Page 36 of A Hellion for the Highland Hawk
“She’s done a lot of good around here, hasn’t she?”
Elsie nodded. “There are soldiers walkin’ now who would be dead or missin’ a limb if it wasnae for her. I cannae even guess how many she’s saved.” She paused. “We lost all of our healers in the war, ye see, and then Beathan mentioned the clans to the east. He sent word, askin’ for a healer, and Lady Gibson answered.”
Nancy nodded, her mouth twisting into a fake grimace.
Why did Adeline have to be so nice, so charitable? Why couldn’t she have been a mean old shrew, so Nancy wouldn’t feel a shred of guilt for writing a story about her? In fact, the more she heard about Adeline, the more she knew that she’d just write the ‘and the Clark sisters lived happily ever after, backpacking across the globe’ story.
It was the least she could do.
The two women made their slow way down into a sunny patch of garden, where spring wildflowers bowed their petaled headsin reverence to the mild breeze. The bursts of color cheered Nancy up, although she was now on constant guard for bees, for everyone’s sake. The bees included.
“I didn’t know you had sun in Scotland,” she teased, their steady footsteps sinking into the lawn.
Elsie chuckled. “Och, it’s a rarity. I think we have but a fortnight of summer, but it’s the finest summer ye’ll ever ken. As long as ye daenae get eaten alive by the wee biters that come in the evening.”
“Biters?” Nancy’s eyes widened, imagining some strange and vicious creature that slunk out of the shadows after sunset.
“Wee flies,” Elsie clarified, grinning. “Ye itch for days when they nibble on ye.”
Fortunately, I’ll be gone before then.
Nancy waited for the triumph to come, the excitement of seeing New Jersey and modern comforts again, but it was slow to arrive.
Maybe she couldstay until the summer. She’d never been on vacation anywhere, always too busy or too broke. Why not enjoy the beauty of 1700s Scotland before going back to hunt for jobs, pay rent, and be unable to read most of the ingredients on anything in the grocery store?
“Jack is sorry, by the way,” Elsie added, a note of shyness in her voice. “He wants to come and tell ye himself, but he’s afraid ye might turn him into a toad or something.”
Nancy snorted a laugh. “He still thinks I’m a witch?”
“Nay, but he’s worried ye mightfinda witch to do it for ye.” Elsie smiled and looped her arm through Nancy’s free one. “He really is sorry.”
“I know,” Nancy replied. “However, at some point, he’s going to have to apologize to me himself. It’s not even like I’m angry with him. I understand why he did what he did.”
Elsie shrugged. “Daenae tell anyone I said so, but these men… they’re nae so good at apologizin’.”
“Or saying thank you,” Nancy blurted before she could stop herself, her face warming instantly as she thought of Hunter’s ‘gratitude’ for at least the tenth time that day. And it was barely noon.
“Aye.” Elsie laughed softly, the sound turning into a surprised gasp. “Och, yer guard dog is here again. Starin’ at ye.”
“What?”
Elsie subtly pointed her chin in the direction of a coppice of apple treesjustbearing fruit. Between the slender trunks, on a sort of patio, Hunter and Jack were conversing with two otherguards. Yet, Nancy felt the heat of Hunter’s gaze as he briefly glanced in her direction.
“How did Freya end up here?” she asked abruptly. “I heard Jack say something about… knowing that someone would never let Hunter have her. I just assumed she was born here, but I’m guessing not.”
Elsie’s face shuttered for a moment as they moved toward a stone bench on the other side of the garden, where a little stream trickled peacefully, and laurel bushes rustled. There was a wall beside it, and over the top of that wall, Nancy could see a natural pool a fair distance below, carved out of rock.
An open portion of the wall marked the start of the steps down to the pool, and though she relished a swim, the thought of swimming there made goosepimples rise all over her skin. Maybe when it was warmer.
“A terrible business,” Elsie said, at last. “His wife was… I daenae ken how to put it delicately.”
“Then put it bluntly,” Nancy encouraged.
Elsie managed a small smile. “The marriage between me cousin over there and his wife, Rachel, is what ended the war that me braither started.”
“Beathan?” Nancy blinked in surprise.
The man might have had backward opinions about women, but he hadn’t seemed like a bloodthirsty warmonger.
