Highlander's Return: The Sinclair Brothers Trilogy, Bonus Novella (Book 2.5)

Burke glanced one last time over his shoulder at his
cousin Garrick and the English healer lass Jossalyn. Though he would miss their
company, he also felt relieved to be out of their hair. It was obvious the two
were in love—and that they snuck off to explore that love whenever they thought
Burke wasn’t paying attention.

Of course, he knew what they were up to, and what
grew between them. He had experienced it himself. Although it was years ago, he
would never forget the feeling of true and deep love blossoming for the first
time.

You two had better be married the next
time I see you
. Burke’s words to Garrick floated back
into his mind as he nudged Laoch, his bay stallion, into a trot. He hoped his
advice to his cousin sank in—Garrick could be stubborn and resistant to being
told what to do, but it was plain as day that he and Jossalyn were meant to be
together. She was the sister of Raef Warren, the Sinclair clan’s greatest
enemy, but that couldn’t stop their love.

As expected, Garrick had bristled slightly at
Burke’s words.
You’re not her father, Burke…

Take the word of a man who regrets not
being able to follow his own advice,
he had replied.

Aye, Burke knew more than Garrick about love—and
losing it.

Perhaps you can still find happiness…
Garrick
had eyed him closely as he spoke, and his voice held a note of sympathy. Perhaps
Burke had said too much. He didn’t want his cousin’s pity. He had resigned
himself years ago to the fact that he would never again experience the kind of
perfect passion and deep connection he had felt with—

Meredith.

Meredith
Sutherland
.

Burke used her clan name like a knife, twisting it
into his chest to remind himself yet again why he could never be with her.

Even though nearly ten years had passed, the pain
was still sharp. He leaned into it so that he would remember not to get hurt
like that again. He had been young and foolish to fall in love with a
Sutherland. Everyone in the Highlands knew that the Sinclairs didn’t get along
with their neighbors to the southwest.

And “didn’t get along” was an understatement. Their clans’
centuries-old blood feud still ran hot. If anything, Burke and Meredith’s brief
but intense encounter ten years ago had only made the simmering conflict heat
to a near-boil again. Luckily, no blood had been drawn for decades, but that wouldn’t
have been the case if Burke and Meredith’s plan to get married had worked.

He supposed he should feel grateful that they hadn’t
succeeded, that she had been married off to some distant cousin and clansman,
and that they had never done what both of their youth-fired bodies had longed
for.

But he didn’t feel grateful. Instead, the thought of
Meredith Sutherland and their forced separation sat like a stone in his
stomach.

Burke suppressed a sigh, despite the fact that he
now rode alone through the forest a few hours west of Inverness. Even when he
was completely alone, he always forced himself to maintain his composure when
it came to thoughts of Meredith. If he let go of his vise-like grip on his
self-control, even for just a moment, he wasn’t sure if he would be able to
regain it again.

He had forced himself to move on from Meredith,
forced himself to forget the rich, dark waves of hair that smelled like roses,
the deep brown eyes that swallowed him whole, the lush firmness of her body,
the sweet smile made mischievous by the sprinkling of girlish freckles over her
nose…

Hell, who was he fooling? The mere memory of her
stirred him more that the actual presence of other women he had encountered
over the years. Nay, he would never forget her, no matter how hard he tried. But,
he reminded himself for the thousandth time, he would never get to be with her
again either. There was the true source of his pain: she haunted him still, but
she might as well be dead to him, for he would never again know true happiness
with her.

As the deep but familiar ache settled into his
chest, he guided Laoch slightly westward. He had several long days of travel
ahead of him before he reached Roslin Castle on Sinclair lands. The journey
would only take a couple of days if he could travel in a straight line across
northeast Scotland, but Sutherland lands stood between him and his destination.

His head whipped around at the sound of a snapping
branch behind him. It was just the summer breeze, of course. Bloody hell, he
was already jumpy at the mere thought of crossing Sutherland lands.

It wasn’t wise for a man—a Sinclair, no less—to
travel alone across Sutherland holdings. But haste was of the essence. He
needed to reach Robert, his cousin and Laird of the Sinclairs, as quickly as
possible to tell him the news.

Longshanks was dead.

Edward I, King of England, Hammer of the Scots, was
dead.

Burke and Garrick had been sent by Laird Robert
Sinclair and Robert the Bruce, the self-crowned King of Scotland, to the
Borderlands to gather information on the English army’s movements. There were
ever-loudening rumors of a mounting attack on Scotland coming from the
Borderlands, and the more they could learn—covertly—the better.

The two of them had arrived at Dunbraes village
nearly a month ago, keeping a low profile by passing themselves off as two
traveling blacksmiths looking for work. The village, along with Dunbraes
Castle, was held by Lord Raef Warren, the English bastard who had brought war
and destruction to Sinclair lands in the battle at Roslin four years earlier.

Even though Warren had been away during their
week-long mission, they had overheard plenty about the increasing activity of
the English army in Dunbraes. But they never expected to hear the town crier
announcing not only Lord Warren’s return to Dunbraes, but also the news of
Longshanks’ death.

They had been forced to fight their way out of
Dunbraes and travel hard through the Scottish wilderness—with a new travel
companion as well. Jossalyn Williams, the shy but strong-willed English healer
lass at whom Garrick couldn’t stop staring, was actually Jossalyn Warren, Raef
Warren’s sister. Blessedly, she had been able to treat a wound in Burke’s leg
that might have otherwise killed him.

He unconsciously rubbed the now-closed wound on his
right thigh at the memory as he rode northward. The skin was still pink and
new, and he’d have a hell of a scar, but at least he was alive—thanks to
Jossalyn. Despite the fact that she was the sister of their enemy, Burke
couldn’t hold Garrick’s love of the lass against him—she was strong, smart, and
beautiful. Of course, she didn’t stir him the way that—

Nay, he wouldn’t think of it—of
her
—again. He
had a mission to complete. He had to stay focused.

Garrick and Jossalyn were headed toward Robert the
Bruce’s secret rebel headquarters outside Inverness. Once there, the two of
them could focus on aiding the rebellion side by side. And if Garrick heeded
Burke’s warning, they would see to getting married soon, too.

Burke, on the other hand, needed to report back to
his Laird and closest confidante, Robert Sinclair. As Robert’s right-hand man, Burke
was loyal to him to the death. Burke had bristled at first at being sent on
this mission to the Borderlands with Robert’s younger brother. His place was at
Robert’s side—especially since Robert’s new wife, Alwin, was with child. Robert
was frequently, and understandably, distracted these days.

Garrick hadn’t exactly been excited to travel to the
Borderlands with Burke either, but neither one of them could defy both their
Laird and their King. Garrick was taking care of half their mission by
informing the Bruce of all they had learned. The other half of the
mission—reporting back to Laird Robert Sinclair—fell to Burke.

He had to get back to Roslin to tell Robert that
Longshanks was dead, that Warren had pursued them into Scotland, and that the
English army was stirring in the Borderlands. His news could affect the entire
country. It could mean either the start or the end of the Scottish wars for
independence from England.

That thought brought him back to the gravity of the
situation he was in. Sutherlands be damned. Burke couldn’t waste two days
skirting their lands because of an ancient blood feud. The fate of Scotland
hung in the balance. He would just have to cross their holdings.

He would have to ride carefully, even more so than
the last week and half as he, Garrick, and Jossalyn had traveled north through
Scotland. He was alone now, with no one to watch his back. And if he didn’t
reach Robert and deliver his news as fast as possible, he would have
failed—failed his mission, his Laird, and his country.

He couldn’t let that happen.

“Come on,
Hero
,” he said, patting Laoch’s
neck. He guided the bay stallion to the northeast and spurred him on, straight
toward Sutherland lands.

Chapter 2

Chisolm Sutherland was dead.

Meredith had to remind herself of this every few
hours, for although it had been several weeks since her husband had passed away
in their bedchamber, she still slinked through Brora Tower as if it weren’t her
home.

In fact, Brora was more hers than it had ever been
Chisolm’s, and yet her husband had made her feel like a guest—nay, an
intruder—in her childhood home.

But Chisolm Sutherland was dead now, she reminded
herself yet again. She straightened her spine as she climbed from the top floor
of rooms to the roof of the tower house. She no longer had to be afraid of his
harshness, his cold dismissal, or his groping, demanding hands.

The warm, late-summer sun touched first her head and
then her shoulders and back as she climbed up the ladder and onto the flat parapet
that ringed the tower’s roof. The air was still and heavy with the warm scent
of the surrounding green hills. She could even catch a faint whiff of salt in
the air coming from the North Sea off to the east. She inhaled deeply, letting
the fresh air and sunshine seep into her and lift the shroud of despondency
that seemed to be ever-present of late.

Nay, not just of late. If she told herself the
truth, which she could now that she was a widow, the darkness had closed in on
her the day she was married, nearly ten years ago, to Chisolm.

It had been her eighteenth birthday. She had wept
bitterly throughout the whole day for the loss of Burke Sinclair, her first
love and the man she longed to marry. They had promised themselves to each
other, had sworn to find a way to keep their love alive, but her father, Murray
Sutherland, had forbidden them from ever seeing each other. He even threatened
all-out war with the Sinclairs if Burke ever came near her again.

Her father had arranged for what he considered a
more suitable match for Meredith—Chisolm Sutherland, a distant cousin on her
mother’s side and a fellow clansman. Her father didn’t seem to mind that
Chisolm was older than her by nearly two score. It was best for the clan, he
had said to her sternly on her wedding day.

After all, Meredith and her brother Ansel were the
immediate cousins to the only legitimate male heir in line for the Sutherland
Lairdship. That meant that if anything happened to Kenneth Sutherland, the only
son of the current Laird, Ansel would be next in line to take over. Meredith
had to do her duty by shoring up clan ties and strengthening the connections
between their family and the rest of the clan, her father had explained.

After her father had thoroughly chastised her for
her selfishness and girlish sorrow, Meredith was quickly cinched into a fine
gown, her tears scrubbed away by a hurried hand. Then she was pushed down the
stairs of Brora Tower to be presented to her groom.

Chisolm had been annoyed with Meredith even before
he saw her for the first time. He stood in the main hall of the tower house,
pacing in front of the great hearth, his mostly gray hair combed back from his
wrinkled features. When he noticed her approaching from the stairwell, his cold
eyes had slid over her, half in appraisal of his young bride, and half in
distain for her red-rimmed eyes and trembling lower lip.

The ceremony was over practically before it had
begun. After a few quick words in front of the priest, her body belonged to
Chisolm. He was eager to use it, too. They’d only sat through the first half-hour
of the muted celebration of their nuptials before Chisolm pulled her up to her
chamber on the top floor and led her to the bed.

Without a word, he’d pushed up her skirts and lifted
his kilt. Her appearance must have pleased him, she thought now with the
clarity of time, for he was harder and larger than he would ever be again in
the coming years. He had tried to push into her, but the dry friction and her
own innocence prevented it. She’d bit her tongue on a cry of pain, trying to
remain motionless so that the moment would be over quicker.

She remembered how he had cursed under his breath. Then
came the act that would begin and exemplify their marital relationship. He spat
into his hand and reached between her legs, his cold fingers swiping over her
sex. She jerked back uncontrollably at the contact, but his hips kept her legs
open. With one hard thrust, he was inside her.

Then she could no longer suppress the cry that rose
in her throat. The pain had torn through her, and she’d tried to pull away, but
he held her firm, thrusting a few more times before groaning and collapsing
onto her. She’d held her breath, letting the tears slide silently down into her
hair and the bed’s coverlet.

After a few minutes, Chisolm said something vaguely
complementary, then stood, righting his kilt, and had returned to the
celebration below.

Meredith had pulled her skirts down and curled into
a ball on her bed, muffling the pained sobs with her pillow. Thus began ten
years of marriage.

She inhaled the fresh summer air again, trying to
chase away the dark memories. At least it had gotten somewhat more tolerable as
the years stretched on. At first, Chisolm was insistent, urgent even, like that
first time. He would corner her in the stairwell or roll on top of her in the
middle of the night, not waiting for her body to adjust to his touch, but simply
thrusting into her.

But after the first few years, when it became
apparent that he could not get his heir on her, he grew more sullen and
distant. She hated his silence and his cold dismissal of her, but she clung to
the fact that he no longer touched her.

There was a brief stretch in their marriage when
Chisolm had yelled at her, berated her, and even accused her of some sort of
wrongdoing for not getting pregnant, but that passed soon enough. She was well
aware that he had seduced several of their household staff, spending more
energy wooing and bedding them that he ever had on her. Even still, none of the
maids ever became pregnant either. No one spoke of it openly, but all of Brora
Tower knew that Chisolm would not have an heir.

And now Chisolm Sutherland was dead. She had done
her duty, both to her family and to her late husband. She had sat by his
bedside during the illness that would eventually take his life, silently
holding vigil despite the fact that he all but ignored her. His soul was in
God’s hands now, and she was free of him.

Her chest squeezed painfully at the thought, even as
her pulse ticked up in nervous anticipation. What did it mean to be free of
Chisolm? Though she had never loved him, and even hated him at times for his
treatment, a life without his cold, demanding presence suddenly seemed like
uncharted territory. Who was she, if not the wife of Chisolm Sutherland?

Was she simply Murray Sutherland’s daughter? Her
father had died not long after the wedding. Though he had never said it, his
eyes carried the guilt of the ill-formed union in his last few weeks of life. Her
father had probably assumed that she would quickly forget her puppy-love for
Burke. Or perhaps he didn’t fully grasp Chisolm’s character until he was living
under the same roof with the man. Either way, it was too late. The match had
been made, and Meredith had been forced to live with the consequences.

Perhaps she was just Ansel Sutherland’s sister. Her
brother had already begun to be groomed for the Lairdship before their father
had died, but the training picked up even more afterward. Not long after their
father’s passing, Ansel had been called to Dunrobin, the Sutherland clan castle
a few dozen miles from Brora Tower for further preparations alongside Kenneth
Sutherland.

She only saw him a few times a year despite the
tower house’s proximity to Dunrobin. Ansel was busy, though. He helped the clan
and its lands run smoothly by aiding first their uncle and then their cousin
Kenneth in any way he could. And with the increased activity by the English
army in Scotland, along with Robert the Bruce’s rebellion, it seemed like Ansel
was constantly traveling to either battles or negotiations.

A chirp overhead brought Meredith’s head snapping
up. She caught sight of a flash of brown and red as a little bird darted above
her. It must be a male linnet, she thought as her eyes followed the swoops and
darts of the bird. He had on his summer plumage, which was mostly brown but
with red at the head and chest.

The little bird trilled again, and Meredith heard a
response from somewhere off to the west. The linnet swooped easily toward the
sound, and was soon lost to her sight. She couldn’t help but smile at the
bird’s easy movement. It stirred a long-forgotten memory in her, almost like a
hazy dream.

She used to love animals. She would tromp out to the
woods a few miles away from Brora Tower and watch birds or squirrels for hours
at a time. Once, she had slipped into her father’s study and used some of his
expensive parchment to sketch dozens of animals from memory. She had received a
severe swatting for doing so, but it hadn’t dampened her appetite to study
animals.

Burke Sinclair’s face suddenly swam forth from the depths
of her memory. She was so startled at the unbidden image of the handsome young
man from her past that she gasped out loud. What had called the image of his
face from the recesses of her mind?

The fox. She smiled at the memory of herself as a
girl—nay, a young woman—chasing after a beautiful red fox on a cold winter’s
evening. That was the night she first met Burke.

The memory was bittersweet. Over the years, she had
become skilled at pushing away thoughts of Burke. At first, she had clung to
the image of his face, his whispered words and soft kisses. But as time passed,
she realized that although thoughts of him warmed her inside, they only made
her real life seem colder, highlighting her present pain and unhappiness.

Now, though, she leaned into the memories. She let
them wash over her like the sunlight that warmed her face as she stood on the
roof of the tower.

Burke’s sandy hair, which he kept having to push
back from his face whenever he leaned toward her.

His blue eyes, which were somehow darker and deeper
than the North Sea, yet which danced when he smiled.

His firm body pressed against hers.

A slight breeze from the east caressed her heated
skin and ruffled her hair and dress. Even the simple act of allowing herself to
remember made her feel more alive than she had in years. Perhaps this was who
she truly was—not a wife or a daughter or a sister, but a woman, feeling the
sunshine on her hair and the wind on her skin, watching the birds flit through
the perfect summer sky and thinking of love.

It was a start, anyway. Chisolm Sutherland was dead.
And Meredith Sutherland was coming back to life.

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