Chapter 11

Chapter

Eleven

T hey parted before others missed them, separating after many more feverish kisses and sweet words of longing. “I cannae stand the thought o’ ye going back to Clyde’s hoose, me darlin’ lass,” Bruce growled in her ear, running his fingers through her long, dark locks. “When can I see ye again?”

“I must go and smooth over yon big bairn’s injured feelings before he comes looking for me, ye braw duin ,” moving her lips over his eyelids, Esme kissed her lover’s face. “I dinnae like the idea any more than ye do, but it is the path we have to tread.”

But he could not stand to let her go. “When? Dinnae make me wait and worry, sweetheart.”

Giving him her old mischievous smile, Esme broke away from him and walked to the door. “Ye have yer own worries to work oot, Bruce. Dinnae ye fash aboot mine.”

He acknowledged the wisdom of this with a bow and watched her walk back to the main village. One last naughty glance over her shoulder and a bewitching sway of her hips, and she was gone. Bruce slumped back onto the bed, eying the covers with suspicion as if they had plans to tell what they had witnessed.

It felt so good to have shared that part of his life with her; the cursed life he had led alone for so many years. But Bruce was anxious for Esme to feel the same way about sharing her story with him. From the way she told it, Bruce suspected that Esme would have no trouble dispatching him along with all the rest.

He admired her fighting spirit, but he had enough experience with women to know that the precarious triangle with Anna, Esme, and Mackenzie would not last for much longer. Always a man of action, Bruce headed to the great hall.

As a warrior, the Highlander never allowed his emotions to get in the way of killing evildoers. But he was canny enough to realize that ten years of constant domination and overlordship was enough for those on the mainland to recognize the Fletcher clan as the island rulers. This was not a simple case of bringing the Mackenzies back into power—for the sad truth of the matter was that there were no male Mackenzies left to rule.

First things first, he must break up with Mackenzie, the laird’s daughter. Their lukewarm domestic arrangement must come to an end. He owed her that much after three years of steady, functional intercourse. It bothered Bruce that he had taken the easy route when it came to getting the Fletchers to accept him. Fighting for them and taking the laird’s daughter as a bedfellow might have seemed like a good way to pass the time while he searched for Esme, but it had come back to bite him hard.

Tapping a page on the shoulder, Bruce asked the boy to run up to the dais and ask the laird for an audience. After informing the laird that it was time for him to return to the mainland he was no longer granted access to the inner circle without an invitation first.

The page beckoned Bruce forward. The buzz of conversation died down as the Highlander approached the dais.

“My daughter warned me that you would be back with another petition before the moon had grown fuller, Highlander, and here you are.”

Laird McFletcher sprawled in his chair, staring at Bruce with an unmoving face. Neither man moved for a long while as the battle of wills wrestled to see who would break first.

“Well? Are you not going to say anything? You ask for an audience and yet here I am doing all the talking.”

Finally, Bruce spoke. “I ask that ye release me from fealty to yer Lairdship. It is time for me to return to the mainland. What say ye?”

Laird McFletcher darted a look over at his son, Clyde, before answering. “It saddens me to lose you from my side, Highlander. It keeps the dogs at bay knowing that Bruce Sterling—one of the Immortal Brethren of old—fights for the Fletchers.”

“I have been a loyal warrior for three years, Laird. I owe ye nae blood oath or promise. My time here is done. I must move on.”

Bruce did not move from where he stood in front of the dais, but he was aware of movement at the back of the hall. Clyde was holding his wife’s arm, but Anna was determined to speak. The Highlander stepped aside so that Anna could approach the high chair on the dais.

“Father in the eyes of the law, hear me. Let the Bear Warrior depart and take his woman with him. We don’t need them to keep this island safe. The local folk are in thrall and our enemies over the sea are cowed. Let them leave.”

“Control your woman, Clyde,” Laird Fletcher snapped, “and tell her not to interfere in the affairs of men.” He turned back to Bruce. “I was under the impression that you would stay on the island for the love of my daughter, Highlander. How have things changed?”

Biting the inside of his cheeks to hold back his rage, Bruce remained calm in the face of this inquisition. “Three years is a long time for me to bond meself to anyone, Laird, be they a woman or an overlaird. And yet I would prefer to leave with yer blessing.” All the time, he was focused on taking Esme with him, hopefully with the laird’s permission.

“This is true,” Laird McFletcher said, “It has been well documented on the mainland that the Bear Warrior appears for one battle and then recedes into the mists from whence he came. That is why I am so shocked that you want to leave because I believed it was love that kept you here.”

It was a strange sight, watching the two men have such an open battle of wills; the Highlander, hulking tall with shoulders broad enough to hold a yearling calf, his familiar black wool plaid pleated around his taut torso and his broadsword sheathed on his back, and the Norseman chieftain with his new gold crown encircling his head, made from the islanders’ melted sovereigns and jewelry.

The hall seemed to hold its breath as everyone waited to hear what Bruce had to say. Throwing aside the plaid to expose his casually unlaced shirt, the Highlander hooked his thumbs into his belt and relaxed. He seemed proud to be explaining his new circumstances as he flexed his shoulders around and cleared his throat.

“Love did keep me here on the island. Ye are right. But I had to be certain that is what it was, ye ken. That’s why I hung around for so long because I had to be sure. I’ve never felt any o’ the softer emotions before. That side o’ life has been hidden from me up until noo.”

A murmur of shocked voices was heard in the hall. “You’ve gone soft, Bear Warrior!” One of the soldiers seated at the table raised his mug of ale to toast Bruce in a mocking way. “Ye have tied yerself to the laird’s daughter’s apron strings!”

Gales of laughter and high-pitched titters followed this drunken teasing. Bruce was unmoved, acting like he had not even heard the comment.

“It takes a real man to admit to the world that he loves another better than himself.” He addressed his comment to the laird and that was all Bruce had to say on the matter.

The laird held up his hand for silence. “Are you asking for my permission to take Mackenzie away with you? Must I lose my best warrior and my daughter in one fell swoop?”

When Bruce broke the silence this time, it was more shocking than anyone could ever believe. “Nay, Laird. Ye can keep her.”

If the old woman embroidering in the corner had dropped her needle, it would have been possible to hear it fall to the ground. The great hall seemed to be holding its breath to hear what else Bruce had to say.

“Because it is nae Mackenzie whom I love.”

The hall erupted into raucous speculation and shock. This time, the laird had to stand up and wave his arms about to gain their attention and make everyone settle down. “Silence! I must hear what else the Highlander has to say.” The laird bellowed at the top of his voice. By and by, the hall occupants grew quiet. They wanted to know who Bruce had fallen so madly in love with that he was willing to stand in front of all the cliffside villagers and declare himself a lost cause.

The laird settled back on his chair, glowering at the man in front of him. As much as the former brigand admired warriors who were brave enough to speak their minds in front of him, he hated the fact that there was no way he could convince Bruce to stay or stop him from leaving. It made him feel powerless, and the laird did not like it at all.

“Speak. What maiden has caught your fancy in our great hall, Bruce? I will have her warming your bed before the day is much older if it will make you stay with us a little longer.”

But Bruce was able to see that this was an empty promise. He had no desire to turn Esme into a bargaining tool. “Her name is nae important, Laird. What is important is that I have yer permission to leave.”

Clyde rose to his feet after disentangling his wife’s hand off his arm. “I know the woman who has caught the Highlander’s eye, Father. And she belongs to me.”

The laird had not risen to his position of leadership without being able to read a room very shrewdly. The last thing he wanted was for a fight to go down in front of the dais in the great hall. If news of that got out to the mainland, all the nobles would be laughing at him for his loss of control over his men.

The laird held up his hand. “This is a conversation you should be having with my daughter first, don’t you agree, Highlander?’

Breathing in deeply to control his temper, Bruce bowed his head and stepped back. “Aye, ye’re right, Laird. I must sever me connection with yer daughter before anything else. Where might I find her?”

“That is a conversation I wish to be a part of, Bruce.” The laird clapped his hands together and one of the pages stepped forward to offer him a goblet of mead. The Norse folk had never lost their taste for different drinks and foods and nowhere was this more evident in how they rejected whisky and barley ales, choosing instead to drink honey mead. “Let us all meet later this evening, in the front room in the house you share with Mackenzie. Perhaps you can offer my daughter some kind of wergild in exchange for the three years you took from her.”

Offering a wergild was an ancient tradition that was already starting to fall out of practice on the mainland. When the word was translated, it meant ‘human payment’. It was used to settle disputes and end blood feuds by paying the injured party, or in the case of wrongful death, settling money on the family. And even though the laird had offered his daughter as a bedfellow for the Highlander willingly and Mackenzie had other lovers during her time with Bruce, she was seen as the one who had been wronged.

All Bruce could do was bow his head and step away from the dais. He was seething with regret, close to punching the walls as he thought of his shortsighted stupidity. He had accepted his old arrangement with Mackenzie without any forethought for the future.

Slowly, with a lagging step, he made his way back to the house where he had slept with Mackenzie for three years whenever his duties kept him on the island. The closer Bruce got to the grace and favor house he shared with the laird’s daughter, the more he realized how lazy he was in the past to accept the arrangement. How badly behaved he had been to lie with a woman so casually.

The pathetic excuse he wanted to use was the same he had heard coming from other men for the last two hundred years; Falling in love with Esme has opened me eyes to the undeniable fact that what we had was a hollow shell o’ a relationship, and noo I must go.

But something did not sit right with Bruce admitting that to himself. There was something so calculated and manipulative about the way the McFletchers had pushed him into this corner of domesticity. He remembered the entitled way Mackenzie had raked her eyes up and down his shirtless torso as she brought her horse to a whinnying halt on the beach the first time they met. She had licked her lips with relish as if he was some delicious morsel she wanted to eat.

She wanted him in the same way a man at a banquet considers another plate of meat—not because they are hungry, but because they are greedy.

Suddenly, Bruce did not feel so wretched anymore. Esme and he belonged together. Squaring his shoulders, he went inside.

The fire was ashes in the cold hearth and the shutters were bolted. The wind sighed through the rafters, tugging the tapestries away from the walls and sending the hanging cobwebs blowing.

He saw her sitting in the armchair in front of the fire. Mackenzie had her knees pulled up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them. Her brows were pulled together in a frown. Bruce was surprised to see her there—he supposed she would be with the rest of the women finishing what was left over from dinner and planning the food for the following day.

Moving to stand behind her chair, Bruce placed his hand on her shoulder. “It’s time for me to go, Mackenzie. Remember what I said to ye the first time I took ye to me bed? Ye are nae the one I look for, so let’s go into this with both eyes open.” Still, Mackenzie did not respond. “We took pleasure from one another for a brief while, Mackenzie,” Bruce continued, “but I am a Highlander through and through, so I was bound to choose a wife o’ me own kind.”

That got a response from her. Rising slowly from the chair, Mackenzie moved closer. “So, you choose that mewling she-dog of a slave over me? I should have you chained in the Luna hut for the mad -that you are.”

The Luna hut was a small stone shack on a remote part of the island where men were allowed to lock their wives if they considered them to be acting out of line.

Bruce scoffed. “Good luck with that. There is no warrior on the island strong enough to take me on.”

Mackenzie seemed to collapse in on herself. Weeping, she cast herself into his arms. “Don’t leave me, Bear! I cannot stand the mortification of being the one you left behind.”

He hugged her, trying to soothe away her humiliation. And so it was that Bruce did not notice Mackenzie remove the dagger from her belt and plunge it under his ribcage, aiming for the heart.