Awakening His Highland Soul (Steamy Scottish Historical Romance) Read online

  “Beautiful,” she muttered. “What must it be like to have such freedom?”

  Even from so far below, she could tell that the bird must be huge, with a wingspan far wider than she was tall. She watched it, mesmerized, as it hung in the ether. Then, with a barely discernable twitch of its wings, the great bird of prey dove out of sight behind a far hill.

  Beatrice’s eyes followed it, and as her gaze dropped from the blue vault above to a promontory below her.

  Is that a castle? How majestic! What a perfect setting for it!

  The castle glowed in the sun and was ringed by a thin belt of splendid-looking noble pines; the bark of the handsome trees looked almost silver-purple in the strong light of the midday sun.

  Ever since Beatrice had walked in to find her mother and father dead in their little cottage–having been robbed and murdered by faceless thieves–she had done everything in her power not to let fear rule her life. She had made a decision, as a child, that she wouldn’t allow herself to be put off doing anything just because she was afraid that she would get in trouble for doing it.

  Conquer your trepidation, seek adventure in the everyday whenever possible.

  And so, she set off down the boulder-strewn hillside, intent on taking a peek at this regal edifice. Her intrepid feet picked their way nimbly over the treacherous ground until she made it to the edge of the wide copse of noble pines.

  She paused then to get her breath back and suck in a few gasps of the sweet, resinous air.

  The air is so clean here! Almost as if I was drinking a draught of some sort of revitalizing potion with each breath.

  She closed her eyes and listened to the sounds of the forest all around her. Somewhere off to her left, a brook ran. The eternal music of water chattering over rock was soothing to her ears. She heard squirrels scurrying in the tree branches above her, the hammering of an enthusiastic greater spotted woodpecker going about its business in the distance and…

  Someone humming to themselves!

  Beatrice’s eyes snapped open. She could not see the source of the tuneless humming.

  But it sounds as if it were coming from off to my left…

  As one might expect of a woman whose job it was to perform feats of acrobatics whilst standing on the back of a moving horse, Beatrice was agile of foot and could move like a cat when she needed to. Ducking into a crouch, she moved off into the trees, towards the sounds of human presence.

  She located the source of the noise only a short distance from where she had been standing, listening to the sounds of the woodland. She peered slowly and cautiously around the trunk of a great sycamore and her hazel eyes narrowed.

  There it is! The font of the humming!

  A young man sat propped against the bole of another sycamore tree. He was sprawled carelessly in the leaf litter, his head propped on an outthrust root, the very epitome of idle content. He held a handful of sycamore seeds in his hand and, as he hummed unmusically to himself, he sent seeds spinning one by one in the direction of his booted toes.

  In the unconscious manner of someone who is far more used to, not to mention far more interested in, appraising horses than men, Beatrice ran her hazel eyes over the reclining stranger.

  Tall, fit, muscular. He looks as if he was born to run through these glens. He seems just as at home here as the Scots pine or the red deer.

  Another part of her mind, a part that wasn’t often called upon for advice, put forward something just then.

  He is a handsome man, too. I am hard-pressed to think of a time when I laid eyes upon a man of such rugged and strong appearance.

  It was true. The young man’s hands and face were tanned a healthy shade of brown, as if he spent much of his time out of doors, in the wind and the weather. His hair was thick and black, and held back with a leather thong. Stubble covered his jaw. His eyes, though closed at the moment, had slight lines in the corners. a sign, perhaps, that here was a man who spent much of his time smiling and laughing.

  He is well-clothed, too. Boots of good, supple leather that fit him well. A kilt of finely woven tartan. Fresh linen shirt. These all suggest he is a man of considerable means.

  It was as her eyes ran up the Highlander’s body, taking in his attire, that they came to rest on the man’s chiseled face. Beatrice realized that the man’s eyes, which were the deep, dark brown of Highland peat, were open now.

  And they were turned in her direction.

  Beatrice froze like a started deer. Her eyes widened and her heart seemed to pause within her chest. She was dressed in her tight, brown equestrienne leathers, which blended well with the bark and bracken of the forest surroundings.

  Has he seen me? Do I run? Do I stay?

  These questions flickered through her mind with the rapidity of a swallow over a lake.

  Before she could formulate an answer to any of them, however, the young man had got nimbly to his feet and taken a step in her direction.

  “Hold,” he said, in a commanding but gentle voice, colored with the gorgeous burr of this part of the world. “Hold, lass. Who are ye, and what’re ye doin’ watchin’ me here?”

  Beatrice could not find the words to answer. Now that the man gotten to his feet, he seemed even more handsome than before. He was broad across the chest and shoulders, and Beatrice could see the clearly defined muscles of his upper arms even through his linen shirt.

  “Ye daenae have tae be afraid, lass,” he said, his arms out to the sides, his voice low. “I’m nae goin’ tae hurt ye. What’re ye called?”

  He smiled then and the dimness under the canopy of leaves seemed to lift slightly. Beatrice, poised as she was to flee, felt her bunched muscles relax a little.

  As if he was able to sense her feelings and read the thoughts running through her head, the stranger said, “That’s right, lass. Me name’s Jeames Abernathy, and if this is a dream then I’d like tae thank ye, for it’s the sweetest dream I’ve ever had.”

  2

  When Jeames had opened his eyes and seen the hazel eyes peering out from around the trunk of a sycamore not five meters from him, he had assumed that he had nodded off and was dreaming. The eyes seemed to appraise him in minute detail, running up his body, all the way from the tips of his toes to his face.

  After blinking firmly, and even going so far as to pinch himself hard on the thigh, he had come to the conclusion that he was not asleep and that he must truly be being watched by somebody.

  Perhaps it’s one of the brownies… Could it be possible that the fairy folk dae actually exist? I cannae believe it.

  After he had hailed the person, and seen the eyes widen in sudden terror and suspicion, he had been forced to believe that it was a mere woman hiding in the forest watching him, and no mythical creature.

  Jeames was an experienced hunter. He’d been stalking deer, wild boar, and goats throughout these Highland hills ever since he had been old enough to ride and shoot a bow. He had a knack for reading creatures and a nose for knowing how close he could get before they might flee.

  At that moment, he could tell that the furtive, hidden female figure was right on the edge of running for it.

  “It’s alright, lass,” he said soothingly. “There’s nothin’ tae be gained by runnin’ blindly off in this country. Ye’ll just as likely end up in a peat bog or break yer ankle fallin’ down a rabbit hole than get away. Now, just come out and tell me what ye’re doin’ on these lands.”

  He still half-expected the woman to vanish into the trees without a sound. Instead, slowly, easing out from the dappled shadows of the tree in which she hid, the mysterious figure padded out towards him.

  Me God, but what a bonnie lass!

  The figure that emerged from the cool shadows may very well have been one of the fairy folk, such was the way in which her beauty smote Jeames’s heart.

  She had a slender, firm body, and walked with the wary grace of a deer or vixen. He could see that if she chose to run, he would have a hard time catching her, no matter how
well he knew these woods. She was wearing a strange outfit of tight-fitting leather, the likes of which he had never seen any woman wear in the Highlands or out of it. Every line of her body spoke of an athleticism and speed that he doubted any lass that he had ever met could rival.

  “Who are ye?” he asked yet again, his words colored with wonder. He felt like a moth that’d just slipped through a keyhole and found itself face to face with a star.

  The woman cocked her head at him, weighing him.

  “Why should I tell you that?” she asked in an English accent.

  Her voice was gentle and warm as honey but edged with distrust.

  “Well, I suppose ye don’t have tae tell me at all, really,” Jeames replied. “Might be that it’s considered polite tae tell the man onto whose land ye’ve strolled yer name at least, though.”

  “Didn’t look like you were doing much protecting of it just now. Are you a guard from the castle?”

  Jeames grinned. “Aye, I s’pose ye could say that I’m a guard o’ sorts. Though I’m off duty at the moment.”

  The woman looked about her. “You’re charged with protecting this forest?” she asked.

  Jeames rubbed self-consciously at the back of his neck. “Aye, and a lot more besides. About two-thousand acres or so of land.”

  The woman’s eyebrows rose at this. “Who are you?” she asked, boldly.

  “As I said, me name is Jeames Abernathy. As ye guessed, I live down at MacKenzie Castle. These are the MacKenzie lands that ye’ve wandered onto by the way, lass.”

  The woman looked about her, her head flicking from tree to tree as if she expected soldiers to spring out from behind them.

  “I told ye,” Jeames said. “Ye’ve nothin’ tae fear. So long as ye come with sound motives and a pure heart to this place.”

  I doubt a purer heart ever set foot in these woods. Not since this part o’ the land was shaped.

  “So, that castle that I saw from the hilltop, that’s, sort of, your home?”

  “Aye, that’s right. That’s the seat of the MacKenzie clan. Will ye nae tell me yer name, lass?”

  The feeling had come upon Jeames that he must find out the name of this radiant beauty that had strayed like some wood nymph out of a dream. He somehow felt that his future happiness depended on it.

  He was aware, though, that to push for information at this point might do more harm than good. He wanted nothing more than for this paragon of female loveliness to stay a little while longer.

  Man alive, is this what me mither means when she talks o’ a bolt from the blue? What in the world brought her to this corner of my land? I daenae ken anythin’ about this lass, nae even her name, but I’d trade me claim tae the lairdship tae find it out.

  In silence, he watched the young woman, unsure what to say to make her tell him her name; he did not want to scare her off with an inappropriate word.

  He held the woman’s gorgeous hazel eyes whilst all around them the animal residents of the forest continued their chattering and the brook that ran through it chuckled in its stony bed. Jeames felt that he could have stayed in that moment forever and been quite content.

  “I can’t,” the oddly dressed woman said, breaking the spell.

  “Sorry? Ye can’t what?” Jeames asked.

  “I can’t tell you my name.”

  “Why?” Jeames said. He took a step towards her.

  “I–I just can’t,” the woman replied and, in the twinkling of an eye–or so it seemed to the befuddled Highlander–she had turned on her heel and vanished into the bracken and low scrub.

  “Wait!” Jeames called after her. “Wait! Who–who are ye?”

  There was no answer. Only the sounds of the woodpecker tapping industriously away in the distance, the creek running amongst the roots of the trees and the occasional cry of a rook in the treetops.

  Overcome with a sort of heartfelt desperation that was entirely new to him, Jeames cupped his hands to his mouth to form a tube and called, “I will search fer ye, lass! I’ll search fer as long as it takes! I will find ye, if it’s the last thing I dae!”

  The echoes of his voice rebounded from the trunks of the trees that surrounded himself. His words reverberating from stone to stone, from crag to crag, each one of them suffused with a passionate fire that he could not contain.

  What’re ye doin’, ye fool? Have ye nay sense in that thick head o’ yers? Ye’re betrothed tae be married, man! There’s nay hope in pinin’ after some nameless lass! Especially not one who just appeared tae ye in a wood!

  * * *

  Jeames did not sleep a wink all that night. He had sat through dinner without saying a word. He had not been in a foul or depressed mood, but his mind had been so consumed with the memory of the beautiful stranger who had appeared to him in the thicket that it left him unable to attend to any conversation for more than a few seconds at a time.

  “Are ye quite well, lad?” his faither, Andrew Abernathy, had asked him as Jeames got to his feet and made to go to bed with his platter of venison left practically untouched.

  Jeames had barely had wits enough to form a coherent answer as he’d left the hall.

  He sat outside on a low wall and watched the sun rise orange over the eastern hills. His thoughts were still on the woman, his mind’s eye going over every detail of her face that he could recall: the angular and inquisitive eyebrows, the hazel eyes, and aquiline nose. His memory traced itself down her slender neck, along the outline of her lithe form in the figure-hugging outfit.

  His reverie was broken by the sudden swelling of the dawn chorus, as what sounded like every bird within hailing distance of the castle broke into a riot of sound at the dawning of another day.

  He sat down to break his fast with his father. His mother preferred to take her own morning meal a little later in the Laird and Lady’s chambers, but both father and son were early risers.

  The Laird piled a few fresh-baked bannocks onto his plate and passed the basket to Jeames.

  “Are ye feelin’ a bit more yerself this mornin’, son?” Andrew Abernathy asked.

  “Hm? Oh, aye. Aye, I’m fine, thank ye, Faither.”

  “Are ye sure? Ye’ve the look about ye of a salmon that’s just been pulled from the stream. Shocked like.”

  Jeames chuckled at this description, and his father laughed with him. It was, in truth, a fair depiction of how he felt.

  “Nay, I’m fine. Just had a wee bit of a surprise in the woods up on the hill the other day. Saw somethin’ I didnae expect tae see.”

  “Nae that big buck that we saw up on the heath last week?”

  “Nay, this was nay buck.”

  The Laird opened his mouth to ask a question, a quizzical look on his face. Before he could say anything though, an errand rider was ushered into the hall by one of the Laird’s guards. With a bow, the rider proffered a sealed scroll to the Laird and was then ushered out of the hall by the same guard that had showed him in.

  Jeames’s father broke the seal and unrolled the scroll.

  Jeames slathered a warm bannock in honey, took a bite, and chewed thoughtfully as he watched his father scan the missive.

  “Hm,” the Laird said, after only a few moments. “It’s more fer ye that it is fer me, lad.”

  Jeames swallowed the bannock and said, “How’s that, Faither?”

  “It’s a message from Laird Brùn of the Ross clan.”

  Jeames, who had been about to take a bite from another bannock, lowered the biscuit from a mouth gone suddenly dry. Laird Brùn was the father of Margery Brùn, the woman who Jeames had been betrothed to be married to for most of his adult life. The two of them had been promised to each other by their fathers, the pact between the clans to be sealed after Jeames’s twenty-fifth birthday.

  “Oh, aye,” he said, trying to affect a nonchalance that he felt not at all. “What does his Lairdship wish of me?”

  Andrew Abernathy gave his son a penetrating look from under his bushy gray brows.

 
“He writes on behalf of his daughter, Margery,” the Laird said.

  Jeames took a hasty gulp of mead and spilled some of it down his chin.

  His father raised an eyebrow at him.

  “She requests yer company tae a performance by a circus that’s taken up residency in a paddock just outside o’ Aberdale.”

  This time Jeames almost choked on his gulp of mead.

  “She wants me tae what?” he said.