The Devil of Dunakin Castle (Highland Isles)

by McCollum, Heather

  Grace felt a hollow flutter in her chest. “Thank you, however I’m sure Lachlan could use your prayers more than I.”

  “So, brave,” the woman said, shaking her head. She leaned closer to Grace’s ear. “Prepare yerself, lass. If he hasn’t raped ye yet, he will. He’s a true devil. Even killed his own mother.”

  Grace’s breath balled up inside her for several heartbeats. Killed his own mother? She didn’t believe it for a moment.

  “Please, Brodie,” the woman who must be the boy’s mother, called across the circle of villagers. She shook her head. The ladies who had held her in Keir’s presence released her to run over to Brodie, falling on her knees. “He’s a stupid, hungry boy.”

  Brodie looked out at the gathered crowd while holding the lash. His voice boomed as loudly as his face was dark with anger. “A hungry boy, son of a valiant warrior killed in battle, and none of ye brought them bread or meat?” His gaze scanned the crowd, and Grace watched as many of them shifted, looking down at the dirt beneath them.

  Brodie snapped the whip, and several people flinched. “We are a clan, all of us. The only time one family should be hungry is if we are all hungry. We had a good harvest, and the only way the Mackinnon clan can remain strong is if we all partake in it.” He folded the flail, pointing the heavy handle around the circle as he pivoted on one heel. “If one is forced to steal bread, ye are all guilty of the same. Each of ye should stand in the stocks and feel the strike of the Devil of Dunakin.”

  The weight of his stare fell heavily on each person in the crowd. After several long moments, he moved around to stand in front of the boy. “Ye will stay within your mother’s house for a week and keep your shirt on whenever out, until spring. I will tell the Devil that I delivered three lashes before ye fell unconscious and were carried home by several villagers.” He looked out, and two men stepped forward. Brodie nodded, and with his dagger, cut the boy loose. His mother wrapped Niall in a hug.

  “Thank ye, sir Brodie,” she called, tears coursing down her cheeks.

  Brodie nodded and turned, traipsing away from the crowd. The woman next to Grace squeezed her hand. “What is yer name, lass?”

  “Grace,” she answered numbly.

  “The ladies will offer prayers to Saint Mary to keep ye brave and alive.”

  Grace had no idea how to reply. Her mouth opened. “Thank you?” she said, but it sounded like a question. She turned away before the woman could say anything else and saw Brodie striding along the outside of the great castle wall. He walked with purpose, the lash still in his fist. Grace followed at a distance, glancing over her shoulder, but no one followed.

  Brodie ducked into a low, thatched barn. Grace hurried toward it and circled behind where it butted up against a copse of trees near the river, concealing her from anyone walking by. The gurgle of the water made her heart thump faster, but she focused on the building before her. The chinks of daub between the hewn planks were loose, and she searched until she found a missing chunk.

  Peering in, she saw Brodie and Keir. Keir had donned a shirt and took the flask Brodie handed him. “Thank ye,” Keir said.

  Brodie slapped a palm down on his shoulder. “It was earned. The boy was scared enough to piss himself.”

  Keir frowned. “And ye couldn’t keep Grace out of it.”

  Her breath stopped altogether. He hadn’t wanted her to witness his abuse. She blinked, her eyelashes touching the outside of the barn.

  “The woman is slippery,” Brodie said. “When I told her she must stay inside, she excused herself to the privy, but that’s not where she was going. Dara saw her sneaking out.”

  Brodie pointed to something Keir held wrapped in cloth. “Bread for Rachel and Niall?”

  “Aye. I didn’t know they were short on food,” Keir said.

  “Rachel’s too proud to go to Rab for more, and Niall is growing so fast, I don’t think she can keep him fed. I shamed the villagers for letting them get hungry when others are not.”

  Keir nodded. “Good. And bring Niall to training,” Keir said. “He’s old enough and will receive two hearty meals a day up at the castle.”

  Brodie nodded. “I told him to act like he was healing for a week. If anyone comes to tell Rab—”

  “I’ll intercept,” Keir said, “and scare the piss out of them for trying to curry favor. Make sure Rachel’s given a few chickens for eggs, and teach Niall how to set traps for rabbits. Even with the others helping them now, the lad needs to learn to feed himself. Without a father to teach him, I am responsible.”

  “Actually, as chief, Rab is responsible,” Brodie said. Grace couldn’t see his face, but his tone was solemn. Keir’s face was hard, his brows low.

  “What would have happened if we hadn’t come back for weeks?” Brodie asked. “A perfectly good lad would die, bent over in those damn stocks.” He shook his head. “Rab’s gone mad since Bradana died, Keir. Perhaps it is time for ye to replace him.”

  Grace’s eyes opened wider, and she pulled away to readjust over the open chink in the daub. Could Brodie want Rab and his son out of the chief’s seat? Enough to poison them?

  “’Tis treason,” Keir said.

  “Or is it liberation from a tyrant who forces ye to do his dirty work?” Brodie asked, his voice low.

  Keir stared back for a long moment. “Are ye poisoning my brother and nephew?”

  Brodie took a step back as if Keir had struck him. He shook his head. “How could ye ask if I’d poison Lachlan? Nay, Keir, I am not.”

  Keir’s shoulders slumped forward, and he set his hands on his knees, propping himself up. “I know, but I had to ask.”

  “Now if it was just Rab…” Brodie said and chuckled, breaking the tension Grace could feel permeating the low barn, the ewes clustered at the far end, barely paying the two men any attention.

  “Well now, what do we have here?” A man’s voice made Grace fall forward, her forehead thumping the side of the barn. She turned to see the man from the dark corridor this morning standing there. “Peeping at some sheep, Sassenach?” The words were teasing, but the leer that tightened his face once again stiffened the hairs on the back of Grace’s neck. His gaze stripped her bare, making Grace cross her arms over her breasts.

  She stepped away, sliding back along the edge of the barn until only a few trees separated her from the river. “I was happening by and wondered what animals dwelled within,” she whispered, the man’s large frame trapping her against a tree flanking the water. “I need to…go,” she said.

  “Ah now, not so fast, lass. I hear ye’re from Aros.” His grin turned dark. “I have an acquaintance with the chief there, Torquil Maclean. I’ve heard that ye are sister to his wife.”

  Between the man before her, who held himself in a very predatory fashion, and the sound of water behind her, Grace’s panic reared up with paralyzing strength. She stood there, unable to yank her sgian dubh from the inside of her pocket. Her lips parted to gather more air to feed her fleeing heart.

  As if sensing his menacing power over her, the man stepped closer. A wicked grin darkened his features, making it clear that he enjoyed frightening her. “If ye survive Dunakin, lass, perhaps ye could take a message back to your bloody chief.”

  Riding over the pounding in Grace’s ears, a voice made the evil man pivot, hand to the hilt of his sword. “Normond MacInnes, your ragged head will be atop a pike by nightfall if ye don’t step back. Now.” Keir. Relief flooded Grace, making her sag against the tree.

  Normond MacInnes? Her eyes widened as she stared at the back of the stranger’s head. God’s teeth. She’d found the man that the chiefs of Barra, Mull, and Islay Isles all wanted dead, the man who’d disappeared after stalking and trying to rape her friend, Mairi Maclean.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Pull your weapon,” Keir said, his gaze centered on Normond MacInnes’s eyes. “And Dara won’t be wedding a dead man.”

  “Sard off, Keir,” MacInnes said, turning to stride past him away from
the riverbank. Keir watched him go and shifted his gaze to Grace. Her face was flushed. “He didn’t touch ye, did he?”

  She shook her head. “That is…Normond MacInnes?”

  “Aye,” he said and glanced at the wall where she stood. “Ye were spying on me.”

  Grace threw up both of her hands as if wishing to freeze time in its place. She glanced behind him at the wall and back at Keir. “Yes, but I need to tell you about that man.”

  “What did ye hear?” he asked, much more interested in that than the fool who he was convinced wouldn’t stay loyal to his sister.

  “That man is evil. Tor Maclean, the chief of the Macleans, and Cullen Duffie, who is the chief of the MacDonalds of Islay, as well as Mairi’s new husband, the chief of Barra Isle…” She held up a finger for each chief and pointed them in the direction Normond had gone. “They all want him dead for terrorizing and trying to rape Mairi Maclean. She was his stepmother, and he trapped her at Kilchoan when his father died. Is he the one who sent you to find her to heal Lachlan?” She shook her head. “You can’t let him marry your sister. Throw him in Dunakin’s dungeon.”

  Keir frowned, stepping closer. He had distrusted Dara’s suitor from the moment he arrived, a lone traveler who’d left his clan to fight for any army. But it was more than that. It was the glint in the man’s eyes and obvious hatred of anyone questioning him. “Stay away from him,” he said. “I will talk with Rab and Dara.”

  Grace opened her lovely lips to say something else, but he beat her to it. “What did ye hear through the wall?”

  Her mouth shut, and he watched as the lovely flush came back to her cheeks. She tipped her chin higher, but stared directly at him. “A captive must use one’s resources to survive by learning the truth.”

  “Sometimes the truth is ugly,” he said, his words low in warning.

  She looked heavenward before centering a glare at him. “Or the truth is much less ugly than what is played out before a quaking crowd.” She huffed. “Keir, you are forced to play the part of the Devil, but you aren’t in your heart. You don’t need to follow Rab’s brutal orders to beat a boy or steal away a woman.”

  He studied her. “Ye would leave now, then, after seeing how sick Lachlan is?”

  They stood in silence, and he watched her gaze rise to the trees.

  “I… Blast, Keir.” She shook her head. “I will help him, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m a prisoner here and that you are one big brutal lie.”

  Two men walked by, spotted Keir, and changed directions. “Come,” he said and stepped forward, taking Grace’s arm. He didn’t need her to spout secrets here in the open.

  “Where are we going?” she asked as he partly dragged her behind him. “To another pretend whipping? Or maybe an authentic head spiking festivity?”

  “Keep your words inside ye, lass,” he said and led her to the bailey, steering her to the stable where Cogadh was housed. Once inside, he released her.

  “I don’t understand you,” she said and flung her arm toward the closed door. “All those people out there are terrified of you. I met a woman in the crowd who is having the whole town pray for me because she knows you will be raping me sometime soon.” She paused, but he kept moving, throwing a saddle on Cogadh and tightening the girth straps. “Doesn’t that bother you?” Grace asked, her voice demanding.

  “They’ve been taught to fear the Devil of Dunakin. It is what has always kept order here, for generations.”

  Before she could ask more, he lifted her up in the saddle. “If ye keep your lovely mouth shut until we are away, I will answer questions.”

  Grace pinched her lips shut with a humph as he opened the stable door and mounted behind her. He clicked to send Cogadh into a fast walk out of the bailey and into a canter through the streets of the town. Let the staring villagers think he was taking Grace away for dastardly sins. The worse they think of ye, the better. Aonghus Mackinnon’s words threaded through him, words he’d heard from the moment he left his mother’s apron strings.

  He stared ahead over the blue hood Grace wore. “Close your eyes,” he said as they drew closer to the ring of heads encircling the moor around Dunakin.

  “Perhaps they are only stuffed sacks made to look like heads,” she said. “I don’t know what is real around here.”

  He leaned closer to her ear, trying to ignore the scent of flowers that had grown stronger since she’d bathed. “I have no wish to hold ye unconscious throughout the rest of the ride. Inhale the taint on the breeze to know they are real, and shut your eyes.”

  In case she spitefully ignored his prediction, he kept his arms snug around her waist, pressing the softness of her curves into him. They flew through the grotesque barrier, and he slowed Cogadh to enter the sparse stand of trees where he followed a thin path. Grace remained silent, and they broke out of the small woods to canter up a snow-covered hill. Spindly tufts of dead grass shot up from the white, and Cogadh’s hooves churned as they rose upward to ride between two jutting boulders. He felt Grace shiver in his arms and opened the sash from his kilt to drape before her, blocking the wind.

  Up ahead, a few low myrtle trees flanked a stream. Cogadh followed it, picking his way around the edges of ice cut away by the flow of clear water. The breeze blew fresh air in, free of woodsmoke and the tang of death that ringed Dunakin.

  Farther up, where the stream turned to the north, he spotted the edge of the cabin. Squat and secure, the thatching was still fresh from the fall when he’d climbed above to mend the few leaks. The walls still looked clean, swept by wind and snow. He pulled Cogadh to a stop before the small barn and jumped down.

  His hands grasped Grace around the waist, pulling her toward him, guiding her down to the ground. She didn’t look at him but stepped away, crossing her arms. “Ye can go inside. I’ll stable Cogadh and be right in.”

  Grace walked to the porch and tentatively pushed against the door. It swung inward, and she stood there trying to see into the dimness. Keir exhaled long, his breath fogging in the cold. Why had he brought her here? Brodie was the only other person alive who knew of this place, hidden on the border between Mackinnon and Macleod land. He walked Cogadh into the stable and took off his saddle. Grabbing a bucket, he strode out to get some water from the stream and saw Grace leaning against the open cabin door. Her gaze followed him to the stream and back, but she didn’t say a word. She was angry, probably hated him enough not to talk. Bloody hell.

  He filled the small trough inside and stuffed some hay into the iron feeding grate. “If she slits my throat,” he said, drawing his horse’s gaze, “she’s your new master.” Cogadh snorted.

  Keir washed his hands and trudged to the door. “It’s safe,” he said.

  “I no longer enter places when I don’t know what is inside. I learned my lesson from the wolves.”

  The old door creaked as Keir pushed it to walk in. There was a table and two chairs, a large bed, a swept hearth, cupboard and trunk, a willow broom in the corner, and dry kindling. Exactly how he’d left it. He went straight to the hearth and pulled flint and steel from his leather pouch. He snapped them together while holding a charred piece of fabric, which caught the spark. He added a small piece of milkweed fleece to it, blowing on it softly until the flames caught. Laying it in the cold hearth, he fed it twigs and then larger pieces of kindling until the fire grew strong enough to leave.

  Grace stood inside the door. “Your country home?” she asked.

  He gave a small, cold smile. “’Tis a place we can be alone.”

  She moved forward, circling the room to stop before the fire. Splaying out her fingers, she warmed her hands. “It’s kept up. Who lives here?”

  “No one. It belonged to Graham MacLeod at one time, but only I come here now.” He grabbed a chair to sit.

  “You keep it up?” She waved her hand at the floor and the roof overhead.

  “Aye.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Why?”

  “It’s the only pla
ce on the Isle of Skye where I do not need to be the Devil of Dunakin.”

  Grace took a big breath and let it out. She sat in the other chair, facing him. “What is going on here? This whole farce where you must act cruel and vicious?”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “It has been done within our clan for generations. I was raised to be nothing but cruel and vicious and warlike like every other Devil of Dunakin. Aonghus Mackinnon was the chief, and I was his second son. Therefore, I was instructed on ways to make men quake, women cross themselves, and children hide. The Devil’s reputation can often be enough to prevent attack.”

  “Why then are there heads around Dunakin?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “Sometimes we still get attacked. We win, and Rab orders the show of strength as a warning to others. Like your good King Henry on London Bridge.”

  She shook her head. “But your own people are afraid of you, like you are some murdering, raping monster. Even though you aren’t.”

  “Ye’ve seen all the men I’ve killed etched on my skin. I am a killer, Grace. It is all I’ve been taught to be.”

  “In battle, to protect yourself and your clan. That is different. The fact that you honor those killed by placing their cross on your skin shows your heart doesn’t ignore cruelty and human loss.” She leaned forward. “You saved that boy today, planning for Brodie to stop you, meeting Brodie with bread for the boy and his mother, instructing him to invite Niall to train with the young warriors. A cold-hearted monster wouldn’t do that. Why must you play the Devil?”

  “It is who I am, what I’ve been trained to be.” How many times did he have to say that before it sank in to her? “I know nothing else.”

  “Maybe you’ve been taught nothing else, but you surely know something else or that boy would be bleeding or dead.” She leaned forward. “You mention your father teaching you to fight and scare people, but what of your mother?”

  Margaret Mackinnon. The thought of his kind mother brought both shame and a sweet comfort. She had smelled of freshly baked bread from spending time in the bakehouse, kneading and braiding her beautiful creations. Aonghus would ridicule her for working with the servants, but Keir’s mother had been kind and looked beyond simple status among people. And…she had been hiding. Her rough, loud husband didn’t enter the kitchens where the warmth and delicious aroma embraced her all day.