HEATHER.

"I'm betrothed!" my little sister cried excitedly. "Again."

Letting Arabella spin me around in the tiny chambers that I had surrendered to her now that I spent all night every night in the laird's bed, I was quite bewildered. My sister had been wooed by two of the laird's warriors and once we collapsed together upon the small straw bed, I said, "Congratulations, Arabella! But which man did you choose?"

"I'm marrying Davy," she said, emphatically, as if I was daft to think otherwise. "But I didn't have to choose," Arabella added, meeting my eyes with mischief. "Neither Davy or Malcolm will insist upon it. I will marry Davy, but we will simply carry on together, all three."

I had never heard of such a thing. Such a scandalous thing. I didn't see how it could possibly work. Two men and one woman-such things usually ended up in bloodshed. But as I had very little room to judge anyone else's personal arrangements, I merely bit my lip. "Our father hasn't given his permission..."

"Davy says the laird's permission is the only thing we need." Arabella sighed a happy sigh. And I sighed with her, because in all the gloom and terror of living in a castle under siege, this was one bright spot.

Love, however unorthodox, in whatever shape it took...love was a beautiful thing, was it not? "When will the wedding be?" I asked, wondering how we would possibly celebrate such a thing with every meal rationed and every gla.s.s of liquor watered down.

"Now that part's a wee bit o' a mystery," Arabella said, her eyes widening conspiratorially. "Davy says he must do something for the laird and prove himself, and when he's done it, then we may marry. He was slippery about the whole thing, and he was gone from the bed before dawn, so I haven't had a chance to ask anything else."

I fought down my urge to scold her for so openly admitting that she shared a bed with a man who was not yet her husband, but I did the same thing, did I not? And unlike my sister, I wasn't going to get a marriage from it. No, my sister, who had never wished for a respectable hearth and home was going to get one...of a sorts. Whereas I was going to be the laird's harlot until he cast me off. And yet, it was only the last part that frightened me.

"I have something for you," Arabella murmured, a glint in her eye.

"For me? But you're the one who is betrothed this day!"

"Heather, did you forget your own birthday?"

"Oh, that," I said, blushing a bit. "A nineteenth birthday isn't important."

"T'is important to me," Arabella replied, and pushed up from the straw bed to rummage about in a trunk at the foot of it. She came back to me with a tiny gla.s.s vial. "The physicker doesn't believe in the healing properties of rose oil-but I made some anyway and you might like it to scent at your pulse points."

She'd made for me a perfume. A fitting gift for my circ.u.mstances, and a thoughtful one too. I pulled the stopper and inhaled the scent, then sputtered with delight. "Oh, but it's a beautiful scent! Do you want to try some?"

"Get away with you," Arabella said, pulling her wrist away with a laugh. "I'm no laird's lady, swanning about, smelling sweetly, with flowers in my hair. I am more like to roam about smelling of pungent herbs with dried bark powder under my nails."

She took pride in it, I thought. In being useful. In having a place at the castle where she was valued as an a.s.sistant to the physicker. I envied her that more than anything.

I did my work at night, in the laird's bed. But by day, I was lost.

When the sun rose, everyone in the castle seemed to have useful work to do but me. The warriors repelled attacks, shot at any approaching boats, and kept watch over the enclosure against tests of our defenses. The castle staff went about their work. And even the villagers found ways of a.s.sisting by hauling water or seeing to it that ammunition was easily available to the men on the walls. And the guards kept watch over my laird and his larder.

I was worried for my little siblings, far from my reach now. For most of my life, I'd been the mistress of my father's cottage, tending to farm ch.o.r.es and to the little ones. Keeping them fed and clothed, since our mother had died giving birth to the littlest one, and there was no one but me to care for them. After the laird had taken me, I relied upon Arabella to care for the little ones. But who was caring for them now? My father hadn't come into the castle for protection. He'd fled with the children into the mountains to stay with kin. With the enemy roving the countryside, my heart ached wondering who was cooking up the meals and seeing to it that their little bellies were full.

Perhaps that's why I found my way to the castle kitchen, where the cook saw me lingering near the door. "Out!" the intimidating woman said, waving her spoon at me like a sword. She hadn't liked me much since the time I boasted that I could make the best meat pie in the clan. She'd liked me even less when I proved it. Though I'd sensed a brief appreciation for me when she'd tested the flake of my crust, the siege-or discovering that I'd stolen her cast-off paddle-had made her hostile again.

"I only want to help," I told her.

"Keep the laird happy," she said. "That's how you can help. That's your job."

Well, it was, wasn't it? And it was work I had come to treasure. The easiest, most pleasurable work of my life. Work made even more pleasurable that evening when the laird sniffed at my neck, and said, "Roses?"

"Aye, do you like it?"

He pulled me closer against his broad chest, smiling all the while. "I like the scent of roses. Reminds me of warmer days. T'is not my favorite flower, though."

"What is?" I asked, for I wanted to make a study of him.

"Heather," he said at once. "I love the purple blossoms of heather, just like your eyes. Heather has always been my favorite, even before I met you. Now that you have come along, no other shall ever supplant it."

My breath caught at the seriousness with which he spoke these words and I desperately hoped to believe he meant more by them than a discussion of flowers. "I-I don't know if there is such a thing as heather perfume, or I'd wear it for you."

"I like the perfumed scent of you now, but your own scent is no less perfect. Especially when you are aroused," he said, stroking my nude hip to bring us closer together in the bed. Arousing me so easily with his touch, as he always did, even though we'd already been intimate. "But I have something else for you to wear..."

"Oh?"

"Aye," he said, grinning. "Go to my wardrobe and open the little chest inside."

I rose from the warmth of his bed, naked, as I crossed the room. And inside the little chest he indicated, I found such a remarkable thing that I gasped to see it. Pearls. A long strand of them, with that peculiar sheen that drew the eye and made the heart skip a beat. I could not begin to imagine the expense of them. "I'm afraid to touch them."

"They were my mother's," the laird said. "Now they are yours."

I whipped my head around to look at him, to be sure he was not jesting. For it would be a cruel jest, one that would wound me, truly.

To mention his mother even in the same breath as me...

"You can't give such a thing to me!" I cried.

Smugly, he replied, "I'm the laird. You must not tell me what I can and canna do."

I stood there, still as stone, my fingers yearning to touch the beautiful pearls, my heart warning me never to touch them. These pearls were more expensive than anything I had ever seen. Worth more than my father's croft if he were to buy it outright, I should think. Worth more than me. "But my laird-"

"I cannot spoil you with dainty cakes from the kitchen when we are rationing. I cannot woo you as I would like to. If I had my way, I would shower you with jewels and fine dresses and flowers and foods so rich they would make you moan with pleasure. Alas, in this moment and in these circ.u.mstances there is very little that I can do for you or with you that I would like to, but this no one can stop me from doing. These beautiful pearls were meant to grace your lovely neck. Show me, la.s.s. I want to see you in them."

It was a command, a sweet command, and so I dared to scoop the strand out of the box and loop them around my neck, luxuriating in the strangely silky feel of them on my bare skin. There was an eroticism to this and he must have felt it too, because a dark heat banked in his eyes, burning like a coal. "Happy birthday, my sweet."

I lifted my gaze to his. "But how-how did you know it was my birthday?"

"Your sister has a rather vexing habit of speaking before she is spoken to. Of addressing her betters without permission. And doing so in pa.s.sing with scarcely a curtsey as if she were a man, instead of a modest girl. But in this case, she managed to get word to me that it was your birthday and I am grateful to her for that. For such a day is truly worth celebrating."

I love you, I thought. I love you so desperately.

But how would I ever dare speak the words aloud? Ours was not that sort of arrangement. The love I read about in poetry books was never the kind that would be mine. The laird had said to me once that he might love me, and feared he might never tire of me. That was likely the most a girl like me could hope for. It was more important to me that he said I belonged to him. And that he would defend and protect what belonged to him.

That would have to be enough.

"I want you to wear these pearls always," he said, when I came back to the bed, and he trailed the string of them over my b.r.e.a.s.t.s in a way that made my nipples tighten and peak into pink nubs.

"Always?" I asked, not wanting to speak. Wanting only to feel as he teased me with the pearls. But fearing not to ask. "Won't your kin take offense to my wearing what belonged to your family?"

"Ian, you mean?"

"I daresay Ian Macrae is not a man to notice a woman's jewelry. I speak mostly of his sisters and his mother, Lady Fiona."

The laird gave a sudden bark of laughter. "Oh, so then you have crossed paths with my aunt, the dragon, have you?"

Inwardly, I cringed at the memory of every time the woman or her high born daughters turned in the corridor so as not to meet my eyes lest she be stained with my sin. "I shouldn't like to antagonize her."

"Fiona is an old prune," the laird said. "I don't care if you antagonize her."

I smiled, but thinly, because it was in my nature to care what people thought of me. I had once been such a good girl, and I didn't take easy to shamelessness.

"La.s.s, I have never seen a woman so troubled by the idea of wearing a beautiful strand of pearls before. Why aren't you happier at the idea?"

"It is only...at a time like this, when everyone in the castle is coming together in common purpose and under such privations, for me to wear pearls...and for the clan to know that you gave them to me..."

My laird slowly let the pearls slip through his fingers, then brought his hand to my cheek. Brushing me there with the pad of his thumb, he stared into my eyes with an intensity I'd never seen before. "Like a wise counselor, you are thinking of my standing with the clan."

"I'm sorry," I said, feeling the flush on my cheeks at what he must see as an overstep. "I have no place to advise you."

"Don't apologize, la.s.s. You have touched me deeper than you know. And there is something I must make clear to you. Something I should have said before now. Whatever I might say in the heat of pa.s.sion-when I am thinking only of your body-I know that I have in you a woman of uncommon grace and wisdom. Which is why you are worthy of my mother's pearls, and which is why you may wear them when and if you see fit."

A woman of uncommon grace and wisdom.

I couldn't think of anything kinder that a man could say to a woman.

He thought I was worthy of his mother's pearls, and because I wanted him to be right, I decided that I must find a way to a.s.sist with the day-to-day work of the castle.

In the morning, I set aside the pearls with a wistful sigh, then donned the most respectable garment I had. When Brenna came to tend me, I had her help me loop my braid at the nape of my neck for modesty.

Then, mustering my courage, I went to billeting room where the respectable ladies and Macrae kinfolk were gathered to make cloth for the effort. I knew how to spin and sew; I was eager to do it. But no sooner had I appeared in the doorway than did Lady Fiona rise and block my entrance. Smiling brightly-too brightly-she escorted me from the sewing room to say, "My dear, I have my daughters and their reputations to think about. I cannot have them a.s.sociating with a woman of your ilk."

She was the daughter of a laird and the sister of a laird and the aunt of my laird. Even before the laird ruined me, she would likely have said the same thing. I was a crofter's daughter; she was a lady of landed wealth. But now that the laird had taken me to his bed, I knew that my lowly social origins were not her foremost objection. "My lady, surely at a time like this, all hands are needed-"

"This isn't the first siege I've lived through," Lady Fiona snapped. "And it probably won't be the last. But a lady's virtue must be guarded well, so that it may endure eternal."

I swallowed, waiting for the pain of my shame to blossom in my chest.

Yet, it did not.

Because if the laird was pleased with me, then I ought not care what Lady Fiona thought. Nor her daughters. And I suddenly realized what a blessing the laird had given me by asking me to devote myself to his pleasure and his alone.

Why he'd given me some manner of armor!

"I find my virtue in doing my duty by the laird," I said simply.

Then I turned and left her gawping, for she could hardly argue with that.

Having no where else to go, I wandered down the stairs to where my sister worked with the physicker, madly grinding something to a powder with a mortar and pestle. She knew herbs-healing herbs-and was determined to keep the castle well-stocked or well-organized. I had to confess, while she'd never been terribly reliable at home on my father's croft, away from our father's oppressive presence, my little sister had recently come into her own.

"Can I grind that for you?" I asked, discomforted by the change in our roles.

Blowing a tendril of hair out of her eyes, Arabella looked up from her worktable and held out a jar for me. "You can tell me what this says before I end up mixing the wrong things together."

I stared at the smudged markings on the jar, but could make no sense of them, a thing I was embarra.s.sed to admit, since I'd been taught to read at the laird's command and expense. "I'm-I'm not sure what it says. Does the physicker have some idea?"

"He says he's never seen it before and doesn't know how it came to be amongst his collection. And he also said he didn't have time for my nonsense. A direct quote..."

"I can try to find out if you let me take the jar."

"Take it where?" Arabella asked.

"To Ian Macrae. He's the one who taught me to read."

She snorted. "I don't see what place a big brawny warrior has playing your school master."

"The laird told him that he must," I said.

She snorted again. "Is he always obedient? Because between you and me and these gray stone walls, I must say, I'm not sure the man can be trusted."

"He..." I trailed off, not knowing exactly what I meant to say of Ian Macrae. He was the laird's kinsman, but a thorn in his side. He was a close advisor, but a hostile one. Though he'd never been particularly kind to me, he'd also risked his life to protect me. "Before the siege, when you were captured by the enemy, and the Donalds tried to capture me too, Ian was nearly killed defending me, so I cannot say a bad thing about him."

But I also couldn't speak much of him without remembering how he had also been present when the laird deflowered me. How he had watched, with l.u.s.t in his eyes. How I had wondered if he would take a turn with me-not hating the idea, at the time. The memory made me blush, which caused my sister to misinterpret my embarra.s.sment entirely. "Well, then I'll say nothing against him, Heather. Is he a bad teacher? Does he bellow every time you get a word wrong?"

I turned away. "He doesn't love teaching me, but he's been surprisingly patient. We've found together a love of books."

"Books," Arabella said, dreamily.

I sighed, too, for I loved them. Ever since I'd learned to read, I'd found great solace and escape in their pages. Books seemed to me a magical thing. Murmuring softly to myself as I puzzled out the words, I was sometimes transported to other times and places. Sometimes I marveled at the poetry of a phrase. Sometimes I learned things that I longed to put to use somehow.

And I owed that, in part, to Ian Macrae.

So I was feeling entirely charitable toward the man when I found him out in the wintry cold by the gate, where he had his sword drawn against two terrified villagers. "Out you go," he barked at them. "And be glad you're not being dumped over the walls into the cold loch."

At the sight of the villagers' tear-streaked faces and the sound of these harsh words, I came to a dead stop, my hand curling around the jar. Ian couldn't mean to send villagers out of the castle, defenseless against the enemy.

"T'was just a misunderstanding!" one of the villagers cried, and I could see that he was bleeding at the nose. "There's bound to be brawling when tempers are so high."

"But it's not the first time between you two, is it?" Ian snapped. "I warned you last time you took to each other that you'd be thrown out of the castle, and the cook now tells me that you broke her crockery and busted open a cask of wine."

"T'was an accident!" the other villager exclaimed, his beady eyes darting to me in desperation. "We'll starve out there, or be beaten, or worse, la.s.s. The laird wouldn't want that for his people would he?"

Before I could speak, Ian put the blade to the man's throat. "Better you starve than all the law abiding folks inside these walls do. You made your choice to behave like ruffians, now this is the price. You can leave by the door or we can push you from the top of the walls-your choice."

"Ian!" I cried, the jar in my hand forgotten. I knew what the Donalds did to our people in the countryside. They'd held my own family hostage, kidnapped my sister and quite nearly raped her besides. "You can't send them out there."

My laird's warrior whipped his head around to glare at me, as if he couldn't decide if I was merely a half-wit or a complete madwoman to interfere with him. "This is none of your affair, woman."

It wasn't my place; of course it wasn't. But my heart had started to pound in fear for the two villagers. "The laird has offered the clan his protection."