Page 37 of A Hellion for the Highland Hawk
Elsie covered her mouth as a laugh slipped past her lips. “Heavens, nay. Me other braither. Our older braither.” She paused, her laughter fading. “I daenae ken why, but he went mad with the power of bein’ the Laird here. He wouldnae stop. He kept sendin’ our people to their deaths, comin’ up with fatal schemes that he thought were the best ideas. One night, years into the war, he took the councilmen’s bairns hostage and threatened to kill them all if the war wasnae won in a week.
“That’s when they asked Hunter to do somethin’. He didnae want to do it, I ken that in me heart, but he did it. He killed me braither so that me braither wouldnae murder a group of innocent bairns. But there are some who think he did it to gain power for himself, since he ended up being the Laird.”
Nancy stared at her in abject disbelief as they sat down on the bench. “Why not Beathan?”
“He didnae want it, and the council didnae want him,” Elsie replied sadly. “But as I said, Hunter sent word to our enemy, Laird MacLeach, who sent his daughter, and they got married to end the war. She went mad a little herself, and… they accused him of killin’ her, but when the baby showed up at our gate, that rumor stopped.”
Blinking slowly, Nancy sat back against the backrest of the bench and stared blankly at the pristine green of the lawns, where a blackbird swooped down to snatch a worm.
Maybe things weren’t simpler here at all. People were still fighting each other over nothing, and families were still insanely dysfunctional.
“How could you all forgive him for that?” she asked carefully as she gently lay Freya in the crook of her arm, the child already sleeping. “I mean, he killed your brother. That must be difficult to get over.”
Elsie cradled her bump. “If it wasnae for Hunter, someone else would have done it, and they would have made our braither suffer. Hunter did it quickly, and with good reason.Iwould have killed me own braither if it meant savin’ those bairns.” She swallowed loudly. “Power changed me braither. I didnae even recognize him at the end.”
Her eyes welled with tears as she sniffed, discreetly wiping her nose with a handkerchief. It looked as if she was about to have one of her weeping episodes again, at the complete mercy of her haywire emotions. But then, she seemed to rally and turned to Nancy.
“Do ye have any siblings?”
It was Nancy’s turn to feel a lump in her throat. “By blood? None. By choice? One. We were… in a home together. Grew up together.” She coughed in a bid to clear the lump. “She’s a very busy, successful woman, so I hardly ever see her anymore. But… she’s the reason I’m here. She was the one who told me about the Hawk, in a roundabout sort of way.”
“Then ye must invite her here, so we can thank her!” Elsie chirped, clapping her hands together. “We were hopin’ to host a cèilidh soon. Ye could send word to her. I ken thatI’dlike to thank her. It’s nae so easy to make friends, but… I think that ye and I might be good friends indeed.”
Her cheeks pinkened with a sweet, bashful energy as she lightly brushed a stray tear from her cheek.
“I think I’d like that,” Nancy said, meaning it, as her gaze drifted toward the apple trees and the men talking beyond.
Her heart jumped as she locked eyes with Hunter. Had he been staring at her this whole time?
CHAPTER 15
Ye shouldnae have kissed her.
Hunter seethed as he tried not to stare at Nancy, but his gaze kept wandering regardless of his wishes. One moment, he was paying close attention to something Jack was saying about the borders; the next, he was watching her,admiring the slight dimples in her cheeks when she smiled, the bright light in her dark blue eyes.
She was wearing another taunting dress, the neckline low, her waist so tightly cinched that he could’ve wrapped both his hands around it. He grazed his teeth over his lower lip as he marked the curve of her neck and the line of her jaw, burning with a need to kiss that olive skin, to trace every freckle, to finish what he’d forced himself to end in the dungeons.
Even now, he didn’t know how he’d managed to hold back. He could still hear her breathy gasps and feel her fingernails rake over his shoulder blades, sense the urgency that had taken overher as she’d wrapped her leg around him, an invitation that no sane man could refuse.
“Me Laird?” Jack said, arching a curious eyebrow.
Annoyed by his threadbare discipline, Hunter glanced back at his man-at-arms with an anger that wasn’t aimed at him. “What?”
“I was just sayin’ that all seems quiet on the border. I suggest sendin’ out more men tonight,” Jack replied, a barely suppressed note of amusement in his voice.
Hunter nodded. “I’ll ride out with them.”
“Me Laird? Nay, ye daenae have to do?—”
Hunter didn’t hear the rest as he marched across the lawn and headed back into the castle, needing to be as far from that temptress as humanly possible.
She might have claimed she wasn’t a witch, but whatever hold she had on him was nothing short of sorcery.
Later that night, relieved of her duties by Isla, Nancy lay on the somewhat lumpy mattress of her peaceful bedchamber and willed sleep to come. She squeezed her eyes shut, tried counting sheep, did as many breathing exercises as she could remember,tensed all of her muscles, and then relaxed them, utterly desperate for some rest.
It refused, evading her like a word dancing on the tip of her tongue or the details of a dream upon waking.
“Great,” she muttered. “Now, he’s invading my sleep too… because looking after his daughter is so easy on no sleep whatsoever.”
