Page 25 of Highlander’s Bride

When she disappeared, he sighed and looked at Bryanna with a crooked half smile. “I dinna really need a quill to play. There are nae such luxuries on the road, and I learned to play it with just my fingers.”

The anticipation of what was about to happen tightened her stomach. He didn’t want Teasag here while he played, but did he want her?

“I can leave you…” she offered, though without much enthusiasm. “I understand what it’s like to want to be alone with your instrument.”

As he ran his hands over the strings, he studied her as though he was seeing her for the first time in his life. “Ye do? Do ye play?”

“Yes, but not lute…”

He nodded and began tuning the lute. The sounds were softer than what she was used to from the steel or nylon strings of a guitar, and she wondered what these strings were made of—perhaps animal guts. Finally, when he was satisfied with the tuning, he arranged the fingers of his left hand to create a chord, then ran the fingers of his right hand over the strings, producing a sad, beautiful sound…the beginning of a ballad, perhaps.

And then, one chord after another, a slow, melancholy melody was born from his lute, and Bryanna stilled, mesmerized.

But when he opened his mouth and a deep, rich voice took over, she must have stopped breathing.

Or living altogether.

Because nothing else existed but his voice and his words.

There lived a man in a Kintail house,

A man with a hole in his chest.

He searched for a heart to fill the hole,

But all he found was dust.

Ohh, all he found was dust.

While he played something like a pre-chorus, Bryanna’s blood tingled as though a draft of unbearable cold had just taken over the room.

He put there gold and he put there silver,

and he put there much, much wine,

But only true love of a bonnie lass

Made him feel alive.

Ohh, made him feel alive.

Bryanna’s heart drummed, beating painfully against her rib cage. He was singing about himself, she knew. That voice…so much richness, so much emotion… He was the man with no heart. But who was the bonnie lass who made him feel alive? Did he still love her?

But the bonnie lass couldna ken

That he’d never be her love.

All he’d brought upon her fate

Was fire, ash, and demise…

His voice shook and the last line came out slow and quiet.

“Ohh…fire, ash, and demise.”

Bryanna wiped away her tears when he slowly looked up and met her gaze. Pure agony was thundering in his eyes’ dark depths. “I hope ye are from another time and leave soon, lass. Death follows me like a cloak but ’tis others that get hurt. I hope ye wilna be one of them.”

Chapter 12