Page 27 of Highlander’s Claim

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Aulay’s arms ached as he held the rough wooden handles of the stretcher. His whole body was aching and sweaty under his tunic. The sky grayed, and rain had started drizzling, as though God was mourning Beathan, too. The way up the hill towards Dunyvaig Castle had become slick and muddy. The castle loomed over him, silent and solemn.

Like his own heart.

The English had lost and retreated. Before he had killed one of them, Aulay had learned the attackers were sent to discover if Aulay had found the shipwreck, and to retrieve the treasure if possible.

That meant the English hadn’t found it. The treasure was still out there.

It meant he needed to have a serious conversation with the sole survivor of the shipwreck…Jennifer Foster.

They needed that treasure, or this attack would be only a small taste of what the English and their Irish allies would do to Islay and the Highlands.

He looked up at the gatehouse as they came through. The rough stone glistened with rain. Colum held the back handles of Beathan’s stretcher. The other Highlanders walked up with nine more stretchers with three wounded and six dead. Seven warriors he’d lost today. All of them were his pride and his friends.

But Beathan was someone he’d fought with for the past twenty years.

They passed through the gate and kept walking up the slope of the inner bailey, the scent of rain replaced the iron tang of blood, and Aulay raised his face to the sky, letting rain fall onto his face and become the tears he didn’t let himself shed.

They stopped in front of Beathan’s house, and Aulay and Colum put the stretcher on the ground to inform a sick woman with a six-moon-old bairn that she had just become a widow.

CHAPTER 11

It was already late when Aulay shut the door of his bedchamber, confining himself with the copper-haired woman.

Exhaustion weighed on his body—from the battle, from holding himself steady while he talked to Ailis. Grief and anger fought within him, and he didn’t think he’d have it in him to talk to Jennifer like he should.

But the moment he saw her, something lightened in his chest. With her dress so bright it seemed to glow, she looked foreign against rough stone walls, the muted red of the canopy curtains over his bed, and the fire reflecting from the swords and shields on the wall.

Seeing her bonnie face, he remembered how warm and delicious her body had felt in his arms earlier today. How her curves fit right into his hands as though made for him. How the need for her had consumed him, as though nothing else existed. He hadn’t felt that since he was with Leitis… No, he couldn’t remember a time even with her that he’d been so overtaken by desire. The mad, all-powerful drive to claim her for his own. Like a lad before he had his first woman.

“What happened?” she asked. “Who attacked? Are you all right?” Her eyes scanned him as if looking for injuries. He was covered in blood, but it was all the blood of the enemy.

“English, looking for the shipwreck,” he said, advancing on her. “The shipwreck ye refuse to talk about. They killed Beathan and six other men. Ye’ve been here for three days, and until ye tell me everything ye ken, it doesna look like ye’re leaving anytime soon.”

She opened her mouth, no doubt to protest, but he raised his hand to silence her and walked to the last in the row of chests standing in the corner. The one he hadn’t touched for seven years. The wooden surface, the carved ornamentation of a romantic scene with a lady and a knight in a garden, was regularly cleaned by the servants so it didn’t look like it had been untouched. He had bought this chest in the Kingdom of Galicia, a present for his beloved wife, and he remembered the bright smile on her face as he gave it to her. He’d sworn then to keep showering her with gifts as long as they would keep making her smile like that.

The slit window above the chest cast silvery moonlight, the shadows on the carvings dark.

“What are you doing?” Jennifer asked, her voice pulling him out of his thoughts.

He unlocked the chest, asking internally if what he was about to do was right. He was sure Leitis wouldn’t want a woman to be cowed and to freeze in her completely unsuitable clothes when there was a whole chest of perfectly good clothing that no one used.

And no one would use. He wasn’t going to marry. He wasn’t going to lose anyone again.

“I’m giving ye some attire that is more suited,” he said and lifted the lid.

It didn’t smell like Leitis anymore. His servants put in lavender to keep moths away. He picked up a green dress that Leitis had worn during pregnancy and that had more room, since Jennifer had a more ample bosom and arse, he thought with his mouth going dry. He picked up an undertunic as well, a girdle, and another pair of shoes.

He stood and handed them to her. Jennifer took them with a frown. “Whose are they?”

“They belonged to my late wife, Leitis,” he said. “She was taller and thinner, but they lie unused, and this way ye have something warmer. And people wilna be bothered by ye as much.”

Jennifer looked at the garments like they were a dangerous animal. “Are you sure about this?”

Truth be told, he wasn’t sure. It hurt to see another woman with Leitis’s clothes. But it was for the peace of the village and to help this woman fit in. “Aye. ’Tis what she would have done in the first place had she been alive. I should have offered sooner.”

“Look, I appreciate it, but are there any other clothes I could wear? I’m really not sure you’re good with this—”