“Just a few and no longer.”
“And it willna kill them?”
“If ye use it properly, it shouldna.”
That was good enough for Magnus. He inspected the silver pellet a moment longer before tucking it into his purse and pulling forth two silver coins. Handing those over to the appreciative apothecary, he was just turning for the door when a group of women blew in.
Magnus couldn’t see them very well because of the bright sunlight coming in through the doorway behind them, but he could see their shapes. He could smell the perfume. As they came deeper into the shop, he realized that he recognized the woman in the lead.
A bolt of shock ran through him.
She was well-dressed and elegant, and Magnus knew her well, but she reminded him of a time in his life he’d rather forget. For a moment, he wasn’t sure what to do and his moment of indecision cost him, for the woman locked gazes with him and she, too, registered great surprise.
“Magnus?” she gasped. “Magnus, is that you?”
Magnus nodded, realizing that he could not run now. He took a deep breath to steady himself as his heart began to pound.
“Aye,” he said. “Greetings, Lady Ayr.”
The woman shuffled over to him in a flurry of fine fabric and strong perfume, her expression filled with delight.
“Oh, it is you,” she said in her clipped English accent. “What a magnificent stroke of luck to find you here, Magnus. I’ve not seen you in years.”
That was very true. Not since he’d had been her husband’s hostage. He’d spent most of his life in captivity before being released, cast off into the world to fend for himself. Those were the years that Magnus tried to pretend never happened, but seeing Agnes Stewart, Duchess of Ayr, brought back that which he hadn’t thought of in quite some time.
Seeing her face brought back the old, familiar hatred.
“It has been many years, m’lady,” he said, feeling uncomfortable. “If ye will excuse me, I’ve business elsewhere.”
“Magnus, wait,” she said, putting her hand on his arm to stop him. She looked him over appraisingly. “Do you not have a moment to spare me? My, you have grown. When I last saw you, you had only just become a man and my husband finally found peace with your father. What a glorious day that was, your release. To tell you the truth, I had begun to look on you as one of the family. You had been with us for so long, I felt as if I had raised you and I was sorry to see you go.”
I doubt that raising your children means keeping them locked up and punished at the slightest infraction, he thought bitterly. Lady Ayr wasn’t a terrible person, at least not as terrible as her husband, but she had been guilty of ignorance. She was slightly daft, and silly, and hardly noticed the things that went on around her. The more Magnus looked at her, the more those terrible memories filled him.
The more he was bombarded by things he had tried hard to forget.
He had been so young when he’d been taken hostage by Ambrose Stewart, Duke of Ayr. The man was a cousin to his father, Hugh Stewart, Duke of Kintyre and Lorne, youngest brother of James, the King of Scotland. Hugh was a man with a rebellious streak in him. At least, that was the general consensus from the royals when others called him a true loyalist to Scotland. When Hugh had fallen afoul of his brother in a sloppy coup attempt, Ambrose had stepped in to take Hugh’s bastard son hostage to ensure Hugh’s good behavior.
And that’s how Magnus had spent his entire life up until his release seven years ago. He had been treated adequately or poorly within the household of the Duke of Ayr, depending on his father’s behavior.
It had been a horrible way to live.
“Aye, it was a long time,” he said. It was all he could manage. “Please excuse me, m’lady. I do have pressing business elsewhere.”
This time, Agnes let him go. “Of course, Magnus,” she said, watching him head for the door. “I shall tell my husband that I have seen you and that you look well. We are staying at Trinity House in town. You remember the place? To the north, near the sea. Please visit us when you have the time to do so.”
Her last words were called out to him as he quit the shop, a shouted invitation he would never accept. But just as he rushed through the doorway and onto the street, he plowed into a small body in his path. He hadn’t even been watching where he was going and he heard a feminine yelp as he knocked a woman into the gutter.
In his current mood Magnus would have kept going, leaving the woman on her backside, had she not been in his way. But she was, and if he took another step, he would step on her. Therefore, he was forced to stop out of necessity, annoyed that she was blocking his exit. He sidestepped her and reached down to pull her to her feet, purely as a courtesy.
He didn’t know why he should show any courtesy, because he wasn’t the courteous type. Or polite when it came to women in general. Other than natural male urges or a way to make money, he’d never had any use for them. But the moment he pulled the woman to her feet and looked into her eyes, something changed.
Magnus found himself looking into a face that could only be described as angelic. The startled eyes gazing at him were large and bottomless, a pale shade of brown he’d never seen before. Her nose was pert, her mouth lush and generous, now popped open in surprise. There was a strange magic to the moment, a buzzing in his ears that shut out everything else around him.
Suddenly, he didn’t feel like running off.
“My apologies, m’lady,” he said. “I dinna see ye.”
She was trying to brush off her beautiful dress. It was pale green, perhaps silk because it was so fine, with yellow edges around the neckline and at the bottom of her belled sleeves. Now, it had the addition of dirt from the avenue and Magnus took his eyes from her face long enough to realize that she was quite dirty as the result of his handiwork.
“No wonder,” she said in an accent that was not Scots. “You were moving so quickly, it is a wonder you waited for the door to open at all. Why not take it right from the hinges?”
She was scolding him.
He deserved it.
“Had it not moved aside fast enough, I would have,” he said defensively, crouching down to brush the dirt from the bottom of the hem. “If I’ve ruined yer dress, I’ll pay for it.”
She continued shaking out the dress, looking for any real damage. “It is not my dress,” she said. “It belongs to the Duchess of Ayr. She will not be pleased if you’ve ruined it.”
She was shaking the dress around so much that he stopped trying to brush the dirt from it. Standing up, he studied her for a moment, coming to think there was something oddly familiar about her now that he’d had a good look.
He’d seen those eyes somewhere before.
“Are ye a lady for the duchess?” he asked.
She nodded, now brushing her left sleeve. “I am,” she said, taking more time to look at him than at her dress. “No harm done, I suppose. But be careful the next time. The next lady you shove into the gutter may not be as gracious as I am.”
“What’s yer name?”
She stopped brushing, annoyed at the question. “That is none of your affair,” she said. “Go on with you or I shall call for a guard.”
He shook his head. “Ye misunderstand,” he said. “I…I think I’ve seen ye before.”
Highland Legend
On sale July 2021
Acknowledgments
An author’s journey is never a solitary endeavor, and I’ve had a lot of help along the way, advised and assisted by generous people who have left a lasting mark on me.
It takes a village!
To my partner in crime and general all-around good guy, Scott Moreland. None of this would have been possible without your support, your advice, your honesty, and your occasional meltdown. You push me to be a better writer.
To my author-sisters, women who inspire me every
day to be the very best I can be. Each one has contributed something to my life—friendship, advice, direction, wisdom—Tanya Anne Crosby, Eliza Knight, Barbara Devlin, Christi Caldwell, Kerrigan Bryne, Hildie McQueen, Violetta Rand, Susan Stoker, Amy Jarecki, my de Wolfe Pack authors, Melissa Storm, and so many others who have been with me through this journey. You have all contributed something along the way, and I can never fully express my gratitude.
To agent extraordinaire, Sarah Elizabeth Younger, who believed in me and worked her tail off to help me achieve a life-long dream.
To Deb Werksman, “THE” editor extraordinaire who made sure that dream came true.
To my mother and father, Bill and Sylvia Bouse, and my brother, Bill Bouse, who have watched all of this happen from the fifty-yard line and have been an endless source of encouragement (and astonishment!).
And, of course, to my husband, Rob, the real knight in shining armor in all of this.
Lastly, to my readers, without whom none of this would be possible.
About the Author
With over one hundred published novels, Kathryn Le Veque is a critically acclaimed USA Today bestselling author, a charter Amazon All-Star author, and a number one bestselling, award-winning, multipublished author in medieval historical romance.
Kathryn is a multiple award nominee and winner, including winner of Uncaged Book Reviews magazine’s Raven Award for Favorite Medieval Romance and Favorite Cover. Kathryn is also a multiple RONE nominee for InD’Tale Magazine, holding the record for the number of nominations. In 2018, her novel Warwolfe was the winner in the romance category of the Book Excellence Awards and a finalist for several other awards. Kathryn’s books have also hit the USA Today bestseller list more than fifteen times.
In addition to her own published works, Kathryn is president/CEO of Dragonblade Publishing, a boutique publishing house specializing in historical romance, and President/CEO of DragonMedia Publishing, a publishing house that publishes the Pirates of Britannia Connected World series. In July 2018, Kathryn launched yet another publishing house, WolfeBane Publishing, which publishes the World of de Wolfe Pack Connected series (formerly Kindle Worlds).
Kathryn is considered one of the top Indie authors in the world with over two million copies in circulation, and her novels have been translated into several languages.
Connect online:
Facebook | Twitter | Bookbub
kathrynleveque.com
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