To Catch a Highlander: A Highland Erotic Romance (7 page)

“Of course I do,” I admitted.

A matter of minutes later, Honey was tethered alongside Ewan’s horse and we found ourselves in a room much like the night before. “Home again,” I noted sardonically, setting my pack down beside the bed.

“I admire your sense of humour, Brianna,” he said. “Quite frankly, you’re going to need it in the coming months.”

“Months?!” I forced a smile. “You think it shall take me that long to escape from Gordan?”

“No,” he admitted. “But you shall need at least that long to find somewhere to hide and create a new life for yourself. I have no doubt at all that you can do it, B
rianna, but it will not happen quickly.”

For the first time since he had arrived that afternoon, I felt my true feelings for him return. “That’s lovely, Ewan. I mean, not that I should have to go through the ordeal I know is before me, but that you underst
and I shall do what I need to do, and that I will not be a slave to Gordan the rest of my days.”

“I do understand, and I admire you all the more for it,” he said.

“You admire me so much you’re going to deliver me into the nightmare, then,” I said, “even as you know I shan’t stand for it for long in any event.”

“I have no choice in the matter, Brianna, I have told you that again and again.” He approached me gingerly and I let him hold me. “If there were any other option at my disposal…”

“So you tell me again and again,” I said bitterly. “You know, of course, if I must run off and hide somewhere, there is no chance of our ever being together!”

“If it is meant to be, I shall find you.”

“I cannot deny you are most adept at finding me,” I admitted.

Ewan laughed
. “That’s my girl. Now then, supper time.” He took me by the hand, and I saw no point in resisting.

The eating house was even louder and more crowded than the one from the night before, no surprise given that we were in the city now. Ewan was well into hi
s second pint of ale, and I nearly finished with my first, before we had a modicum of privacy at our table. “Thought they’d never leave,” he said with a drunken flair of relief as he watched a pair of burly men finally standing up from the other end of the table. “It’s past time we had some space to ourselves.”

“What difference does privacy make when you won’t touch me?” I demanded.

“Not that again!” he said, waving for another round for us both. “My dear, you shall never know how very badly I want to fulfil that request of yours. But I have told you, it can never be.”

“Of course not,” I said. “You are far too afraid of
Gordan.”

“Brianna!”

“Oh, stop! It’s true and you know it. Lord Ewan Galbraith has nothing to fear from a contemptible pig like Gordan, at least not if half what you have insinuated about the man is true, yet you live in fear of…of I don’t even know what!”

“It is not
so simple as all that,” he said, pausing to greet the barmaid as she set two full mugs before us. “Would that it were.”

“What di
fference would it make, then, if you still had every intention of delivering me into the devil’s jaws and wouldn’t even give me one night of joy to remember?”

Ewan looked up at me from his drink, which he set gently back on the table, and nodded ever so sl
ightly.

“What is it, Ewan?”

“You are correct,” he said.

“Of course I am. Nothing makes you bend to
Gordan but your own silly fears.”

“Not about that. I mean, perhaps you are right about me as well. But I meant you are right about what you have been sayin
g all through this wretched journey. If I am going to inflict Gordan upon you, then you do indeed have a right to know the story of all that happened before you were born.”

I smiled in spite of myself. “Well, thank you!”

“Do not thank me until you have heard me out,” he warned. “You may well hate me once you know the truth.”

“I cannot imagine that,” I protested.

“Wait and see,” he said. “And finish your ale.”

Back in our room in a pleasantly drunken fog, we got a fire started and some water collected for a
bath. While we waited for the water to warm up, Ewan undressed me slowly, reverently, as if unwrapping a delicate treasure. I could certainly bide my time waiting for a lifetime of such treatment, if only he would agree to come away with me! But I saw no point in trying to reason with him about all that yet again, especially not when he had finally agreed to open up to me about his past. “This is lovely,” was all I had to say for the moment.

“You are lovely,” he said. “You are the one good thing to come ou
t of all the madness that ensued all those many years ago, and that makes it all the more difficult for me to tell you what you must by rights know.” He set my filthy dress by the privy screen and I curled up on the bed, enjoying the pleasant embarrassment of being nude in his clothed presence. “Whatever you may think of me when I have completed the story, Brianna, please recall how you loved me last night.”

“I have no doubt that I shall love you all the more for your candour,” I reassured him as I watched
him pour the hot water into the waiting barrel.

“I wish I could be so sure of that,” he said as he stirred the water with his arm. “Come, the water is lovely and I want you to be as comfortable as possible for this.”

I did as he directed, sliding into the warm water and feeling the frustration of being caught again ebb away just a bit as I indulged in his obvious admiration for me. “Now then, Ewan, your tale of woe, please!”

“It is indeed that,” he said, kneeling beside me. “Very well, then. Brianna, you
surely know that before I was Lord Galbraith, I was among your father’s men in the last great skirmish.”

“Your gallantry led to
your becoming a lord, did it not?” I asked, having heard the story many times.

“That is the story your father and
Gordan and I agreed upon,” Ewan said, “And it is the story anyone your age or younger believes to be true, I imagine. “But the truth is rather less noble than all that. You see, Brianna, Gordan was the big man among your father’s forces, his most trusted man – the sort you, Brianna, would have picked a fight with while disguised as a boy, as a matter of fact! Me, I was fresh from my father’s pastures, ambitious even then. I wanted more than anything to be like your father and Gordan, and I’m afraid they both knew it. ‘This Ewan Galbraith, he follows us around like a puppy, he does,’ was one way I once heard Gordan describe it when he did not know I could hear him. ‘But he’s got ambition, and Lord Douglas and I, we know just what to do with that!’ he said.

“My father cer
tainly does know what to do with people who have ambition,” I acknowledged bitterly.

“You don’t know how right you are,” Ewan said. “So the two of them used me to wonderful effect, always getting their way and always letting me think I’d get my chance nex
t time, but of course that never came to pass. I didn’t see it that way at the time, but I see it all too well now, and for the past twenty years and more! And then – I do apologize, Brianna, but the story must take a most lurid turn at this point, but you did say you wanted to know everything…”

“I do. Go on.”

“There was a woman. Isn’t there always in a story like this, though! A beautiful young red haired farm girl became a common sight in town when we were about, and Gordan and your father were most smitten in the most vulgar way. I know not what sort of language you may have heard from your father’s men, but it likely wasn’t nearly as bad as the way they used to discuss this lovely lass over their drink late in the evening! One night, for instance, they got to debating openly whether she had red hair, well, you know, not on her head, if you will…”

“I understand completely,” I told him, a ball of rage now taking root inside me as I suspected I knew who the red haired girl was.

“Yes, well, the two of them were quite drunk – as usual, as you’ll understand – and got into this very distasteful argument over this poor girl’s body, and at long last I had finally had enough of them. They were being absolutely disgusting, and I told them as much, and I got up and left. The last thing I heard was Gordon saying, ‘Well, guess we know what he thinks of beautiful ladies, don’t we?’ and they enjoyed a laugh at my expense.”

“I would have expected nothing less of a gentleman like you,” I said, my anger receding slightly in
the glow of admiration for Ewan.

“Thank you, Brianna. Now, there was something neither of them knew about
myself and the red haired lass, but a few days later they learned it. You see, she found me a pleasant gentleman as well, and later that week we were enjoying one another’s company on a warm evening in town. Walking arm in arm down the lane, both of us feeling most delighted with our company, and undoubtedly looking it as well, and who should happen upon us but your father and Gordan, out for an evening’s grog of course? Naturally the boys were jealous! Even naïve little me in those days, I could see as much at first glance. Neither of them said anything, but then they hardly needed to, did they?”

“Indeed,” I agreed.

From that day on, suddenly they went about kissing up to me. I knew why – or suspected it at least – but so badly did I want to be big and important like the two of them, I didn’t even care. Arrogant idiot, I was! But of course I realized that far too late for it to be of any use. For the next few weeks, always buttering me up and making me feel like one of the big boys for a change, and of course they just wanted to get near my lovely lass, but what did I care? Now, I don’t know just what they had planned for me, but it didn’t come to pass in the end, because one day I made a big mistake. I told them the girl and I were engaged.”

“Engaged!”
My suspicions grew further, as did my growing rage at my father, at Gordan and, in spite of myself, at Ewan for being so foolish in his youth.

“Engaged,
” he repeated. “And finally in with Lord Douglas and Gordan – I was the happiest man in all Scotland! Never a doubt of that. I suppose that is why I allowed your father to wheedle some information out of me as to where my love and I were planning to meet that evening. I let it slip that we liked her father’s barn for private conversation, but I did insist that was all we had ever done there. We were saving everything else for after the wedding; they just wanted a private place to talk. As God is my witness, Brianna, that is the truth! I never touched your…I mean my…”

“You mean my mother.”

He nodded. “Indeed. We were to be married, and I was committed to keeping her virtue intact until that wonderful day a few months hence. You can imagine how Gordan and your father reacted to that bit, by the way, but for all that, I think they believed me. In any event, once they knew where we were planning to meet, I later learned your father wanted to go there that night and play some silly prank on us, but Gordan said no, let’s wait a while on all that. Your father, to his credit, agreed. But then Gordan did go to the barn that night, alone, to wait for us. But your mother got there first.”

“Oh dear God, he raped her, didn’t he?”

“He tried. I arrived at the barn to hear what I thought was a couple of cats screeching at one another, only to find your mother screaming like a banshee and kicking at Gordan, writhing out of his grip and leading him around in circles, though he did manage to get her dress up and see she was a natural redhead all right! Which was a revelation to me, as well, since we’d been chaste. I was too late to preserve her modesty, but I had little trouble beating the snot out of Gordan, though he later convinced all your father’s men it was the other way around.”

“Why would they believe him?”

“Good question,” he said. “Perhaps they only let him believe they believed him. When a man brags about being a barely-frustrated rapist, who knows what else he might be capable of? Now, while we were fighting, apparently your father noticed Gordan’s absence among his men and put two and two together, and he also came to the barn while the struggle was ongoing. I don’t know just when your father arrived because I was too busy thrashing Gordan, but…well, there was a lantern that got kicked over in the fight, and it set some hay ablaze. I first noticed your father’s presence while the other three of us – your mother, Gordan and myself – were struggling to put the fire out, and he joined in as well, hollering some nonsense at Gordan about what he could have been thinking, as if your father didn’t know!”

“I take it you were not able to put the fire out,” I said.

“Naturally we were not. The four of us finally had to give up on our efforts, and we stumbled out of the barn just in time for half the village to see us all in a place where your father, Gordan and I had no business being. Your mother had yet to tell her family about me, so you can imagine what their friends thought of me in that moment. ‘Bloody court martial, naturally,’ was the last thing I heard Gordan say before we three were all rounded up.”

“I should hope so.”

“Yes, well, the story isn’t quite done, I’m afraid. Your mother told the constable everything, of course, and it looked like Gordan was going to gaol for a very long time, even he said that. Then he started yelling at anyone who would listen that your father and I were in it, too, and you know how poorly your father handles a scandal where his reputation is at stake. Gordan not only would have ruined your mother’s reputation, he’d have fouled the house of Douglas’ name for a generation or more. Brianna, he blackmailed your father into helping him. ‘Ain’t no one able to prove you weren’t there the whole time, you know!’, that’s what he said, and he made sure I heard it too. He said he’d tell everyone the truth – that your father wasn’t there until after the fire started – if your father would put up some money and a title to bribe me with.”