The Warrior's Bride

by Amanda Scott

  Andrew shouted, “The cliff!”

  Sakes, the crack was widening in front of Lizzie’s toes.

  What happened next happened in a breath but, to Murie, seemed slow and purposeful. Leaping forward, she reached toward Lizzie and was barely aware of Rob’s shout or of Scáthach suddenly beside her.

  Dougal shoved Lizzie into Murie’s arms as Scáthach darted in and pushed them sideways, away from the edge and out of Rob’s way as he passed them.

  Stumbling, clutching Lizzie, Murie fought to keep them both upright and watched in horror as the rock under Dougal broke and Rob dove toward him.

  Pushing Lizzie toward Lina, Murie dashed forward, but Ian grabbed her and swung her into Andrew’s arms.

  Rob lay flat on the ground, arms outstretched, sliding toward the edge.

  By flinging himself down at the broken edge of the cliff, Rob managed to grab one of Dougal’s upthrust arms, but the clifftop provided no traction. Despite Rob’s great strength, Dougal nearly had him over at the outset, and although he slowed himself, he knew the other man’s weight was too much for him to hold long.

  Rob dug the toes of his rawhide boots into the rock as hard as he could, and now he felt Scáthach tugging at his breeks. The daft dog was more likely to pull the breeks off or go over the cliff with him than to pull both him and Dougal anywhere.

  “I’ve got you,” Ian shouted.

  Rob felt him grab both ankles, but he was still sliding, and he knew that the only way Ian could save him was if he let go of Dougal.

  Dougal, desperate now, evidently no longer willing to die, had managed to grip Rob’s forearm with his free hand. In doing so, he pulled Rob’s right shoulder and half of his chest over the brink. The heel of Rob’s left hand caught and held a small, rough upthrust in the granite.

  Ian, Scáthach, and one bit of granite were delaying the inevitable, but…

  “I’m here, too, lad,” Andrew said, grabbing a fistful of Rob’s plaid. “I dinna think we can hold ye both if ye go over, so let go o’ him afore that happens.”

  Rob gritted his teeth. He doubted that Dougal would let go of him.

  “Hang on, lads!”

  Rob let himself breathe again at the sound of Mag’s voice. Friends though they were, it had never before sounded so welcome. Everything had happened so quickly that he had been aware only of holding Dougal. Now he could feel the painful strain, as if his arm were trying to separate itself from the rest of his body.

  Seconds later, with Mag gripping one of his legs, Ian the other, and Andrew handfuls of his clothing, Rob managed to grip both of Dougal’s wrists and haul him up. Scáthach barked and Rob heard Lina and Lizzie shouting encouragement.

  Murie watched Ian and Andrew haul Dougal to his feet and vaguely heard Mag say that he would attend to Lizzie. Murie had eyes only for Rob, who still sat on the hard granite, too close to the broken edge to please her.

  Scáthach poked him with her nose, and he patted her. Then, wearily, he got to his feet.

  Dougal said bitterly, “I dinna ken whether to thank ye or curse ye, but—”

  Rob’s fist shot to Dougal’s jaw in a swift, hard blow that nearly lifted the other man off his feet before sending him crashing to the ground.

  It happened so fast that Rob had squatted and was rubbing his right fist in his left palm before Murie quite realized what he had done.

  She was barely aware of moving toward him, let alone that she was running, until she reached him and shoved him hard to his backside, shouting, “What were you thinking, you dafty? First, to dive after him like that and scare us all half-witted, and then to strike him whilst you were still so near the edge! What if he’d hit you back? What if—?”

  Her words ended in a shriek when Rob, moving faster than anyone would have thought possible, surged up and she felt herself being lifted into the air before he was on his feet. She caught a glimpse of Lina’s shocked face, another of Lizzie clasped tight in her brother Mag’s arms, and then Mag’s delighted grin before she was facedown over Rob’s shoulder like a sack of barley, and he was bearing her away from the cliff toward the woods.

  “Put me down!” she shrieked, trying to kick him as she pounded both fists against his back. “Put me down, I say!”

  Rob smacked her hard on the backside, drawing another outraged shriek and then a stillness of both fists and voice when he rested his hand there again.

  Knowing that the others would look after Lizzie and Dougal, he strode into the woods with his burden. It was so quiet then that he wondered at the silence until he heard a squirrel chatter and realized that Mag would have spread word that the lost ones were found as soon as Pluff had told him. Likely, all the searchers had returned to their assigned duties or to the—

  “Where are you taking me?” she muttered.

  Where, indeed? he silently asked himself.

  “Here,” he decided, lifting her off his shoulder and setting her on the ground.

  Her hair was tangled. Her face was red, and her eyes flashed. Her right hand flew up to strike but stopped where it was when her gaze collided with his.

  “Go ahead, mo chridhe,” he said softly. “I do recall warning you that defying me is never a good idea. Hitting me would usually be a worse one. Even so, I deserve a smack after what I just did, but when you said I’d scared you, I just—” He drew a breath. “You ran toward Lizzie as if to grab her, just as Dougal pushed her. I feared that the pair of you and Scáthach would go over.”

  She stared at him, tears welling in her eyes.

  “Ah, lass, go ahead. Slap me as hard as you like. I swear I won’t retaliate.”

  With a sob, she said, “I thought I was going to lose you, that Dougal would beat us, after all. And then, when you hit him—”

  Rob opened his arms then, and she walked into them, sighing with deep contentment when they closed around her.

  Epilogue

  Loch Sloigh, Arrochar, three months later

  Sakes, Muriella, are you daft? Why the devil did you not tell me this before now? What if—”

  Murie put a fingertip to Rob’s lips. It silenced him, but she eyed him nonetheless warily. They sat alone together on a wooded hillside above the long, oval loch that was Clan Farlan’s ancient gathering place. She wore the new blue kirtle Lina had made for her, and Rob wore his plaid and his cap with eagle feathers in honor of Andrew Dubh’s first clan gathering at his beloved loch in two decades.

  Rob nibbled Murie’s fingertip, and taking that as a sign that he would let her speak, she lowered the hand and said, “I would tell you that I just found out, love, but I promised always to answer you truthfully. In troth, though, I think you know why I waited. I was afraid you would not let me come and help celebrate this day.”

  “I would have brought you to Arrochar,” he said. “I might have balked at letting you walk all the way up here.”

  She shook her head at him. “I am not ill, sir, or weak, or decrepit. And Father would be gey disappointed if we were not both here.”

  “He is having a grand day, is he not?”

  She smiled. “He has earned it.”

  Below them, the water of the loch gleamed brightly in the summer sun. Its shoreline was alive with clansmen, women, and children. She and Rob were high enough on the steep hillside to hear only distant shrieks from children splashing in the water and someone singing. Above the trees, a hawk soared lazily on a breeze.

  “Father is pleased that everyone came, because he feared that Ian might not get leave to return again in so short a time. Even Galbraith came, and Lizzie.”

  “Not Lady Margaret, though.”

  “Nay, but Liz told me that her ladyship means to move to Inch Galbraith. She says that Galbraith alone cannot keep Lizzie in hand. In troth, I think she has grown fond of Lizzie and that Liz will be pleased to have her there.”

  “Sakes, your father even let Dougal come.”

  “I know,” Murie said. “I have not said so to anyone else, but I still don’t understand why
he did not just hang the villainous man.”

  Rob grinned at her. “Andrew said that hanging him would be letting him off too easily, that Dougal should have a finer understanding of his own behavior, and Pharlain’s, toward their people and their ‘guests.’ These days, apparently, Dougal is an oarsman on one of Andrew’s galleys.”

  Murie chuckled. “I’ll wager Mag is pleased about that, but surely Father does not keep Dougal in chains as they did with Mag.”

  “Nay, Andrew insists that Dougal volunteered,” Rob said. “I shudder to imagine what other choices Andrew offered him. He said he is merely letting Dougal work his way back into the clan’s good graces.”

  Murie laughed.

  Rob loved her laughter, and when she put a fingertip to her lips again and sucked on it, his body reacted as it always did, and his memory flew back to the day he had seen her on the ladder in Mag’s cottage, looking so childlike and yet not like a child at all. She had so many sides to her that he found new ones every day, and he hoped that he would discover more and more of them long into their future.

  He glanced around the small clearing. They could see people below them, but if he spread his plaid, the shrubbery ought to conceal them.

  She chuckled, and he looked at her and grinned guiltily.

  “They won’t see us,” she said. “And I won’t break.”

  He caught her in his arms then, kissed her, and pulled off his cap. A moment more, his plaid was on the ground, and he was helping her out of her kirtle. She untied her shift and opened the gathered neckline enough to let it slide down her arms to the grass. Now that he knew, he could see the soft rounding of her belly.

  Flinging his tunic to join her kirtle, he told himself he would teach his son that everyone had a right to his or her own thoughts and opinions but that there were mysteries in their world that defied understanding. Meeting his love’s twinkling, too-knowing eyes, he also decided that he would advise that laddie that the best way to manage such things was to accept the mysteries that pleased him and let the others be what they would.

  “You know that I mean to tell a tale at the ceilidh tonight,” she said.

  “Not about Elizabeth Napier.”

  “No, you dafty. Kiss me again.”

  He complied thoroughly, pulling her down beside him and into his arms. Within minutes, she was in full heat and ready for him.

  As he eased his way cautiously in, Murie said softly, “What make you think our bairn will be a son?”

  Dear Reader,

  I hope you enjoyed The Warrior’s Bride, as well as its predecessors in the Lairds of the Loch trilogy, The Laird’s Choice and The Knight’s Temptress.

  Nine months after Jamie’s Inverness Parliament, the North was in flames again and the town of Inverness, except for its renovated castle, reduced to smoking rubble by the Lord of the Isles. The King hurried north, where he was joined by Alexander, Earl of Mar, Lord of the North, who had summoned Clan Chattan to his banner under the Mackintosh (the clan captain), and Donald Dubh Cameron. Clans Cameron and Mackintosh were allies, and the Mackintosh had no love for the Lord of the Isles. Recall that these clans were supporters of the King in Scottish Knights.

  Brehon law is the second-oldest codified law known, after Sanskrit law, and dates from the fifth century. A case and decision like Murie’s supposedly occurred.

  Now, a more personal note: Lest anyone out there wondered how a young woman who walks all the time in the woods could possibly be idiot enough to walk into a low-hanging branch, I should confess that two summers ago the author, who has many more years of such experience than Murie had, and who was thinking about the plot for this book, walked headfirst into a large, low-hanging branch that had not moved an inch since her previous passage, and many before that, on the same trail. Fortunately, I was wearing a hat with a sturdy bill that hit the branch first, tilted down, and protected my face. To say that I felt like an idiot, however, is an understatement. An obliging friend nearby removed the hazard immediately with his chain saw. However, it was hardly the first time that my daydreaming nearly ended badly and it probably won’t be the last. I often walk with my sister in a local wetlands area, and, twice, she has stopped me just short of a rattler.

  I would again like to extend special thanks to Donald R. MacRae for his always extraordinary help and support, as well as to Matthew Miller, California Commissioner for The International Clan MacFarlane Society, Ltd; Michael MacFarlane of Celtic Jackalope, and everyone else who contributed to the website www.clanmacfarlane.org for their helpful commentary and excellent resources.

  Also, as always, I thank my wonderful agents, Lucy Childs and Aaron Priest, my wonderful editor Selina McLemore, Senior Managing Editor Bob Castillo, master copyeditor Sean Devlin, my publicist Jennifer Reese, Art Director Diane Luger, Cover Artist Larry Rostant, Editorial Director Amy Pierpont, Vice President and Editor in Chief Beth de Guzman, and everyone else at Hachette Book Group’s Grand Central Publishing/Forever who contributed to this book.

  If you enjoyed The Lairds of the Loch, please look for Book 1 of my new Border Nights trilogy, Moonlight Raider, in September 2014. Meantime, Suas Alba!

  www.amandascottauthor.com

  OTHER BOOKS BY AMANDA SCOTT

  LAIRDS OF THE LOCH: THE KNIGHT’S TEMPTRESS

  LAIRDS OF THE LOCH: THE LAIRD’S CHOICE

  SCOTTISH KNIGHTS: HIGHLAND LOVER

  SCOTTISH KNIGHTS: HIGHLAND HERO

  SCOTTISH KNIGHTS: HIGHLAND MASTER

  TEMPTED BY A WARRIOR

  SEDUCED BY A ROGUE

  TAMED BY A LAIRD

  BORDER MOONLIGHT

  BORDER LASS

  BORDER WEDDING

  KING OF STORMS

  KNIGHT’S TREASURE

  LADY’S CHOICE

  PRINCE OF DANGER

  LORD OF THE ISLES

  HIGHLAND PRINCESS

  THE SECRET CLAN: REIVER’S BRIDE

  THE SECRET CLAN: HIGHLAND BRIDE

  THE SECRET CLAN: HIDDEN HEIRESS

  THE SECRET CLAN: ABDUCTED HEIRESS

  BORDER FIRE

  BORDER STORM

  BORDER BRIDE

  HIGHLAND FLING

  HIGHLAND SECRETS

  HIGHLAND TREASURE

  HIGHLAND SPIRITS

  THE BAWDY BRIDE

  DANGEROUS ILLUSIONS

  DANGEROUS ANGELS

  DANGEROUS GAMES

  DANGEROUS LADY

  THE ROSE AT TWILIGHT

  RAVES FOR THE NOVELS OF AMANDA SCOTT

  THE KNIGHT’S TEMPTRESS

  “4½ stars! Scott is known for her deft storytelling and her knowledge of Scottish history, customs, and legends. Her latest may actually exceed reader expectations. The Knight’s Temptress is exquisitely written, and its intricate and highly charged plot enhances the wonderfully wrought romance and the emotional maturation of her characters.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “Danger, action, and a white-hot hero… what more can you ask for?… I felt like I was right there in Scotland in the fray with the hero. The writing simply flowed, drawing me right in.”

  —LongandShortReviews.com

  “Charming… I eagerly await the next in the series.”

  —SingleTitles.com

  “A fast paced, action-packed story… Filled with passion, danger, Scottish allure, treason, and love. The romance and passion sizzle off the page… Ms. Scott has yet again created a dazzling story with a bigger-than-life hero and a feisty heroine. A must-read.”

  —MyBookAddictionReviews.com

  THE LAIRD’S CHOICE

  “Wonderfully romantic… [a] richly detailed Scottish historical from the author frequently credited with creating the subgenre.”

  —Library Journal

  “Splendid scenery… Atmosphere abounds in this colorful romance.”

  —HistoricalNovelSociety.org

  “A fine piece of historical romance fiction.”

  —TheBookBinge.com

  “A great start t
o a trilogy that brings historical Scotland to life.”

  —NikkiBrandyBerry.wordpress.com

  “Written with great details… The end was wonderful.”

  —MyBookAddictionReviews.com

  HIGHLAND LOVER

  “4½ stars! The last of the Scottish Knights trilogy is Scott’s reward to her fans. The exquisite, yet subtle portrayal of her characters, coupled with their budding romance, hastens the reader’s emotional involvement with the novel. Excellent melding of historical events and people into the sensuous love story greatly enhances an excellent read.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “With multiple dangers, intrigues to unravel, daring rescues, and a growing attraction between Jake and Alyson, Highland Lover offers hours of enjoyment.”

  —RomRevtoday.com

  “A rollicking tale… will grab your attention from the very beginning… Ms. Scott’s unique storytelling ability brings history to life right before your eyes… Adventure on the high seas, passion, treachery, pirates, danger, visions, suspense, history, humor, and romance run rampant in this exciting, swashbuckling tale. If you are looking for a great Scottish romance, look no further than Amanda Scott!”

  —RomanceJunkiesReviews.com

  “The latest Scottish Knights romance is a wonderful early fifteenth century swashbuckling adventure. As always with an Amanda Scott historical, real events are critical elements in the exciting storyline. With a superb twist to add to the fun, readers will appreciate this super saga.”

  —GenreGoRoundReviews.blogspot.com

  HIGHLAND HERO

  “4½ stars! Scott’s story is a tautly written, fast-paced tale of political intrigue and treachery that’s beautifully interwoven with history. Strong characters with deep emotions and a high degree of sensuality make this a story to relish.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “[A] well-written and a really enjoyable read. It’s one of my favorite types of historical—it’s set in medieval times and interwoven with actual historical figures. Without a doubt, Amanda Scott knows her history… If you enjoy a rich historical romance set in the Highlands, this is a book to savor.”