Once Upon a Highland Summer (10 page)

She stepped forward, and her skirts rustled over the dry leaves and fallen stones that covered the flagstone floor. Moss fringed everything in green velvet. Light streamed down through broken windows and the missing roof to pool in the center of the floor. She crossed and stood there, felt the ancient place hum around her. Caroline turned in a slow circle, delighted.

A set of crumbling stone steps led upward. At the very top, the light from a narrow window turned the mossy steps to a path of emeralds. The view must be spectacular.

She began to climb. The room dropped below her as she moved higher, and she clung to the cold stone wall and refused to look down. She could hear the cackle of pebbles as they fell from the crumbling steps to the distant floor, but she ignored them, her heart growing lighter the higher she went, the air sweeter. She reached the window at last and paused, breathless, to look out.

The view was indeed wonderful, a sweeping vista down the length of the valley, across the shining loch and up to the very door of the new castle. The valley was green and purple with heather, dotted with yellow and white wildflowers under a brilliantly blue sky. The wind was scented with an intangible perfume that she could almost taste. It made her giddy. She leaned out into the wind, felt it pluck at a loose tendril of hair from the tight knot she’d pinned at the back of her head, stroke it through cool fingers. It felt wonderful. She reached up and took out the pins, and put them in her pocket, and let her hair fly free. How easy it was to believe in magic and true love and old legends here. She was a princess in a fairy tale, and all that was needed was a handsome prince.

An angry male voice yelled something in Gaelic.

Caroline looked down to see a man staring up at her. He had no coat or cravat, and his sleeves were rolled up, revealing muscular forearms. He had his eyes shaded against the sun with one hand, and his dark hair blew in the wind, revealing a wide brow. He yelled again, his voice deep and filled with angry authority. She didn’t recognize him as anyone she’d met at Glenlorne.

“I don’t speak Gaelic,” she called back, and waved him away, not wanting anything or anyone to interrupt this perfect moment.

His jaw dropped. “Good Lord, you’re here already? I suppose the chapel is already set for the wedding too,” he said in English.

Wedding? Caroline blinked at him. Was this some kind of Midsummer trick, to propose to a stranger? She hid a smile. At least he was more pleasant to look at than Mandeville or Speed. A giggle escaped.

“Come down. The tower isn’t safe,” he said, his tone still stern, but coaxing too. With his hand held out to her, she could almost believe he had indeed come for her, a prince who would take her away and marry her. She need only reach out, grasp his hand, and let him carry her off.

“I accept,” she breathed, leaning out the window, caught in the giddiness of the moment, drunk on the perfume of flowers, the silken caress of the wind on her face. He was handsome, or at least she thought he must be. It was hard to tell from her perch so high above him. She leaned still farther out to get a better look, Juliet to his Romeo. He didn’t smile and hold out his arms. His eyes widened in horror.

“Don’t lean any further out the window. I’ll come up and fetch you down. Don’t move!” He was gone then, dashing around the tower out of her sight.

She blinked at the grassy spot where he’d been standing and felt a moment’s disappointment. Perhaps she’d imagined him after all, a fairy king who’d crossed through the veil between the worlds while it was thin at Midsummer. How foolish! She’d do better to go and find the girls, take them back to the castle to dress for tea. If they were late, Countess Devina would scold Caroline, then her daughters, then Caroline again.

She turned to hurry down, watching her feet on the narrow steps. If he had been real, he must have gone for help, thinking she was daft, standing in a rotting tower with her hair wild around her shoulders.

Suddenly he was there before her, standing on the stair below her. She gave a whoop as she nearly crashed into him, and retreated up a few steps. He was indeed handsome—and tall, and broad-shouldered. His white shirt glowed in the dim light of the tower. He stared at her for a moment, his brow furrowed.

“What the devil are you doing?”

Had she heard that voice before? Impossible. He was no one she knew. A man like this one would be hard to forget. She raised her chin. “I was just coming down,” she said in her best lady-of-the-manor tone.

He didn’t move, or step aside to let her pass. He stood there staring at her, his deep gray eyes intent on her face, her hair, sweeping over her body, and pausing. She realized she’d forgotten her skirt was still tucked up. She loosened it with nervous fingers and let it fall, covering her ankles. She straightened her spine, substituting a prim governess look for the lady-of-the-manor expression, though she could feel hot blood filling her cheeks.

He grinned at her, the change of expression sudden, transforming his face from handsome to heart-stopping. Her breath caught in her throat. He was the finest-looking man she’d ever seen. It was the kind of smile that stole a woman’s breath, a lover’s knowing grin. No one had ever looked at her like that—not Sinjon or William, and certainly not Speed or Mandeville. Her heart skipped a beat. Her bodice felt too tight, and it was hard to breathe.

“Are you looking for someone?” she asked, as if he, not she, was the one trespassing.

“I came looking for my sisters. I didn’t expect to see you here. Not so soon, at least.”

Now what did that mean? She swallowed, wondered if he were dangerous. She backed up one more step. “I’m the only one here, I’m afraid. Perhaps you’ll excuse me. I must go.” She waited for him to move, but he stood staring at her instead.

“If you please, I—”

Someone pushed her. She felt strong hands on her back, and suddenly she was flying through the air. She cried out and waited to land on the flagstone floor far below.

His arms came around her, caught her against his chest. She felt the sun-warmed heat of his body, the hardness of his muscles, the beat of his heart against her own. She met the surprise in his eyes, her nose was an inch from his for an instant before he turned and pressed her against the wall, keeping her safe, trying to get his own balance. He glanced over the edge, then back at her. She could see her face reflected in his eyes, caught the faint tang of whisky on his breath, and the scent of heather.

“Someone pushed me!” she gasped, and he looked at her dubiously before stepping back. He kept one hand under her elbow. He didn’t even bother to look up to see if there was someone behind her.

“The steps are dangerous. The whole tower is. It should have been pulled down a hundred years ago!” He began to descend the steps, still holding her, one hand on her elbow, one around her waist, assisting her, keeping her safe, as if she were indeed a princess—his princess. His touch turned her to jelly, and the stone wall made her cold on one side, and the heat of his body made her burn on the other.

Caroline stopped walking and looked back up the steps, but there was no one there.

He followed her gaze. “You said yourself you were alone,” he said sensibly.

She
was
alone, wasn’t she? Except for the handsome Scottish stranger. But he’d been below her. He couldn’t have pushed her. She felt her face color again. He probably thought she’d thrown herself at him in response to his impromptu proposal of marriage. She’d probably imagined that too.

He let her go as soon as they were on solid ground, and stepped back to a proper distance. He indicated with a sweeping gesture that she should precede him out the door, back into the heat and light of the real world. She stood numbly mortified as he tugged hard on the heavy wooden door to close it. “How on earth did you manage to shift this?” he said as he picked up a heavy beam of wood, studded with iron. “This door has been barred shut for years.”

Caroline frowned. Had the door been closed when she arrived? She didn’t remember opening it. She watched him set the heavy oak bar in place, his muscles flexing under the linen of his shirt. She certainly would have remembered moving
that
.

She clasped her hands around her arms and felt a chill pass through her as she recalled Megan asking if she believed in ghosts. Of course she didn’t. But as she stared up at the stone walls, at the empty window, it felt again as if someone was watching her. Prickles crawled over her flesh. What an odd place it was.

“I trust I don’t have to warn you to stay out of the tower, lass.”

Lass?
Caroline swallowed. He thought her a local girl, perhaps. She supposed she did not look anything like the daughter of an English earl, or even a governess, for that matter. The wind lifted her hair, and red tendrils reached out to him. She stepped back and caught it in her hands, tidying it, reaching for the pins in her pocket.

A call made him turn. Caroline’s stomach dropped to her feet. It was the girls, coming back across the hillside, their arms—and their skirts—laden with flowers. The countess would not approve. Megan’s hair was unbound, bedecked with wildflowers, and her feet were bare. Sorcha was skipping hand in hand with another girl her age. Alanna was following with an armload of flowers, her cheeks flushed. Now these were lasses—happy, carefree, and sun-kissed.

She would have to hurry them back to the castle, see that they washed their faces, combed their hair. She would firmly remind them of the rules, tell them they were the daughters of an earl, and— She swallowed. Even in the silence of her own mind, she sounded like Somerson.

And here she stood, disheveled, her skirt stained with dust and moss, looking like—well, a
lass
. With a
man
. Whatever would the countess say to
her
? She’d dismiss her at once, of course, and rightly so—and then where would she go? Back to London? No.

Her rescuer had turned away from lecturing her, and was watching the girls, his hand shading his eyes, the breeze stirring the dark hair on his forearm where his shirt was rolled up. He was disheveled too, a mossy green stain on his shoulder. She saw a slow smile bloom over his features, transforming him again.

The girls obviously knew him. She could see it in the way they dropped the flowers and ran toward him, yelling like hoydens, with the rest of the lads and lasses following them eagerly.

Propriety. She was a governess now, not a lass. In a moment they’d spot her as well. She could imagine the gossip, the speculation, the comments. The tale was sure to get back to Countess Devina. Caroline edged deeper into the shadow of the old tower, and then fled around the back of it. She scrambled down the path that led through the woods, back to Glenlorne, and sanity.

She needed to change her own gown and wash her face, and remember who she was.

C
HAPTER
T
WELVE

“A
lec!”

He turned to watch his eldest half sister racing up the slope of the hill toward him. At least he thought they were his sisters. They were grown women now, not the girls he remembered. Was that truly Megan, the tall lass with the dark hair, and Alanna in the blue gown? Village lads trailed behind them like a pack of dogs on the hunt. Of course, it was Midsummer, and there was sunshine, flowers, and laughter. A dangerous combination, he thought protectively, and realized that he sounded as old as his grandfather, as stiff as Westlake. They’d grown up to be beauties. What lad could resist?

He opened his arm in time to catch the first girl as she hurtled into him. He enfolded her in a hug. “You smell like heather, Alanna!” he said.

“I’m Sorcha,” she said, frowning only slightly, regarding him with their grandfather’s gray eyes.

“Ah forgive me. Last time I saw you, you were—” He held his hand about three feet off the grass. She’d been barely five when he left, with freckles and missing front teeth and unruly red curls. She grinned at him with a full set of teeth now, but she was still freckled, he noted, happy that hadn’t changed. In a few years, little Sorcha would be a beauty. His heart contracted as he thought of the years he’d missed, and would miss in future.

“You look just the same as I remember!” she said, her eyes glowing. “Mama said you were dead, but Muira knew you’d come!”

Another girl arrived. “Alanna?” he asked carefully. She’d grown up to be very pretty, her and her eyes were still as blue as the sky

“Yes!” She smiled shyly.

“And Megan,” he said, smiling at the young woman who hung back slightly. She curtsied, and held out her hand.

“Hello, Laird. I’m Megan MacNabb—” She whooped when he pulled her into an embrace, swinging her in a circle before he set her on her feet again.

“You weren’t so heavy the last time I did that,” he teased, and watched her blush. “Is that lavender water I smell?” he asked.

Sorcha laughed, slipping her hand through his. “It’s very English. Mother makes Alanna wear rose scent.”

Alec ruffled her hair. “And what about you? What scent do you wear?”

She giggled. “I’m still too young.”

“She’s just a child, Alec.” Megan said.

“I’m almost thirteen!” Sorcha protested. “When I am seventeen like Alanna, I will send to France for the finest perfume—lilies or violets, or even gardenias!”

The village lads and lasses stepped forward, welcoming him home with shy smiles. “This is Brodie MacNabb,” Megan said as the last lad stepped forward. The girls surrounding him sighed at the mention of his name.

“I’m the heir,” he said. “Conor MacNabb’s lad. D’you remember me?”

Alec had met the boy at his grandfather’s funeral, and remembered him as sullen and hungry. He’d spent the day hiding under the table, eating. The heir.
His
heir. If he hadn’t come home, this tall boy with blank blue eyes would be laird at this very minute.

“Have you been at Glenlorne long?” he asked. Conor’s holding was miles away.