Love Conquers All: Historical Romance Boxed Set

by Laurel O'Donnell

  Wind whipped at Iain’s cloak, the brisk kind of gusts that would have been clean and fresh if blowing across the high cliffs and moors of Doon.

  But here…

  Shuddering, he silently cursed the need to inhale. Never had he seen such a gathering of misery. Nothing had prepared him for the mass of luckless souls surging into the cathedral.

  They inched forward as one, a noisy mob of cure seekers eager to perform devotions at the saint’s tomb.

  All hoping for a miracle.

  An old man in a tattered robe hobbled past him, followed by a cluster of bleating, mud-spattered goats. Iain leapt out of the way only to find himself jostled by a band of equally muddied children and a gaggle of witless women. Mumbling nonsense, they kept on and didn’t seem to notice him.

  That suited him fine.

  He did not want to be there.

  Looking about, he surveyed the full-packed alleys opening off the crowded main road, searching for a swift escape.

  Of course, he found none.

  His only option was to scale the well-guarded walls of the nearby canons’ manses and risk a dash through their gardens. He cast aside the notion as quickly as it’d come.

  Any such foolery would only give MacFie cause to report a ‘scandal’ to his brother.

  Even so, a fierce instinct for self-preservation drove him to keep looking.

  Monks and friars milled about, lending what aid they could to the needy, their well-meant efforts repeatedly hindered by scamps and charlatans faking the direst ailments in hopes of a dole.

  Some of these folk writhed on the cobbled pavement, the foam on their lips smelling more like sharp-scented soap than the froth of the truly ill.

  Iain pressed the back of his hand against his mouth and nose. Soon, he would be ill if he didn’t find a way to be gone from here.

  “Nae, nae, nae. A thousand times nae.” Bracing his legs, he folded his arms and leveled a stare at Gavin. “A hundred mean-tempered, whip-wielding fishwives couldn’t persuade me to take another step. I dinnae care what you tell Donall, nor how blessed the good St. Kentigern-”

  “Your brother made clear that he wished you to pay proper homage here.” Gavin slanted a glance at one of the two young oarsmen with them – the one guarding the packhorses and their precious cargo.

  The lad stood a few inches taller than the good-sized MacFie and packed more muscled might in his wee finger than Iain’s, Donall’s, and Gavin’s brawn combined.

  “The choice is yours, my friend.” Gavin watched him, his usually sunny face set in solemn lines.

  “Is it?”

  “Aye. Think hard.”

  “I have done nothing else since we left Doon.”

  “That was the idea.” Gavin stretched his arms above his head and cracked his knuckles. “Good so.”

  Iain shuddered again. “I see nothing good here.”

  “That doesnae matter.” Gavin leaned toward him. “Go peaceably as befits your station and your purpose here. Or…” He lifted his shoulders, the simple gesture saying more than words.

  Iain glowered at him, then slid a furious look at the hulking oarsman. He secretly suspected MacFie of feeding him sweetmeats or perhaps lusty, wide-legged lassies just so the oversized lad would do his bidding.

  “Hugh knows better than to fight me.”

  “He’ll do as ordered. He’s aware I speak for the laird.”

  “I am the laird’s brother,” Iain reminded him.

  “You are doing penance.” Gavin aimed an all but imperceptible nod at the hard-muscled giant.

  The lad stepped closer.

  Iain ignored the implied threat and narrowed his eyes at Gavin. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  Silence answered him.

  “You would.”

  “If you leave me no other choice, aye.”

  Iain set his jaw, frustration coursing through him. Hugh often lost his head in fights, the bloodlust maddening him. Only drawn steel would stop him and Iain didn’t want to hurt the lad.

  “Well?” Gavin lifted a brow.

  “Lead on.” Iain kicked a pebble. “If you can plow a way inside.”

  Gavin smiled. “You doubt it?”

  “Sadly not.”

  “Then come.” Gavin’s smile didn’t slip.

  Looking confident enough to forge a path through granite, he made for the cathedral steps, every pilgrim, pious or otherwise, springing out of his path.

  “Thieves and parasites,” Iain muttered as he followed, pushing his way through the mob.

  “Ply your wares elsewhere,” he snapped at a greasy-haired bawd who’d loomed up from nowhere to rub against him. “I’ve no interest.”

  Biting back a harsher rebuttal, he jerked free of her grasp, readjusted the fall of the woolen pilgrim’s cloak slung about his shoulders, and wished the almost-gone knot on his forehead hadn’t chosen that moment to start aching again.

  His misery now complete, he searched for, but caught no glimpse of Gavin.

  Iain frowned.

  Without doubt, the long-strided scoundrel was already on his knees before the shrine. Like as not praying for new and inspiring ways to bedevil him.

  Eager to have done with the whole unpleasant business, Iain started forward again, but each step proved difficult. His ill ease worsened the nearer he came to the cathedral’s arched entrance.

  It was the most unusual sensation. And it had nothing to do with his splitting head, his annoyance at MacFie, or even his dislike of chaos and foul smells.

  He felt watched.

  Worse, the strange ‘chills’ were upon him again. They descended with a vengeance to whirl through him and – he couldn’t believe it – even ignite stirrings in his vitals.

  Here, of all places.

  Stopping, he closed his eyes and drew a long breath. With luck, the sensations would be gone when he opened his eyes.

  Of course, they weren’t.

  They were stronger. Heated, intense, and rousing, but entirely unwanted. And whatever unleashed them waited for him inside the hallowed depths of Glasgow Cathedral.

  That he knew.

  The pounding of his heart told him so.

  ~*~

  For the third time since entering Glasgow Cathedral that same morning, Madeline tried to examine the jumble of goods adorning the elaborate metal gates that secured the tomb of Glasgow’s patron, St. Kentigern.

  The objects that interested her were ex-votos, offerings shaped like injured or ailing body parts. Pilgrims left them at shrines, as did the sick and needy. Crutches, bits of cloth, and bundles of flowers were also on display, likewise fastened to the tomb’s gates, or simply left on the floor.

  Sadly, she couldn’t distinguish all of them.

  Candles threw flickering light over richly carved panels and into the shrine, but the brightly painted columns supporting the tomb’s canopy cast shadows across the gates making many of the offerings indiscernible.

  More frustrating still, and for the third time, a sharp-eyed sacristan thwarted her attempt to spend more than a few moments before the tomb’s enclosure.

  “Good sisters, keep to the processional route,” he admonished, shooing them along by flapping his hands.

  “You should return in winter,” he advised. “Come on St. Kentigern’s feast day when we open the shrine, if you are so eager for a closer look?”

  “We will do that.” Madeline gave him a polite smile.

  Then, glad for her postulant garb, she cast her gaze to the stone-flagged floor as a true sister-in-waiting would have done and moved on, hoping to appear suitably humbled.

  “Faith, but this is terrible.” She glanced at Nella as they paused to kneel before a side altar. “We will never be done if he keeps pestering us.”

  “Shhh…” Nella reached for her hand, squeezing it. “The postulant’s robe will fool no one if you are heard fussing. He doesn’t know your purpose and only sought to help.”

  “I don’t care about saints’ bones and when they ar
e put on display.” She paused as a group of psalm-chanting monks hushed past. “Silver Leg’s trinkets interest me and nothing else,” she said as soon as the cowled brethren slipped from hearing range. “He was here. I can smell his taint.”

  Nella leaned in, her voice low. “I may have glimpsed one of his silver leg votives the last time we passed the shrine.”

  “Where? Do you remember?”

  “It was hanging from the gate enclosure on the east side of the shrine, near the floor.” Nella glanced about, edged even closer. “I spotted it just when the sacristan made us move on. I cannot say for certain. It was half-hidden behind the larger cast of a waxen foot.”

  “Let’s hope you are right.” Excitement raced through Madeline, joining the other emotions whirling inside her ever since they’d left the last side altar.

  She touched her friend’s arm. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

  “When?” Nella straightened. “There wasn’t time. I also didn’t want to disappoint you. I thought to wait until I’d seen it again, and was sure.”

  Wrapping her arms around her waist, Madeline dug her fingers into the rough-spun wool of her borrowed cloak. Someone else’s anger and frustration churned inside her, tightening her chest until she could hardly breathe, much less continue upright along the crowded side aisle.

  “Can you find it again?” she managed, straining to keep her voice steady.

  Nella turned a sharp gaze on her, but nodded.

  “I believe so.”

  “Then let us hope,” Madeline urged, barely able to get out the words for her heart thundered uncomfortably. She felt chilled, knew someone else’s feelings were sweeping her. Hers withdrew, overpowered by the rush of stronger, agitated emotions. And as always, she could not stop them.

  Wishing she could, she hurried on. But she stumbled over an uneven flag in the stone flooring. And as she caught herself, she sensed another layer of the stranger’s roiling emotions. This surge of sensation revealing the all-consuming love in the stranger’s heart.

  Nae, his heart.

  She was sensing her shadow man. And the recognition nearly brought her to her knees for his emotions no longer came to her from a distance.

  He was here.

  Within the cathedral walls.

  His pulse raced faster, as did her own. She swayed and beads of moisture filmed her forehead. Somehow she managed to place one foot before the other, to keep moving. Blessedly, they’d almost reached the shrine again.

  It was one thing for her ‘gift’ to allow her to sense a man’s depth of feeling, his capacity to love. She gladly sent him light and warmth in her dreams. But to stand before him, face to face?

  She didn’t want that.

  She knew him too intimately. His emotions were also too strong, more powerful than any she’d ever encountered.

  And this was the worst possible time. Now that she’d committed herself to something that would condemn her to ruin. A life of piety behind cloistered walls.

  No, she couldn’t meet this man.

  She grabbed Nella’s hand. “Come, let’s look for the ex-voto and be gone,” she said, already pushing forward, pulling her friend through the crowd.

  To her relief, the hawk-eyed sacristans were busy assisting a pilgrim who’d fallen ill.

  Seizing opportunity, Madeline hurried to the spot Nella indicated and dropped to her knees in front of the tomb. Near-crazed by the emotions spinning inside her, she thrust her hands into the cluster of offerings on the metal-wrought gates.

  The instant her fingers curled around the little silver-cast leg, his voice joined the chaos, his words as loud and clear as had he spoken beside her.

  A beggary votive thief! A postulant and a cutpurse.

  Madeline shot to her feet, the harsh words shattering his spell over her. In a beat, the racing of her heart was hers alone, the panic inside her no one’s but her own.

  Forgetting Nella, the sacristans, and the wee silver leg clutched in her hand, she hitched her skirts and searched for the best place to push through the throng.

  Half-afraid her knees would buckle before she could get away, she tried to block the shadow man’s words. But they echoed through her…

  Beggary. A cutpurse.

  Her breath came fast and shallow as her gaze found him, his accusations damning her.

  Chapter Six

  “A sticky-fingered postulant.” The words slipped from Iain’s lips, though how they had, he didn’t know. His jaw surely brushed the cold stone of the cathedral floor.

  Astonished, he stared at the plainly-dressed, travel-stained lass before him. The very one he’d just sensed as it…

  Nae, not it.

  A woman.

  In truth, she was more than that…

  His gut told him that he was staring at the source of his bedevilment. She was also the reason his entire body had tightened, the nearer he’d come to the cathedral.

  To her.

  A would-be nun and votive thief.

  Now he knew he’d run mad. Or was spelled or cursed, even if he’d never believed in such foolery.

  Something was happening, and he couldn’t explain it.

  He did keep staring, stunned by his heart-pounding reaction. Sakes, she was so callous she’d steal from a tomb. The shrine of Glasgow’s own saint. Yet she’d bespelled him so thoroughly he could hardly draw breath, much less step forward and challenge her to hand over the silver whatever-it-was she’d plucked from the gates of St. Kentigern’s sacred resting place.

  She took a backward step, her treasure clutched in a hand pressed against fine, high-set breasts. If her clothes were plain, she was striking. Not classically beautiful, but stunning all the same.

  There was something about her.

  He tried not to show any emotion, to ignore the sensation that he stood at the edge of a cliff, about to topple into an abyss.

  She returned his stare from light green eyes, their gold-flecked depths mirroring shock and recognition. As if she knew who he was and reeled from the powerful attraction that leapt between them.

  Or was he seeing her shame at having been caught at her thievery?

  He supposed that was possible.

  Either way, he was captivated.

  Just then, a strand of glossy copper-gold hair slipped from beneath the hood of her cloak and tumbled against her cheek. She looked more like a startled doe than a brazen relic thief. Worse, she had the full, seductive lips of a temptress.

  She pushed the curl back where it belonged, adjusted her cloak. The garment’s travel-worn folds couldn’t hide the lushness of her curves. Then a look of anguish flashed across her face and she was gone. She bolted through a break in the throng, taking his heart with her.

  The very one he’d thought had withered and died.

  A strange blend of amazement and denial swept him. A truth he could no longer ignore. Troubled, he rubbed the back of his hot and achy neck.

  He knew what ailed him.

  The MacLean Bane.

  His blood iced, his throat going dust dry as his blood roared in his ears.

  Already, his surroundings seemed to shift around him, changing subtly into a different place. A new world, and one that would require him to tread rough, unknown ground.

  His staunchest belief had just been shattered.

  He, Iain MacLean, younger son of the great House of MacLean, master of nothing, and sometimes called Iain the Doubter, could never again scoff at the notion of MacLean men being able to love, truly love, only one woman.

  The legend wasn’t just a bard’s tale to be told before peat fires on cold winter nights.

  It was true.

  He now knew it with a certainty that rang with each thudding beat of his heart, his every ragged breath. For his ‘one woman’ had just crossed his path.

  The tomb thief, gods help him.

  ~*~

  A few hours later, but far from the pilgrims and splendor of Glasgow Cathedral, the power of ancient magic brought a smile
to Devorgilla’s lips.

  Most pleased, she bustled about her cottage, then hummed a merry tune as she paused to peer at her assortment of faery fire stones. She had a sizable collection and she kept them in a large wooden bowl on the table near her hearth. And although each stone possessed its own immeasurable value…

  Just now, only two interested her.

  Iain MacLean’s and his lady’s.

  His new lady.

  The lass meant for him since before the first sprig of heather bloomed in Scotland.

  Clucking her tongue, Devorgilla shook her head. Much grief would never have come to pass if men hadn’t meddled into things best left alone. But they had, and so Iain the Doubter had entered into a political marriage to benefit the clan rather than the needs of his own braw heart.

  For sweet-natured and comely as Lileas MacInnes had been, she wasn’t the one.

  And none of the powers-that-be at the time had heeded Devorgilla’s reminders of the MacLean Bane.

  The legend.

  Not Iain’s late father, nor his council of elders. Nary a one of the better-knowing graybeards had listened to her. Even her more dire warnings went unheeded.

  Worse, they’d called her a troublemaker.

  There’d even been threats to banish her from Doon if she didn’t stop what they called her silly prattle.

  Her brow creased at their foolishness. Greater powers than hers would be needed to undo ill-made choices of the past.

  A wiser move would be to help along the future.

  To that end, she leaned down and brushed a speck of lint off her red plaid shoelaces. Then, on straightening, she curled her fingers around the wooden bowl of magic stones and pulled it across the table until it rested at the edge.

  Leaning forward, she brought her face to within inches of the bowl. She needed to be certain her eyes hadn’t deceived her.

  They hadn’t.

  Both stones, smooth and glistening Highland quartz, glowed with a finer luminosity than ever before.

  Not yet the brilliance she hoped for, but with more inner fire than she’d expected to see this day. And they vibrated. Devorgilla fancied a faint humming came from within their depths.