From Salt to Skye by Adriane Leigh

Author:Adriane Leigh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Adriane Leigh

Olympia

“I’ll make heroes of my sons yet! Macgregors are nobility. How dare they leave a dark mark on one of the greatest houses of Scotland? The blood of our ancestors spilled all over this land, and for what? For our sons to marry peasants? So they can mix royal blood with trash? I don’t care how hardworking her mother is, she deserved to be fired.”

“She’s been the lead for nearly all of twenty years at Leith.” Roderick’s mother’s soft tone attempted to calm Baron Macgregor.

“Death would be a kinder fate.”

Roderick’s eyes widened as he clutched my hand with his own. We were crouched under Baron Macgregor’s library window as he stalked in front of the fireplace and spoke every unkind word he could think of about his sons.

Roderick had thrown pebbles at my window until I’d come out after dark to discover the disturbance. And there he’d stood in his royal enlistment uniform, handsome as could be, with tears streaming down his face. I hugged him for as long as I could before he’d walked me back to Leith to hear his father’s lunatic ravings.

“Let’s run away from here, Olympia. Just you and me. We’ll have a little cottage on the top of a hill, a few sheep, and a few babies. We’ll be happy. I can make you happy. Just give me the chance.”

“Roderick…” Tears spilled down my cheeks as I thought of my next words. I don’t love you. Could loving him save his life? Was giving up my own future worth saving his? And did he really love me, or were these the ramblings of a scared boy afraid to die on a far-off battlefield?

“I love you, Olympia. I love you so much.” Roderick’s lips covered my skin. I held his head close to mine, so although I couldn’t utter the words, he would know I loved him too.

I did love him; he was my childhood best friend. But I suspected love meant different things to both of us. I didn’t yet know that I’d experienced love at all, beyond schoolgirl crushes on brooding older brothers. My mother had already lost her employment at Leith because we’d disobeyed Baron Macgregor’s rules. It was out of my control what happened next.

I let Roderick hold me late into the night. With the crickets burning holes in my eardrums, Roderick slept halfheartedly on my shoulder while I resisted the urge to run. I’d come to hate myself in the minutes and hours since our happy threesome had been caught. In the moments before dawn finally broke, I shook his shoulder to wake him.

He looked up at me with dreamy eyes still filled with sleep and cooed that I was even more lovely in the morning light.

I cringed before breathing out, “We should get up, or we’ll be caught. Again.”

“Good idea. We have a lot of ground to cover today. Maybe we could be in Inverness by tomorrow, and I can make you my wife by Friday. Have you been to Inverness?”

“Inver—? What? No, no, Roderick… I can’t go with you.

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