It was after midnight, but she had left a candle in the window, a tiny beacon of light giving him hope on this dismal night. He hesitated outside the door. What more could he say to persuade her? He was out of words.
Apprehension, sudden and urgent, swept over him like a crashing wave. Without knocking, he flung the door open. One glance told him the cottage was empty. The candle had not burned down much, so Lily could not have been gone long.
Where was she? She was in trouble, he knew it.
Roderick.
He heard her voice in his head, pulling him as if a twine connected their hearts. He quickly found his grandmother’s old lantern and a rope and ran back outside. Icy rain pelted his face as he held the lantern high, trying to see into the blackness. On the sharp wind, he heard her call his name again. He had to find her.
Lily, where are ye?
Roderick had never had a vision in his life, but now he saw Lily with her arms wrapped around a small tree as clearly as if she were right in front of him. He sensed her growing weakness, and her deep cold was so real to him that a shiver went up his back. He must find her quickly.
He pushed back his rising panic and searched his memory. As a lad, he had scrambled all over this part of the island, and he knew every inch of the path along the cliff. He must recognize something from his vision that would tell him where she was. In his mind’s eye, he followed the path along the cliff. He remembered seeing a tree bent by the wind and growing sideways out of the rock with its roots clinging to the side of the cliff. That was it.
He knew exactly where she was, and it was not far. He took off at a run down the muddy path, which was quickly turning to ice with the increasing cold.
When he neared the part of the cliff where the tree was, he saw that the path had been washed out.
“Lily! Lily!” he called out as he leaned over the side of the cliff, holding the lantern out.
Amidst the browns and grays of the rocks, the lantern picked up the glint of Lily’s red hair. Jesu. His heart went to his throat when he saw the white surf of the waves crashing two hundred feet below her dangling feet.
“Hold on!” he shouted. “Hold on!”
He set the lantern on the ground close to the edge where it would shed some light on the side of the cliff. As Lily was bound to be too weak to hold a rope, he would have to go down for her. So near the slide, the ground would be unstable. It would be easy to set off another slide, so he would have to be careful and avoid the weakest area as much as he could.
After tying one end of the rope around a boulder and the other around his waist, he started down. He rappelled down the cliff until he was on a level with her, then inched sideways.
“Lily, stay awake!” he shouted when he saw that she had rested her head on the tree trunk.
She did not respond, and he feared she would lose her grip and fall before he could reach her. When he could almost touch her, she lifted her head.
“I can’t hold any longer,” she whispered.
As she started to fall, he dove to the side and caught her around the waist with one arm. But he’d thrown himself off balance and banged against the side of the cliff. He quickly found his footing again, but he’d started a small slide. Fearing it would grow, he raced up the rope, protecting Lily from the flying rocks and debris as best he could.
When he made it to the top, he untied the rope and ran with Lily in his arms until they were a safe distance from the slide. He heard a crack and a thunderous crash and turned in time to see an entire stretch of the cliff break off and fall into the sea.
He fell to his knees and held Lily tightly in his arms.
Praise God, he had found her in time.
“I knew you’d come,” she said, and wrapped her arms around his neck.
“I always will,” he said.
“I know that now,” she said.
When he got her back to the cottage, he bundled her in blankets, gave her a cup of hot whisky, and sat her on his lap before the hearth. His heart might never recover from this night, but Lily seemed to revive quickly.
Once she did, she took him to bed and tested the strength of his heart again. And in the morning, she insisted they go back to where he had rescued her the night before.
The cliff looked like a cleaver had shorn it, and there was a huge a pile of rocks on the shore below it.
Lily turned to him and held out her hand. In her palm lay the key to her shop, the one she had been so frantic to find after they had made love the first time.
She closed her hand around the key and then flung it off the cliff.
“I take it that means you’re staying?” he asked, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
“My home is where you are,” she said. “Always and forever.”
Then she threw her arms around him and gave him a kiss to remember.
EPILOGUE
“Da is here!”
Lily turned from where she was hanging boughs over the cottage door to look at her six-year-old daughter. “Are ye certain, Teàrlag?”
Roderick had said not to expect him until much later.
“Aye,” her daughter said. “My brothers too.”
At times Lily found it unnerving how strong The Sight was in her small daughter.
“They brought a present for me,” Teàrlag said.
“It’s meant to be a surprise,” Lily reprimanded her. “Ye know ye shouldn’t look.”
Her daughter lifted her shoulders and gave her an unrepentant grin.
They had lost Seanmhair earlier this year, and Lily had wanted to return to the cottage to clean and decorate it for the Yuletide as Roderick’s grandmother would have done. In the morning, they would all return to the castle.
“Da and my brothers are verra hungry,” Teàrlag said, tugging at her skirts.
Lily just had time to set the bowls for the venison stew on the table when her three sons burst into the cottage with a cold wind and boisterous greetings. They smelled of damp wool, dogs, and fresh pine boughs. They were strapping lads who would become fine men and great warriors, a credit to their clan like their father. She was so proud of them.
Roderick entered last, ducking his head through the doorway. The sight of him still made her heart flutter.
Later that night after the children were asleep in the loft, Lily lay in her husband’s arms, watching the flickering flames in the hearth and thinking about how lucky she was.
“Do you think we would have found each other,” she asked, “if your grandmother had not had that vision and persuaded the Lord of the Isles send you into the Lowlands?”
“Aye,” he said. “We were meant to be together.”
“That we were,” she said, smiling up at him.
“She told me that love has a magic all its own.” He kissed her forehead. “One way or another, I would have found ye.”
THE END
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This novella is not part of a series, but I had fun giving it small ties to all three of my historical romance series. Fans of my THE RETURN OF THE HIGHLANDERS series have been asking for more stories about handsome MacDonald warriors from the Isle of Skye, so Roderick is for them. I made him the father of a secondary character in that series, which also makes him distantly related to three of the four heroes. Lily, my heroine here, was a child character in Knight of Passion, the final book in my ALL THE KING’S MEN trilogy.
Finally, the Douglas chieftain mentioned in this story was the 3rd Earl of Angus, a predecessor of Archibald Douglas, the 6th Earl of Angus, whose ambitions cause such trouble for his sisters in my latest series, THE DOUGLAS LEGACY. The Douglas earls and the Lord of the Isles were real historical figures. As always, I like to advise readers that fact and legend blur after hundreds of years and that, as a fiction writer, I take as much latitude as I need to write a good story.
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Excerpt: CAPTURED BY A LAIRD (THE DOUGLAS LEGACY #1) by Margaret Mallory
Scotland
1517
Burning her husband’s bed was a mistake. Alison could see that now.
Yet each time she passed the rectangle of charred earth as she paced the castle courtyard, she felt a wave of satisfaction. She had waited to commit her act of rebellion until her daughters were asleep. But that night, after her husband’s body was taken to the priory for burial, she ordered the servants to carry the bed out of the keep. She set fire to it herself. The castle household, accustomed to the meek mistress her husband had required her to be, was thoroughly shocked.
“Do ye see them yet?” Alison called up to one of the guards on the wall.
When the guard shook his head, she resumed her pacing. Where were her brothers? They had sent word this morning that they were on their way.
As she passed the scorched patch again, she recalled how the flames shot up into the night sky. She had stood watching the fire until dawn, imagining the ugliness of the past years turning to black ashes like the bed. The memories did not burn away, but she did feel cleaner.
Destroying such an expensive piece of furniture was self-indulgent, but that was not why she counted burning it a mistake. While she could not tolerate having that bed in her home, it would have been wiser to give it away or sell it. And yet she simply could not in good conscience pass it on to someone else. Not when she felt as if the bed itself carried an evil.
Instinctively, she touched the black quartz pendant at her throat that her mother had given her to ward off ill luck. It had been missing since Blackadder broke the chain on their wedding night. After the fire, she found it wedged in a crack in the floor where the bed had been.
“Lady Alison!” a guard shouted down from the wall. “They’re here!”
The heavy wooden gates swung open, and her two brothers galloped over the drawbridge followed by scores of Douglas warriors. Praise God. As the castle filled with her clansmen, Ali-son immediately felt safer.
One look at Archie’s thunderous expression, however, told her that his meeting with the queen had not gone well. Without a word, her brothers climbed the steps of the keep, crossed the hall where platters of food were being set out on the long trestle tables for the Douglas warriors, and continued up the stairs to the private chambers. They never discussed family business in front of others.
“She is my wife!” Archie said as soon they were behind closed doors. “How dare she think she can dismiss me as if I were one of her servants?”
Alison tapped her foot, trying to be patient, while her brother, the 6th Earl of Angus and chieftain of the Douglas clan, stormed up and down the length of the room. When Archie’s back was to her, she exchanged a look with George, her more clever brother, and rolled her eyes. This was all so predictable.
“I warned ye not to be so blatant about your affair with Lady Jane,” George said in a mild tone.
“My affairs are none of my wife’s concern,” Archie snapped.
“A queen is not an ordinary wife,” George said as he poured himself and Archie cups of wine from the side table.
Alison found it ironic that the Douglas clan owed the greatest rise in their fortunes to Archie’s liaison with the widowed queen. Usually, it was the ladies of the family who were tasked with securing royal favor via the bedchamber.
Archie, always overconfident, had gone too far. While the Council had been willing to toler-ate the queen’s foolishness in taking the young Douglas chieftain as her lover, they were livid when the pair wed in secret, making Archie the infant king’s stepfather. The Council responded by removing the queen as regent. She fled to England amidst accusations that she had tried to abscond with the royal heir.
“How was I to know my wife would return to Scotland?” Archie said, raising his arms. “Be-sides, I’m a young man. She couldn’t expect me to live like a monk while she was gone.”
Doubtless, the queen, who was pregnant with Archie’s child when she fled, expected her husband to join her. But while the queen paid a lengthy visit on her brother Henry VIII, the Douglas men retreated behind the high walls of Tantallon Castle and waited for the cries of trea-son to subside.
That was two years ago. And now, Albany, the man who replaced the queen as regent, was on a ship back to France, and the queen was returning. Archie had gone to meet her at Berwick Castle, just across the border.
“Is there no hope of reconciling with her?” Alison ventured to ask.
“I bedded that revolting woman four times in two days—and for naught!” Archie thrust his hand out. “I had her in my palm again, I swear it. But then some villain sent her a message in-forming her about Jane.”
“Must have been the Hamiltons,” George said, referring to their greatest rivals.
“Despite that setback, I managed to persuade the queen—through great effort, I might add—that we should enter Edinburgh together as man and wife for all the members of the damned Council to see,” Archie said, his blue eyes flashing. “But then she discovered I’d been collecting the rents on her dower lands and flew into a rage.”
No wonder the queen was angry. After abandoning her, Archie had lived openly with his lover and their newborn daughter in one of the queen’s dower castles—and on the queen’s mon-ey.
“You’re her husband,” George said, leaning back in his chair. “Ye had every right to collect her rents. Still do.”
Alison did not want to hear about husbands and their rights. She folded her arms and tamped down her impatience while she waited for the right moment to ask.
“Enough talk. We must join the men.” Archie threw back his cup of wine. “We’ll ride for Edinburgh as soon as they’ve eaten their fill.”
George was already on his feet. She could wait no longer.
“Ye must leave some of our Douglas warriors here to protect this castle,” she blurted out. “The Blackadder men are deserting me.”
She hoped her brothers would not ask why. She did not want to explain that burning her husband’s bed had insulted the Blackadder men and spurred many of them to leave. They dis-liked having a woman in command of the castle, and she had unwittingly given them the excuse they needed.
“I can’t spare any men now,” Archie said, slapping his gloves against his hand. “I must gather all my forces in a show of strength to convince my pigheaded wife that she needs my help to regain the Regency.”
“The Hamiltons will attempt to do the same,” George added.
“But what about me and my daughters?” Alison demanded. “What about the Blackadder lands Grandfather thought were so important that I was forced to wed that man? I was a child of thirteen!”
“For God’s sake, Alison, we’re in a fight for control of the crown,” Archie said. “That will not be decided at Blackadder Castle.”
“Please, I need your help.” She clutched Archie’s arm as he started toward the door. “Ye promised to protect us.”
Archie came to an abrupt halt, and the shared memory hung between them like a dead rat.
“Mother did not need to remind me of my duty to my family,” he said between clenched teeth. “And neither do you.”
Unlike the Douglas men, who lauded Archie’s seduction of the queen as a boon for the family, their mother begged him to end the affair. A generation ago, one of her sisters had been the king’s mistress. After it was rumored that the king had fallen so in love that he wished to marry her, all three of their mother’s sisters died mysteriously.
When Archie wed the queen in secret, knowing full well that every other powerful family in Scotland would oppose the marriage, their mother made one demand of her sons. Archie and George pro
mised her, on their father’s grave, that they would protect their four sisters.
“I’ll find ye a new husband as soon as these other matters are settled,” Archie said. “You’ll be safe here until then.”
Another husband was not what Alison asked for and was the last thing she wanted. “What I need are warriors—”
“Who would dare attack you?” Archie said. “Now that we are rid of Albany, I am the man most likely to rule Scotland.”
Before she could argue, Archie pushed past her and disappeared down the circular stone stairwell.
“Don’t fret, Allie,” George said, and gave her a kiss on her cheek. “Your most dangerous neighbors were the Hume lairds, and they’re both dead.”
***
David Hume left his horse and warriors a safe distance outside the city walls and proceeded on foot. If the guards were watching for him, they would not expect him to come alone, or so he hoped. Keeping his hood low over his face and his hand on his dirk, he mingled with the men herding cattle through the Cowgate Port to sell in the city’s market.
A month ago, David would have been amused to find himself entering the great city of Ed-inburgh between two cows. But his humor had been wrung from him. As he walked up West Bow toward the center of the city, the rage that was always with him now swelled until his skin felt too tight.
He paused before entering the High Street and scraped the dung off his boots while he scanned the bustling street for anyone who might attempt to thwart him. Then, keeping watch on the armed men amidst the merchants, well-dressed ladies, beggars, and thieves, he started down the hill in the direction of Holyrood Palace. He spared a glance over his shoulder at Edinburgh Castle, the massive fortress that sat atop the black rock behind him. If he were caught, he would likely grow old in its bleak dungeon. He’d prefer a quick death.
David had walked this very street with his father and uncle. With each step, he tried to imagine how that day might have ended differently. Could he have stopped it? Perhaps, perhaps not. Regardless, he should have tried. From the moment they entered Holyrood Palace, he had sensed the danger. It pricked at the back of his neck and made his hands itch to pull his blade.
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