesting things. He was always toadying up to Father and he was always putting Flora down. He was jealous of her, that’s what he was. She flung away from the window and the unfairness of life before running blindly down the passageway.
She rounded a corner and then, slightly breathless, halted in front of the door that led into the Great Tower. It was forbidden. It was always kept locked and, in her memory, only Father—and his father before him—had ever gone inside. It was unsafe, he said, and not even the servants were allowed to enter. But Flora knew where the key was kept, because she had seen her father take it from a wooden chest set in a window embrasure further along the passage. And she had watched as Father had gone inside. That was last year and she had thought nothing of it at the time but, recently, when she had been out riding her pony, she had glimpsed a man at the window right at the top of the tower. Her heart had nigh on stopped in terror, but then he had swept a hand over his head and she had recognised the gesture.
It cannot be so very dangerous if Father went up there.
Before she could talk herself out of it, she hurried along the passageway to the chest and opened the lid. Inside, wrapped in a tartan cloth of the McCrieff colours of brown, lilac and moss green—the colours of the Highlands, Father always said—was a large iron key. She grabbed it, closed the lid and looked all around. There was nobody there. In fact, the castle seemed almost eerily quiet today. At that thought, a shadow swept over her and she started, her heart leaping into her throat as she clutched the key to her chest. A glance out the window showed a huge, black cloud had covered the sun and she laughed at her silly fancy that, somehow, Father knew of her disobedience and was signalling his displeasure. He’d left the castle. He couldn’t possibly know.
Nevertheless, a war waged within her breast. Defiance of her father could result in punishment and yet...that lingering feeling of being constantly overlooked prodded her into doing something that would prove, if only to herself, that she could not so easily be dismissed.
And humming beneath those two opposing emotions of fear and bravado was something else. Something...other. And it was growing stronger. And it was urging her to follow her instinct that this—her fingers tightened around the key—was right. This was what she needed to do...must do. It urged her on. No. That wasn’t quite right. Flora shook her head in frustration...she couldn’t quite grasp the meaning of that compulsion... She concentrated, hard, and then she gasped. And straightened her spine. That gut feeling—her instinct—was not urging her to go into the tower. No. It was drawing her there...beckoning her...
She hesitated no longer. Her instincts had never let her down. She ran to the door, inserted the key into the lock and turned it.
Inside, the windowless room was utterly dark, other than the light admitted by the open door. The room smelled musty and, as her eyes adjusted, she could see it was completely empty apart from a door set at right angles to the outer curved wall. Flora closed the door to the tower behind her and, in the dark, felt her way around the wall—the stone cold and rough against her fingertips—until her questing touch found the roughly hewn frame of the door within the room. It was not locked. She sucked in a deep breath and lifted the latch, the loud grating sound stirring her fears all over again. But the urge to go further...to seek...to, somehow, put things right...was near overwhelming, and she pulled the door open, revealing stone steps spiralling up into the tower.
Light from above lit the way and Flora crept up the stairs, keeping as quiet as she could even though there could be nobody there to hear her. Her breaths sounded harsh in the silence and she fancied she could hear her heart drumming in her chest. At the top of the stairs she halted, disappointed at the empty room that met her gaze. There was no mystery here. She crossed to the window—which at some time had been enlarged from the original arrow slit—and gazed out over the bleak hills and the glens with their pewter-grey lochs to the snow-capped mountains to the north. Then she remembered having seen Father at this very same window and she ducked away in case she, too, might be seen.
She swept the room again and her breath caught in her lungs as she realised it wasn’t quite circular, although the tower itself was definitely so. She frowned, trying to persuade herself she was imagining it, but there was no mistake: the curve of the wall opposite the window was different. And why did a tapestry cover one end of that shallowly curved wall in this deserted tower?
Her feet moved, seemingly of their own volition, to that tapestry. Its faded colours depicted scenes of men doing battle with swords and claymores—a familiar enough sight to one brought up with tales of past ferocious battles between the clans—against the backdrop of a magnificent castle. Without further thought, she pulled the tapestry away from the wall. Dust billowed into the air and she held her nose between finger and thumb and squeezed her eyes shut until the urge to sneeze passed.
She opened her eyes, but they were blurred with tears and, without warning, a wave of sorrow crashed over her. Still holding the tapestry, she rubbed away the tears with her other hand. Behind the tapestry was a simple wooden door. She opened it and slipped behind the tapestry and through the door into a narrow space lit by two tall, narrow windows—arrow slits from which her ancestors had fired upon their enemies, long ago.
Then her eyes dropped and a high scream whistled from her lungs before she clamped her hand over her mouth. She wanted to run, but her legs locked tight. The skeleton gleamed white among the frayed and rotting cloth that had once shrouded it, but had now fallen away to expose the bones. It lay on a stone shelf built out from the wall and Flora could not tear her gaze away as grief, anger and aloneness battered her.
Her gulping breaths sobbed into the silence as she strove to move.
To get away.
To leave that dreadful sense of desolation behind.
The light outside abruptly brightened and a stray sunbeam penetrated one of the arrow slits to touch the skeleton, and a gleam from among the shredded linen caught Flora’s eye.
As if in a dream, she saw her trembling hand reach out. As her fingers closed around a metallic object, she was all at once released from that awful paralysis. She whirled around and ran, never pausing until she reached the sanctuary of her bedchamber. She leapt on to her bed, scrambling back until she was up against the headboard. She bent her legs and clasped her arms around them, resting her forehead on her knees as the tears leaked hot from her eyes and her chest heaved.
A sharp prick in the palm of her right palm finally shook Flora from her terror. Slowly, she released her legs, becoming aware that she clutched something in her right hand. She opened her fingers, hardly daring to look. There, on her palm, rested a brooch fashioned from silver. Her breathing slowed and steadied, and calm gradually overcame her fear. She swung her legs from the bed and crossed to the window to examine the disc-shaped brooch more closely. The surface was decorated with a plant she recognised—a thrift, with its tuft of leaves and its distinctive flowers aloft on slender stems. Two swords crossed at the centre in an X, with the letters R and A at either side.
A drop of blood sat in the centre of Flora’s palm, where the pin of the brooch had pierced her skin. She bent her head to lick it away and, as she did so, her head swam and utter anguish rushed through her. She clutched her hands to her chest until that feeling subsided, then studied the brooch once more, willing it to give her some clue as to what she might do to set everything right. She rubbed the surface with her thumb and felt calm descend as she made a silent vow to take care of it.
She wrapped it in one of her embroidered handkerchiefs and laid it in the bottom of her drawer. Even had she not sworn that vow, she would never dare replace the brooch—the thought of seeing that skeleton again made her quake with terror.
Father must know it is there. Who is it? Why is it in our tower?
On that thought, Flora realised she must go back and lock the tower door before anyone found it open but, after that, she would never, ever venture near the Great Tower again.
But neither would she ever forget what she had seen.
