The Making of a Highlander (Midnight in Scotland #1) - Elisa Braden Page 0,7
it with a great, floppy hat, and sometimes she left it uncovered to flash like red fire.
He’d grown accustomed to her lack of proper skirts, her unnervingly brilliant eyes, her sharp-tongued taunts about his manhood.
Dinnae luik so gloomy, English. Angus is a crabbit auld man, be ye bonnie as a fresh-dewed lass or no.
Did ye steal those boots from a Scot, English? They seem a mite big for yer wee, dainty feet.
Next time, try flutterin’ those girlish lashes at him, English. Mayhap he’ll offer to let ye pour his tea.
Most women thought him handsome, but only Annie Tulloch managed to turn it into an insult. And God, how she relished the insults.
Brazen, mouthy woman.
She ordered her brothers about like a tyrannical sea captain. She cursed her towering stepfather to his face before patting his cheek and asking if he needed more liniment.
She dressed like a boy or, more precisely, an unkempt Highland ruffian who cut his hair with a dull knife. She was fearless. Fiery. Crackling with defiance and ignorant of basic manners.
Three years ago, he would have liked her. Hell, five years ago, he might have seduced her for the sport of it.
Now? He didn’t know what to do with her.
Which might explain the disquiet in his gut after witnessing her come apart over nothing much at all.
“Ye needn’t have troubled yerself, English.” The tremulousness of her voice made his hands tighten on the reins. He almost wished for another insult.
“No trouble. Your house is on the way to mine.” Nodding to the rutted cart path that forked into Glendasheen, he eyed the heavy clouds above, the dark hills to either side of them, and the fingerling mists caressing yellow birch and green pine. “Jacqueline may not win any races, but she’ll save your boots some wear.”
“Jacqueline?”
“The horse.”
She fell silent, rocking with the motion of the cart.
He glanced at her hands, which flattened protectively along the right side of her waist as though covering a wound. “Did the boy hurt you?”
Eyes the color of cornflowers flew up to his. “B-boy?”
“Cleghorn’s son. When he accosted you back in the square. Did he injure you?”
Destitution shadowed her eyes before they fell away. “No. Ronnie is a good lad.”
Perhaps she was mad, after all.
Certainly, he’d known men who appeared normal for days or weeks at a time, only to fall into a state of sudden, confused agitation. War could produce such a plague upon the mind. So could grave losses.
He’d once befriended a tribesman in the Cape Colony of Africa. The man had spoken English, so John had hired him as a translator and guide. They’d gotten on famously until the night he’d mistaken John for a ghost from his past and tried to gut him with the spit from their campfire.
John later learned the man’s two brothers, wife, and five children had been slaughtered by a rival tribe years earlier. Madness. Grief. Torment. A decade after the tribesman had buried his family, memories had risen up like an ancestral spell to sow chaos in his mind.
Now, John wondered if Mad Annie Tulloch suffered something similar. Normal behavior most of the time—well, normal for her—then a sudden break.
“I’m not mad.” Those unnervingly blue eyes met his again. “I ken ye think so. But I’m not. So, stop yer gawpin’.”
As usual, her mouthy ways struck him like an itch. He wanted to laugh and, at the same time, to shut her up. Instead, he focused on the road ahead and held his tongue. At least she’d regained some color.
“What are ye haulin’ back to that decrepit auld pile of stone ye live in, English?” She glanced back at the cart’s towering load, covered in canvas. “More than a bit of linen for yer drawers, I reckon.”
“Materials for repairs.”
A snort. “Repairing Glendasheen Castle will take more than this lot. Ye’ll need a bluidy miracle.”
He frowned. “I’d make swifter progress if your fellow Scots would agree to work for me.”
“Better chance of Christ himself ridin’ his unicorn down here for a dram and a biscuit.”
“Hmm. I could use a good carpenter.”
Another snort. “Amusin’, English.” She removed her hat and shook the rain from the wide brim before plopping it back into place. “’Tis cursed, ye ken.”
“So I’m told.”
“Angus didnae lie about that. Somethin’ bad happened there. The castle willnae