The Highlander's Redemption

The next morning Madeleine padded through to the scullery on bare feet with her tippet wrapped over her shift and poured herself a glass of water from a large stone jug. Returning to the main reception room, she walked straight into Calumn, who growled something low and vicious in an unfamiliar language. Startled, she jumped back, spilling some of the water down her shift. He towered over her, clad in a long woollen robe tied loosely at the waist. In the bright light of day his eyes were dark blue and heavy lidded. The stubble on his jaw was a tawny colour, darker than his tousled golden hair, giving him a raffish look.

‘Who in the devil’s name are you?’ he barked.

Madeleine’s heart sank. ‘Madeleine Lafayette. You don’t remember?’

‘You’re French?’

She smiled nervously. ‘Yes, I’m still French.’

To her relief, Calumn’s flash of ill temper faded. He raked his hand through his hair and grinned ruefully. ‘French, and obviously not a housebreaker. I need coffee.’ He opened the door leading out onto the stairwell. ‘Jamie,’ he roared, ‘where are you?’

A patter of feet preceded the arrival of an urchin of some nine or ten years with a mop of dirty blond hair and a face which would benefit from the application of a washcloth. ‘Nae need to ask how you are this morn, Mister Munro,’ the lad said with a cheeky grin, handing over a tray on which was an enamel pot of coffee and a large jug of ale. ‘You’re like a bear wi’ a sore head.’

Calumn took the tray wordlessly. Tossing the boy a coin, he caught Jamie’s curious glance towards Madeleine. ‘I’ll not be the only one with a sore head if I catch you blathering, do I make myself clear?’

‘Clear as day, Mister Munro. I didn’t see nobody.’ Whistling tunelessly and somehow managing to grin at the same time, a feat which impressed Madeleine immensely, Jamie banged the door shut behind him.

Calumn poured them both a cup of coffee before helping himself to a long reviving draught of ale. ‘Jamie’s family live on the ground floor,’ he said by way of explanation. ‘Andrew Macfarlane, his father, is dead. His mother takes in lodgers and looks after me, too.’ He dropped gracefully into one of the seats opposite Madeleine. Under his robe he still had his shirt on, but not his breeches.

Embarrassingly aware of her own dishabille, Madeleine pulled her tippet closer and tried to redistribute her shift, a manoeuvre which simply succeeded in drawing Calumn’s attention to her bare ankles. Shuffling her feet as far back under the settle as she could manage, she shook out her hair in an effort to disguise the flush creeping over her cheeks. ‘Do you remember nothing of last night, monsieur?’

Calumn inspected his knuckles ruefully. ‘Aye, it’s coming back to me now.’ His mouth thinned as an echo of the menacing look from last night traced a path across his handsome countenance. ‘It’s men like that who give soldiers a bad name. You took no harm?’

Madeleine shuddered as the image of the men’s faces flickered into her mind like evil spirits. ‘None, thanks to you. You were very brave to take on three of them alone. You could have been killed.’

He gave a twisted smile. ‘Perhaps that was my intent. I sometimes think I’d be as well dead.’ His eyes glittered, like the glint of granite on a Highland peak.

Madeleine shivered, frightened by the bleakness in this expression. ‘You should not talk so.’

‘Should I not now?’ he growled at her. ‘And what business, mademoiselle, would that be of yours?’ he demanded, frowning fiercely and staring off into space, so that she dared not reply.

Fortunately he did not seem to expect her to. His frown eased, then as suddenly as it came on, his mood shifted and his attention refocused on his visitor. She looked mighty uncomfortable in her state of undress. Far too uncomfortable to be the type of woman he had taken her for. And she was younger than he had taken her for, too. What the devil had he got himself into?

‘It was a sorry introduction to Scotland for you, but if you don’t mind my saying so, you were asking for trouble, hanging around the castle like that. They no doubt mistook your calling. I did so myself, but I take it I was wrong?’

Madeleine stared at him in consternation. ‘Indeed, you are mistaken,’ she said indignantly, clutching her tippet even more tightly.

‘That’s what I just said,’ he responded, unmoved by her embarrassment. ‘But as I’ve also just said, you can’t blame me for thinking it, anyone would have made the same mistake.’

She could not deny this, so remained silent.

‘What the hell did you think you were doing there? Had you no money for a lodging?’

In the cold light of day, after a night’s refreshing sleep, Madeleine struggled to come up with an answer to this perfectly reasonable question. Her actions seemed stupid even to herself. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, feeling singularly foolish. ‘I mean—yes, I had money, but I don’t know why I didn’t find a place to sleep.’

‘Do you know why you’re here, at least? In Edinburgh, I mean?’

‘Of course I do,’ she responded, drawing herself up haughtily. ‘I was trying to get into the castle, but they wouldn’t let me pass.’

‘Why on earth …?’

‘I wanted to speak to the prisoners there. I’m looking for someone.’

‘A man, I presume.’

Madeleine nodded.

‘And what has this man done?’

‘Nothing,’ Madeleine said indignantly. ‘He’s not a criminal.’

‘Then why—ah, your man is a Jacobite.’ He waited on her nod. ‘And what makes you think he’s in there?’ Despite his pleasing lilt, the worlds were sharply spoken.

‘I don’t. I don’t know where he is.’ Madeleine paused, swallowing hard as the many, many things she didn’t know about Guillaume and his fate threatened her ability to think clearly. ‘The castle is as good a place to start as any. I thought someone in there—one of the other Jacobites—might know him, or of him, might be able to help me trace him.’

‘It’s a bit of a shot in the dark if you ask me.’ Calumn pressed a hand to his brow. His head had begun to thump. His tried to think, but his thoughts fled from his grasp like a hare from a hound. ‘How do you come to speak such good English?’

‘A woman in our village, Madame le Brun, who is married to the school teacher, is from a place called Dover.’ Confused by the sudden change of subject, Madeleine eyed her host warily. ‘She teaches me embroidery—or she tries to—as well as English. She would be pleased at the compliment,’ she said with an attempt at humour, ‘for she despairs of my stitchery.’

Calumn rubbed his eyes and shook his head in an effort to clear away the fog befuddling his brain. A shaft of sunlight slanted in through the leaded panes of the window, making him wince. Too much whisky, but at least it stopped him from dreaming. He focused his gaze on his unexpected houseguest. She was a slight thing, with long flaxen hair trailing down her back. Beautiful in a fey, ethereal way. ‘You look like a mermaid,’ he said.

His smile curled like smoke. His voice had a teasing quality, a lilting, sensual tone, which connected to her senses at a very basic level. Looking at him from under her lashes, the sunlight making his hair a burnished halo, Madeleine thought anew how strikingly attractive Calumn Munro was. Perhaps his ill temper was simply morning crotchets. ‘My mother used to say that, too,’ she said.

His eyes crinkled as his smile deepened. ‘Did you put me to bed?’

‘I just made you comfortable.’ The vivid memory of being held hard against him made Madeleine’s toes curl up into the soft pile of the rug at her feet.

‘Did I behave myself?’

She wondered nervously if he knew that it was she, not he, who had taken liberties. ‘You behaved perfectly. You promised you would. Word of a Munro, you said.’

Calumn’s smile faded. His eyes darkened, as if a light had gone out. ‘Word of a Munro,’ he repeated, his tone bitter. ‘I must have been drunk.’

He got up and stretched, rolling his shoulders, which were stiff from tension. He needed food and fresh air. ‘I can’t think on an empty stomach. We’ll get some breakfast and you can tell me your story properly.’

‘You’ve done too much for me already,’ Madeleine protested, but it was half-hearted. She was ravenous. Calumn Munro looked like a man with influence, and last night had proven him also a man of action. What’s more, he was her only friend in this foreign country; she would be foolish to turn down the opportunity to enlist his help.

Foolish, but also wise? She knew nothing of him, found not only his uncertain temper but his very presence unsettling. But … she trusted him. And he intrigued her. ‘Yes, thank you,’ she said with an uncertain smile. ‘I’ll go and get dressed.’

‘I’ll get Jamie to fetch you some hot water,’ Calumn said, suiting action to words with a bellow which would have awoken the dead.

With the hot water, Jamie brought a letter which had just arrived. When he had washed and dressed, Calumn broke the seal reluctantly, his frown deepening to a scowl as he scanned the closely crossed sheets of his mother’s elegant hand. Father weaker … demise imminent … factor requiring constant supervision … your return required urgently. All the usual phrases, although the bit about the attack on the western lands was new. Revenge by a Jacobite clan … to be expected given the Munroes’ stand, his mother wrote. Calumn’s stomach clenched in anger as he read this paragraph more closely. Bad enough the mess the Rebellion had left in its wake, now they must be feuding amongst themselves! If they were to survive in the Highlands, the clans must stick together, could they not see that!

Beg of you to return. Your father … not likely to live much longer. If his father died, the lands would be his. His to change and to renew, his to care for and nurture rather than work to exhaustion, his to do all the things he’d thought about and planned during the last few years. But they weren’t his yet, nor likely would be in the near future. His father might be weak, but his grip on life was a lot more tenacious than his mother gave him credit for. And anyway, what was the point in dreaming, when the fact was he couldn’t go home. Not now. Maybe not ever.

The usual feelings of frustration and anger and pointless railing at fate, roiled in his gut, making him nauseous. Calumn crumpled the letter up in disgust and threw it into the empty hearth just as Madeleine rejoined him. She raised her brows, wondering what could have inspired such fury, but seeing the deep frown which marred his face, chose wisely not to comment. He was dressed in breeches and top boots teamed with a dark coat, the clothes expensive and well cut. He had shaved and tidied his hair, though it was not tied back but swept away from his brow, curling almost to his shoulders. It was unusual for a man of his obvious standing to go without powder or wig, but Madeleine thought it becoming.

Calumn gave himself a shake, pressing his thumb into the furrow of his brow as if to smooth away the thoughts which formed it. ‘Come on, then,’ he said, holding open the door for her, ‘my stomach thinks my throat’s been cut.’