The Highland Laird's Bride

The tunnel was hers, maintained through sheer will. She told no one of it. When she was a child, there had been several of them, but time had passed and the residents either didn’t remember them or believed they had collapsed. But she had maintained one, had cleared and buttressed it for years. It was narrow and precarious, and a way of escaping from her punishments, from her family and what had become of them.

Simply knowing the tunnel was there kept her calm. And now, with the siege, it allowed her to steal much-needed food. But she hadn’t been stealing. Bram had been leaving gifts.

She should have known—she had known—but it was a bounty she hadn’t been able to ignore.

In the darkest part of the night before last, she had left the tunnel to steal, only to find venison hanging in the tree closest to the tunnel. And underneath? A sack of cabbages and onions.

Immediately, she had recognised it for the bait it was, but she had no caution as she cut it down. Caution didn’t matter when necessity did. Her clan was starving and, even while she resented it, she took the trap.

So all day she looked over her shoulder, all night she kept herself dressed and pacing in her room. She thought of barricading the tunnel, but a mere day’s effort wouldn’t keep out a determined intruder and she didn’t want to bring attention to the tunnel.

But she had vowed that would be the last time she stole food. Since it was their last stolen meal, she needed to feed the few people still in the keep; she needed to feed her brothers and sister. What she didn’t do was feed herself.

It didn’t matter. She didn’t need her energy for much, since she was trapped inside with no way to roam. Trapped, and she knew who to blame for that as well.

As she left the privy, Dog was waiting for her at the end of the narrow corridor. From there it was a short turn with a few stairs that led to the main Hall.

She wished she could avoid the central room even though the Hall’s permanently rancid smell was weaker now, which was the siege’s only benefit.

They had cleaned the keep when the gates were first barred. Old mouldy rushes, thrown bones and rotting food were swept clear to be thrown at the Colquhoun clansmen surrounding her home.

But even without the old rushes and food, the Hall stank from the rotting wood and stones that hadn’t been scrubbed in years. When she was a child, the Hall had gleamed, the smells had been of home, of a time when her mother and father had been alive and happy. Now it held only mould, stains and regret.

She resented that she was forced to stay in the keep, forced to walk through the Hall that mocked her childhood memories. Patting Dog’s head, she hurried outside to the low building that was the kitchens.

Cook, making a soup from the venison and vegetables, gave a cautious, respectful smile.

Ignored most of her life, Lioslath forced herself to nod a greeting in return. For over a month, her clan had treated her with loyalty, with...respect. Their tentative friendliness continued to startle her.

It was difficult to change a lifetime of avoidance. With the siege, she was no longer left to roam free. She was forced to acknowledge her clan and her family. No. In truth, it was before the siege that she’d been forced to acknowledge her family...but she didn’t want to think about that now.

As soon as Dog grabbed the generous bone from the preparation table, they exited out the back of the kitchens. Again, a change. Usually, this area was rife with rotting carcasses. But since the Colquhouns came, this area, too, had been swept.

She didn’t take any pleasure in it, though. After meeting Bram last night, nothing today would bring her pleasure except his departure. He was all that she hated: conceited, arrogant, jovial.

Regretting not plunging her blade into Bram’s heart when she’d had the chance, Lioslath walked to the platform that allowed her to see over the gates.

The structure was a hastily erected disaster they ripped from her father’s stair extension. Stairs he ordered made, even though there were no walls, floor or ceiling to support them. Another impetuous folly of her father’s, just like his marriage to the Colquhoun’s sister.

She felt the weight of her loss rise and settle in her chest. Her father was dead. It wasn’t the English knight who had killed him who bore the full brunt of her wrath. No, the man she hated above all had better be breaking his camp or she’d throw the first bucket of debris today.

‘You rise late again.’

Lioslath stopped to face Aindreas, the hunter’s son. As usual, Aindreas’s appearance was marred by his thickly tangled brown hair.

‘Does it matter?’ she retorted. But it mattered to her; she had never woken late in her life.

‘You’re rising later and sleeping in the keep. You’re becoming a lady of leisure. Already the men and I cleared the debris into buckets. They are ready to throw on command. I also checked and reinforced the snares in the back, and re-limed the branches to catch the birds.’

She snorted in derision, but she envied him his duties. They had given him a purpose. She felt lost in here. ‘You had to wake up early to do the snares because you’ve never been good at them.’

‘I’ve improved since we were five, and since you sleep late I’ll be a sight better than you the next time we hunt.’

Hunting. It was what she lived for. In her childhood, Aindreas’s father, Niall, had been the chief hunter for the clan. When Lioslath’s father had remarried, her stepmother had prohibited her from staying and then sleeping in the keep. She’d followed Niall like a shadow until he showed her his skills. Aindreas was only a year older and they had become like siblings.

‘You have been making snares for years. You couldn’t possibly become better than me in only a few weeks,’ she said. ‘You’d have a better chance using a handful of your own tangled hair.’

Aindreas cocked a brow. ‘The lasses have nae trouble with my hair.’

She saw the curve to his lips that displayed the familiar dimple. The one that made all the Fergusson lasses sigh with want.

‘That’s because they didn’t have to listen to your mother lament about you never combing it.’

Those years in childhood at the hunter’s cottage had been the most precious to her. It had been a chance to be around a family, since she didn’t have one of her own.

Except...she did have a family now. Maybe not her father or mother, but her half-brothers and half-sister. They were here.

‘The whelps have already risen,’ Aindreas said, seeming to know her thoughts. If her brothers and sister had risen, she had more pressing concerns.

‘Have they been fed?’ she asked, looking around her.

‘Do you truly care?’

‘Aye, if someone else looks after them, I doona have to.’ She gave him a pointed glare. ‘Your continual calling them puppies won’t make me tend and care for them.’

He shook his head. ‘They think matters are different now.’

She didn’t want to think of her father’s death or what that meant to her younger half-sister, Fyfa, and two half-brothers, Eoin and Gillean. She was still adjusting to being trapped inside the keep with them when, for her entire life, they’d been kept separated. ‘Even if matters are different, what would I do with them? They’re...idle.’

‘They’re not idle. They play.’

‘What would I know of play? Other than it accomplishes nothing.’

‘Just because you weren’t given the chance—’ Aindreas’s eyes softened. ‘You wouldn’t have to do anything with them. Simply be their sister.’

She didn’t know how to play or be a sister because she’d never had a childhood. So how could she understand theirs?

‘You can’t avoid them forever, Lioslath.’

‘I’m not avoiding them.’ It was impossible to. They were always underfoot, playing, laughing. Her clan’s tentative smiles and wary looks continued to startle her. Her siblings’ open smiles and constant chatter terrified her. ‘Will you take them today?’

‘You know I will.’

‘Just keep them away from the platform.’ She didn’t care how he took her words.

‘Caring if they get hurt? You are becoming soft.’

‘Nae,’ she said, wondering if that was why she said it. ‘I doona need the annoyance of tending injuries on top of everything else I have to do today.’