Highland Daydreams Read Free Page B

trusted. She certainly could not tell the woman who she was and from where she had just escaped. Lara remained silent. Glancing over to the warrior, she looked for some indication as to what to do or say to the old hag but he stood quiet, staring at her blankly. In the dim light of dusk, she could only feel his stare.
    “What is yer name?” she asked rather impatiently. “Well now, dinna be shy. Speak up lass.”
    “Lara,” she quietly responded, giving the woman nothing more than her first name.
    “It’s good to meet ye, Lara. My name is Rowena,” she said, then turned her attention back to the warrior. “The lass can sleep inside. As fer ye, there should be plenty of hay fer ye in the barn. Tomorrow mornin’ I expect ye to have the horses brushed down and the chickens fed. When my husband, Innes, returns in the mornin’ he can tell ye what else needs to be done. He works as a blacksmith in the village so he is away often. We lost our last farmhand, so much is needed to be done. If ye prove to be well worth the hire, I shall e’en pay ye,” the woman offered to the warrior.
    “Thank ye, my lady,” he said in a more grateful tone.
    Lara followed Rowena towards the front of the house. Before turning the corner, the woman turned back and asked, “Laddie, what do I call ye?”
    The warrior cleared his throat before speaking.
    “Bram, my lady. My name is Bram MacKinnon.”
     

     
    Grateful for the woman’s hospitality, Bram eagerly walked towardss the barn. He welcomed the fresh air and a dry pallet. The past two weeks had been hell on both his body and his mind. As he entered the barn, he noted a stack of hay in one of the abandoned stalls. Grabbing a large heap of it, he arranged the hay into flat layers on the ground. Bram laid his weary body down upon a wool sack he had found and placed on top of the hay. He swore to the heavens that he would forever lie in that spot and not move another muscle. 
    Rolling to his side and placing his arm underneath his head, his muscles twitched as pain shot down his right arm and lower back. He yearned for a tankard of whiskey to drink away his pain or knock him out completely. His body felt as if he had been tied up and dragged by a horse running at full speed.
    Stretching his arms wide, he rubbed his shoulders to loosen his tense muscles. Carefully, he lifted the blood-stained tunic over his head and tossed it onto the ground; his back still sore from the lashings. Lying back, he tried to close his eyes for just a bit but his effort failed miserably.
    Overly exhausted, Bram knew he needed to rest, but sleep eluded him. It was the silence that plotted against him, denying him the rest he so desperately needed. For every time he closed his eyes; he was back on the battlefield. The flashbacks were vivid; waking nightmares. The sound of metal clashing, the buzzing of arrows whizzing through the air and the smell of death all around him. But it wasn’t actually the battle that haunted him. In all of his twenty three years, he had been in battle many times and not once had it changed him. But a pair of dark blue eyes belonging to an English soldier haunted his dreams. Those eyes belonged to the man who had pierced his sword into Bram’s abdomen causing him to lose so much blood it rendered him unconscious.
    Bram hoped fate would allow him to face that man again someday. Looking down at his stomach, he saw the ghastly scar that was still continuing to heal. He could still feel the heat of the Englishman’s blade every time he looked at it; a memory not so easily forgotten.
    The imprisonment he endured was nothing compared to witnessing his Scottish brethren slaughtered that rainy day. Bram felt he should have been among them. He recalled the heavy rainfall washing the blood and mud away from his face. He was shaken awake and carried off in a wagon pulled by two black horses draped in the English royal colors until he awoke in the dungeons at Cumberland.
    Bram had expected