A Very Highland Holiday - Kathryn Le Veque Page 0,63

come, accepted her without comment.

“’Tis.” Padruig nodded at Fiona.

Gair shrugged. “First he’s told me of it. But if he wants a sgian dubh, I suggest ye find it for him,” he said pointedly to Stuart. “He won’t let you loose from the bargain without it.”

“Then I never will be,” Stuart growled. “What ye want is bloody impossible.”

The anguish in Stuart’s voice as he talked about searching Culloden Moor was similar to what she’d heard in other Highlanders she’d spoken to since that battle. They’d seen horror, and while they’d survived, they’d never completely recover from it.

“Not necessarily.” Fiona set her mostly empty tea mug on the table. “The innkeeper’s daughter has collected things from the moor and keeps them in a room here. She calls it her Chamber of Sorrows. Perhaps she’s found your sgian dubh.”

Stuart’s blue eyes skewered her. Fiona wished she still held her mug so she could hide behind it. Stuart gazed straight into her soul.

She hadn’t quite adjusted to the fact that he’d returned. Alive. Part of her was in shock, believing him a ghost who’d vanish as soon as she touched him. The other part sang in heavenly thanks, that Stuart had escaped and was whole. A quarter of an hour ago she’d been mourning him. Now he was here, and joy was burgeoning. When the shock faded, she’d be giddy and incoherent.

What they’d be to each other after a year apart, if anything at all, remained to be seen, but for the moment, it was enough that Stuart was here.

Now he continued to stare at her as though he had no idea what she was talking about.

“Oh, aye?” Gair answered her.

“I’ll ask her if you can look,” Fiona offered. “She’s an agreeable young woman, I’m finding. Though be careful, Gair. She has made no secret of the fact that she’d like a husband.”

Gair burst out laughing, which had the unfortunate consequence of him spitting droplets of ale across the table. “No fear on that score, lass. Gair’s not the marrying kind.”

Fiona had spoken in jest. Carrie, the innkeeper’s daughter, had made it known she’d prefer an Englishman who could take her to softer living, so Gair was safe, but she did not explain. None of the three men at this table would have any use for Englishmen at the moment, even theoretical ones.

“You do that, chaileag.” Gair took another slurp of ale. “Padruig will be grateful. I imagine this one will be too.” He jerked his thumb at Stuart, carefully not calling him by name.

Fiona said nothing about Gair addressing her as girl, or of him using the forbidden Erse tongue. It was not easy to cease conversing in a language you’d spoken all the days of your life.

Stuart kept his gaze on Fiona. Unnerving, that. She longed to ask him what had happened to him, how he’d escaped, how he’d survived. And to tell him what she’d been doing since the day last year when they’d parted so stormily at her brother’s house. She’d been travelling the Highlands too, though she’d returned home from time to time to rest and plan. But she’d tried to stay away from her brother as often as and for as long as she could. Handy to know so many women in the Highlands with sentiments similar to hers.

They couldn’t discuss such things, though, not here, in a tavern any traveler might enter.

I missed you, Stuart. I feared for you, my heart.

Fiona lifted her tea mug and drank the last bitter dregs, but she couldn’t avoid Stuart’s scrutiny.

Stuart followed Fiona into the Chamber of Sorrows located in the rear of the inn—Fiona had somehow persuaded the landlord’s daughter to admit them. Though Stuart hadn’t heard what Fiona had said to Carrie when the young woman had returned to the taproom, he wasn’t surprised Fiona had arranged it. She had a way with her, did Fiona Macdonald.

When she’d said sgian dubh, the words soft on her tongue, Stuart’s entire body had become incandescent.

Fiona was a true lady of the Highlands, her speech holding the unmistakable lilt. Far gentler than the harsh voices of the men he’d been surrounded by, her consonants almost a whisper against the liquid vowels.

Stuart had missed her until he ached. He hadn’t realized how much until he’d been trussed up in that dark building in the farmlands of southern England, unsure whether he’d live or die. The thought of never seeing Fiona again had been almost as bad as the creative torture the English bastards