Taken by Angeline Fortin (ebook reader with android os TXT) 📕

“Did ye no’ miss me, mo chroí?  Even a wee bit?”

Miss him?  How inadequate, really.  She hadn’t missed him.  She’d agonized over his absence, worried for his safety, pined for his company.  Longed for his body. Even his absence hadn’t managed to dull the emotion he roused in her.  The power he had over her was unnerving.  Stunning.  How could she ever give this up?

Scarlett shrugged, biting back the urge to tell him just that.  “You knew where I was this whole time.”

His chest trembled behind her.  “How can ye torment me so?  Tell me true, lass, did ye miss me a’tall?”

“Did you miss me?” she countered softly.

“I’ve ne’er felt so bereft in all my days than those when parted from ye.”  His brogue was thick, heavy with feeling.

Rhys might ask all the good questions, but Laird had all the right answers.

“I may have missed you, just a little,” she conceded and was rewarded with a light swat on her bare behind for her efforts.  She turned in his arms so that she could face him, reaching up to caress his cheek.  Taking note of the few additional gray hairs that joined his shaggy beard.  The sight of him brought such joy to her heart.  She’d never be able to adequately describe it much less confess it.  She only knew she didn’t want him to leave her alone again.

Relaxing in his encompassing embrace, she absently stroked his hands and arms as he held her tightly.  Content with the steady beat of his heart thumping comfortingly against her cheek.  Having not slept well in days, she snuggled closer and drifted into the hazy netherworld feeling at peace at last.

Finally it occurred to her that Laird might have been right.  She was right where she belonged.  In that moment, everything was perfect and Scarlett was content.

“Are you still angry with me?”

His silvery eyes danced over her face.  He must have been consoled by whatever he saw there because a tender smile lifted the corner of his lips before he brushed a lingering kiss across hers.

“Nay, lass.  I was ne’er angry.  Only in denial, doubting what I prayed couldnae be true.  But I couldnae go another day wi’out seeing yer bonny face.”

Scarlett nodded, biting her lip worriedly.  “Do you still doubt me?”

“Ah, mo chroí, I only wish I could.”  He held her in silence for a long while.  “Lord Lindsay has advised the King to withdraw.  I, too, extended my opinion that we should do so.”

“Supporting the enemy of the Hepburn clan?”

“Supporting the man in the right,” he corrected.

“Then it’s over?”  She pounced on that tidbit.

“Nay, lass.”  Laird tweaked her earlobe.  “He wouldnae listen.”

“But did you tell him all of it?” she persisted.

“I tried.  I swear,” he said.  “The King wouldnae see reason perhaps because there was none to be had.  He thought me mad as I thought ye.  And before ye say it, all yer proof would mean nothing to him.  He wants this war.  Naught will change his mind on that.”

Taking his hand in hers, Scarlett looked up at him beseechingly.  “Then let’s leave this place.  Let’s get your brothers, even your father and go back to Dunskirk or even Crichton.”

Laird shook his head.  “Nay, lass.  I willnae turn tail.”

No, of course he wouldn’t.  Even knowing certain death awaited him, Laird would still want to be first over the wall, so to speak.  She was going to lose him either way.

“So you’ll just leave me here?”

He bent his cheek to hers.  “Nay, lass, I’ll no’ leave ye again.  I cannae.  The Hepburn motto is Keep Trust, Keep Faith.  Have the same in me.  I will make it through this is one piece.”

“And if you don’t?”

“Then I’ll still ne’er leave ye.  No’ really.”

38

“Omnipotens Deus: ut in nobis et imperio istis beneficiis inceptum. Fac eos uictoria et pace.”

“Amen,” Laird murmured beside her, his head bowed reverantly as the priest blessed them.  Or at least, Scarlett hoped that’s what the elaborately robed man was doing.  Lord knew, they needed every bit of help they could get.

“Amen,” she echoed.

Scarlett wasn’t the religious sort at all but when King James called his nobles to attend mass with him that night at the chapel of Ford Castle, she knelt beside Laird with her hands wrapped around his.  Praying harder than she had ever imagined herself capable.  Praying for his safety and for his family’s.

Praying for something, anything to change what was about to happen.

The priest lifted his arms heavenward.  “Hoc petimus in nomine Domini Dei nostri, et Pater noster, qui vivit et regnat in unitáte Spíritus Sancti.”  He signed a large cross in the air before him. “Benedìcat vos omnipotens Deus, in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.”

“Amen,” they all said again and stood, waiting as King James left the pew at the front of the chapel and exited down the aisle.  Scarlett wrestled with the urge to latch on to him as he passed.

Laird’s hand holding tightly on to hers might have been all that was between her and the moment where she prostrated herself before the monarch and begged him not to be such a huge idiot.  Pride had no place in a situation like this.

Other lords and nobles filed out behind him.  Some faces Scarlett recognized and then finally the Hepburns, all of them.  Names on a long list.  Sir Adam of Craggis, the Abbott of Arbath, the Earl of Glencairn, the young Earl of Bothwell who would leave behind his wife and new son, and the Bishop of Brechin who would leave behind those two mistresses and a dozen fatherless children.

Scotland would be filled with orphans and widows by this time tomorrow and there was nothing she could do to change it now.  No matter how much she wanted to.  No matter how hard she prayed.  It was futile.

Unlike the others, Laird knew exactly what he was getting himself into.  She