by Karen Ranney
He said nothing to her, still studying her in a way that was unsettling. His face was oddly arresting, as if she recognized it somehow. But she had never before seen him. If she had, she surely would have remembered.
“I will send some men to help you salvage what you can,” he said.
She glanced inside the cottage once more. “Will you replace the porcelain that my mother was left from her mother?” she asked, the words coming fast and without thought. “Or the silver bracelet that was my dowry? And my loom? Will you replace that, too?”
For a moment he simply stared at her, giving her time to wonder at the consequences of her words. What could he take from her now? Her life? What was left of it? Sleeping when dreams did not come. Eating when she could find something edible. Everything else of value had been taken from her, and the last of it, those possessions and trinkets that had recalled a more joyous time, were now unrecognizable smoldering lumps.
To make the moment even worse, Hamish began to play the pipes. The tune was not a lament, which might have been more appropriate at this moment, but the MacRae March, used in past years to summon the clan to Gilmuir.
Now she was going to lose her last relative. She glared at her uncle, but Hamish blithely ignored her, piping himself to his death.
Chapter 3
A t the first sounds of the pipes, grating and harsh, Alec spun around.
A man, attired in a kilt of red, black, and white MacRae plaid, stood halfway up the hill. On his shoulder was a set of pipes, the sound coalescing into a tune of sorts. The last time Alec had heard the bagpipes had been at Culloden, and that memory was never voluntarily recalled. Now the glen echoed with the music as if the hills and rocks magnified the sound.
The face was older, the body more bowed and stunted as if age itself weighed heavily on him. But Alec recognized the man from his childhood. Hamish MacRae.
Several of the English soldiers moved to intercept the Scot, but he didn’t attempt to elude them. Instead, he continued to walk stiffly down the hill, defiantly playing.
“He has courage,” Harrison said quietly from beside him.
“There’s a fine line between bravado and bravery,” Alec said dryly.
“Restrain him!” Major Sedgewick called out. As the soldiers grabbed the piper, the tune abruptly ended, the dying notes high-pitched and whining.
Alec strode to where Sedgewick stood surveying the prisoner.
“Take him to the gaol,” the major said, then glanced over his shoulder at Alec. “Unless you would like to question him here, Colonel,” he said.
Alec shook his head.
Hamish focused his attention on Sedgewick. “It’s me you want,” he said. “Not them. Unless the English only choose to wage war on women and children.”
Alec deliberately stepped between Hamish and Sedgewick. If the major would strike a woman, nothing would make him hesitate in harming an old man. From the look on Sedgewick’s face, he was close to doing so.
“Perhaps it would be better if you returned to the fort, Major,” Alec said curtly. “I will attend to the prisoner.”
For a moment he thought the major was going to protest. His unspoken words seemed to choke him. But Alec had been battle-hardened since he’d left home at the age of eighteen, trading his paternal grandmother’s legacy for a commission in the army. He was well prepared to handle a recalcitrant officer.
Sedgewick finally nodded before striding away, his anger evident in the stiffness of his shoulders. Alec watched as he mounted and rode toward Fort William.
He turned to two of the men who’d accompanied him from Inverness. “Keep the men here until you are certain the blaze is extinguished,” he said, “then take the prisoner to the gaol.”
“I believe you have made an enemy there, sir,” Harrison said, joining him a moment later. He nodded in Sedgewick’s direction.
Alec glanced at his adjutant.
Thomas Harrison was the most sober of his officers, rarely speaking when a gesture could suffice. Alec had relied on Harrison’s discretion from the moment they met in Flanders. Only his adjutant and his aide, Sergeant Tanner, knew all of the secrets of his past.
Harrison, for all his attributes, had a remarkably unappealing face. His nose was broad and his chin pointed. Deep-set hazel eyes peered out at the world with a steady and watchful expression.
If there was only formality between them, it was because of Alec’s reserve. He was conscious of his command and the fact that it was not wise to grow close to the men he sent into battle. Yet there were times, such as now, when their relationship slipped into friendship.
“It was to be expected that he would resent my presence here. After all, he was in charge of the garrison before my arrival,” Alec admitted.
“It will not be an easy task you’ve been given, Colonel,” Harrison said.
“Cumberland’s dictates have never been particularly effortless,” Alec said.
Without glancing at Leitis again, he mounted, turning toward Fort William, Harrison at his side.
Constructed of red sandstone, Fort William sat to one side of Gilmuir, its back to the sea. The structure was built in the shape of an open square, the front facing the land bridge.
“It’s ugly,” his adjutant said without apology.
“It’s utilitarian,” Alec countered, smiling.
He noted the details of construction, similar to other English fortifications in Scotland. Ten cannon portals faced the glen, the slope of the facade attesting to the fact that the guns were surrounded by inner and outer walls with a layer of earth between to act as a barrier for both fire and noise. If the rest of the building proved true to similar fortifications, the seaward side would have cannon as well.
He would need to hold inspection, be introduced to the troops, and ascertain the duties of the men under his command. But he glanced, instead, at the ruins of the structure located to the right of the fort.
Harrison’s gaze followed his. “Castle Gloom,” he said with a smile.
“Gilmuir,” Alec corrected him.
He rode closer, feeling as if he were being inexplicably drawn to the castle by memory.
“How long did it take to destroy it?” Harrison asked, surveying the ruins.
Alec only shook his head in response. It was evident from the patchwork nature of the fort that Major Sedgewick and his men had run out of sandstone and used the bricks and stones from Gilmuir to complete the fort. Piles of rubble still remained where the courtyard had once been. The outbuildings had been destroyed, any trace of the structures vanished.
He dismounted, stared up at the castle. The roof was gone, the tall front wall only half its original size. A year of rain and cold had already made its presence known. The interior bricks were no longer a warm ochre, but tinted with green as moss grew in nooks and crannies.
He strode inside what he had known as the clan hall. The rain pattered against the battered floor timbers, adding to the air of melancholy.
The shields and the claymores that had once adorned the west wall were gone. As a child he’d thought them both terrifying and wondrous. There, in that empty space, had been the large banded chest where his grandfather kept his plaids, the hunting tartan, and the dress kilt. And at the head of the hall was where the laird had sat to keep counsel, in a carved chair that looked to Alec’s young eyes to be a throne. It was gone now, only a light square remaining where it had once stood.
A surge of memory came with each footfall, each step across broken bricks and shards of wood. Harrison followed him a few feet behind, as if he recognized that these moments were difficult.
Gilmuir was built in the shape of an H, the castle and priory backing up to each other and connected by an archway now partially open to the rain.
He entered the priory with caution. Not in fear that the remnants of the roof or walls might fall. They looked sturdy enough. It was the bombardment of memory he dreaded, and just as he’d expected, it soared through him.
He
was suddenly eight years old again.
“Stop squirming, Alec,” his mother whispered. She leaned over him and brushed her hand over the top of his head. She was always doing things like that, brushing back his hair, tapping his cheek with a finger, holding his shoulder. Today she had a bit of lace scarf on her head and a smile like the statue of the Madonna not far from where they sat.
“But Fergus is going to show me how to tickle a fish,” he whispered back. “And we’ve already been here so long.”
She’d smiled and shook her head, wordless remonstrance. He’d sighed like the impatient child he’d been and resigned himself to another hour of prayers.
Alec bent now and picked up a board lying in the bricks, brushed it free of dirt. It appeared to be a carved piece of the altar facade. He looked south, but only a pile of bricks remained where the altar had stood. He let the fragment fall to the floor.
The shutters were gone, now only shards of wood. Only four of the arches remained instead of the original seven. They framed the view of the loch and the dimpled surface of the lake as the rain continued to fall.
Bits of brick and mortar crunched beneath his boots as he walked back through the archway and the clan hall.
On the other side of the castle, at a point farthest from Fort William, were the sleeping quarters. Alec pushed open the door to the laird’s chamber, kicking at it to dislodge the debris on the floor. Finally it creaked open and he stood on the threshold, surprised. It was almost as if his grandfather’s will had overcome days of English bombardment.
Although faded and filthy, the room was still intact. On the walls was the heavily embossed paper his grandfather had ordered from France to surprise his wife. Alec ran his finger over one small cream and gold rose, remembering the last time he’d been in this room.
He was leaving for England, the coach prepared and waiting for him. He’d reluctantly followed his grandfather here. They’d rarely spoken in the week since his mother had been killed because Alec had locked himself away in his chamber and refused to emerge.
“I’ve something to give you, Ian,” his grandfather had said on that day. He’d handed him a small silk-covered wooden box, the top of which was heavily embroidered. He recognized his mother’s work in the depiction of the tiny thistles.
He had stared at it with dread, knowing that it was his birthday gift, the one she promised to give him after her ride.
Cautiously, he opened it, to find the MacRae clan brooch nestled inside. Made of gold, it gleamed brightly in the morning light. Above a clenched fist holding a sword was the MacRae motto, fortitudine, with fortitude.
He would have handed it back to his grandfather and wordlessly left the room, but it was a gift from his mother. Oddly enough, the clan brooch had become a talisman over the years. It was his habit to keep it with him, tucked into his waistcoat pocket especially on those days he went into battle.
He looked at the ceiling above him, the plasterwork done by a master from Italy. The cornice work was unblemished, a repeating pattern of thistle and sword, symbols from the MacRae banner.
His grandfather may have ridden like a banshee from hell, been able to throw a dirk with such precision that it pierced a spider’s eye, and capable of drinking more than any man in his clan, but he also possessed an innate love of beauty.
A fireplace dominated one wall of the room and Alec wondered if it was damaged or still drew well. A door in the south wall led to a short hallway and the privy chamber.
Against one wall was the massive bed that had seen the birth of countless generations of MacRaes and the deaths of more than a few. The counterpane was full of holes, mice-ridden, no doubt. He pressed his hands down on the sagging mattress. The ropes were sound and the mattress could easily be restuffed.
This bed would be a hedonistic luxury compared to the Spartan military cots he had become used to over the years. For the first time in years his feet would not dangle over the end of his bed. And when he awoke in the morning it wouldn’t be to find his hands braced on either side of the cot as if to keep himself from falling.
“I’ll quarter here,” he told his adjutant.
Harrison frowned at the bed, the filth on the floor. “Naught but mice, sir.”
“See the bigger picture, Harrison,” Alec said, smiling. “Not as it is, but as it should be.”
Alec left the room, retracing his steps through the clan hall, stepping easily over the rubble before heading toward Fort William.
The English had indeed conquered this place. But the Scots had peopled it with memories. He had thought it might be difficult to return to Gilmuir. Until this moment he had not realized how painful it would be.
His heritage, however, must remain a closely guarded secret. No one must know that the Butcher of Inverness was half Scot.
Chapter 4
“W e have to do something,” Leitis said, “or they will kill him.”
The members of the clan were crowded together in Hamish’s cottage. It was surprisingly neat and tidy, for the home of a man who had lived alone these past years. None of the furniture, from the benches to the shelves built against one wall, showed any signs of dust. The dishes were stacked on the shelf above the table, and the bed was neatly made.
In a vase on the windowsill were a few flowers, a common sight in the spring and summer. Leitis had always thought the bouquet was her uncle’s way of remembering his wife, since she had often done the same.
The people who faced her now might have refused to betray Hamish to the English, but they were in no mood to forgive him. It wasn’t only Leitis’s cottage that had burned today. Malcolm was now homeless, as well as Mary and her son.
“Hamish made the choice to surrender to the English,” Malcolm said bluntly. “And now you want us to rescue him.”
“Would you leave him to be hanged, Malcolm?” she asked quietly.
She studied the faces of these people she’d known all her life. They had all suffered a loss in the past year, had known privation and hardship. “Not one more person should die,” she said softly. “Not even if he was foolish.”
“Sedgewick will not listen to us,” Dora said. “Have you forgotten what he did to you?” She stared pointedly at the bruise that covered half of Leitis’s face. Dora had been like a second mother to her. But that did not mean that their relationship was always easy.
“Perhaps the colonel would listen,” Leitis said coaxingly.
“Why should he? He’s just another Englishman,” Malcolm said, looking as skeptical as Dora.
“He saved the village,” Leitis said.
Malcolm fell silent at that comment.
“He would have to listen if we all went together,” she said, desperate to convince them.
“All that would do,” Alisdair said, “would be to get the lot of us killed.”
“Very well,” she said, pressing her suddenly damp hands against her skirt. “I will go alone.” A bluff that she hoped would sway them. But instead of an argument, she was greeted with stunned silence. A moment later, protesting voices filled the cottage.
“You cannot be that foolish, Leitis,” Dora said.
“A lone woman with all those Englishmen? Are you daft, Leitis?” Peter asked. “Send you to the sea and you’ll not get salt water.”
Leitis glanced at him. Peter had a saying for every occasion, and it mattered little to the old man if any of them made sense. Most of the clan had learned to ignore him.
“Hamish would not be pleased for you to sacrifice yourself in order to save him,” Alisdair said.
“I’m aware of the danger,” she said quietly. “But there is no other choice.”
Dora moved closer, her look intent. “Do you think the English will simply release him because you ask it?”
“Should I not try, Dora, because it will be difficult?” she asked, returning the other woman’s gaze. “It’s a pity our men did not learn that lesson before they marched off to follow the prince.”
Dora looked away
.
“Will none of you come with me? Have we become such cowards?” Her question silenced them.
“Don’t empty your own mouth to shame others, Leitis MacRae.”
She turned and stared at Peter. “It’s an honest question I’ve asked, Peter. Have we all lost our courage?”
“Not every shoe fits every foot,” he replied.
Leitis frowned at him. His pronouncements were growing wearisome.
Mary stepped forward. Her husband had been killed at Falkirk. The child in her arms was the youngest in their clan, born after his father’s death. She came and stood beside Leitis. “I’ll go with you,” she said calmly.
“And I,” Malcolm said surprisingly. He walked to stand beside Leitis, one hand fingering his beard. Snow-white, it came to a point halfway to his waist and marked him as one of the oldest men in the clan.
“You’re all fools, then,” Peter said. “Just like Hamish.” He left the cottage without another word. Most of the clan followed him a moment later, although more than one person looked back regretfully.
Leitis surveyed those who remained. Ada’s swollen and knotted joints pained her greatly on damp days like today, but she smiled her cooperation, and Malcolm had lost the use of his left arm a few years earlier from palsy.
Mary stepped up to Dora, placed her sleeping child in her arms. “Will you care for my son until I return, then?” she asked, bending and placing a soft kiss on her child’s cheek.
“And if you don’t come back?” Dora asked sharply.
Mary tilted her head up proudly. “Then tell him that I was as brave as his father.”
“I’ll care for him,” Dora said grudgingly. “As if he’s my own.” She glanced above the child’s sleeping form to Leitis. “Your family would counsel you against this, Leitis,” she said, narrow-eyed. A final remonstration, one that had the power to hurt.
Leitis took a deep breath, wishing she felt more courageous. “Hamish is my family, Dora,” she said softly. With a forced smile, she left the cottage.
