The Runaway Highlander (The Highland Renegades Book 2) (23 page)

As much as it tore at his heart to watch Anne rolling around with Brighde in their sorrow, he knew it was a necessary evil. He had prepared himself for the worst.

The whole march back from Stirling, he’d been ruminating into his helmet about Anne having a new husband, or not being with
Fergus at all, having left for France on her own, or being in love with someone new, or even just not caring if he lived or died. Any of them worked as a torment for his weary heart.

They would have proven her mother right. That Anne couldn’t care for a disfigured disappointment like him. That she was only using him to escape her sister’s fate. Or her own. That she would leave him as soon as it became convenient. Or when she tired of looking at his ugly face.

But when he’d heard Anne’s words, seen her weep for him, or for his corpse, he couldn’t explain away her love any longer.

As soon as they passed into
the busy King’s road traffic of that sunny harvest afternoon so close to Hull, Aedan found it impossibly easy to duck through the crowd unseen and hide in the bushes until the death cart had continued fully on its way. One of the benefits of being dead was that, even if they did notice his absence before they returned to the barracks, they wouldn’t know where to search him out. Or at least he hoped they wouldn’t just backtrack their steps until they found him.

The sun fell through the sky as Aedan waited for the traffic on the King’s road to slow. The soldiers never returned and by the time the sun had nearly set, the traffic was so light, he could sneak along the edge of the road and wait for a clearing to cross toward
Fergus’ farmhouse without arousing any attention. He walked through the orchard, seeking out the place where Anne had thrown the purse. With barely enough light, he managed to locate the stupid thing before full dark. All would have been for naught if they had lost this purse to an animal or a drunken thief in the night.

No. All would not have been lost. For Aedan now knew, without a doubt in his mind, that Anne not only loved him, but wanted him. He wasn’t just a convenience or a solace.

He would have nearly-died all over again to know that for certain.

With the purse heavy in his hand, Aedan made his way through the rest of the trees to the farmhouse. The body of the unknown soldier lay where the soldiers had dropped him. The man had fallen next to Aedan in battle, burned his face right off while Aedan tried to defend himself from attack. In cases where burning or mutilation prevented identifying a body, they would go to
the effects, but this man had none. He had no markers on his body, no weapons. Not even a sword—which could have been dropped when the fire began. But he had no way to be identified, and that made Aedan stop.

Aedan had been wounded, but barely, and when he fell, the corpse had fallen beside him. Seeing his opportunity, he traded his sword and dagger for the corpse’s, strapped the sword as he would have carried it, and put the amulet around his neck. He took the corpse’s helmet, where he hadn’t been wearing one, cleaned it, and wore it non-stop until he could bandage his head to hide the scar.

He’d taken the man’s body off the battlefield, planted the word that it was John Miller of Hull, and the rest had managed itself.

Aedan had been fully prepared to deliver the body, see
himself proven right, and walk away.

He had not, however, been prepared for what he’d found. A heart-sick Anne who had waited for him, who loved him. That had been more a shock than the fact that he survived a defeat and lived to tell the tale.

Suddenly, the door opened and Fergus came out into the cool night with a shovel. He stepped toward the body, saw Aedan, and froze.

Aedan pulled off his helmet. “
Fergus, it’s me.” He held out his hands. “It’s not a ghost. It’s really me. It’s Aedan.”

Fergus
, who had only seen him for a day, may not have recognized him, so Aedan pulled his hair behind his ear to reveal his most identifiable marker.

“God, man.”
Fergus broke into a smile and clapped Aedan in a hug. “You put a right fright into us.” He pointed back at the house. “Are you going to tell the women?”

Aedan nodded. “I’m not sure how, but I have to see Anne.”

Fergus whistled. “I’d better dig two graves then.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s going to kill you all over again.”

Chapter Seventeen

Anne had just barely begun to breathe normally again when she heard one of the babies cry in the next room. The soft wail ignited the sadness in her heart anew.

She wondered if it would always be like this. If every cry would send her into breathing fits and fainting.

Surely someday she would be able to hear a baby cry without a gaping, unholy need for Aedan eating at her insides and bringing about a fresh round of sobbing.

Anne tried to count her way through to the control on the other side. The healing on the other side. She just wanted to stop crying. Brighde was fast asleep on the makeshift bed they’d all been sharing since March, so Anne decided to get up with the baby herself. She wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway. Might as well let Brighde sleep.

A low fire still burned in the main room, where the babies slept by the rocking chair during the day, after they pulled it in from outside. Someone sat in the rocking chair when she approached, already soothing the babe.

Anne blinked and put her hand on the rough wood wall, not wanting to disturb Fergus as he held the baby. But as she approached, she realized it wasn’t Fergus. This man was much larger and darker than Fergus. And rather than the brown tunic that Fergus had been wearing, this man was dressed mostly in white. His dark hair hung down past his shoulders.

But it was his voice that undid her. That deep, thrumming, vibrating tone that set her insides on fire like a lightning strike. She sucked in a breath and he turned toward her.

Aedan.

God in heaven, it was Aedan.

Her breathing quickened and the tears fell on her cheeks anew as she reached for him. Was this really her Aedan?

He put the baby back into its swaddling chair and reached back for her. The feel of his skin on hers, of his hand
s clutching at her. She had been waiting for that moment for seven months and it was every bit as glorious as she had hoped, and a million times over.

Aedan covered her mouth with his before she could speak and continued kissing her until she was completely breathless. She put her hand on his chest and gazed up into his face.

“Aedan?” She ran both hands up the side of his neck and onto both sides of his face and just held him. “Please, God, tell me this isn’t a dream.”

“You’re not dreaming.” Aedan kissed her again until she couldn’t breathe and drug himself back, panting. But his hands remained on her body, holding her hip or her cheek or her shoulder, dragging her toward him and then away. And then into him, and back while they recovered. She felt like they were drinking each other in and had to stop before they drowned.

The sensation of having him in her arms overwhelmed her. From the rough touch of whiskers on his cheeks to the smooth skin of his scar to the wetness of his tears and his kisses to the smell of the road and travel to the taste of apples on his breath.

She couldn’t have dreamed such a moment.

Anne held him tight against her, reveling in his scent and the strength of him. The tears wouldn’t stop, even in her elation.

His big hands held her cheeks and wiped the tears away with the rough pads of his thumbs. Then he kissed her again. He pressed her up against the wall and she could feel every inch of his body crying out for her touch.

She wanted the same thing.

“How, Aedan?” Anne sucked in a breath, reviving herself from the headiness of his kisses.

“I found a man with no identifiable markers who had been—”

“Never
you mind.” Her mouth sought his again and she drank more of him until drunk, she pulled away and rested her head on his chest. “I don’t need to know how. I just need to know that you’re staying.”

He ran a hand down the back of her head, smoothing out her hair as he cooed to her.

“Why would I ever leave?”

“You left me once before.” Her somber tone struck something in him because he pulled her to him with a ferocity she’d never seen.

“I was a fool. I thought I could leave you before you left me and somehow give you a better life than you would have had with me here to hang on.”

She relaxed into the heat of his embrace. “You are a fool, Aedan Donne.”

He pulled her chin toward him and looked down into her eyes. “I thought I was the best man there ever was and ever would be.”

Anne felt the laughter wash over her as she replayed that moment in her head. So certain Aedan was gone forever, she had bared her soul, and it turned out Aedan had heard her after all. Miracle of miracles.

With a coy smile, she replied, “That wasn’t you, actually. That was my other husband. His name is John Miller.”

“Oh, it is, is it?” He captured her lips and kissed her with a surprising tenderness. “Well, it so happens that I’ve met this John Miller.”

“You have?” Anne took in the lovely, whole, solidness of him and traced a finger down his nose, stopping at his lips.

“Yes, he has this lovely young wife named Annabeth.”

“Oh, he does?” She kissed those lips, then kissed his scarred cheek and his unscarred cheek, then his lips again.

“Yes, and I hear they’re going to elope to France one of these days.” He pulled the widow tax purse from around his neck and jangled it in front of her. The bittersweet reminder that this idyllic life with Rosie and
Fergus couldn’t last put a twinge of sadness in Anne’s heart.

“I will miss it here, Aedan.”

“I’m sure you will. You seem like you’ve been at peace here.”

“We have been
, as much as we could be.”

Aedan sat in the rocking chair and hauled her down into his lap. “Have you ever asked
Fergus how he and Rosie came to be here?”

She shook her head. They had the Northern accent, they knew the area, they had trees that might have been generations old. She assumed they’d been here forever.

“Fergus killed a man in Berwick. He and his wife and his mother escaped here with Molnar’s help more than twenty years ago.”

Anne leaned against Aedan’s shoulder. “That’s why he helps people like us.”

“That’s exactly why.” He smoothed the hair from her face and pulled her up to face him. “Have you ever noticed the way Fergus and Rosie look around soldiers? Or strangers?”

Anne nodded. “The same way we feel. I assumed everyone reacted like that in England, given that the army can be so… present.” She’d seen the wariness, the fear in Rosie’s face when a group of soldiers stopped to requisition supplies one day, on their way to Stirling.

And even when the death cart had come, both Fergus and Rosie had been conveniently elsewhere.

“They’re suspicious. Afraid.”

Aedan held her face to his so their noses almost touch. “They’ve had twenty years of that fear, Anne.” He kissed her, letting his tongue explore her. Helpless to refuse him, she reveled in the fluttery feeling that took over her body when Aedan kissed her.

“I don’t want you to live with twenty years of that. Not even a year of it.” He motioned toward the now-sleeping baby. “I don’t want our children to see it in your face, or in mine. Or my sister’s or your sister’s. I want us to have lives free of that kind of daily fear.”

“And you think France will give us that freedom.”

He held up the purse. “I nearly died because I think France will give you that freedom. Until today, I never thought I would want that freedom.”

“What happened today?”

He pulled her squarely onto his lap and leaned down to capture her lips. “I found my Annabeth Miller.”

A giddy, forever feeling welled up inside and Anne held him to her, absorbing every moment of happiness she could. They would need it for the road ahead, she knew.

When
such adversity waited for her, and such danger promised to try to thwart their happiness, the only thing that made hope flourish inside her was the knowledge that her heart had been completely given, and another heart completely offered in return. In the face of such a deep love, all peril seemed an insignificant bump in the road that would always lead her back to this pure, hopeful joy.

~ Where To Find Me ~

Read more of the Highland Renegades books coming in June and July of 2014. Watch my website at
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