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Monday Puzzler
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MP: 12 October 2020
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Stubborn, meet stubborner. Cue fireworks. Repeat,Sounds like fun.
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Okie wrote: "This weeks Monday Puzzler is The Highlander's Christmas Lassie by Anna Campbell in Have Yourself A Merry Little Scandal bk 2 in the Christmas collection of Historical Romance."I guessed the author but I haven't read this yet. Are the other stories in this anthology good?
Muirburgh, The Trossachs, Scotland Christmas Eve, 1824
Hero, turned his weary horse off the Callander Road onto the track leading up to a substantial farmhouse, half-obscured in the thickening snowfall. Hope, high when he arrived in this district, dashed so often since, stirred painfully inside him.
This had to be the place. He’d tried everywhere else in this prosperous little glen near Loch Lomond, before the people at the last house had directed him to Burnside Farm. It was late in the day, and early winter darkness already descended. With an exhausted groan, he dismounted in the empty yard, noticing how well kept the property was.
Senga, his gray mare, was too tired to wander. He led her under the eaves of an outbuilding and rubbed her nose with grateful affection. “I hope this is it for the day, old girl, and we can find you a nice warm stable out of this weather.”
It was madness to travel at this time of year. But when his friend Fergus Mackinnon, Laird of Achnasheen, had told him what he’d seen in Muirburgh, Hero couldn’t bear to wait for spring and friendlier temperatures. If Fergus was right, almost twenty years of searching came to an end in one way or another today. How appropriate that it was so close to Christmas, the season of miracles and new beginnings.
Senga gave a soft whicker and bumped her noble head into his hand. She was a brave beast with a loyal heart. For her sake, too, he hoped his seeking came to an end.
He left her standing and crossed the snowy yard to the impressive door, decorated with an elaborate wreath of holly and ribbons. He raised the heavy lion-head knocker, and his gut tightened with suspense as the summons echoed inside.
There was a delay before anyone answered. While he waited on the front step, Hero pulled down his hat, stamped his feet, and wrapped his arms around himself to warm up.
Or perhaps it only felt like a long wait because he was half-mad with anticipation.
At last he heard a latch lift. The door opened on a lamplit hallway, adorned with branches of pine and holly.
“Good evening, sir.”
Hero hardly heard the greeting as his heart began to pound. Before him stood a tall youth. A tall youth who wore the same face he saw in the mirror every morning when he shaved.
“By God…” he choked out.
Behind the lad, a slender woman appeared, a mixing bowl in one hand and a wooden spoon in the other. A smiling woman with rich red hair and a face that was a fairer sight than bluebells in an April wood.
A woman Hero hadn’t seen since he was eighteen years old.
“Who is it, son?” she asked, her voice warm. “Has one of our neighbors called to wish us the best for the season?”
The world receded in a dizzying rush, stealing the strength from Heroes legs. To save himself from falling, he reached out a shaking hand to grab the lintel.
“Heroine?” he forced out of a tight throat.
Under his dazed gaze, she stopped in her tracks and went as pale as the snow outside. Her lovely green eyes widened with shock and her smile evaporated.
“Hero?”
He gripped the post tighter, in too much turmoil to know exactly what he felt. “They told me you were dead.”
From that moment, the icy hand of despair had descended on him and it had never lifted.
Until now.
He realized that a ray of bright joy pierced the fog of churning emotion inside him. He’d never come to terms with losing Heroine. She’d left a jagged wound in his life that had refused to mend.
To his bewilderment, instead of reacting with happiness or astonishment or curiosity, her porcelain-white face closed against him. He glimpsed a flash of what looked like hatred in her eyes.
“To you, Hero Last Name, I am dead.” Her voice was colder than the wind whistling around his ears. “Shut the door, Son. This man isn’t welcome in my house.”
Before Hero could muster a plea or a protest or a question, she turned away and strode off down the long corridor with the proud posture he remembered so well.
******
Behind her, Heroine Last Name waited for the door to slam shut, but instead she heard her seventeen-year-old son speak. “I think you’d better come in, sir.”
“But your mother…”
“I live here, too, and I’d like to talk to you.”
Son's name must have noted the resemblance as well. How could he not? With every day that passed, her son looked more and more like his swine of a father. Her son was also more inclined to make peace than seek strife. Son's Name had been born one of life’s diplomats, a quality he certainly didn’t get from his mother.
She faltered in her stride, and for a moment the world around her dissolved into a miasma of crippling distress. Her heart was racing, and she felt sick. She’d never expected to see her first lover’s face again this side of the grave.
Once like a pudding-headed fool, she’d dreamed of Hero finding her and telling her that everything she believed about him was a lie. But as the years had passed, she’d realized that was never going to happen.
Never say never, Heroine Last Name.
Now he’d turned up, and she wished her former lover to Hades. What a hide he had, bowling up on her doorstep on Christmas Eve without a hint of shame, and expecting a welcome.
Son's Name was still talking. “It’s as cold as charity out there. Only a villain would force another living creature into such a snowstorm, especially on Christmas Eve.”
“I appreciate your kindness. Is there a barn where I can put my horse? She’s just about done in.” Hero sounded almost normal, not stricken as he had when he saw her and made that unconvincing claim that he thought she was dead.
That provided a nice easy excuse to explain his absence, she supposed. She didn’t want to believe him, she really didn’t. Although even the hardest heart would register how distraught he’d looked when he caught sight of her.
As her temper surged, Heroines shoulders stiffened and her sight cleared. She whirled around and glared at her unwanted visitor. “Don’t you dare make yourself at home. Go on your way. There’s an inn a few miles up the road. They’ll fall all over themselves to offer a bed to a fine fellow like the heir to Dun Carron. If you play your cards right, they might even throw in a bonny maidservant to keep you warm.”
To her surprise, sardonic amusement creased Heroes intense dark face. “Careful, my love. You’re starting to sound jealous.”
Her queasiness worsened, and bile flooded her mouth with a bitter taste. She felt no urge to smile back. “I was never your love.”
The ghost of his humor still hovered. “Of course you are.”
How dare this bastard say that, when they both knew it wasn’t true? She bit back the impulse to scream and scratch and carry on like the hysterical girl she’d once been. That was how she’d reacted when brutal men had ripped her away from everything she knew. Her rage had done her no good then. It would do her no good now.
“Betrayal sits oddly with declarations of love. At least in my mind,” she said with a dryness that burned. Her hands clutched the bowl and spoon so tightly that she felt the ache up her arms. “But I suppose that’s just another sign of what a peasant I am. As if you didn’t know that already. Go to the inn, then go back to Dun Carron. Or to hell, for all I care. You have no place here.”
“Mother…” Son's Name protested, staring at her in dismay.
“This is my house, Son,” she said in a harsh tone she’d never used to him before. “If you don’t like the rules, you can leave.”
Heroine turned away again and stomped toward the kitchens. She’d banished Satan from her presence, and she had shortbread to make. But banishing the memory of Hero Last Name and all he’d once been to her was nowhere near as simple as refusing the physical man permission to enter her house.