Page 2 of Lady Len and the Mysterious Mac

Outside, she turned her face up towards the light rain that had begun to fall, like a bluebell welcoming the dew. Tiny as she was, she’d be soaked through in no time if he left her out there on her own, and then he’d have two patients in the sick ward to contend with. But she didn’t appear bothered by the drizzle. If he wanted her back inside, he would have to go and fetch her just like everyone was expecting him to do.

She seemed to sense his arrival before he drew even with her, as though the ground shook when he walked, and she instinctively shrunk away, toward the rowan tree that stood sentinel over his mother’s grave.

“Milady Ellen?” he asked, his voice rough and scratchy from disuse, unrefined even to his own ears. No wonder lowlanders thought him an insensible oaf, little better than the giants of faerie stories. “Nae better?” he tried again, and she shrugged a little, her lovely blonde hair darkening and beginning to curl in the damp as she stared down at the headstone.

Of course she wasn’t better. The lass no more wished to wed than he did.

His father was sympathetic, but he’d also made it clear—the clan had grown restless during his years in exile, and tolerance for the heir’s coastal malingering had run out. They were impatient for some sign that the Kintail was preparing a tanist to succeed him and restore the lands of Ross-shire to their former glory.

Even his father’s sympathy ran short, however, when Si protested that it should be Bram who was next in line, and not himself. Clearly, that was a battle for another day, after the Kintail’s health improved and the clan’s unrest was mollified. If a marriage would appease them for a time, then Si supposed it was the lesser of evils, and wouldn’t such a comparison delight any bride?

He looked down at the lass, whose head might almost reach his oxters if she stood on her toes. Her nose was dripping blood as bright as rubies. They’d mentioned she was sickly. Perhaps this was his penance, then, for killing his mother—a lifelong reminder of human frailty.

When he held out his handkerchief to her, she merely stared at it, and so he reached for her face himself. The lass jerked back, hitting her head against the tree. Her eyes widened, but she didn’t cry out or move her hand to rub the spot, and Si raised his palms in surrender.

She was more skittish than a day-old foal, but this time when he reached out, she didn’t flinch, and so, as gently as he was able, he tipped up her chin and held the cloth to her face to stop the bleeding.

“All right, milady?” he asked, hating the way the words seemed to stick in his throat.

It was the same shame as when his tutor once filled his mouth with river pebbles and ordered him to recite his psalms, until the man realized that Si would just swallow the rocks along with his syllables. The tutor had given up after that, and Si’s father, not yet the Kintail, sent him away to board with a more renowned scholar in Aberdeen before his twelfth birthday. He could still taste the pebbles now, all algae and earth.

The lass reached up to take the handkerchief for herself, and Si withdrew his hand, but not quickly enough. Her fingers brushed against his as the sky finally rumbled, and lightning scorched down his arm, straight to his stomach. His eyes shot to hers before he stepped away and unfurled the back of his plaid to protect her from the rain.

Si hated too the way she instinctively shrank from him, as though a man of his size could only be meant for violence. He wished she’d look at him, so he could know the color of her eyes and show her that he meant no harm.

If he ever did want to see them, he supposed he needed to get her out of the rain, and into that kirk, where their families were growing more restless by the second.

“I’m not,” he began, and then cleared his throat. Not what? So many things.

He swallowed and tried again.

“I know I’m not what you must’ve had in mind.”

She snorted, a soft, quick laugh that erupted unexpectedly before she clapped one hand over her mouth to keep the rest inside.

He tore his gaze from her face, focusing instead on his mother’s headstone. “I’m not a bad man,” he whispered. “I willnae hurt you, nor let any harm come to you.” She couldn’t know just how deeply he meant those words. And why should she believe him, when they’d never laid eyes on each other before today?

“Gawyn would say, if there’s something you dread, best to have done with it quickly,” he said, mostly to himself, but she nodded slowly, as though agreeing with him. “I ken you’re not keen, but unless you’re planning to make a break for it, the fastest way to bring this infernal day to its conclusion would be for you to come back inside the kirk.”

He hadn’t meant to sound so cold. She looked past the headstone, to the kirkyard fence and the soggy fields beyond, as though considering the option of escape.

Si scrubbed a hand over his beard. Should he have shaved it off? Would a younger face make him look less severe, or all the more terrifying with the countenance of an overgrown bairn?

“Sure you'd prefer your own kirk near your own home,” he offered. “Inverness, aye?” Had she been there when Fraser of Lovat had laid siege to the city back in 1715? Had the siege forever altered her young life as it had the MacKenzies’, snatching away a beloved laird before his own babe had drawn its first breath? With an heir not yet born, the tanist became laird—Si’s father, Alex—and Silas became the new heir.

She stopped dabbing her face and began folding the handkerchief into smaller and smaller squares.

“I want to thank you for being so accommodating on account of my father’s recent poor health,” he went on, in case no one had explained to her why she’d been brought to Ross before the wedding instead of after.

The lass snorted again, and Si would almost swear he could hear her thoughts on the wind, a muttered, “As if it matters what I want.”

But no, perhaps he was only hearing his own thoughts outside his head.

Another clap of thunder pealed across the sky, and this time the lass shrunk towards him instead of away, and it cracked something open inside him as the rain began to fall harder, the scent of lavender wafting up from her wet hair.

“If you will,” he whispered, making to turn back towards the kirk, and at last she relented.

Hushed voices fell silent as they entered. Bram scratched his ankle with the toe of his other boot.