by Aileen Adams
A Highlander’s Woman
Highland Heartbeats
Aileen Adams
Contents
A Highlander’s Woman
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue
Afterword
A Highlander’s Woman
Book Twelve of the Highland Heartbeats Series!
A Highlander loves forever…
The final book in the Highland Heartbeats brings us a wonderful love story for Padraig Anderson, Rodric’s younger brother who now heads the Anderson clan and has seen his brother and all of his friends find his happily ever after while he’s stayed the course and run the family business.
Margaret is an assassin with the Order. Until she can’t perform her last assignment. Now she’s on the run, disguised as a lad, and facing down scoundrels outside brothels.
Until she’s rescued by Sorcha and Moira and brought to the Clan Anderson homestead.
Who said life would be any easier when her heart keeps beating faster every moment the laird steps near?
1
The woods outside Caistor were deep, dark, and lush, with alder trees rising high above the emerald-carpeted floor. When mist hung over the ground, as it did while a cloaked figure kept careful watch on the road, there was an almost mystical feel.
If the cloaked assassin had believed in mysticism, which was not the case.
The world held many things—rare and wonderful, sinister and vile. It did not hold spirits and wills o’ the wisp. These were legends. Nothing more.
Perhaps the assassin was a legend, too. A figure who appeared seemingly out of nowhere, one in need of help who quickly pulled a blade or a vial of poison which was used on a slow, dim-witted target.
A body could be warm and breathing one moment, cold and with eyes which stared like those of a great fish the next, with no one around the wiser. That was the assassin’s skill. That was why assignments such as this were assigned only for assassins such as his one.
Normally, two or even three of the assassin’s brethren would go out on a mission. They might travel to the coast of France or to Norway’s shores. Most frequently, the missions they carried out took them into England, which was where the assassin now waited for a very special carriage to roll down the road.
Why was the man inside marked for death? It was not for the assassin to say. Such information was never shared, for it mattered little why a soul was about to meet its end. Only that it did, and ideally in the swiftest, most silent way possible.
This was the assassin’s gift. The lack of struggle, the speed with which one worked to render victims silent in the time it took to blink an eye.
Some who practiced this art—which was what it was, art learned over a lifetime of instruction and rigorous training—were clumsy no matter how long they’d worked at mastering the craft. They allowed a devious duke or avaricious marquis to scream, to cry out for help, something to alert those nearby to their misfortune.
This could result in needless bloodshed, with those uninvolved coming to rescue those who might already have met their end. There could be no one left behind, no one who might tell tales or describe the murderers.
Never for the assassin. Not once, not ever. It was a point of pride, one which inspired respect and perhaps a bit of resentment from those whose skills would never reach such heights.
This was the best place to do it, along the narrow, old road which ran past Gainsthorpe to the west. No one in that part of England could be unaware of the village’s reputation for harboring thieves and cutthroats. The local magistrate would quickly dismiss even the murder of an earl as little more than the evil of one of Gainsthorpe’s many bottom-dwelling criminals.
Rolling wheels. The clomp-clomp of hooves. Every muscle in the assassin’s body suddenly went loose, utterly relaxed, as though sliding into a steaming washtub. This was an action routinely performed. This was nothing new.
The assassin lowered the hood of the mud-stained brown cloak the assassin had taken pains to dirty minutes earlier to reveal the assassin’s face.
And a head full of long hair the color of flax.
The assassin was a woman. A young woman named Margaret.
Margaret smeared dirt on her cheeks to heighten the effect of her supposed distress. When the earl—or, first, his driver—took notice, it would be to her advantage to look as disheveled as she was supposed to be.
One brush of her fingertips against the outside of her left boot, where the handle of the silver dagger waited. She need only withdraw it in the normal swift fashion, the smoothest of movements, and the deed would be done. The man need not even suffer.
Perhaps it was foolish to believe herself merciful. Mercy would be sparing the man’s life—she was not daft, she knew this.
But his life was over. Someone had deemed him unnecessary, or he had seen something he ought not to have seen, or he’d refused to enter into an arrangement with a friend-turned-foe.
The man was going to die regardless of who killed him. It was already arranged.
The least Margaret could do, then, was to ensure he did not suffer needlessly. Suffering was not required of her victims. Only death.
The carriage drew nearer, the snorting of a team of horses reaching her ears. She even heard the driver call out to the earl, warning him of rough road ahead.
As though he knew.
A shame, really, that the driver would also have to die, but there was no avoiding stopping the carriage here, in the wood, where none would be the wiser.
After careful consideration of the earl’s travel plans, it was determined that he would never be more vulnerable than on this stretch of road. Only a few miles in either direction would mean the presence of farms and the tenant farmers who might bear witness. Further on was a thriving village and the possibility that someone was waiting to meet the man.
This would have to be the place, meaning the driver’s demise, if Margaret was to execute her plan to the satisfaction of Mother Cressida and the man or woman who’d paid to have the earl forever silenced.
She let out a deep breath which turned into fog upon hitting the damp, cool air of the deep wood. Her moment had come.
She staggered out into the road as though exhausted and injured, stumbling in the direction of the as-yet-invisible carriage. It would come around the bend in a moment, judging by how loud the hooves sounded against the stony ground.
“Help…help…” she gasped, sliding into the tones of an educated noblewoman. English, naturally. “Help me, please.”
Margaret fell to her knees in the road just as the carriage rounded the bend.
“Whoa, there!” the driver called out, reining in the startled team.
They neighed, stomping the ground, prancing fretfully as the carriage rolled to a creaking halt.
“Help me, please,” Margaret whimpered, clutching her filthy cloak around her. Her skilled eyes took in the scene. A shining, black carriage whose doors bore the Remington family crest. Two magnificent Shires the color o
f dirty snow. A driver dressed in wine-red tunic and cloak, standing in the driver’s box that he might have a better look at her.
“What is this?” A man who could only be Earl Remington called out in tones of impatience from inside the carriage. “Why have we stopped?”
“There’s a woman in the road,” the driver observed, casual. As though this were nothing more than a matter of vague interest.
Margaret whimpered, reaching up from her half-prone position. “Cutpurses,” she breathed, her chest hitching with each breath. “Barely escaped. Please, help me. They stole my horse.”
The door opened, and out stepped a man dressed in finery the likes of which Margaret had never seen outside the royal court. She had recently completed a mission there, poisoning an indiscreet duke whose habit of letting slip matters of the gravest nature meant the need for elimination.
She’d seen such lavish dress there. Velvet trimmed in ermine. Shining silver buckles. Fine leather boots she would have guessed might feed the entirety of the earl’s tenants.
“Who are you?” Earl Remington demanded, keeping himself at a distance. She needed him to come closer, to help her to her feet. Were it not for the presence of his driver she might allow him to crouch over her and take care of him then.
If she did so, the driver would surely see his master fall and order the horses to run. She might not have time to dispatch with him if she had to first get up from the ground. Every moment was precious.
“I… was merely traveling the road,” she groaned, touching a hand to the back of her head. “They struck me. Oh, please, can you take me to the next village?”
“Where are you from?”
“York,” she replied. “Would that I had never left.”
This was taking too long. There was always a chance that the target in such a ruse would not come to her assistance. A man in the earl’s position might be suspicious of any distressed traveler such as she, no matter the story they told. Or, they might be of a selfish disposition and care little for the misfortune of others.
It seemed Earl Remington was of the latter disposition.
She struggled to her feet, swaying, then fell to one knee. The dagger was at the ready, close to the left hand she pressed to the ground as though to keep herself upright.
The earl muttered an oath under his breath. “Come, now,” he grumbled, finally approaching. “Let us see to you, I suppose.” As though this were the most repugnant thing he could imagine.
Little wonder someone wished him dead.
She hooked her fingers around the handle of the dagger, withdrawing it as he hoisted her up by her right arm. A smooth pivot brought her hand through the air in an arc, the blade poised to make contact with his thick, white throat.
“Papa?”
She froze, the tip of the dagger a mere hairsbreadth from the man’s skin. It had all happened so quickly—the way it always did, thanks to her skill and speed—that the earl did not notice at first how the situation had shifted against him.
“Papa!”
From the corner of Margaret’s eye, she observed a curly-headed boy of no older than four winters leaning out from the open door.
“Papa, what is it?”
Not a child.
Not an innocent child.
Her eyes met the earl’s, and the terror in their depths told her he was well aware of his situation. Those eyes cut to the side, in the direction of his child, then back to her.
Not a wee child.
She’d killed so many, their faces all having long since blurred into one shapeless, featureless shadow. This was all she’d ever known—spying, then assassination, once her skills sharpened. So many no longer breathed, laughed, loved, because of her.
Feeling? Regret? Never a concern, for they were wasteful. They muddied the waters, made a woman slow, dulled her instincts when every fiber of her being had to be focused on a single goal.
But this.
This was something she’d never encountered.
It went against the few beliefs she still held onto, everything else having been long since burned away in her training.
Remington’s life. The driver’s. They’d been lived.
That child…?
All of this went through her head in the course of a heartbeat.
“Tell him all is well,” she whispered, careful to ensure the blade was hidden from the child’s view.
“All is well, Edward,” the earl choked out. “Sit down, my boy.”
There was a choice to be made, and quickly. She had to either murder the child or let all three of them go. She could not leave him on his own with his father’s body—such a horror was beyond imagining, and he might just as well succumb to the elements or, worse, to animals who would surely smell the blood and come on the run.
Her tongue darted out, licking her suddenly parched lips. “You never saw me,” she hissed. “This never happened. Do you understand?”
“Y—yes.” He tried valiantly to maintain his composure, but it was slipping.
“I give you my word,” she warned. “If I could find you on this road, I could find you again. If I hear a word of your speaking of this to anyone—anyone at all—I will come for you. It will not matter whose company you’re in then. I will dispatch you all. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
Only then did she pull the dagger away. “I would suggest you do not return home for some time, and do what you can to hide yourself. I will know if you don’t.”
With that, she darted into the woods, leaving the carriage and her failure behind.
Her heart hammered madly as she retrieved her horse, which at that moment chewed contentedly on a mouthful of grass. Rather than steering him toward the road, she walked him through the woods, away from the earl and his son.
His son! Why was he with his son?
Never had she called into question anything about herself, what she did.
Now, she questioned everything, and the first question—who was she, after all?
2
“Come at me, then!” Padraig Anderson raised his sword with a mighty roar and rushed at the armed man standing only a few paces away. The fear in the younger, smaller man’s eyes told him everything he needed to know. This would be a sure victory.
Again.
He did not bother striking, choosing instead to shove his shield into the man’s chest. “Come on, then! What are you about?”
“I’m—I’m sorry, my laird.” If there had been a puddle at the lad’s feet, Padraig would not have been in the least surprised.
A rumble of good-natured laughter rose up behind him, and he did not need to turn to know he’d find his brother and friends having a jest at his expense. He cast a doleful eye upon the witless lad chosen to assist with his training before going to join them, seated in a row along the stone wall which ran around the area designated for such practice.
“Aye, and a lot of help ye are,” he grumbled. “Ye put me up against the runt of the litter and barely a man, to boot. Ye have my thanks.”
His older brother clapped him on the shoulder. “’Tis not just the lad,” Rodric reminded him. “You’d be hard-pressed to find a man on the place who’d liked to match swords with ye.”
“Why not, then?” Padraig demanded. “I am laird of this clan, and I demand to train as a warrior. A warrior cannot train alone, with no one to help hone his skills.”
“Aye, but the laird rarely trains for such fighting while he’s the laird,” Fergus chuckled.
“I trained when I was a lad. Da insisted.”
“But not as hard as I did,” Rodric pointed out. “Ye were young when Da died, and Alan needed ye as an aide, not a warrior for the clan. He had enough of those at his disposal.”
Padraig reminded himself of his lofty position and, as such, the need to maintain his composure when in the presence of so many clan members. In truth, he wished to throw his shield to the ground and shout curses at the heavens.
How was he t
o train to fight, truly fight as he’d seen his men do against the Cameron forces, when not a single one of his warriors had the courage to raise a sword to him?
“I must admit, I dinna see why ye insist upon this,” Rodric grinned. “Ye dinna see Phillip Duncan riding out with his men, because he’s needed for other matters. Important matters, vital to the clan’s survival. The same goes for ye.”
He could not explain it, and his brother would never understand it.
For the first time, during that skirmish with the Cameron men, he’d felt… alive. Truly, fully alive. Not sitting behind a table in his study, looking over correspondence. Not settling the arguments of quarreling farmers who tended his land.
He’d ridden out to battle, as men did. He’d smelled blood in the air, and it had only served to heat his own blood, to send it racing through his veins.
For the first time, he’d been able to understand why his brother had fought, why his friends had risked their lives. It was a sickness that got into a man’s bones and would not let him go, the way some men developed an overfondness for drink.
“Look. I know I should never take a chance like that again—at least, not until I have an heir or two at home, in case I meet my end. This doesn’t mean I ought not be prepared in case of a real, true war marching up to our doorstep. We all know it’s possible. Until now, I’ve been buried here at the house, in my work. But there’s a world out there.” He swept an arm across his body, taking in the full breadth of the rolling, green hills and the mountain peaks beyond.
