To Love a Scottish Lord

by Karen Ranney

  Brendan slowed his horse, pointing ahead. “There it is, Castle Gloom.”

  “Castle Gloom?”

  “That’s what I thought when I first saw the place,” he said, staring ahead.

  Peering through the trees that lined the road, she saw her destination. She’d never expected an isolated castle dominated by a tall tower. Of dark red brick and stone, it seemed a blot on the landscape. Almost a wound. The thought was as disconcerting as the flock of seabirds suddenly circling overhead. With a rush of wings, they flew swiftly away in the other direction, almost as if in warning.

  They heard the explosion first. Brendan’s face paled, but before she could understand what he was about to do, let alone prevent it, he lunged at her, launching himself off his saddle and into her with such force that she was catapulted to the ground. A moment later, she was on her back in the grass beside the road with him atop her. Before she could push him away or demand to know what insanity had overcome him, a projectile crashed into the tree to their left.

  “He’s firing at us! The damn fool is firing at us!”

  “Who is?”

  “Hamish!” he said angrily.

  She pushed at Brendan’s shoulder. He moved off her, but neither of them made an effort to rise.

  “What sort of man shoots at his own brother?”

  Brendan didn’t have an answer to her question, and she didn’t press the matter. In a moment, she sat up. He stood and helped her stand.

  Her knee hurt and her left shoulder ached from where she’d hit the ground too hard. However, she didn’t mention those minor inconveniences. They paled in significance to being blown away by a cannonball.

  Behind them, the trees sparkled. In the grayness of the day, the sight was eerie, as if she’d chanced upon a magical forest. Mary bent and picked up a piece of the shot and held the warm, glittery metal in her gloved palm.

  Before she could comment on it, Brendan reached out and plucked it from her hand.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “A piece of bronze.”

  He met her eyes. In his gaze was the same confusion she felt.

  “Why is he shooting at us?”

  “I don’t know, Angel,” he said.

  This time, however, she didn’t correct him.

  If he’d only lowered the sight two inches, he might have been able to hit the top of the tall pine. Hamish jotted down the coordinates, using a piece of charcoal wrapped in a rag. He was nearly out of paper. He hoped Brendan arrived before the rest of his supplies were as depleted.

  The tower room in which he sat was drafty. He’d stuffed straw in some of the archer’s slits to cut down on the wind, but he’d left the lone window open, folding back the shutters. Now the barrel of the cannon rested on the stone sill.

  On one of his early explorations of the ruins of his borrowed home, he’d discovered the cannon sitting there in the tower. It hadn’t been difficult to figure out why such armament had been laboriously carried up the four flights of curving stairs. Resting just within the curtain wall that followed the irregular shape of the island, the tower commanded a view of the countryside and was in the perfect defensible position. If he stood at the window and looked left he’d have a view of the loch and beyond, the sea. To his right was a narrow strip of woods and the road that led to civilization.

  The bridge, however, was flooded at every high tide, protecting him from any possible intrusion.

  He pulled the cannon back on squeaking wheels and loaded it again, using bits of metal and stone as shot. As for powder, there was plenty of that. The defenders of Aonaranach had left a small magazine behind, buried beneath a pile of straw.

  Reaching for his tinder box, he lit it and then the fuse, stepping back a few feet while the cannon belched its contents in a deep-throated roar.

  There, he’d hit the pine tree exactly.

  A shout made him straighten and approach the window. With one hand braced against the sill, he leaned out to his right. A scrap of red material tied to a long branch was emerging from the grove of trees. At the end of it was a very angry Brendan.

  Hamish understood immediately. He’d been firing at a tree only a short distance from where his brother stood. He waved his arm to signal that he’d seen the makeshift flag. Brendan, in turn, frowned up at him, and then staked the branch in the ground, standing there with feet planted apart and arms folded in front of him.

  A woman stepped out from behind a tree to join him. She wore a bright red wool skirt and cloak, but her kerchief was missing. Brendan’s flag, he thought.

  Hamish pulled back but she didn’t move, her face tilted up to the window. He wondered if she’d seen him and then thought not. If she had, she wouldn’t have continued to watch with such a calm expression on her face. Nor would her smile, small though it was, have remained so firmly moored on those full lips.

  Her hair was brown, with hints of gold glinting in it even on this gray and somber day. Her eyes were dark, but she was too far away for him to discern the color. Her waist was narrow and her bosom ample. Only her slender neck and delicate wrists showed, and glimpses of her ankles as she walked. The vision he instantly had of her naked reminded him how long it had been since he’d been with a woman.

  A wife? Three weeks was too little time for even his fast-acting brother to secure a bride.

  “I’ll be married come the spring,” he’d said in India. “I have a yen to settle with one woman.”

  “Where would you put this bride of yours?” Hamish had asked.

  Brendan’s ship was large, one of the first vessels built at Gilmuir. Even so, his accommodations and captain’s quarters were too small for a family.

  “I’m thinking in Scotland,” Brendan said. “Or maybe Nova Scotia. Either is as close to a man of the sea.”

  “Do you think that’s fair? You’d be away for years at a time, and she might actually be lonely for you. If, that is, you manage to find the one woman in the world who would miss that ugly face of yours.”

  Brendan had only smirked at him, secure in his ability to attract females.

  No, she couldn’t be a wife. Even Brendan couldn’t be that fortunate.

  Brendan turned toward her, saying something that made her smile fade. She tilted her head back and regarded the tower once more.

  Hamish left the window and stood in the middle of the circular room. If it had been only Brendan, he wouldn’t have felt any hesitation in descending the stairs and opening the oak-banded door he’d repaired. But he was curiously reluctant to show himself now. He’d not been in close quarters with a woman since he’d been captured.

  He wished, for the first time since he’d left Brendan’s ship, that he’d thought to bring a mirror. After he stared into it, he’d be able to gauge the depth of her revulsion. How would she act? Would she gasp or shudder, or give in to tears?

  There was nothing to do but let them in. Bending beneath the lintel, he descended the stairs. Once on the ground floor, he removed the bar and opened the door, taking the precaution of retreating to the steps again to stand in the shadows.

  Brendan came first, looking around the tower. He marched to the bottom of the steps, and catching sight of Hamish, placed his fists on his hips and glared.

  “It’s taken you long enough, brother,” Hamish said.

  “Is that how you repay me for my tardiness, Hamish? By trying to kill me? Why the hell were you shooting at us?” Brendan’s shouts echoed through the tower. Where once there’d been no sound at all in the castle, now there was abruptly too much.

  “I was not,” Hamish said stiffly, all too conscious of the arrival of the woman behind his brother. “I was simply amusing myself. If I’d known you were there, I would have pointed the cannon in the opposite direction.”

  “Where did you get a cannon, Hamish? I would have thought this godawful place would only boast spiders and bats.”

  There had been enough of those, but he felt a curious protectiveness for his hermitage and only sai
d, “A legacy from a former owner, no doubt. Someone once wished to defend it.”

  “I can’t see why.”

  Brendan stepped aside, leaving Hamish an unobstructed view of the woman in crimson.

  Her eyes were brown; an unremarkable color that nonetheless now seemed deep, dark, and almost mysterious.

  “Who are you?” he asked in a voice sharper than he’d intended.

  Brendan frowned up at him, almost protectively.

  “Angel, this surly creature is my brother. Hamish, allow me to introduce Mrs. Mary Gilly. A healer of some repute.”

  He told himself that he was enraged because Brendan had overstepped his authority, not because of the way his brother’s hand rested on the woman’s shoulder. Nor did his sudden foul mood have anything to do with the soft and winsome smile she gave him in return.

  “A healer? All I wanted was for you to bring the provisions I asked for, Brendan,” he said curtly.

  She took a few steps forward, and Hamish took another step back, wishing that he had the power to banish her with the blink of an eye or a commanding gesture of one finger pointed toward the door. He held up his hand, palm toward her as if to ward her off.

  “I am sorry you’ve come all this way for nothing,” he said. A perfectly rational sentence uttered in a remarkably civil tone. Considering that he’d not talked to another human being in three weeks, he should be congratulated not only for the restraint of his utterance, but also for the clarity of it.

  Abruptly, he turned on his heel and left them.

  Chapter 2

  B rendan entered Hamish’s room without knocking, but then, Hamish expected it. Brendan could be exceptionally charming when he wished, but now was not one of those occasions.

  His brother halted at the threshold, staring at the cannon still sitting by the window. “You’d have more room in here if you moved that thing outside.”

  “Ah, but then I wouldn’t have been able to amuse myself by lopping off the tops of trees.”

  “Is that what you were doing?” Brendan frowned. “A waste of your talents, Hamish.”

  “Who is she?” Hamish asked, changing the topic of this conversation.

  “A woman of Inverness,” Brendan answered. “As I told you, a healer with a great reputation.”

  “Why do you call her Angel?”

  “She evidently saved a little boy on his deathbed. At least that’s the story Iseabal related. She knows of Mary’s talents because of her husband, a goldsmith. Evidently, she and Alisdair commissioned him to make several objects for Gilmuir.”

  “She’s married?”

  “No longer. Her husband died some time ago, I believe.”

  “So you fetched her from Inverness because of Iseabal’s recommendation?”

  “Can you think of a better reason?”

  In all honesty, he could not. Hamish had the greatest admiration for his sister-in-law. The problem was that he didn’t want a healer there.

  “Mrs. Gilly sounds like she will be sorely missed in Inverness. Perhaps you should take her back there with all possible speed.”

  “Don’t you want to get better?”

  Hamish couldn’t help but laugh at that question. “I am as good as I will get.” He turned, finally, and faced Brendan, standing unflinching before his brother’s inspection. He spread one hand out while the other remained at his side, useless. “This is all that I am. This is what I look like healed. If she can give me back the whole of my body, I would take it. Gratefully. But she cannot.”

  “Perhaps she can, especially if she’s as gifted as they say.”

  “I need no miracle worker, Brendan. God Himself would have to erase these scars.”

  “They’ll heal in time, Hamish, and not be as noticeable as now.”

  “But they’ll always be there. Take her back to Inverness, Brendan.”

  “I don’t think Mary will go,” he said.

  Hamish turned and faced the window again. “Then you must convince her.”

  Brendan had been there less than ten minutes and had already made his presence felt in the old castle. Through the window, Hamish could see a wagon piled high with boxes and crates on the bridge, being unloaded by two more strangers.

  Mary Gilly was striding across the courtyard toward the castle. The least Brendan could have done was to bring him a healer who was advanced in years, someone with age and wisdom, and missing a few teeth, perhaps. Or a physician, if no old wise woman was available.

  A beautiful woman had power of her own. Was that how she healed her male patients? Did she simply will them to health? He wasn’t immune to such blandishments. As the Atavasi had learned, he was all too human.

  Had she charmed Brendan? Was that why he’d brought her there?

  The twilight graced her with loveliness, the shadows falling over her like an ethereal blanket. She seemed a part of this place, a ghost returning to its home.

  “Who are the others?”

  “A cook and a carpenter.”

  “All I wanted was a few supplies, Brendan. I don’t need a cook, a carpenter, and most especially a healer.”

  “I’ve never seen a man who needed one more.”

  Hamish sent a swift look to his brother, and Brendan only smiled in response.

  Hamish MacRae might be her patient, but it was only too obvious that she wasn’t wanted. After Brendan followed his brother up the sloping stairs, Mary remained where she was, feeling like a parcel Brendan had forgotten.

  The ground floor was sparsely furnished. A settle made of planked pine sat to the side of an arched fireplace. Two chairs and a table on the other side of the room comprised the remainder of the furniture.

  Long moments passed, but Brendan didn’t return. She could hear the sound of voices, and it disturbed her to be an accidental eavesdropper on their conversation. Turning, she left the tower.

  She stood in the middle of the courtyard on a grassy patch of ground with the wind pressing her skirt against her legs and tossing her hair askew. She was an Inverness woman, born and raised within the city. True, there were grand sights to be seen there, and places to go that caused her breath to hitch in wonder or sheer pleasure. However, nothing she’d ever seen before incited her imagination as much as Castle Gloom did now.

  Where were the men in arms who’d once patrolled these walls? Where had the cook and all her helpers gone, and the lord of the manor? What had happened to the lady, and any children born here? They’d simply vanished, and she couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to them all.

  She turned slowly, thinking that the castle didn’t look nearly as forlorn or forbidding as it had appeared from the road. To her left was a long, rectangular building backing up to the wall for shelter. To her right was the tower, midpoint in the long, curving wall. Behind her was a glorified lean-to that had evidently been used to house the animals, and where she and Brendan had put their own mounts.

  Crossing the courtyard, she knelt at the wide stone lip of the well and lowered the bucket, delighted to discover that the water was crystal clear and cold. Placing the dipper back in the bucket, she followed her inclination and headed for the main building.

  If she were to stay there, at least for a few days, she must find a place to call hers, a little corner of Castle Gloom where she could command some privacy, arrange her medicines, and treat Hamish. She wondered if Brendan would be able to convince his brother that she could be of assistance.

  A stubborn man couldn’t be reasoned into changing his mind. He must be led to it by example. More easily done in Inverness, where there were a host of cures and enough tales of her successes to bolster a patient’s confidence in her. But here, in this remote castle, how did she convince Hamish MacRae to trust her?

  She pushed open an oak door, surprised that it swung ajar easily. A short hallway gave way to a large room, surprisingly well lit. She tilted her head back to see the windows aligned high in the wall. As if heaven approved of her curiosity, the sun suddenly speared through a
cloud, further illuminating the chamber.

  The room was barren, but without much imagining, she could almost see the shields on the walls and the banners hanging across the ceiling. This place held the memory of its own history, even if none of its inhabitants was there to speak of it.

  The wooden door was heavily notched in places, as if someone had leaned against the frame and nicked at it with his knife in boredom. The stone floor beneath her feet was pocked and smooth, made that way by generations of well-shod feet. Yet, for all the emptiness of this place, it wasn’t a sad room. Instead, it felt merely waiting, as if it were a sentient being and knew, somehow, that its time had not quite passed.

  She turned and walked through the hall to a short door set into the wall to her left. This chamber was filled with shadows, and she didn’t enter it completely, merely stood at the threshold looking inside. Evidently, the room had once been used for lodging, judging by the number of cots stacked against one wall. She couldn’t help but wonder if the castle had been used to garrison troops, since a belt buckle and a powder horn sat against the wall near the door.

  On the other side of the Great Hall was another room. Inside, a long wooden table stretched the length of the space. Dozens of shelves lined the walls, but they were all empty. Not one pot or pan remained in the kitchen. Not a butter churn or a knife, bucket or bowl. Not a jar. The emptiness of the larder buttressed her idea that the exodus from Castle Gloom had been a deliberate one accomplished over time.

  As in the Great Hall, windows high in the white walls illuminated the space. Shafts of sunlight struck the floor in squares, intersecting with each other to form a crisscross pattern. The ceiling was arched, and whitewashed as well, except for a dark spot over the massive fireplace discolored by years of fires. There were no clues to the absence of the inhabitants of Castle Gloom, but she’d solved one problem. If she could find no other room, she’d use the kitchen.