Page 18 of The Finest Scottish Fate

“Trust yer heart, lass,” Callum said. “And allow no one to convince ye otherwise. Yer heart and soul always knows the truth. Listen to them. No matter the facts or even the reality ye see with yer own eyes. Always trust yer heart and soul.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means believe in the magic and never let go of it.”

A strange weakness came over her, pushing her to her knees. She fell forward and dug her fingers into the sea of grass rippling like waves across the steps of the hillside. She gagged. That grass really needed to stop moving. Her perfect cherry turnover was about to come back out. Closing her eyes, she bowed her head and concentrated on not losing her breakfast. Ears throbbing as if she’d suddenly been yanked to a different altitude, she swallowed hard and worked her jaws. Maybe she’d picked up some sort of bug on the airplane. Whatever this was that was wrong with her, it was not good.

“I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do any more today,” she said, forcing the words out through the nausea. What was that strange howling? The wind shoved her, making it impossible to stay upright on all fours. She fell over and curled into a ball, hugging her knees tightly to her chest. “Morganna?” she called out without opening her eyes.

Morganna didn’t answer. No one answered but the wind and a horse’s enraged scream.

Chapter Five

“What in the name of all that is holy?” Drummond urged his mount back a few paces as a black cloud filled with lightning boiled a few feet above the sidhe hill. The rest of the sky turned as inky as the darkest night, even though it was midday, and only moments ago, the sun had shone brightly.

“We should not be here,” Murdoch said, struggling to control his terrified mount.

“No.” Drummond kept his gaze locked on the cloud alive with lightning. “Here is exactly where we are meant to be.” He felt it in his gut more surely than he had ever felt anything before. She was coming, Mockingbird was coming, and he’d sworn to the voice and the powers above that he never ran from anything.

His horse reared and pawed at the air, slicing it with its hooves. The howling winds swallowed the animal’s frightened screams. Drummond held on. If he lost his seat, the beast would surely bolt, and he’d be walking his arse across the Highlands. The mossy hillside became a sea of lush grasses that stretched taller before his very eyes.

“We must leave,” Murdoch shouted over the storm.

Drummond ignored him. No, Mockingbird needed him. He would remain until she arrived. He’d promised to protect her. It didn’t matter that he had no idea to whom he’d made that promise; all he knew was that he fully intended to keep his word. Mockingbird would be safe. He needed to meet this woman more than he had ever needed anything in a very long while.

Blinding streaks of lightning shot out of the cloud and splintered the blackness of the heavens. Thunder shook the earth, then an unholy silence fell across the land, and the wind disappeared. The horses immediately calmed as if ordered to do so by a higher power. Something moved inside the clumps of grasses at the hill’s summit.

Drummond squinted at the form in the darkness, trying to make it out. Then the faintest moan came from those shadows, and his heart leapt. Mockingbird. He leapt from the saddle and charged up the hillside.

“Drummond!” Murdoch shouted. “No! ’Tis surely a trap.”

He ignored him. It was her. Curled in the grass like a wee fawn cowering from the storm. He knelt close, but didn’t touch her. Not yet. He didn’t wish to frighten her.

“Mockingbird?” he whispered, leaning over her.

Her eyes were closed. She shuddered, then hugged herself into a tighter ball of helplessness that demanded he scoop her up and hold her close.

“I have ye, lass. Dinna fash yerself. All will be well.”

She groaned, then shivered again as though it were already the dead of winter, and she was nigh on freezing.

He yanked his woolen brat from around his shoulders and cloaked her in its folds. “I have ye,” he told her again as he rose with her in his arms and descended the hillside. “Murdoch—’tis her.”

The man pointed at the ever-brightening sky. “The storm brought her to ye. Look how it clears now that she’s here.”

Drummond spared the horizon a glance, then returned his focus to the maiden that the gods or the Fae or whoever had seen fit to give him. “Hold her whilst I get into the saddle, then hand her up to me, ye ken?”

“Aye.” Murdoch took her from him.

An unreasonable surge of jealousy burned through Drummond like a fiery brand. “Dinna hold her so close.”

Murdoch backed up a step, arching both brows in surprise before shifting to hold her at arm’s length. As soon as Drummond settled in the saddle, he handed her up to him, then offered a smug bow. “There ye are, m’lord.”

Murdoch only called him m’lord when he was vexed, and Drummond supposed he shouldn’t have snarled at the man. It wasn’t as though he’d tried to maul the lovely maiden. But he couldn’t help it. Jealousy had taken him over. “Dinna be an arse, Murdoch—and forgive me. I dinna ken what came over me.”

With a snort, Murdoch went to his mount, launched himself into the saddle, and urged the beast to head homeward.

Drummond tightened his cloak around his precious passenger, lashing her snugly against his body. Her soft warmth seeped into him. Her scent—the sweetness of honey, of a rain-swept glen filled with heather—wrapped delicate tendrils around him. It pulled him in and possessed him.