Hard-Hearted Highlander--A Historical Romance Novel Read online

“The vicar said he recalls a Mr. Tawley, who was as close as a brother to Donald MacLeod. He has sent a man to deliver a message to him.”

  “They’ll no’ remain here, at Balhaire?” Rabbie asked.

  Vivienne smiled at him. “Silly lad. They need parents, aye? They need a hearth and someone to tuck them into bed at night.”

  Of course they did.

  “Aye, but it’s a bonny day, is it no’?” Vivienne asked, and brushed hair from his forehead. “We mean to walk down to the cove. You will join us—”

  “No.”

  Vivienne clucked her tongue at him. “Aye, you will. You canna have your lass here and no’ acknowledge her, Rabbie.”

  “She is no’ my lass and I didna invite her.”

  “No one did. She doesna need an invitation now, does she? Within a matter of days, she’ll be family.”

  Rabbie winced at that blatant reminder. “I must marry her, Vivi, aye? But I’ll no’ be forced into entertaining her.”

  “Oh, Rabbie, really—”

  “Oh. Mr. Mackenzie! You’ve come!”

  Rabbie groaned, closed his eyes a moment, then turned about to face his fiancée. She was approaching him cautiously, as if she expected him to lash out at her. Why was she so cautious? He hadn’t shouted at her—he hadn’t shown her anything but apathy thus far.

  “I’m... I thought I wouldn’t see you.”

  Rabbie could not determine if, by that remark, she meant she had rejoiced in the hope of not seeing him, or had hoped that she might.

  “Feasgar math,” he said, and clasped his hands behind him and gave her a curt nod. “I wasna expecting you,” he said.

  “Oh, ah...yes, I know,” she said. She looked to Rabbie as if she wanted desperately to wring her hands, but was struggling to keep from it. Her keeper was walking toward them now, laughing at something Catriona had said.

  “I’m...happy you have come,” she said. She didn’t sound particularly happy. She sounded afraid. “I’ve brought you a gift!”

  “A gift,” he repeated. Why in God’s name had she done that?

  She withdrew a small package from her pocket and held it out to him.

  “What is it?” he asked, making no move to take it.

  Miss Holly had arrived at her side, no doubt, to direct this wee woman.

  “Open it, and you’ll see.”

  Rabbie had no desire to take a gift from her or even know what it was. But he could feel their eyes on him, could almost feel the expectation flowing from his brother and sisters, and made himself take it. He undid the bit of twine and unfolded the vellum. Inside was a lacy handkerchief, and he was suddenly and jarringly reminded of the time Seona had given him a gift, wrapped similarly. Her gift had been a brooch to pin to his plaid sash, a replica of a broadsword topped with the Highland thistle.

  This was a lace handkerchief. A ladies’ handkerchief, he was certain, although he knew that of late, English men dripped in lace. He picked it up between finger and thumb and held it out for all to see.

  “I embroidered your initials,” she said, pointing. “See? There, in the corner.”

  He could see the tiny letters. R and M, unsteadily applied, the R slightly larger than the M. He looked at the lass. “What am I to do with this, then?”

  She blinked. Twice. “It’s a gift,” she repeated, as if that should answer any outstanding questions he might have about it.

  The gift embarrassed him, and he hastily shoved it into a pocket. Did this ridiculous creature honestly believe he had any use at all for a lace handkerchief? “Thank you.”

  “Rabbie,” Catriona muttered. She’d put a protective arm around the chit. “Miss Kent has gone to some effort, aye?”

  What effort? He himself might have sewn initials onto a handkerchief. He looked at the woman he was to marry in less than a fortnight. “You are too...” Absurd, that was what. “Kind,” he said, and forced a slim smile. And then quickly looked away. Unfortunately, his gaze happened to land on Miss Holly. What was that, a wee smirk on her lips? He had the distinct impression she was amused by his discomfort.

  “Come back to the game, Miss Kent,” Aulay suggested. “We’re almost to the end, aye?” Aulay offered his arm and Miss Kent put her hand on it, smiling once again as he led her back to the green.

  Always the diplomat, his brother.

  That left two sisters to glare at him and one Englishwoman to smirk. Bloody fine day it was, indeed.

  “What is the matter with you?” Vivienne asked in Gaelic. “She made it for you. And don’t dare say you don’t care. I know you’re unhappy, Rabbie, we’re all of us unhappy. But we can’t simply lay down and die.”

  “Why not?” he asked.

  Her glare deepened. “If you mean to be this cruel, you should tell Father you will not wed her and spare us all the agony.” She turned and flounced away, Catriona hurrying to keep up with her.

  That left Rabbie with the smug English flower. He sighed. “Go on, then—no doubt you want to impress your bad opinion on me.”

  “Me? I’m merely an observer,” she said, and flashed a bit of a smirk. “Although I’m quite certain that if I knew what your sister said, I would agree completely.” Her smile broadened, and ended in a pair of very appealing dimples in her cheeks. She glanced down to his boots and buckskins. “Did you swim here?”

  He sighed. “I tried. Go on, back to your game, Miss Holly.”

  “Rabbie, lad, come on, then!” Aulay called out to him.

  God help him, not Aulay, too. Rabbie shook his head.

  Aulay began striding forward. “We’re to the cove, we are. A walk with the children. You’ll join us.”

  “No—”

  Aulay’s grin was not exactly a sunny one. He clapped Rabbie on the shoulder, squeezing painfully. “I wasna asking, lad. We’ll have a walk with the children, and you’ll take the opportunity to acquaint yourself with our guests.” He squeezed once more, only harder, and then turned away. “Shall we walk?” he called to the others.

  The children, naturally, were thrilled with the idea, and with shrieks of glee began to race each other toward the bailey gates, the dogs on their heels, galloping alongside them, tails high in the air. Rabbie looked around for Ualan and Fiona, and saw them following Barabel’s broad behind in through a door to the kitchen. There was something that chafed about that, those two children being put to work. But then again, he supposed they could not be left to run wild, without supervision.

  “Come along then, Rabbie!” Catriona called, gaining his attention once more.

  There was no escaping it. In spite of his melancholy and his increasing unwillingness to play this courtship game, a part of him really did understand that he had to make some effort. His siblings would not believe him if he told them that he desired to do so more than they could wish it...but Rabbie couldn’t summon the pluck necessary to say it.

  He watched as Aulay rounded them all up and began to walk with Catriona and Miss Kent, followed by Miss Holly. The children ran ahead of them all, only the youngest of Vivienne’s riding atop his father’s shoulders as Vivienne walked beside them.

  Rabbie followed last, his mind blank.

  The group’s progress was slower than he could tolerate, however, and he ended up passing Vivienne and Marcas. Soon, he was walking behind Aulay and the ladies, listening idly to their conversation. Miss Kent was speaking of the stars, he thought, reciting those used to navigate, with Aulay correcting her pronunciation a time or two.

  Miss Holly asked about the repairs Aulay was making to the ship, which prompted his brother to mention the new navigational equipment they’d acquired at a dear expense.

  “An octant?” Miss Holly asked brightly, rousing Rabbie from the lethargy of his thoughts. How could she possibly know that?

  “Exactly so, Mi
ss Holly,” Aulay said, sounding surprised. “How do you know of it, then?”

  “Oh, I read about it.” She said it breezily, as if it was common for a woman who laid out her mistress’s gowns and put up her hair to read about navigation tools.

  “You read about it,” Rabbie said skeptically.

  She glanced dismissively over her shoulder at him. “Lord Kent has an impressive library.” She quickened her step to catch up to Aulay. “I understand it’s remarkable in its design,” she said. “Quite an improvement over the sextant.”

  “Aye, that it is,” Aulay said. “It can be used for celestial navigation in both day and night, then, and the accuracy of direction is vastly improved.”

  She beamed with a smile, obviously proud of herself for knowing it.

  Rabbie studied her with suspicion. He glanced at her charge, wondering if she’d read anything like it, but Miss Kent wasn’t listening at all. She and Catriona had their heads close together and were speaking in low tones.

  They had reached the shore now, and the children began to scour the coastline for interesting finds, their parents trailing lazily behind. Miss Kent and Catriona wandered farther afield, still engrossed in their conversation about God knew what. Aulay, naturally, had wandered over to Rabbie’s boat to have a look. Since they were wee lads, Rabbie could not remember an instance in which Aulay was interested in anything other than boats and the sea.

  The sea had never lured Rabbie, even then. He recalled a particularly bad voyage as a lad with his father at the helm. A fierce storm had given him a bout of seasickness so severe that Rabbie could hazily recall some question of his recovery. Part of his sickness, he suspected, had been his abject fear of being capsized. Since that voyage, there was something about the sea’s vastness and the ferocious strength of it that had intimidated him into keeping his feet firmly on terra firma for the most part.

  What Rabbie had enjoyed as a lad and as a young man was soldiering and feats of strength. His father, and his father’s father before him, and his Uncle Jock, God rest his soul, had made a name by training Highland guards.

  What had begun as an effort to protect what was theirs in a land where loyalties and alliances were constantly changing had grown into a formidable strength for the Mackenzies. Rabbie’s father and Uncle Jock had trained men who had gone on to serve in the crown’s forces. For the young men of their clan, the option was an appealing one, as their keep was paid and there was money to send home. Rabbie had liked the work of training, had relished challenging his body to stronger and stronger feats. He might have joined the soldiers in joining the king’s army, might have led a regiment into battle for the king, had the Jacobites not begun their rebellion.

  It was not the rebellion itself that that had attracted him, but the questions the rebellion had raised. Was the true king of England and Scotland sitting on the throne? An argument could be made that the Stuarts had a more legitimate claim than the Hanoverians, from whom King George had descended. Was the taxation the crown imposed fair? Rabbie didn’t know the answer to that, but he knew that before the union of Scotland and England, his family had not resorted to piracy. It had become necessary when they couldn’t recoup the costs of bringing goods to Scotland after the taxes and excise had been levied, and their people couldn’t afford the goods because of the tax burden.

  Nevertheless, the Mackenzies had remained neutral and had believed their neutrality would keep them out of the fray. Bloody hell if it had—their livelihood had been damaged and his own life threatened, all because they were Highlanders. Rabbie could not serve a king who had sent the murderous Lord Cumberland and his forces into the Highlands as he had.

  Aye, everything had changed after that. Everything.

  Rabbie sat on a rock. He kept his gaze on the children, and only happened to see Miss Holly when she wandered along the water’s edge, squatting down every few steps, picking up this or that and examining it before tossing it down again. Maybe she’d read about seashells, too. Maybe she had superior knowledge of the tides, thanks to Lord Kent’s impressive library. It was incredible that she had chosen navigation to wile away a few hours.

  He stood from his rock, clasped his hands behind his back and moved lazily in her direction. “On the hunt for artifacts, are you?” he asked as he reached her.

  She glanced up at him, squinting into the sun. “No. Just rocks.” She smiled pertly. She rose up and brushed her hands free of sand.

  “How is it that a maid, bound to nothing more than laying out her mistress’s petticoats, should know about navigation, then?”

  A brow lifted. “I told you. I read it. Is that so unusual?”

  “Aye, I’d say it is. It doesna fit with that of a servant.”

  “Neither does being a shrew or a harridan.” She gave him a meaningful look, then dipped down to pick up a shell. “It might astound you to know that there are women in this world who seek to improve their mind.”

  She was right—everything about her was unusual. Who spoke in such a way? “Who is your father?” he asked curiously.

  The question seemed to startle her, which Rabbie found even more curious.

  “Why do you ask? Do you intend to complain of me?”

  “I’ve no’ thought of it,” he said. “Perhaps I should.”

  “I don’t care if you do,” she said, a little too forcefully.

  “How is that you’ve come to attend Miss Kent? You’re too educated, aye? A lass does no’ possess that sort of education and confidence without an eye toward an advantageous match. So why, then, have you no’ married?”

  Now her eyes narrowed in a manner that almost made him regret the question. “Why haven’t you?”

  A fair question, he supposed, but one that hit him squarely in the gut. “There are times when life doesna unfurl as one might have hoped.”

  “Exactly,” she said, and dropped the shell. She looked away from him and rubbed her nape. Her cheeks were blooming, which he thought odd. She had not struck him as a person who was easily flustered. “I know that life for Avaline has not unfurled as she hoped.”

  Avaline. He thought of her so little that he’d almost forgotten her name.

  “Look at her now,” she said, nodding in the direction of his fiancée.

  Rabbie didn’t want to look away from Miss Holly’s profile. There was something maddening about her, but there was also something quite captivating, too. Particularly because she was English and yet did not employ towering hair or a powdered face to make herself attractive as so many of them did. She seemed quite at ease in plain frocks and hairdressings and her tongue wagging freely.

  Even more startling was that Rabbie was noticing these things at all.

  “She is happy with your sister. She’s rather fond of her.”

  Rabbie had to shake off the admiration of Miss Holly to glance in the direction of Miss Kent. “A pity she’s no’ to marry Cat, then,” he said.

  When he looked back at Miss Holly, she was frowning. As she was wont to do. Particularly in his direction.

  “She’s really quite...different once you know her,” she said, clearly searching for the right word. “She is diverting. And sweet. And very accommodating to those she cares about.”

  “She’d make a fine governess, then.”

  Miss Holly snapped her gaze to him. “She’ll make a good wife. What more can a man ask?”

  So much more than that, Rabbie thought. A man could ask to love his wife. To want to be with her at every turn. Was that too much to ask?

  Miss Holly suddenly gasped. “Look!” she said, dipping down. “It’s a farthing.” She picked up the object and held it in her hand. Rabbie leaned over, peering at it.

  “Aye, that it is.”

  “Where do you suppose it’s come from?”

  “Och, any number of men, aye? This is a ship�
�s cove. Seaman, their families—all of them walk through here at low tide.”

  She turned it over in her hand. She was smiling, delighted with her find. “It’s good luck,” she said.

  “It’s no’,” he said.

  She slipped it into her pocket. “You are curiously determined to see gloom in everything.”

  “On the contrary—I see the truth in everything.”

  She studied him, assessing him. He noticed the flecks of brown and green in her eyes, the dark lashes that framed them.

  “Aye, come on, then!” Aulay called to them. Rabbie glanced away from her eyes. Aulay was waving to them, gesturing to the path. The tide was coming in and the beach would soon disappear. Catriona and Miss Kent were still in a tête-à-tête, already walking up the path. Vivienne and her family were halfway up the hill and into the forest, along with Fiona and Ualan. Miss Holly quickly started after them, as if she feared the tide would swallow her before she reached the path. Or perhaps she feared she’d be left alone with him. But as Rabbie followed her, she suddenly exclaimed and turned around, running back toward the sea, lifting her skirts to keep the hem from the sand. When she reached the edge of the water, she put her hand in the pocket of her gown, then hurled something into the water. The farthing.

  She ran back, slowing as she neared him, working to catch her breath.

  “You threw the farthing into the sea,” he said.

  “I did,” she said breathlessly. “I made a wish.”

  “I donna know this custom, throwing good coin away.”

  “It’s not a custom,” she said, and began to walk. “But as there is no wishing well about, it seemed the next best thing.”

  “What folly, tossing coins into the sea. It’d be better use to you in your pocket, aye?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with believing in a bit of magic, Mr. Mackenzie!” she called over her shoulder.

  There was something completely wrong with believing in folly. He hastened to keep step with her and fell in beside her. “Well, then? What did you wish?”

  She laughed with surprise, and the sound of it shot down his spine. “You are mad to ask! To reveal my wish is to ruin it.”