by Faris, Fiona
Highlander's Forbidden Love
Only love can heal the scars of the past...
Fiona Faris
Contents
Thank you
About the book
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Extended Epilogue
Afterword
Do you want more Historical Scottish Romance?
The Highlander's Virtuous Lady
About the Author
Glossary
Thank you
I want to personally thank you for purchasing my book. It really means a lot to me. It’s a blessing to have the opportunity to share with you, my passion for writing, through my stories.
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About the book
Elizabeth Bryce had a very cruel and hurtful life, until she was taken in by the Hays and now is living peacefully in the Slains castle.
But even though she’s turning into a fine lady, no one wants a bride with such a gruesome past. And she needs to find a suitor before she turns into an old maid.
A glimpse of hope embraces her when Duncan Comyn, a Highlander whose courage and valor is beyond words, saves her from certain death. Moreover, he’s a kind man that wants to mend her lost soul.
What she doesn’t know is that he is a rebel and the sworn enemy of her benefactors. Duncan's sole duty is to overthrow Elizabeth’s guardians and take back his family's rightful inheritance.
How can Elizabeth find true love and thwart both the loving and the evil intentions of those who stand in her way? How can Duncan just abandon his honor in the name of love?
* * *
At the end of the book, there is a glossary to help you understand any words of the Gaelic dialect, you might not know.
Prologue
The sea off Formartine
Northeast Scotland
AD 1320
Micheil Cullen bent over the oars of his small open fishing boat. He did not usually venture out to sea at night, but this night was an exception.
In the stern of the boat sat Duncan Comyn, whom Micheil had a short time before disembarked from a French trading crayer. It was the strangest contraband he had ever smuggled and by far the most dangerous. Usually, if he was spotted by the Earl’s men from the castle, he could buy the turning of a blind eye to his activities with a firkin or two of brandy or a bale of cloth, whichever he was running. This night, however, detection would cost him more than a share of the contraband; it would most likely cost him his life.
Micheil studied Duncan as he pulled his yoal towards the beach of Cruden Bay. He saw a tall, well-built man of about his own age, in his early twenties, dressed in a tunic and cloak, with his face hidden in the dark recess of a deep hood. He carried a small bundle wrapped in a trussed oilskin and a long dirk in his belt. His passenger’s hands, Micheil noticed, appeared soft and unblemished, unlike his own which were thickly callused by toil.
He knew this stranger to be a kinsman of the rightful Earl of Buchan, whose lands and titles had fallen forfeit to the Crown after the victory of Robert the Bruce in the recent war of succession. Micheil himself was a loyal supporter of the Comyn cause, which is why he had been entrusted with the task. He also knew, from Tamhas Boghan of Auchmacoy, who was paying him for his trouble, that the lad was on a mission from the Disinherited, led by Henry of Beaumont, to sow unrest among the people of Formartine against the Hays, who had been granted the Comyns’ heritance in the aftermath of the war against the Bruce. He wished him luck in his task; the fellow would, Micheil suspected, have his work cut out for him.
A full moon shone brightly over the coast. The sea was covered by a light haar and almost perfectly still, which were the ideal conditions for the sort of work he was engaged in that night. Micheil had greased the oarlocks earlier that afternoon, and his oars dipped in and out of the water almost soundlessly, while the gentle swell slapped against the clinker of the boat’s shallow draught. In the distance, he could hear the surf hushing quietly on the shore.
His passenger was peering over Micheil’s bent head and shoulders towards the beach where they intended to land. Suddenly, he threw back his hood and peered more sharply into the haar.
“What is yon?” he asked in a penetrating whisper.
Micheil swung his oars from the water and carefully laid them along the gunwales. He swiveled around and squinted in the direction that Duncan was indicating.
Four ghostly lights wavered shoreward in the mist.
“Damnation!” Micheil swore under his breath. “It will be Hay’s men from the castle,” he continued in a low whisper. “They must have heard rumors that some smuggling was afoot and have come down to intercept it.”
Duncan’s eyes narrowed as they strained to penetrate the haar. Anxiety creased his brow.
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” Micheil whispered, “that we cannot put in at the bay. If they have heard tell of smuggling, they will be swarming all over the country in the hope of confiscating the booty for themselves. They might be looking for Flanders wool or French brandy, but they will apprehend you all the same.” He lowered the oars into the sea again and began to turn the boat around. “It would be best if I returned you to the Frenchies.”
Duncan put out a hand and stilled Micheil’s rowing.
“The trader will be long gone,” he said. He thought for a moment. “Is there nowhere else you can land me? Further along the coast, perhaps?”
“Nowhere that the Hays won’t look.” Micheil shook his head. “And if they catch you and discover you’re a Comyn, you’ll be swinging on a gibbet before sunrise.”
“Well, we can’t stay out here all night. As soon as the sun rises and burns off the haar, they’ll see us as clearly as an eagle spies a salmon.”
Micheil turned thoughtful and frightened at the same time. He swallowed nervously.
“There is one place, but… nay, I wouldna dare to venture it.”
“What place?” Duncan pressed him.
“The Bullers,” Micheil said simply and shivered, as if the mere sound of the word struck terror into his veins. “It’s a gloup – a collapsed sea cave – on the other side of
the north headland of the bay.”
“Aye?” Duncan asked impatiently, eager to discover the significance of Micheil’s remark.
“Well, there’s a narrow inlet that runs under a natural arch that the collapse left behind, which leads to a ‘pot’. It’s well hidden both from the landward and the seaward sides. You could wait out the search there; then, when the coast is clear, make your way across the headland and down my cottage. Though I’m still not happy about your lodging there,” he added. “It’s right under the nose of the castle. If they find you there, we’ll both swing.”
“And you could land me there?” Duncan prompted.
Micheil shook his head vehemently.
“I wouldna dare,” he insisted. “It’s called ‘the Bullers’ – ‘the Kettle’ – for good reason. No matter how calm the sea is, the surge of the tide through the narrow inlet makes the water boil in the ‘pot’. Forby, there is no beach to land on, just rocks and cliffs that a boat would be dashed to pieces against. I wouldna venture it in daylight, let alone the dark.”
“Let’s venture it, man,” Duncan urged in a low growl, without hesitation. “There’s a calm sea, and you needn’t try to land; just carry me close enough to the rocks that I might lowp ashore.”
Micheil shook his head even more vehemently than before.
“Don’t be daft, man,” he said. “Even if you made it onto the rocks, you’d still have near a hundred feet of crags to climb to win free of the chasm. And those crags are dripping with shite from all the gulls that roost there. You would never get out of it with your life.”
Duncan clapped a hand on Micheil’s shoulder.
“Let’s venture it all the same,” he urged. “I’d rather perish in the Bullers than suffer the damned Hays in Formartine.”
* * *
Duncan could not believe the change that came over the ocean as Micheil rowed the yoal between the narrow jaws of the Bullers and beneath the soaring arch of rock, which was all that remained of the vault of the sea cave that had come crashing down a long time ago, in the days beyond memory. The calm moonlit sea they had left was transformed into a seething cauldron of sound and spray, as the ocean swell heaved in the confined space of ‘the Kettle’ and leaped up its ragged walls like an angry caged beast. The din of the enraged sea, as it echoed back from the cliffs that enclosed it, was tremendous; Duncan felt its grumble reverberate deep in the pit of his stomach. He also felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise at the sight of the massive waves lashing and scouring the rocks on which he knew he must land. To venture such a landing would, as Micheil had maintained, be madness.
“Let us get out of here!” Micheil cried, his voice sounding faint and puny amid the cacophony of crashing breakers.
Duncan’s instincts counseled the same, but he knew his mission would stand or fall by his actions in the next few minutes. To withdraw would mean certain capture, either on the torchlit beach, which the Earl’s men were at that very moment scouring, or in the cold light of dawn when the haar would lift to expose them bobbing like ducks sitting in the bay.
“No!” he cried back. “Take me as close to the rocks as you dare and then a little closer still. As soon as I make the leap, get out as quickly as you can. If I fail, do not risk yourself by tarrying to attempt a rescue.” He cast a grim look at the maelstrom that raged around them. “Even if you weren’t wrecked, I doubt you could pull me out alive.”
“Don’t be a fool, man!”
“It’s either this or the gallows. I would rather take my chances with the waves.”
Micheil let the swell suck him to within a yard or so of the rocks before hauling with all his might on the oars. In the split second that the yoal hung precariously between safety and disaster, Duncan made the leap.
He grunted heavily as he hit the rocks. He did not even try to break his fall with his arms but allowed his face and body to bear the brunt of the impact as he enveloped a rocky outcrop in a tight embrace. He clung desperately to his anchor as the sea clawed at his hips and legs, seeking to drag him down into its hungry maw. His hands slipped on the wet rock, and he hugged it more closely, the coarse granite scraping his knuckles, knees, and cheek. Clinging as fast and as close as a limpet, Duncan began to haul himself higher up the outcrop and away from the suck of the surging waves.
Soon, he was clear of the water and lay for a few minutes, gasping for breath, on the breast of the outcrop. His robes were saturated, and he shivered with both cold and relief. He looked out into the ‘pot’ but could not see Micheil or his boat. He hoped that the brave fisherman had succeeded in drawing clear of the treacherous waters and was now resting over his oars in the calm waters of the open sea. He also hoped that Micheil would have no trouble from the Earl’s men. He trusted he would not; they were accustomed to his nocturnal activities and would, in any case, be easily bribed.
Recovering his breath, Duncan peered up at the cliffs. The thin moonlight picked out the long white patches of guano that streaked the chasm walls and the occasional silhouette of a long-winged seabird as it slipped from the ledge on which it roosted, soared for a moment against the starry sky, then settled again. It was too dark, he decided, to attempt to scale the cliffs; that would have to wait until morning.
He scanned the rocks immediately above his head. There, about six feet above him and well above the reach of the sea spray, he spied a narrow shelf where he could safely wait out the remainder of the night. He clambered up to it and huddled with his back against the damp stone of the cliff.
Deafened by the incessant crash of the ocean, he settled into a fitful doze.
In his dreams, he saw himself slitting the throat of Sir Gilbert Hay, false Earl of Errol and Buchan, and High Constable of Scotland.
He found the dream deeply gratifying.
Chapter One
Cruden Bay
Some weeks later
The noise was tremendous. Its din filled the broad crescent sweep of Cruden Bay between its two towering headlands.
Elizabeth Bryce pressed her hands to her ears to dampen the explosion of the waves on the beach and the thunder of the wind against the cliffs. The sheer power of the elements frightened her, but it was a good kind of fright that stirred a nervous involuntary giggle in her chest. She loved the wildness of the sea, its vastness; it was still so strange and new to her. She was used to the moorland storms of her native land of Tweeddale, which were wild enough, but even their fierce potency paled alongside the immensity of the sea as it raged and threw itself against the land.
She staggered against the buffeting gusts of the gale, her hair and the ribbands she had woven into it streaming out behind her as she turned her face into the wind, its eddies whipping her long red tresses across her lightly freckled cheeks and brow, releasing the scent of the rosemary with which she had rinsed it that morning. The wind tugged violently at her robes as if it wanted to rip them from her limbs, strip her of the accoutrements of civilization that separated her from her naked animal self, and reclaim her to the wild. Their violence thrilled her; she tipped her head up and closed her eyes to relish in the ravages of the clawing fingers.
When she opened them again, she could see her new home, Slains Castle, rise imposingly from the southern headland against the stormy gray sky, its towers and battlements gazing down, stern and defiant, on anyone who had a mind to meddle with it. Its arrogant grandeur contrasted starkly with the humble fisherman’s cottage that cowered away to her right, in a neuk of the rocks not far above the high-water mark with its black line of rotting seaweed. Once again, she wondered at the fate that had brought her there, to that place so far from her calving ground in Tweeddale, and to a station in life that so far exceeded the one into which she had been born.
She was startled out of her reverie by the piercing cry of a gull. She looked up to her left, through the drizzle that was being driven in squalls against her face, and saw the bird struggling to hold its position above the heaving swell of the sea.
She r
eally should be getting back to the castle, she reflected; the tide was coming in, the storm was intensifying, and her mistress, Lady Margaret, Countess of Errol, would, in any case, be expecting Elizabeth for her French lesson. But she did so love the fury of the gale, the delicious chill of its breath on her brow and cheeks.
