The line resonated through Juliet as she stepped onto the pile of rubble that had once been part of Dun Sgathaich, the castle that had been built upon the ruins of Dun Scaith—Scáthach’s mythical Castle of Shadows—and stared out across Loch Eishort toward the far-off hills of the Cuillins.
Thiswas the air Scáthach had breathed.
Warrior til the day ye died…
Juliet didn’t bother jotting the lines down. They were middling at best.
Movement below caught her eye. Rory was climbing up to the opposite set of ruins. Once, a drawbridge had connected the outcropping where the main castle sat with the mainland. Now, the drawbridge was deteriorated and gone, and the castle could only be accessed by scaling the thirty-foot cliff. As there wouldn’t have been a drawbridge in Scáthach’s time, Juliet imagined this was a closer experience to the Dun Scaith of yore, where young warriors had to prove their mettle by breaching the fortress.
Still, Juliet found herself calling out, “Be careful.”
Rory tossed her a smile over his shoulder and kept climbing.
How like a wife she sounded.
A wife.
A gust of wind from the north whipped through her hair, setting long tendrils free from the loose braid. No signs of civilization for miles around, this was the wildest place she’d ever experienced—a place carved down to its rawest elements.Fight. Survive. Live. Die.
The stakes ran high in a place like this, and it took a special kind of person to thrive here. Juliet didn’t think she had it in her, but the man currently scaling a thirty-foot cliffside—her husband, impossibly—he did. Physically, he was built for it. But that was only exterior strength. It didn’t mean much. Toughness of the mind, that was what it took, and what Rory possessed. Though only she saw it…and his tenants. They saw it, too. It was obvious in the respect they showed the laird of the manor who they considered mostly English—which was all down to Rory and the grit he hid behind those lopsided smiles of his.
Oh, how she adored this man.
Warrior of earth and Skye…
That was the line.
She grabbed the journal out of her knapsack and scribbled it down. Once finished, she noticed the folded paper peeking above the front cover.
Delilah’s letter.
Juliet didn’t need to open and read it again, for she’d memorized its contents.
This last month she’d shed so many tears of happiness. When she and Rory had announced their intention to marry, immediately… Over the anvil as she’d spoken her vows… On her wedding night in Rory’s arms. The ever cool and composed Juliet Windermere—now Lady Kilmuir—had become a leaky bucket.
But the tears that sprang to her eyes now held happiness tinged with a note of sadness. In the gain of Rory—the love of her life…the center of her future happiness—there had been loss, too. It wasn’t that she’d lost Delilah, or the bond only they shared, but never again would they be two halves of a whole.
Rory was her other half.
And someday, Delilah would find her other half, too—if she would but see him.
Which was for Delilah to decide. Nay, not decide. ’Twas not a decision made with the head, but with the heart—not with reason, butfeeling.
One large, masculine hand, then another, appeared on the cliff’s edge near where Juliet sat, followed by Rory’s head and shoulders, the muscles of his bare forearms tensing and releasing as he pushed himself up. She would never tire of seeing her husband exert himself physically.
A trace of desire rippled through her. She couldn’t have predicted she’d be a lusty sort of wife, but here she was plainly lusting after her husband.
Cheeks bright and a bead of perspiration rolling down his cheek, he lowered to a seat beside her, shoulder to shoulder, and reached for her hand, twining his fingers through hers. He jutted his chin toward Delilah’s letter. “We’ll see her when we’re in London in August,” he said, intuiting the direction of her thoughts.
“Actually,” said Juliet, “I don’t think we shall.”
Rory’s eyebrows lifted. “Oh?”
“She mentioned in the letter that she would be visiting a friend in Switzerland through the summer. We shouldn’t expect her back until October.”
“Which friend?” asked Rory, idly, as he pulled a pasty from the knapsack.
“Indeed,” was Juliet’s reply. Delilah hadn’t said, and Juliet knew that meant one thing.Trouble.