Page 73 of Highlander’s Forbidden Fruit

Aleck licked his dry lips. “Nonsense. Yer fine. We need to be on our way. Come, I’ll help ye up.”

“No. We don’t have time. I need you to take my last message to my wife. Tell her I loved her, and only her, that I’m sorry I couldn’t keep my promises.”

“Ye can tell it to Evanna yerself.”

“Not Evanna!” John strained himself to get up. “Malti.”

Aleck stared at the dying man. Who was Malti? Ye need to explain yerself.”

John swallowed. Aleck was livid but he helped John drink some water.

“I met Malti in India. She was only seventeen and widowed. They wanted her to burn on her husband’s funeral pyre. I couldn’t allow that. It’s savage! I rescued her. She was shunned by her family, her village, everyone. I’m all she had in the world.”

“So ye married her because ye pitied her?”

“No! I fell in love. Malti is everything I have ever wanted in a wife.”

“So, what business did ye have proposing to Evanna if yer already married?” Aleck thundered.

“My family do not accept Malti. They refuse to acknowledge our marriage or my children. Then there’s the money.”

“Money?”

“We’re broke!” John laughed. “The great Winchester family, Earls of Winchelsea, paupers in all but name. Evanna is the only daughter of a Scottish Laird. In marrying her, I stand to gain her wealth and her lands. That would be enough to replenish the Winchester coffers.”

“And so ye participated wholeheartedly in this villainy?”

“It was my duty! My father stated I owed it to my family. What was I to do?”

“Refuse!”

“Like you refused your father?”

“Ye keep my Da out of this!”

John sighed, all the animation draining out of him. “It doesn’t matter now. Nothing matters. All I ask of you is to give my apologies to Evanna, and my love to Malti and my children. And… if you can persuade Ashton to care for them. He need not provide lavish allowances, just enough for a decent living. They deserve at least that much.”

Aleck wanted to refuse. He would not take any part in this deception. John coughed and spat out blood. The man was clearly dying. With one last effort, John grasped at Aleck’s arm and held tight.

“Please,” he pleaded. “I can’t die in peace till you promise me.”

Swallowing his reluctance Aleck nodded. “I promise.”

Suddenly the lines of pain smoothed from John’s brow. He looked peaceful as he lay back in the snow, his lips macabre red in his pale face.

“Thank you,” he whispered. And then slowly the dwindling fire in his eyes ebbed and fizzled out.

Aleck closed John’s eyes. He couldn’t sit still. Pacing the clearing, he mulled over everything John had told him. So many conflicting emotions and thoughts raged in his head that he felt like running his head through a tree just to silence the voices in his head.

Splashing his face with cold water from the stream nearby helped clear his head a little. Aleck had never been a man of deep philosophical thinking—he was a man of action.

But what he was expected to do in this situation was beyond him. Part of him was glad that Evanna had been saved from a trap none of them had known about. But he was devastated that John had to be at the edge of death to reveal it.

He was also mad at Ashton for not telling Evanna anything about Malti and John’s children. Maybe John was right, maybe Aleck had judged Ashton wrong.

And then there was the guilt. He had failed to keep John safe. John had died on Aleck’s watch. How could he expect to keep anyone safe if he had failed in his first small skirmish?

What would the Laird say? What would John’s family say? He was answerable to so many for his actions, or lack thereof, which had led to the death of an English nobleman.