Highlander’s Untamed Bride
A Historical Scottish Romance Novel
Maddie MacKenna
Contents
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
Epilogue
Also by Maddie MacKenna
About the Author
About the Book
Orphaned at a young age, Kirsteen Roy is the lead star of a famous traveling show. When her showfolk get invited to celebrate the homecoming of the local Laird's son, she puts not only her heart but also her life in jeopardy.
Beathan Dunn, son of the Laird of clan Dunn, returns home from his Grand Tour only to discover a big surprise awaiting him. Attending the celebration in his honor, his heart stops the minute he lays his eyes on the gorgeous dancer.
As the couple gets to know each other, a passionate romance starts developing between them…
But when an arrow disrupts one of their encounters, they quickly realize they are under attack. An attempt against their life rather than an accident, a crazy manhunt begins…
With the shocking truth closer than they think, Beathan must act fast to protect not only the lass he loves, but also everything else he has ever cared for in his life.
1
Faither,
After two years abroad, my trip has finally come to an end. I have seen all I came to see, done all I’ve come to do. I am ready to go home.
By the time this letter reaches you, I will be nearly there. I set sail from Holland today and hope to be in Scotland by the 31st of September, God willing. I have missed you greatly, and am very much looking forward to hearing what has been happening at the castle, as well as sharing stories of my trip. I hope that, if you are not in good health, you are at least comfortable and happy.
With love from your son,
Beathan Dunn
Laird Seumas Dunn scanned the letter one more time before laying it down on his desk. He took off his glasses and placed them atop the paper before leaning back in his chair, crossing one knobby knee over the other. He let his thoughts wander away from the ledgers he had been looking over before the letter arrived. Instead, he thought of his son.
Seumas was glad Beathan was returning. When he had sent Beathan off on his Grand Tour of Europe, a tradition of men of their class, he had spent days convincing the lad to go for more than a year. After all, a year wasn’t nearly enough time to see everything the tour could offer him! It was an educational experience, a rite of passage once a man of nobility had reached the age of majority. There were so many countries the lad needed to visit, ancient sites he needed to see, and cultures he needed to absorb. It had been hard doing, getting the lad to go at all, because Beathan was loath to leave him after the diagnosis Seumas had received from his physicians.
A wasting disease was slowly stripping the life from him, though the physicians assured him he still had a few years left before he was well and truly gone. The news had distressed Beathan greatly, but Seumas had convinced the lad that truly, it was a blessing in disguise.
“Ye‘re more than ready to take over from me, lad. This is a sign,” he had told Beathan as he lay in his sickbed, his son perched on a chair at his side. “It’s a sign ye need to go on this trip. I‘ve only got a few years left in me, and ye need to see the world before ye‘re a laird.”
“No. I won’t leave you. I daenae need to see Europe, Faither. That’s nae what’s important here. Ye are,” Beathan had told him emphatically.
But Seumas had won out. He was, after all, the patriarch of the family. He still had the power over his son, for all that the boy was twenty-three years old at the time and looking very much like a man.
“This trip will give ye a chance to act out those youthful fascinations of men yer age, lookin’ to see a bit of the world. And then, ye can return home, and I can die in peace knowin’ ye‘ve had a good start to yer life,” he had told Beathan, and finally, after a few days and more than a few conversations in the same vein, the lad had relented.
He had been gone more than two years now. A bad storm had delayed his trip to Germany, and while he had written to his father that he was more than ready to come home, Seumas had been insistent that his son see the country, with its esteemed universities and interesting language.
From Germany, Beathan had then gone on to Holland, and now, finally, he was coming home.
“Logan!” Seumas called, shaking off his reverie and sitting back up in his chair. His condition had improved enough that he was now able to walk about, albeit slowly. He still tired early in the evenings and spent far more time asleep than he would like, but he was alive, and that was more than enough.
“Yes, sir?” Logan Campbell, Seumas’ secretary, asked as he hurried into the room.
Logan was a thin man with a permanently pinched expression on his face. He wore spectacles that were always perched a little too low on his nose, and no matter how fine his clothes looked when he dressed in the morning, by midday they were always wrinkled and askew. He was a strange man, but a dedicated one, and had served Seumas well these last thirty years.
“Beathan is returning,” Seumas said, replacing his own glasses back on his nose. “And I want to throw him a party, to celebrate; fortnight of revellin', with food and wine and good company aplenty. I will need yer help with plannin’, of course.”
“Of course, me laird.” Logan said, bowing his head. “I assume ye want all the lairds and ladies from the surroundin’ areas invited?”
“Aye. And ye will need to talk to the cook, make sure she prepares a good spread. Plenty of roasted meats, sweets, and ale and wine enough to intoxicate a village.”
Seumas had meant the last statement as a joke, but as ever, Logan did not take it as such. Instead, he was muttering to himself, memorizing all of Seumas’ orders. Logan was the most serious man he had ever met, but then, he assumed that was part of what made the man so good at his position.
“What about entertainment, me laird?” Logan asked. “There was a travellin’ show I heard of at the tavern down the road. It supposed to be quite good with theatre and dance. They were stationed in the village, and I believe they willnae leave till tomorrow.”
Seumas hadn’t considered that they would need entertainment, but then, if the celebration was supposed to last a fortnight, there would need to be something to keep his guests occupied in between walks to the loch and rides out to the hills.
“That will do,” he told Logan. “Arrange for them to stay on the land, mayhaps near the hills where it’s dry. We will provide their food of course, and negotiate a price that suits them. I daenae care how much it costs.”
Cost was of no consequence to Seumas. He was richer than Croesus, and besides, he would spare no expense celebrating his son’s homecoming.
“Is there anythin’ else, me laird?” Logan asked.
“Aye. Prepare Beathan’s room,” Seumas said, and he had no idea that such banal words could bring a man such joy.
Seumas knew, as Logan left the room, that he would spend the next few days anxiously looking out the window, listening for hoof beats that told him Beathan was finally back on Castle Dunn soil. He could not wait to embrace the lad, to hear tell of his travels. He could not wait to finally have his son back home.
Pushing himself up off his chair, he made his
way to the door of his study, intent on finding his wife, Malin. She too would be overjoyed with the news of their boy finally returning.
2
Kirsteen Roy could not believe her luck. When the strange Scottish man had come to talk to Madame Blanche the day before, she had assumed it was to ask them to vacate the field where they had pitched their tents. After all, their time in the village was ending the day after, and it was not unusual for patrons to kick them out the night before their last performance. It was rude, of course, but such were the things that performers had to bear for their art.
But this time, they had not been kicked out. Instead, they had been invited to perform at the home of the local laird, Laird Dunn who lived in a castle. A castle! Kirsteen had never been inside a castle before.
After being orphaned during the plague, she had been raised for three years by her parents’ old, cantankerous landlady in a moldering building in London, before being found by Madame Blanche and her husband, Frederick Starrett when she was eleven years old. Madame Blanche and Fred had saved her. Were it not for them, Kirsteen would have been doomed to a life on the streets, for the landlady had told her in no uncertain terms that she would be kicked out the day she turned eighteen.
Up until Madame Blanche and Fred came along, Kirsteen had expected to live life as a woman of the night. She had watched the prostitutes trawling down Canal Street, selling their bodies, and assumed that one day soon she too would become one of them. The thought terrified her, but she had accepted her lot in life. What else could become of a poor orphan living in a slum?
It turned out that much could become of such a girl, for no sooner had Madame Blanche and Fred bumped into her at a pie shop that they were spiriting her away from the landlady’s hovel, bringing her into the fold of their travelling troupe.
The troupe was her family. Though the players changed from time to time, some leaving to find new work, others marrying and deciding to settle in one place, there was always a core of seven or eight people who had worked together for the better part of ten years.
Madame Blanche and Fred treated them all as equals, sharing wages fairly among them and making sure that everyone felt appreciated. Kirsteen knew this was rare among troupes; the other players had told her horror stories of previous jobs with other troupes where the directors had taken advantage of their players, docking their pay and molesting the younger girls.
Kirsteen knew how lucky she was to have been found by Blanche and Fred. And though they had at first taken her into their fold out of sheer charity, Blanche had quickly noticed that Kirsteen had a body “made for movement” and started teaching her to dance.
Kirsteen took to the skill quickly. She was naturally lithe, with long, strong limbs and a natural grace. She could memorize routines in a day, and she was also a passable actor and singer, taking the smaller roles and choruses in the various plays and songs she performed with the troupe.
Thanks to the troupe, she had travelled all throughout England, Scotland, Wales, and Europe. She had seen ruins in Rome, and the Alps in Switzerland. She had entertained dukes and duchesses whose hairpins were worth more than everything she owned.
She led a good life, but as she gazed at Castle Dunn in the distance, Kirsteen couldn’t help wishing that for one day, she could live the life of a true lady; one who inhabited a castle like the one before her. She dreamed to occupy a vast expansive bedchamber with a separate room for dressing and bathing. She would treasure such luxury for the rest of her days.
“It is magnificent, is it not?” Madame Blanche asked. Her native French accent had dulled after so many years away from home, but it could still be detected in the harsh consonants and soft vowels of the woman’s speech.
Her appearance, however was as French as it had been the day Blanche left her home country, according to Fred, who often called her his “French wife” to annoy her. “As pretty and stylish as the day we boarded the boat!” he often told Blanche when she was dressed in especially fine attire. It never failed to make Kirsteen laugh.
Blanche favored the more refined hairstyles of the continent to contain her mass of black curls, and she would only allow her pleasantly plump, curved figure to be clothed in fabric sourced from her home country. Though she was nearing middle age, Kirsteen thought her a great beauty still, with her full red lips, wise brown eyes and the smile that so easily appeared on her porcelain-pale face.
“Indeed, it is. Breathtaking. I think this might be the grandest place we have ever performed,” Kirsteen said as they slowly rode toward the castle. They were on horseback, their various tents and costumes strapped to the animal’s backs.
As they approached the bottom of a hill, Kirsteen saw a small wooden peg with a bit of red fabric attached to it. The fabric was waving softly in the autumnal breeze.
“This is where we will camp,” Madame Blanche said, halting her horse and stepping down from the saddle. “They are having a dry autumn, and I have been assured that rain is unlikely this week.”
The troupe breathed a collective sigh of relief. Sleeping in a soaking tent was torture on the voice and the muscles. More than once Kirsteen had woken up from a night spent under such conditions with a vicious cough and lethargic limbs, neither of which were good for singing or dancing.
The camp took little time to set up; after so many years together, each person knew their role, and no sooner were the tents up than costumes were being stored and beds prepared for the approaching evening.
When they had finished, Madame Blanche led them toward the castle. It was a short walk down the hill and toward the castle’s rear entrance, where they would enter and exit. They were, after all, little more than servants.
When they reached the castle’s rear entrance, a man was waiting for them. He had a very stern, grave look on his face, and glasses that were nearly falling off his nose. Kirsteen would have laughed, but she had the sense that he would scold her if she so much as giggled silently.
“Welcome to Castle Dunn,” he told her and the rest of the troupe. “I am Logan, Laird Dunn’s secretary. If you have any problems or questions, please tell them to me.”
Kirsteen smiled at his accent, a deep, rolling brogue. She had always preferred the Scottish accent above all others. There was something comforting in the rolled r’s, the ayes and nays.
“Might we take a look at the grounds, Logan?” Fred asked. Kirsteen had suspected he had asked as much. Fred loved nothing so much as walking in the countryside. Castle Dunn was surrounded by hills to the south and west, a forest to the north and what looked like a loch to the east. She knew he had spent all his time between rehearsals exploring the scenery in all its beautiful, autumnal Scottish glory.
“Yes, that would be fine. I can lead you, if you like,” Logan proposed, though Kirsteen couldn’t tell how he truly felt about the prospect. His face was unreadable, his mouth set in something between a grimace and a frown.
The troupe followed Logan down past the stables, where the air smelled like manure and hay. Men walked in and out of the stables carrying various buckets and tools, and when Kirsteen peeked inside she saw at least twenty horses in their stalls. There were more animals scattered in paddocks they passed as they walked down a gentle slope; sheep occupied one, goats another, and behind the barn Kirsteen could see a sheltered paddock for chickens.
Visible as well was a vegetable garden larger than anything Kirsteen had ever seen, as well as a hothouse. She could only imagine the delicacies that the castle cook must be able to produce with such resources. Her stomach growled at the thought.
The gentle slope lead to a steeper one, at the bottom of which was the lock Kirsteen had glimpsed before. The glimpse had not nearly done the view justice. The water was a beautiful teal, its surface shining with dappled, late afternoon sunlight.
The loch was surrounded on three sides by a forest lit up with brightly colored leaves. There was a pleasant breeze blowing through her hair as she walked down the hill, carrying with it the sc
ent of freshly turned earth, wood smoke, and peat.
“It’s breath-taking,” Madame Blanche whispered to Kirsteen when they came to a stop at the edge of the lake. “Not even Lake Geneva is so beautiful.”
Kirsteen nodded, finding herself mute as she gazed at the beauty.
Fred walked up to stand beside them and put his arm around Blanche, drawing her to him.
“It is almost as beautiful as you,” he whispered in her ear, and Kirsteen saw Blanche roll her eyes but giggle all the same.
In the twelve years that she had known them, Kirsteen had seen Madame Blanche and Fred grow even more in love with each other. They were affectionate and caring, and never stopped whispering sweet things in each other’s ear, even though by the time Kirsteen entered their lives, they had already been married for nearly ten years.
Kirsteen assumed that such overt affection dulled with time, but that was not the case with Blanche and Fred. The hardships they had experienced, professionally and personally, had only brought them closer. Of those hardships, Blanche’s inability to have a child was the most difficult.
Kirsteen knew they had tried for years, but when no child had come after nearly seven years, they had finally realized that they would never be so blessed. That was, in fact, partly why they took her in. They knew she was in a bad situation with the landlady, but Blanche had also confessed later that Kirsteen was “like the child I always imagined I would have.”
And they, in turn, were the only parents she had ever really known. She was eight when her parents died, but because they both worked selling jewelry at the local market, she rarely saw them. She couldn’t even remember their faces now. All she saw when she thought of them was her mother’s red hair, which she had inherited, and her father’s dark brown eyes, which she had not.
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