Beloved Highlander

Scottish 18th Century

EXCERPT

1728, the Scottish Highlands

Meg is in a tavern seeking Gregor Grant, a man she has never met but has heard her tenants speak of highly. Meg now owns Glen Dhui, once the Grant estate, and has come for Gregor’s help…

“Captain Grant?” she called again, a little desperately now, her voice all but lost in the hubbub.

A brute with massive shoulders and wild hair pointed out a table, his finger unerringly directing her to the only occupant. A man sat with his back to her, slouched over the drink he held cupped in his big hands. Slowing to a stop, Meg let her eyes travel over him, widening with each inch.

He was wearing a worn green jacket that pulled taut over his wide shoulders, and a faded plaid that appeared almost gray in the poor light. His hair was unpowdered, and it was not so much golden as fair brown, the color of honey, its untidy length caught at his nape. A ribbon of shock was slowly unfurling in Meg’s stomach.

This man was absolutely nothing like the Gregor Grant she had pictured in her mind for so long. His back was far too broad, his arms, resting on the table’s surface, far too well muscled, and his legs, stretched out from under his kilt, were far too long. He looked careworn and scruffy and far gone from drink. He was alone, with an air about him that discouraged company.

“Captain Grant?”

Her voice came out sharper than she meant, and at the sound of it he turned his head, scowling nastily at being interrupted in his solitary drinking. Meg saw then that his eyes were amber colored, gold as a wildcat’s, and slightly out of focus beneath slashing black brows. There were violet shadows beneath, and he had not shaved in a while. His cheeks were prickly with a stubble as dark as those fierce eyebrows. Oh, and he was handsome. Not in the delicate, fine-boned way she had imagined—there was nothing effeminate about Gregor Grant. His was a face that had lived and suffered, a tough masculine face, the face of a man who gave no quarter and expected none.

The Gregor Grant she had imagined had been a boy. This was a man, a man who would do no one’s bidding but his own. A man who was scowling up at her with the most fascinating and yet unfriendly eyes that she had ever seen.
Meg had come to find a dream, a wispy, insubstantial girlhood dream.

Before her was solid reality.

* * * * *

Gregor Grant, alone in the crowded tavern, recovering from a duel, is feeling sorry for himself and missing his home of Glen Dhui, lost to his family after they fought against the English king in the 1715 Rebellion…

“Captain Grant?”

He did not know the voice, but he felt he should. Quiet yet determined, tart yet with a breathlessness that caught in his chest and gripped, hard. The voice tugged at him, like a line thrown to a drowning man, bringing him up from the shadowy place where he had been dwelling all evening.

Gregor turned and looked up from the colorless swirl of liquid at the bottom of his cup. And blinked to clear his vision. A figure hovered by him. A redheaded woman in a blue jacket, her long slim legs encased in tartan trews and dusty riding boots. Briefly her image shimmered, as if she might vanish altogether, but instead of going away it steadied. This was indeed a woman, a woman in trews. Gregor blinked again, owlishly, studying her face. White skin, pale blue eyes and flame-red hair. A flame-haired angel, risen from the sputtering candlelight.

Was such a thing likely? Or was he now having visions?

But if she was a vision, he was not alone in seeing her. The groups of men around him had fallen strangely silent. Hardened soldiers, men from his own barracks rubbing shoulders with artisans from the town and crofters from the surrounding countryside. They were staring at her, as astonished and mystified as he by her sudden appearance in their midst. Women did not normally drink at the Black Dog…nor did they want to.

“It is Captain Gregor Grant?”

The angel spoke again, in her English accent, a voice oddly precise and demanding for such a heavenly creature. Gregor frowned and looked into her eyes. They were, he thought with surprise, the exact blue of a Highland summer sky. For the first time in a very long while he had the urge to paint, to draw, to capture somehow her vibrancy. He fought it, concentrating instead on the dull, heavy throbbing in his arm where Airdy’s sword had slashed deep, and the dry whiskey burn in his throat. The vision wanted conversation? Aye, then he’d give her conversation!