Read Let Me Be Your Hero Online
Authors: Elaine Coffman
Let Me Be Your Hero
| Let Me Be Your Hero |
| Graham [2] |
| Elaine Coffman |
| Mira (2012) |
Claire Lennox
, Countess of Errick and Mains, is a powerful woman in a man's world. Her slender beauty belies the strong shoulders upon which she carries much responsibility, guarding her clan against greed, betrayal and treachery. Confident and courageous, she refuses to marry--ever again. Eight years ago, when she was an impulsive young girl, she lost her heart and her husband to foolish pride. Now, as desperate rivals plot to seize her title and lands, one man is willing to risk everything to save her.
Fraser Graham
tells himself there is nothing left between him and Claire but memories. Yet his heart dictates otherwise when ruthless enemies kidnap the woman who was once his innocent bride. After his daring rescue sends them running for their lives through the wild, windswept hills, he and Claire surrender to remembered passion. . .but pride and past hurts silence sweet words of love and forgiveness. As the noose of treachery tightens and a deadly plot unfolds to destroy everything Claire has sworn to protect, Fraser must decide if he will pledge his sword, his strength and his heart to the one woman he was always loved--or resign himself to losing her forever.
They rounded a bend in the path, and Fraser pulled Claire behind a tree. She stood on the hump of roots, which put her almost at eye level with him. She leaned against the tree and waited to see what he would do.
He drew her into his arms and held her close, their bodies intimately aligned. Everything inside her seemed to thicken, while her heartbeat escalated. She felt quivery with anticipation, and so hungry for him she had to force herself to wait and let him take the lead.
His hands were caressing the sides of her neck now, while he trailed kisses over her face, whispering endearments, and telling her how much he missed her; how much he thought about the time they had made love.
He unbuttoned her dress, and his hand cupped her breast and lifted it so it was exposed. Her body, reacting to him, his nearness and his words, was running ahead of her, not heeding her reminders to be reserved.
Also by ELAINE COFFMAN
THE HIGHLANDER
THE ITALIAN
THE FIFTH DAUGHTER
THE BRIDE OF BLACK DOUGLAS
LAINE
C
OFFMAN
LET ME BE YOUR HERO
For Enrique Iglesias
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts. For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might, that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
—Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931)
Lebanese-American mystic,
painter and poet
The Prophet
“On Children” (1923)
Lennox Castle, Inchmurrin Island
Loch Lomond, Scotland
In the year of our Lord, 1741
I
t is said that the people of Scotland are molded by the landscape.
If that be true, then the four daughters of Alasdair, Lord Errick, 18th Earl of Errick and Mains, would be as tranquil and quiet as the slow, smooth running waters of the River Leven, whose very name comes from the Gaelic word
llevyn,
meaning slow.
But that was not the way of it.
In truth, when one thought of the earl’s four young daughters, it did not evoke an image of the placid, meandering rivers or the sweet-natured and gentle hills at the southern end of the bonnie shores of Loch Lomond. Rather, they called to mind more high-spirited, descriptive Gaelic locution; that of the rugged glens and mountains of the northern end of the loch that gave birth to the tumultuous waterfalls and raging hill burns, so oft poetically described.
“Where a wild stream, with headlong shock, Comes brawling down its bed of rock.”
The earl’s daughters considered it fortunate that, in 1390, Duncan, the 14th Earl, abandoned Balloch Castle on the Leven River in favor of a new stronghold on Inchmurrin Island, not only to escape the plague, but also because he considered it more secure against attack. Little did he know that almost four hundred years later, his gladsome descendants would delight in his choice of an island in the southern end of Loch Lomond—or mind you, that he chose the best and largest—as the place to build Lennox Castle.
And that is how it came to be that Lord Errick and his family happened to reside within the fortified walls of their stronghold, secluded in the beauty of a beloved, remote island called Inchmurrin.
Besides his daughters, Claire, fifteen; Kenna, fourteen; Greer, thirteen; and the youngest, ten-year-old Briana, the earl was also father to three sons: nineteen-year-old Breac, seventeen-year-old Ronaln, and Ken-drew, age twelve. In a time when treachery, murder and plots abounded, the earl’s children passed a happy childhood within the confining bounds of Inchmurrin, protected and loved by their father, the powerful earl and chief of the ancient Celtic Clan Lennox.
As they grew older, the earl’s eldest sons, Breac and Ronaln, began to leave the island to accompany their father as he groomed his heir, Breac, Master of Lennox, to follow him as the 19th Earl of Errick and Mains, and prepared Ronaln to be the man he was meant to be.
As for the earl’s daughters, they were safely cocooned
in the embrace of the lovely island, where they were free to explore the three-quarter-by-two-mile island, end to end, to their hearts’ content—all under the watchful eye of their governess, Aggie Buchanan, and Dermot MacFarlane, who always accompanied them.
And speaking of the earl’s daughters, they were, at this very moment, fighting their way through a dense growth of rhododendrons that grew near the remains of a seventh-century monastery founded by the tutelary saint of Paisley, St. Murrin, which was where the island got its name.
A light breeze stirred. Light filtered through the trees nearby. A stag drinking at the lake’s edge lifted his head, water dripping from his muzzle. He sniffed the breeze searching for a scent before he turned to climb the bank. When he reached the highest vantage point, he stamped his foot and breathed heavily through flared nostrils.
The stag stamped again, and snorted as he lowered his head to swing his antlers, as if trying to meet some unknown challenge.
Leaves rustled. A twig snapped.
From somewhere within the dappled shadows of the woods laughter rang out, as if the rhododendrons themselves shook with the voice of joy.
Three young girls emerged, as if driven by a March wind. Wearing identical green capes, they ran out of the forest and stopped. One by one, they pushed their hoods back, and the sun drew fire from hair in varying shades of red.
Briana, the youngest, put her hands to her hips, in the same manner as Aggie often did, and called out, “Claire? Claire Lennox, are ye deaf?”
“No,” a voice called back. “My hair is caught in the rhododendrons.”
“We told ye not to be pushing yer hood back,” Kenna said.
“Faith! I am as trussed as the knight what rode the hippogriff behind Atlantes!” Claire called back.
This was followed by such a racket coming from the thicket that Greer glared at her sisters and called out, “Claire, will ye be needin’ some help?”
Leaves rustled. “Oof! Ouch! I willna have a hair on me haid if this keeps up. Ooch…! Aah… There! I ken I have it now, thank ye kindly.”
The leaves parted, and Claire Lennox stepped into the clearing, her dress torn in half a dozen places, while a good portion of the rhododendron bush dangled from the long tendrils of her bright red hair.
Claire had barely joined her sisters when Aggie and Dermot came around the bend in the path, followed by three brindly gray deerhounds, Lord Duffus, MacTavish, and Maddy. The dogs caught the scent of the deer and broke into a run.
The stag was an old one, and wise, for instead of running he turned and leaped into the lake and began to swim toward the western shore. The dogs followed until Dermot called them back.
The dogs returned, and Lord Duffus, who so loved Claire, stopped next to her and sat down. He watched her with a soft look in his dark brown eyes. She smiled and spoke endearingly to him, then put a hand on his flat head and began to scratch her way back to his ears. She could not help smiling at his almost euphoric expression. Was there ever a dog who could turn ear-scratching into a mystical experience, or display a
look of such enraptured bliss? Aah, ecstasy. There must be nothing like it.
While Claire was attending to Duffus’s need for attention, Aggie had been observing Claire with a critical eye. “Och! Ye are a fright,” she said. “ ’Tis glad I am that yer father is away, with him wanting ye to become a lady ’n all. Have ye forgotten what I said to ye, and how a lass must think o’ herself as a flower? Ye with yer fair skin and red hair—’tis yer mother’s Celtic bluid showing, ye ken, and ye must have a care for yer complexion.” She stepped back and looked Claire over, as if wanting to make certain she did not miss something. “Tsk-tsk-tsk… ’Tis no fine example ye be setting for yer sisters. To think that such affected tricks should flourish in the earl’s eldest daughter. Why, just look at ye. How am I to teach ye the refinements when ye look like ye have been wallowing with the pigs? What have ye been into, lass?”
Claire was rubbing her head. “The rhododendrons held me fast. I have left half o’ my hair with the tree.”
Aggie began to pick the twigs and leaves out of Claire’s hair. “Weel, if it is half o’yer hair, and ye have this much left, then I ken ye had too much to begin with,” she said.
Dermot, a man of few words, had been silently observing them. “Are ye hurt, lass?”
“No, my head throbs, but ’tis nothing mortal, ye ken.” Claire lifted her skirts to observe the damage to her blue gown. “It would seem my gown has seen the worst o’ it.”
“Ye should take the path and not be going through the rhododendrons like a heathen. Ye are yer father’s eldest daughter, and although ye should see to the setting
of a fine example for yer sisters, ye dinna. Mrs. Buchanan was right, I ken, to tell ye to be mindful ye are a lady. Have a thought for yer age, lass, for ye willna be finding yersel’ a husband cavorting about like that.”
Claire saw the scowling black line of his bushy brows, but the fine blue eyes beneath were alive with amusement. She ignored the former and focused on the latter, and gave him an exaggerated curtsy. “I thank ye kindly for yer advice, Dermot MacFarlane, but I dinna believe I will encounter the likes o’my husband-to-be here on Inchmurrin Island, riding down the path on a white steed, himself looking as fine as the flowers he brings me, while on his way to pay me court.”
“Och! If not by land, then perhaps by sea,” Dermot said. His smile faded as he looked beyond her.
Following his gaze, Claire saw a boat with three men rowing toward the island, and they were no Lennoxes. Her expression turned thunderous. “Now, who do ye think that would be, looking proud as peacocks and rowing themselves over to Inchmurrin like they were on the receiving end o’ an invitation?”
Dermot looked amused. “I ken it would be Grahams, judging from the look o’ them and their plaids.”
“Grahams?” Aggie said. “Why, they have not been to these parts in a good many years. Why do ye suppose they would be coming here to pay us a visit, after all this time?”
“I ken it could have something to do with the fact that the earl has not been here since his father died and he became Lord Monleigh. Mayhap he thought it time to pay a visit to Grahamstone Castle, to see how things fare with his own eyes, instead of the eyes o’ his retainers.”
Claire lifted her chin proudly and spoke with an authorative tone. “And where do ye think they are going?”
“To Lennox Castle would be my guess, unless I make our presence here known.” With that said, Dermot made his way down to the water’s edge.
The Grahams noticed him straightaway, and one of the men in the boat waved.
Dermot waved back, and the boat veered toward him.
Overhead a goshawk screamed, and Claire brought her hand up to shield the sun from her eyes as she followed the hawk until it disappeared over the tops of the trees. Curious now, she watched the boat approach, and as it drew closer, she could make out the faces of the three men on board.
She remembered having seen Jamie Graham once, before he became Lord Monleigh. As Aggie said, it had been many years since the last time any member of the earl’s family showed his face in Stirlingshire. She remembered he had come with his father, but she had been about Briana’s age and did not have much memory for anything beyond that.
She decided the man who waved was Monleigh, and wondered who the other two were. Grahams, she was certain, but whether they were brothers or clansmen remained to be seen.
Several times now, her eye had been drawn to one of them in particular. It was the obvious handsomeness of the one sitting in the back that snagged her attention, and she seemed unable to free herself from it. Even from where she stood, she could tell he was older than her fifteen years, but not by more than five
years or so. His hair was as black as a kettle, and at times, the sun struck it in a way that made it glint with fiery flashes of light. She found herself hoping that his eyes were not black, or even brown, but blue…as beautifully blue as the deepest waters in the loch.
She stood next to Aggie, with her sisters scattered about, each of them seemingly content to watch Dermot wade out and grab a hold on the boat, while the three men inside dropped over the side and into the water.
Kenna came to stand on the other side of Claire. “They must be Lord Monleigh’s brothers,” she whispered, “I see a likeness between them. They are all handsome-featured, but I like the one in the middle.”
Dear Kenna, with her newly emerging interest in a man’s features. Claire felt a stab of pity that their beautiful mother could not be here to see the maturing of her daughters. She gave a glance in Briana’s direction, and when her gaze rested upon the bright strawberry hues of her curly reddish-blond hair, she felt an aching tenderness for this sister who never knew the soft gentle touch of their mother, who died three days after Briana was born.
“Tell me, Claire,” Kenna asked, “which one of the brothers do ye favor?”
Claire tried to imagine what their mother would have said. “Dinna get yer heart all fettered. Ye have plenty o’ time, and the lads are numerous.”
“Does that mean ye are no interested in
any
o’ them?”
“Not in the least.” Claire kept the braw, dark-headed one in her line of vision. She knew it was a bit brazen of her, but sometimes boldness was called for.
“But, Claire…”
“Kenna, ye are too young to talk about men and such.”
Kenna’s eyes narrowed. “Such? What mean ye by such?”
Claire shrugged, suddenly aware that she was wading in deep water, and it was getting deeper. “Men…and the things what go with them.”
“What things are ye speaking aboot?”
“Romantic things.”
“Och, ye mean kissing and such?”
“Kenna Lennox, if our father heard ye say that, ye would be in a heap o’ trouble, ye ken?”
“Aye, but he no is here and I ken ye willna tell him.”
“I will if ye dinna stop.”
“I canna exactly ignore what is obvious, now can I?”
“Weel, then ye can focus on the knowledge that they didna come here to pay us court, and they willna be here long enough for ye to charm them.”
Kenna sighed. “Aye, but och! ’Tis such a pleasant feeling to gaze upon such a bonny face. I wonder what his name is? Do ye remember the names of Lord Monleigh’s brothers?”
“No, Jamie was the only name I recall, but we will learn who they are soon enough.”
