Tess and the Highlander (10 page)

She would not look up at him. Colin let his
frustration show in his voice. “There are hundreds of ships that
sail past here every year…more of them all the time. And there are
many men who are…well, not so honorable as I am. Tess, you cannot
even guess how low some of these men are, or how unspeakably they
might behave if they were to find you here alone.”

She turned her back to him.

Colin closed the distance between them and turned
her around. “Give up this stubbornness. I plead with you as a
friend to talk to me. To let me help you.”

“I cannot go back with you to your people.” Her dark
eyes were determined.

“And why not?”

“Because…I am not helpless. I can take care of
myself.”

He fought the urge to shake her. “And
you
will. But you don’t have to stay here to prove that. And no one
would think you are helpless just because you come back with
me.”

She shrugged off his touch and backed away. “It has
been so long,” she murmured. “I don’t even know how to live among
people anymore.”

“Garth and Charlotte were people. I’m people.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Then make me understand.”

She pressed her fingers to her temples and turned
her back to him again.

“I am
not
giving up, Tess.” He approached her
again. This time he took her hand in his and held it until she
turned to him. “Make me understand.”

Silence hung in the room like the mists over Loch
Ness. Colin didn’t let go of her—but didn’t speak either—as her
struggles inside showed plainly on her face.

“We belong to
places
, Colin,” she finally
cried out. “You belong to…to Benmore Castle. I belong…”

“Don’t start that again.” The words spewed out more
harshly than he’d intended. “People move to new places and fashion
new lives for themselves all the time.”

“But these people have someone they can go to…or
travel with. They are
not
totally alone.” She tugged her
hand free and wrapped her arms tightly around her middle. “I have
no one, Colin.
No one
. And I am dreadfully afraid of losing
what I have here. As perilous as living on the May seems to you,
‘tis all I have.”

She hastily moved to the ladder leading up to the
loft area above. He watched in silence as she climbed the rungs and
disappeared.

He turned and looked into the fire, fighting the
urge to go after her.

By the devil, he’d only just finished at the
university. Now was the time for him to live recklessly. To pursue
his dreams of sailing the high seas. To live the life of a pirate.
To take what he wanted. When he wanted. This was his time to have a
hundred women in a hundred ports…without a whit of worry or
regret.

At the same time, another voice argued, he had made
a choice less than an hour ago not to leave this island when he’d
had the opportunity. He’d chosen not to leave without Tess. By St.
Andrew,
everything
was becoming too complicated.

Colin quickly realized that his own confusion was a
separate battle—one that he would need to fight some other time. He
climbed the ladder after her. Reaching the top, he found her
sitting cross-legged beside the old sea chest—the same one he’d
opened the last time he came up here. She had the top open, and she
was touching something inside.

“This is where I might be able to help you,” he said
reassuringly. “Perhaps you are not as alone as you think! It may be
that there are people out there who are kin to you. I mean, perhaps
if you could at least tell me when it was that you came to Isle of
May, then I can…”

“Six.” Her attention was completely focused on
something she was holding in her hand. “I was six years old.”

Colin saw her lift a child’s dress from the chest
and lay it in her lap. He remembered the one he had found in a
mending pile downstairs. She took out the cap next, then the shoes.
And then he saw her take out the jeweled cross. She stared down at
it.

“There was a shipwreck. I don’t know if there were
any other survivors. But I was the only one who washed ashore here
on the May.”

He came nearer and knelt down on the floor next to
her. “Were your parents in the same shipwreck?”

“I wish I knew.” She hastily stabbed at her tears.
“There are so few things that I remember from before coming here.
My name, my age—those I recall. Everything else, though, is hidden
in a thick fog.”

“But there are things that you do remember. Last
night when I was playing music for you, the songs tickled something
in your memory. You had heard that music before.”

“Aye. Sometimes there are recollections that rush
back to me. Faces that I cannot put a name to, or places that I
cannot identify. Then there are other times when my mind brings a
scene into life and I feel myself watching it. ‘Tis like a dream,
as if I’m on the outside of it, looking in. But then it becomes a
muddle again, and none of it makes any sense.” Her voice quivered.
“And then, there are the nightmares. There is one in particular
that comes back over and over.”

Colin held her hand tightly. “Can you tell me about
it?”

He saw her chin tremble, and then she took a deep
breath. “’Tis always night. There are loud noises, all around
me…like people screaming. And I see a wee lass running scared.
There are dark stains on her nightgown, on her hands and feet. She
is clutching something in her hand. And there are footsteps behind
her. Someone is about to catch her. And then she comes face to face
with a wall of fire. There is no place else to go. And the
footsteps are right behind her. I always wake up then. And my chest
is pounding. And I am sobbing.”

Tess’s voice broke, and Colin pulled her against
him. She came willingly. As she started crying softly against his
chest, he found he had to swallow the knot that had formed in his
throat.

“I’m sorry, Tess. I am very sorry. That wee lass had
to be you.” He pressed his lips against her hair. His hand caressed
her back. The strong surge of protectiveness rushing through him
was as unexpected as it was powerful. There had to be an attack on
wherever it was that she lived. But for her to remember and reveal
the painful memories made him realize how truly great her trust in
him had become. “How did Garth and Charlotte find you?”

“Washed ashore in the same place where I found you.
Unconscious.”

“Wearing these?” He pointed to the child’s
clothing.

She nodded and pulled out of his embrace. “The
things in this box are the only things I have left of that life.”
Tess clutched the cross in her fist and brought it to her
chest.

“This cross must be what you are holding in your
dream.”

Her dark gaze met his. “Nay, ‘twas something else.
The nightmares are so real that I can almost feel it. I am holding
a brooch in the palm of my hand.”

A spark of hope ignited in his mind. With his thumb
he wiped the tears from her ivory cheeks and looked into her
face.

“Is there any way you can describe this brooch to
me? Did you ever see it…in your dream, I mean?”

She nodded. “Aye, a few times in my dreams I’ve seen
it. And then later…” She stopped and searched inside the old sea
chest again. From the bottom, she slowly withdrew a flat object
wrapped in leather.

Colin’s gaze followed her hand’s movements as she
opened the packet.

“I didn’t find this until a month ago, after Garth
and Charlotte were both dead. They had it hidden up here at the
bottom of the chest.” In her hand she held a brooch. Even in the
dim light he could see the red stone set in the engraved silver.
“This is the brooch I have been seeing in those dreams. ‘Tis the
same one the wee child has in her hand.” She handed it to him.

On the brooch’s broad sturdy pin, a swan rising from
a coronet had been engraved. Colin read the motto on the circle of
silver, and his breath caught in his chest. ‘Endure Fort.’ He
recognized it. The words meant ‘Endure with Strength.’

“I think…I think I might have been holding this or
wearing it when I washed ashore. But what I don’t understand is why
those good people hid it away for all these years. They never said
a word about it to me.”

“Lindsay.” Colin whispered. “This is the coat of
arms of the clan Lindsay, in the Highlands of Angus.”

“How do you know this?”

“Lindsay lands lie directly to the east of
Macpherson holdings. They are near the coast, with only the land of
the clans Farquharson and Gordon between us.”

Colin thought back in time. There was something
gnawing at the edge of his memory. Eleven years ago. He had been
nine years old.

“It must have been about the same time that you
disappeared that Sir Stephen Lindsay, the laird of Ravenie Castle,
was killed in an attack.”

He looked into her dark eyes, at her auburn hair.
There were similarities, to be sure. Then, suddenly, the memories
poured in. The stories he’d heard.

“Aye, on the same night and during the attack, his
only daughter was whisked away by some of the laird’s warriors and
servants.” Their gazes locked. “The lass was never seen again. Some
thought she was killed, too. Others assumed she’d been hidden away
for fear that those who had murdered the father would harm the
child. The identity of the attackers was never discovered, I
think.”

Tess’s eyes were wide. The teardrops shone on her
skin. A look of disbelief continued to play across her
features.

“But I believe there are many who are still hoping
for the daughter’s return.” Colin cradled her face and looked into
her eyes. “Like your mother, Tess.”

Tess was certain she had heard him wrong. “What did
you say?”

“Lady Evelyn Lindsay, who was Evelyn Fleming before
she married your father, survived that attack and the burning of
the castle. I remember what happened now. Your mother is alive and
well. She is living somewhere in the Lowlands—or the Borders—near
her own family.”

The sudden flash of hope was so unexpected that she
didn’t know how to react. “How…how do you know all of this?”

“Every Highlander knows what goes on with the other
clans. Word travels on the wind there, and this was no wee bit of
news. Besides, as I told you before, only the Farquharson and
Gordon clans separate us from the Lindsays. We’re practically
neighbors.”

“You are not just saying all of this to…to make me
leave this island with you?”

“What do
you
think?”

His large and gentle hand was still cradling her
face. Tess looked into the blue sea of Colin’s eyes and had her
answer.

“Nay, I think you wouldn’t.” The words tumbled out
of her at the same time as she realized the significance of all she
had just learned.

She knew her name. Who she was and where she had
come from. Her mother was alive. She was not alone anymore. She
didn’t have to spend the rest of her life on this island,
frightened and uncertain of what was to happen to her the next
day.

The realization swept through her like a whirlwind,
wreaking havoc with her emotions. She didn’t know what to think
first, what to do. Her mother was alive. She laughed, and then the
tears began to fall.

Her father was dead. Tess didn’t remember him, but
she still had lost him in the same instant that she was told about
him. Many questions battered away at her. The confusion of that
night and what had she witnessed exactly that made her bury the
memories so deep in the recesses of her mind.

“I am sorry Tess. I know this is a great deal to
sort through.”

“Nay, thank you.” She wrapped her arms around him so
tightly that there was not a breath of air left between them.
“Thank you…thank you.”

Tess was so lost in her own happiness and her own
thoughts that it was some time before she noticed the difference in
him. Colin continued to hold her, but she could feel the tenseness
that had entered his body. Tess’s anxiety again asserted itself.
She pulled away.

“There is more that you are not telling me,” she
said, wiping at the wetness on her face

He shook his head. “This all happened so many years
ago. I am just impatient with myself for not remembering
more—remembering the details—of what was said about the people who
supposedly had been behind the attack.”

Tess placed a hand on his shoulder and pushed
herself to her feet. The power of nightmares lay in how real they
seemed. Perhaps, she thought, in how much reality was contained in
them. If she were to look back closely enough, if she could force
herself to remember the details of the dreams, then perhaps she
could recall more of what she had witnessed as a child.

Right now, though, another problem was pressing—the
person she had become. Tess looked down at her simple and tattered
homespun dress, at her work roughened hands. The thought of what a
noble lady named Lady Evelyn might think of the commoner who
claimed to be her daughter was distressing.

He was reading her thoughts. “Tess, I know you must
be anxious about being reunited with your mother again,” he began,
standing up. “But why not come back to Benmore Castle with me—just
for a short time—until a message can be sent to your mother, and
arrangements can be made for you to meet.”

She had once before rejected this same invitation.
Now, though, Tess found that she felt differently.

Eleven years was a long time. Whatever bond she once
must have had with her mother suddenly seemed so fragile,
especially considering how little she recalled. Still though, Tess
wanted to go to her. Part of her did, anyway. But Colin had
suddenly become the one person that she believed she could trust.
He was her only friend, and a thought began to emerge in her
mind.