Lord of the Highlands (34 page)

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Authors: Veronica Wolff

BOOK: Lord of the Highlands
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She stumbled forward, looking for landmarks to place herself. Fresh tears stung.
Will.
They’d stood together just here. How many minutes ago, how many centuries?
Had he died here? Her throat closed, her grief a constant ache lodged just there.
Phone. I need a phone
, she thought, as she began to jog. Hiking her long skirts high, she jogged away from the maze, welcoming the stitch in her side and the burn in her chest.
She galloped down a hill she remembered climbing with Will, and it pushed her harder. Her leather slippers were soaked through, and they made a dull slapping as she raced across a damp, green glen, desperate now to hear Livia’s voice.
Felicity didn’t know how far or how long she’d been going when signs of life began to pierce her consciousness. A distant lowing. The bleat of a sheep.
A car horn.
She broke into a run.
A narrow street wound at the base of a valley, and she ran to it, hypnotized by the sight of small, boxy cars winding in the distance. A dingy, squared-off truck. Some white, compact Eurocar.
She slowed, mesmerized. The sight of modern amenities wasn’t the relief she’d thought it might be, and the notion rocked her.
She just wanted Will.
She scrubbed her arm along her face, wiping the damp from her cheeks and eyes, and made her way onto the road. Felicity stood in the middle, ready to flag down a car. Someone might hit her and, at that moment, she didn’t really care.
It was a blue minivan that stopped. A startling number of people stared at her from inside. Car exhaust filled her lungs, and it was a smell both familiar and yet so jarringly foreign and wrong.
Idling, the driver rolled down his window. “Are you okay?”
A rear window rolled down. “Do you need help?”
“There’s room,” came from somewhere in the car. “She can fit.”
“Did you have an accident?” the driver asked.
“She looks sick or something,” a woman’s voice said.
“Yeah, like from one of those zombie movies.” Laughter. “You’re not going to eat us, are you?”
She was pummeled by questions, all of them surreal and meaningless after what she’d just been through. It took a moment to register that they spoke with American accents. The sound was so recognizable on such a deep-seated level, Felicity didn’t immediately recognize the anomaly.
They grew quiet, watching her. A window rolled back up.
They must think I’m crazy.
She didn’t want them to drive away, and so she ventured a weak smile.
The driver was quick to smile in return, and tried one more time to connect. “Did you just come from some sort of Renaissance Faire or something?”
She struggled to make meaning without context. A woman in the backseat was eyeing Felicity’s dress, and it finally clicked.
The period clothing.
“Yes.” She took a deep breath. “I did. But . . . but my car broke down and I need a phone.”
“There’s a phone down the road a ways,” the driver said.
A door opened to the backseat. “Hop in,” a woman told her.
And Felicity got in the car, every moment, every mile taking her further from her Viking.
Chapter 35
Will had arrived well past midnight. And though he lay, weary and warm, in the bed of his childhood, he found no comfort there.
He thought about Felicity. Always it was Felicity. Falling asleep at night, upon waking, in his dreams. She was ever in his thoughts.
Dawn crept through cracks in the thick draperies. He needed to rise. He must tell his parents of the death of their son.
But the thought of rolling from his bed, placing his feet on the floor, and hauling the weight of his body onto sore legs overwhelmed him.
He reached down, rubbing life into his knee. Winter’s chill reached his bones with an acute ache, his joints like shards of broken glass that barely fit together.
Felicity would have rubbed his legs. She’d have stolen thoughts of pain from his mind.
Felicity.
He hoped desperately she’d survived the journey. That she’d been able to find her way home and was safely reunited with her aunt. But he couldn’t think on that. He needed to push such thoughts from his mind, save them for the wee, cold hours of the night.
He had a job to do. He’d tell his parents about their eldest son, and then tell them their youngest traveled off in duty to his king, perhaps never to return alive.
Despondent, Will stood. The stone floor was bitter cold, and pain crackled up his calves like the sharp fracturing of ice on a thawing loch. He embraced the sensation, willed it to steal the conscious thought from his mind, if only for a moment.
He unfurled his plaid, stabbed by the inevitable memories of Felicity. Of her playful and curious ways.
As he dressed, he pictured her, draping the heavy swath of wool over herself. How many times had her pale, tender hands pushed this plaid from his body? Not enough.
He grabbed his sporran. He remembered her teasing. Was there anything in his life untouched by her?
Buckling it on, he thought of the Fool card, still tucked away. He now understood the message sent to him from the universe. He was that fool.
Will cursed himself. He needed to seek out his father before he grew any more piteous and self-abasing.
He found the man in his favorite spot in the garden, settled in a chair beneath a great, towering birch. “Och,” Will muttered, seeing that nobody had thought to cover the man’s legs despite the merciless chill in the air. “Do all here think only of themselves?”
He retrieved a blanket from a garden bench. It had been left out, forgotten, and Will shook the damp and leaves from it. “Damp wool’s better than none at all, eh, Da?” he said, draping it over his father’s legs.
The old man looked up, greeting his son with a wavering smile. His father seemed stronger somehow, his eyes clearer, his expression more sure.
“You look fine,” Will said. He smiled back at his father, thinking it was his first since he’d said good-bye to Felicity.
His father’s eyes darted around, brow furrowing.
“Looking for Felicity, are you?” Will didn’t wait for a response. He knew how she’d touched his father, and so broke the first of much news. “Aye, she’s left me. It was too dangerous for her here.”
Will faltered. He wandered to the old birch and began to pick idly at the silvery bark. “Did she tell you everything? About where she was from?”
He turned to face his father, who watched intently. The lines at his brow and the confusion in his eyes gave Will the answer.
“Aye,” Will said. “She’d not have.” Sighing, he brushed the dirt from his hands. “Felicity was from very far away, Da. I’ll not be seeing her again.”
His father opened his mouth as if to speak, but Will couldn’t bear a moment more on the topic, and so said abruptly, “I’ve news. Of Jamie.”
“Why do you speak to your father?” His mother’s voice was shrill in counterpoint to the tranquility of the garden.
“Why would I not speak to my father?” Will countered. He knew full well his mother’s meaning, but still, he’d make the shrew speak the words.
She merely glowered.
“My father is as aware as you or I.”
“No indeed,” she snapped pertly. “Your father is dead to us.” She pointed to her husband. “That man is not—”
“
Ist
,” his father hissed. It was a word commanding silence, and yet it came thick on his tongue, easily mistaken for the sibilance of a senile man.
“He speaks,” Rollo told her.
“He spits. He spits and sputters like a dotard, and it disgusts me.”
“Aye, you prefer your men younger, don’t you, Mother?”
“Why are you even here?” Her skirts crinkled as she whirled on him. “Trouble follows you. You’re cursed.”
“I’m here to deliver word of your favorite son.”
Startled, she looked at him blankly. His mother had made her preference clear when he’d been but a child. Jamie’s death would crush her.
His heart had closed to his mother years ago, and yet he’d not relish delivering the news.
“Jamie is dead.”
“You killed him,” she shrieked.
“No,” Will said simply. “Jamie killed himself.”
“My son would do no such thing.”
“It’s your son’s choices that killed him.”
His mother stalked to him. Her face was an icy mask, her obsidian eyes tightened into slits. She’d been a rare beauty in her day. Tall and dark, and the odd thought struck him how beautiful she’d remained through the years.
Beautiful and elegant, a queen carved of ice. And he wanted naught to do with her.
“Get out,” she hissed, pointing a long, thin finger accusingly at him. “It’s the inheritance, isn’t it? You just want to be the eldest. You never could accept Jamie’s precedence. He was always the stronger boy, he outranked you, out
manned
you.”
“Til the very end, my brother acted less than a man,” Will said, his tone dangerously quiet.
“He married, at least.” The disgust that flickered in her eyes startled him. “Unlike you. So stubbornly aberrant you were. And when you finally bring a woman home, it’s some . . . some deviant, with her strange—”
“Ennn . . . nough.”
Father.
Lady Rollo’s head spun to gape at her husband, and his eyes snared her as if she were a pinned butterfly.
There was a curious absence of emotion on his father’s face. His eyes bore the blank look of a disciplining parent grown weary of an unruly child. “I know . . .” He gathered himself, swallowed, then continued, “What . . . goes . . . on.”
“No,” she gasped. “It can’t be.”
Will walked to put a hand on his father’s shoulder. “I imagine there will be changes, Mother.”
His mother screamed, as if she’d seen a ghost. She turned and ran, shrieking for her maid.
“I imagine she’ll have a bag packed and in the carriage before we’re even back inside.” Will watched his mother sweep up the stairs, disappearing into the shadows of Duncrub. The sight made him sad. Such waste, all around.
He felt his father’s eyes on him. “She’ll . . . not want.”
“Aye, I imagine she’ll be away to my aunt’s.”
His father closed his eyes in agreement.
“And if I know you, she’ll have an allowance and will have her fill of gowns and callers as before.”
The older man gave a slight shrug.
It stung to see his father cuckolded so. “How can you—”
“No,” his father interrupted. “Pity not. Her money,” he said, and Will knew he referred to the fortune that his mother had brought to their union. “My choice.”
The older man shut his eyes for a moment, suddenly looking so tired. Just when Will thought he’d drifted off, his father spoke again, his message clear. “The lass. Go to her.”
Even though he knew it impossible, the thought thrilled him. Will let the prospect shiver along his spine before he crushed it from his mind. “I cannot. It’s impossible. And besides, to go to Felicity would mean good-bye forever.”
“Go.” The man’s voice was as clear and steady as it had been when Will was a child.
“There is something I must do,” he explained. “For the King. It’s . . . dangerous business.”
His father gave an uneven nod. “Send word. After.” He’d worry for his son, but as he’d done Will’s entire life, he’d delude himself about the true nature of the situation. Will knew he might not return, but his father would never entertain such a notion. “Then, Felicity,” the man added. He stumbled on her name, a jumble of sounds on his tongue.
Will caught the dart of his father’s eyes across the garden. And the unsettling truth of things came into focus.
“You speak well, Da. You’ve been practicing. With her, I’ll wager,” Will said, nodding to a woman watching and waiting patiently at the edge of the lawn. She’d been his father’s maid for as long as he could remember.
Will’s eyes narrowed. Was there no honor to be had? Who had strayed first, his father or his mother? He looked away from the woman, dispelling what was a distasteful thought. He’d rather not sully his mind contemplating the deceits of bored nobility. Even if they were his own parents.
He’d remember his father as the man he’d been to him. Thoughtful, loving. “This is good-bye then,” Will said.
“A parent’s lot.” The older man inhaled sharply. Grief etched the corners of his eyes. “To part.”
“I thank you, Father.”
“Be safe,” he said with a nod. “And go to her.”
Chapter 36
It was a weird experience, driving with Americans. Recognizing her accent, they peppered her with questions, which she answered in as few words as possible.
It was nice to feel recognized, to be immersed once more in such benign familiarity, and she realized she’d missed modern people,
her
people.
And yet, she also hadn’t. Not really. Her mind kept going to Will. Her place, with Will.
It was a short drive to the tourist shop. Tour buses skewed at odd angles along the edges of a sprawling, unevenly paved parking lot. Scotland’s Pride Woolen Mill was huge, and Felicity fought off a vague sense of alarm at the sight.
Tourists milled in front of the store, drinking coffee in white paper cups and pulling disposable treasures from their bags to show their friends.
Felicity stared in awed silence, and then sensed the quiet hum of expectation in the car. She was supposed to get out.
“Just there,” the driver urged her, pointing to a bright red phone booth on the far edge of the lot.
“Are you sure you’re going to be okay?” the woman next to her asked.
Felicity managed a nod and scooted out the door. She made herself place one foot in front of the other.
Livvie. Livvie. Livvie.
Strangely, her legs were juiced with adrenaline, and by the time she reached the booth, they were weak and quivery. She grabbed the receiver, fingers poised over the dial. Her hands were shaking, and it took her a moment to remember what to do.

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