Fighting for a Highland Lass
Only she can save him…only he can set her free…
Kenna Kendrick
Contents
Thank you
Defenders of the Highlands
About the book
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
But there’s more…
Afterword
Defenders of the Highlands
Do you want more Romance?
Fighting for a Highland Heart
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Thank you
About the Author
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Defenders of the Highlands
Book#1
Fighting for a Highland Rose
* * *
Book#2
Fighting for a Highland Heart
* * *
Book#3 (this book)
Fighting for a Highland Lass
About the book
A female pirate, a noble Highlander, dangerous secrets and the deadly passion that surrounds them...
Anne Sinclair was not a normal lass. Raised by her uncle, the notorious captain Neil Gow-Sinclair and having spent all her life amongst his crew, she was one of his fiercest warriors and was fighting desperately for his approval. But when her mission is to capture and guard an unknown man, Anne will find herself torn between her heart and her duty.
Thorvald's world turns upside down when he is abducted during a raid of his village. Without knowing why he becomes a prisoner of the pirate who terrifies Orkney Isles. But captivity is much more interesting than he would have imagined when the beautiful woman who put him in chains proposes to run away with him. Unfortunately for Thorvald and Anne, Neil Gow-Sinclair is not the only one in pursuit of them.
Now they must become allies to survive, discover the mystery behind Thorvald's abduction and explore their fateful attraction.
She was wild as the sea, he was steady as the earth...
* * *
Chapter One
Hoy Sound,
Off the south coast of Orkney
February 1773
Sunlight skipped across the white-tipped waves. Gulls wheeled, and a bracing wind whipped the salt spray up from where the narrow prow of the Caithness Seal cut through the water like a well-honed blade. Anne Gow leaned out across the churning water, the wind mussing her short black hair the way an affectionate father might do. Not that she had a father, of course. Nor even much affection to speak of. She pushed that thought aside and scanned the view.
Orkney. It was a sweeping, rocky, green prospect; black rocks stretching up from the deep grey water then giving way abruptly to a rolling green land under a vast, ever-changing sky. On a dry day like this, it was beautiful, and the sound of Hoy was good for sailing. On a stormy day, it would have been deadly.
“Sail!” came the shout from high above in the rigging. Anne glanced up at the boy who hung there above the billowing sail. She looked where he was pointing. Sure enough, at the entrance to the bay in which they were approaching, a little single-sailed fishing vessel was turning away from the open water and making its way back into the bay. As she looked over the deck of the ship, she saw that all the crew had seen it too. The village would be warned.
Feelings warred within her; while one part of her seethed with irritation that their planning had come to nought, another part of her felt relief that the little village would not be entirely unprepared for her uncle’s wrath. Then, with a roar, he came, storming through the centre of the crowd of his men. Her paternal uncle, her father’s brother, Neil Gow-Sinclair, with his bristly, patchy black beard sticking out in his fury and his face – horribly twisted by the thick mass of scarring down one side – red with his anger. The stump of his wooden leg thumped on the deck as he moved among his men, yelling orders which his first mate leapt to confirm. Sails up, put on speed, damn the landsmen, they would pay. The usual song.
Then his single, blood-shot eye found Anne.
“You,” he hollered, and there was no question about who he meant, “get back up tae the stern and watch out behind for pursuit. And ready yerself tae fight unless ye desire a whipping! I’ll have no idle hands upon my deck!”
Anne bobbed her head and hurried to obey. There was nothing, she knew, to be gained from disobeying her uncle, and she also knew that even in her case, his threats of physical violence were not idle ones.
The quarter-deck comprised a raised platform at the back of the ship, broad and well-appointed with gun loops, water casks, and a bolted-down table and chairs for the captain and the first mate to sit at in fine weather. There she found a seaman at the wheel of the ship. He gave her a curt nod of acknowledgement but kept his eyes on his task, holding the great wheel steady as the wind billowed into the sails, driving them forward. Anne clambered, monkey-like, up the thin ladder and onto the stern-deck, the highest point on the ship save the rigging. It was a narrow platform with two small quarter-pounder cannons facing back and was heavily reinforced to handle the recoil of the guns. It was also a prime spot to look out over the water behind them and scan for any pursuit. Anne followed her uncle’s orders, gazing out over the water as she took the sword-belt from her small sea-chest and strapped it on.
She was wearing clothes of heavy, dark leather, tight britches, jerkin, and high boots. Standing, she took gloves of leather from her gear chest and pulled them on, and then slipped her leather helmet down over her wild short hair, fixing the strap under her small, strong chin. There was a hide-bound wooden shield leaning against the side of the chest, and she hefted this onto her back then drew her long, light blade, making sure that none of her gear hindered the draw.
Anne Gow hated this, but at the same time, she was fiercely proud of her ability to do it and do it well. She was a fighter, and a damned good one at that, her prowess tempered in the fire of the crowd of hard fighting men who had been her family growing up. Having never known her mother, and with little memory of her father who had disappeared, her uncle was all that was left. What possessed Neil Gow-Sinclair to take her in and care for her she could not guess; it was not the impulse of a tender heart, of that sh
e was sure. A less tender-hearted man would be hard to imagine, but for all that, there was sometimes a look of hard pride in the old sinner’s eyes when he saw her fight. And, of course, he had not always been as cruel and as heartless as today.
There was still no sign of pursuit, but she stuck to her post. Adrenaline thrummed through her, making her heart race, and behind her on the deck of the Caithness Seal men darted back and forth, making preparations for the fight to come, setting the deck in readiness. The rigging was crawling with figures, and as she watched, the three high masts bloomed into sail, strange flowers all opening at once. The captain, her uncle Neil, roared forth an order, and the sails billowed and caught the wind, driving the great ship forward with more speed than anybody would have thought possible.
And then, sudden as a diving gull, they rounded the headland and saw it snuggled small and homely-looking in the green, protecting arms of the small anchorage. A little village. Their prey. Her uncle roared out an animal cry of wicked satisfaction. Anne gritted her teeth and tried to prepare her mind for what must come.
* * *
“It’s a ship, Katheryn,” cried Thorvald to his sister. Katheryn pushed her long dark hair back from her face and shielded her eyes against the glare as she peered out over the bay. The day was clear, and warm for February, but a haze lay across the sea which made the boats on the water dance and vanish and return like mirages in a desert. Below them, the little village they called home snuggled between the twin arms of the bay. Peat smoke hazed the air above it and drifted back to their noses, a homely scent.
They had hurried back over from the clam beds where they had been that morning to harvest. Their father – they both called him ‘father’, though Thorvald was an orphan – had come around the bay to the clam beds in his little fishing boat and shouted to them to hurry home straight away. Now they stood, rough home-spun clothing flapping in the endless sea-breeze, barefoot, their youthful faces weathered by their long days living on the land by the water. For all that, they were a handsome pair, she, at twenty-one, a little older, and he, approaching the end of his twentieth year, a little taller. Both of them were too old to be running barefoot like children in the Orkney clam beds.
Katheryn nodded slowly and looked down into the village.
“Aye, it’s a ship, but she’s a big one, and I can’t make out the flag. Whatever can such a vessel want at Skylness? They’re coming in hard.”
“There, look there,” she grabbed his arm, and he looked where she pointed.
The woman they called ‘Mother’ stood up a little way behind the village. She had been scanning the land, looking for them. There was something of fear in her stance, leaning forward, peering through the haze up toward them. Now she began to wave, gesturing them to come down. Glancing back over her shoulder chilled Thorvald to the bone. On the water beyond, the big ship was lowering two smaller boats from the side. It was hard to tell from this distance, but it looked as if the boats were packed with men.
They ran the rest of the way to their mother.
“Oh, God,” she called as they ran towards her, “we do not know who it is, but ye must come down to yer father and the village folk. Yer father is sure that they have come tae plunder, as that has not happened for many a long year.”
Her pale face was streaked where tears ran tracks through the dust of her simple morning’s work. Thorvald tried to hug her, but she shook him off.
“Go, go, and find yer father and tell him ye have not forgotten how to fight! Katheryn, come with me, we will gather with the other women at the house o’ Francis Harcus, as it’s the biggest and the strongest in the village. Come on now.”
Katheryn met her foster brother’s eyes. The child who had picked the clams from their beds to eat was gone, and she saw instead in his dark eyes, the man he would become. She nodded once to him.
“Go, brother,” and without another word, he turned and jogged down through the village.
“Ah,” his father called, “praise God ye have come. Here, ye have a little time. They are still pulling in their boats tae the shore. The tide hinders them. Come!”
Thorvald took in the scene. Fishermen and craftsmen, peat-cutters, mackerel-smokers, the village blacksmith and the village bard. Even his father was a simple fisherman, with the nimble fingers which came from mending nets by the light of a peat fire in the evening, and the strong shoulders and powerful back of a man who rowed and hauled nets for his living. A healthy man, even a strong man, but without the build of a swordsman. And yet, for all that the men of his village seemed to Thorvald to be the least warlike imaginable, here they were, armed and armoured, grim faces turned toward the sea, their fists clenched around the shafts of long axes and the hilts of swords.
“Come on, lad,” said his father, “get ready. Ye remember what ye were taught, now?”
“Aye, father,” Thorvald added, a little shakily.
“Good lad.” His father gave him a hearty clap on the shoulder, then helped him into chainmail, which sat heavy across the young man’s shoulders, and a helmet of the old Norse style pointed at the crown with a figured nose-guard. Greaves for his shins, gauntlets for his wrists and forearms. He was also given an axe, a big two-hander, the curved blade glinting wickedly in the morning sun.
“No guns?” asked Thorvald. His father turned from where he had been tightening a strap on his own gear.
“No guns,” he confirmed wryly. “No powder, ye see. And few enough men who could shoot them straight even if we had them. No, lad, we will have tae rely on the old way today.”
All around them, the men of the village were forming up. There could not have been more than thirty-five all told, Thorvald thought as he fell into line beside his father. He stared past the nose guard toward the small boats, which were hauling toward the shore, the men they carried shouting with every pull of the oars. He made them fifty, at least, maybe more. And almost certainly more back on the ship. Why? The thought flickered through his mind as his little party took up their positions at the front of their village. Why? There was nothing here worth a raider’s time. Oh, there was dry peat, and smoked fish aplenty, and perhaps some odd valuables gathered out of sentiment by the local inhabitants, but none of that was worth the time of a heavily-armed raiding party, which this seemed to be. Another thought crossed his mind, and he nudged his father.
“Has a messenger ridden to Kirkwall?”
His father did not look at him but spoke low in reply. “Damned bad luck. The only horse in the village took lame the day before yesterday. Francis Harcus could not send anyone to ride the beast on three legs. He has sent his son Harold off in his wee boat toward Stromness, and he will get a horse there. He has sent the blacksmith’s son, young John, overland. On foot.”
There seemed nothing to say to this. Neither Harold Harcus in his boat nor young John on foot would be getting help for the village soon. The men of the village were on their own.
“Seems like they would have been of more use here,” someone commented. “Young John is handy with that hammer o’ his, and Harold Harcus is no fool either.” Despite the tension, there was a general laugh.
As the men of the village prepared for battle, Thorvald thought back, remembering the training which the simple village folk had undergone. Battle-hardened warriors had been sent from Kirkwall, the biggest settlement in Orkney, to train the men of the village in the art of sword, shield, axe and bow. They had drilled the men in simple melee formation and tactics, and put Francis Harcus, the leading man in the village, in charge of the little squad they had created. The women had been trained how to shoot bolts with an arsenal of old Venetian crossbows that had been brought from God-knows-where. Francis Harcus made sure everyone practised at least once a week, and every six weeks or so, the whole community was rousted out, fully equipped, and induced to fight mock battles on the seafront. Perhaps twice a year, men would come again from Kirkwall to inspect the supplies of weaponry, to talk at length with Francis, and sometimes to watch a
demonstration of the village’s basic fighting skills.
At the time, none of this had seemed unusual to Thorvald. He had accepted it with equanimity, just as he had always accepted that fact that he was an orphan, Tom and Freida Fisher were the people he knew as parents. Now, as he faced for the first time the prospect of actually using his fighting skills in earnest, a fleeting thought passed through his mind: it was good they had been trained for this, but it was also just a little odd...
Fighting For A Highland Lass (Defenders 0f The Highlands Book 3) Page 1
