by Paula Quinn
Opening her eyes, Gillian saw nothing but sky and jagged mountaintops. Then she looked down. The vale rolled out before her in a lush array of heather and wild daffodils. Cottages of various sizes dotted the countryside with men and women working around them, beating blankets or hanging laundry out to dry. Some of the men pounded leather while others pulled their boats in from the glistening bay to the west. Sheep and cattle grazed the misty hills with lazy abandon, and everywhere Gillian set her eyes, she saw children.
Gillian decided that she’d never seen any place more beautiful than this. More than just a safe haven nestled within the mountains, the fortified castle rose up out of the side of Sgurr na Stri with dark, jagged towers piercing the mist rolling down from the Cuillins. Guards patrolled the battlements and shouted below when they saw their chief returning from the cliffs.
“It gets frigid here in the winter,” Connor told her, leading them down into the vale. “Ye and yer babe are welcome to stay at Ravenglade with me and Mairi. Or if ye prefer, I’m sure there’s plenty of room at Campbell Keep with Tristan and Isobel.”
“I’d like to stay here.” Gillian sighed with contentment. Oh, how she wished Colin were here so she could thank him, kiss him…
“There’s my wife,” she heard Connor tell her with a slight catch in his voice. He pointed to a dark-haired beauty waving at him from the castle entrance. “She’s going to like ye. If ye love Camlochlin, then ye’ll have a friend in her.”
Within an hour, Gillian had more friends than she’d had in all her years put together. The women of Camlochlin were nothing as she’d imagined. Unconcerned with her religious preference, they welcomed her into their fold like a sister they hadn’t seen in years. Colin’s aunt, Maggie MacGregor, wasted little time getting to the bottom of what Gillian and her son were doing here—which left the other women eyeing her with something resembling admiration widening their eyes.
“Colin can be as cold as a stone wall,” his sister, Mairi, pointed out, rubbing her swollen belly while she and Rob’s petite wife, Davina, walked with her toward another of the hundreds of rooms inside the castle. “I miss him terribly. I pray that he is…” She sniffed, cursed, and then wiped the moisture from her eyes.
“There now.” Davina, whom Gillian had learned was King James’s firstborn daughter, gave her sister-in-law’s arm a tender pat. “We’ve all agreed that Colin can take care of himself. He would be insulted if he knew you worried over him.”
Gillian smiled, knowing she was correct, and stepped inside a massive chamber to meet Tristan and his very pregnant wife, Isobel.
“Aunt Maggie is seeing to the children, but she will be here momentarily,” Mairi told her brother when she reached the bed where Isobel lay clutching her enormous belly. “How is she?”
“The pains are more frequent. I’ve sent for the midwives.” Tristan looked up from beneath weary lids and blinked at Gillian. “Who is this?”
Gillian’s knees nearly gave way beneath her. Save for his shoulder-length hair and the worry creasing his dark brow, he looked so much like Colin, she thought she had to be dreaming of his return.
“Colin’s,” he said, sounding more astonished after Mairi filled him in than if his wife had just delivered twins. “ ’Tis truly a day fer miracles.”
“The miracle,” his wife groaned and writhed from the bed, “will be if someone gets this babe out of me sometime this century!”
“That is why we are here, sweeting.” Maggie swept into the room with two midwives following close behind. She excused her nephew, who refused to leave until he kissed his wife and whispered words of encouragement to her.
Gillian took up her steps to leave behind Tristan. This was a sacred event to be shared by close family. She would find her way around, eager to explore without footsteps trailing behind her.
Davina stopped her. “Stay, I implore you, and help us welcome our newest addition to the clan.”
Lord, but Gillian understood why Colin’s tone had softened when he spoke of this woman. With hair the same color as the pearls around her neck and her wispy frame, her ethereal beauty reminded Gillian of the fairies of lore. She was the chief’s wife and the king’s daughter, yet her demeanor was demure, her tone soft and inviting. She was being kind and Gillian liked her for it. But she would not intrude.
“I should see to my son.”
“Edmund is off playing with the children,” Maggie informed her while she carefully rolled down Isobel’s blanket. “He is safe. You needn’t worry.”
Pausing at the door, Gillian cleared her burning throat and blinked back a fresh spring of tears. Playing. Her son was playing with other children. She needn’t worry. She smiled as a surge of happiness welled up inside her. She never wanted to leave this place. With or without Colin, she would make a life here for her and Edmund. And, oh, she thought, rolling up her sleeves and joining the others around the bed, it felt good to do womanly things with other women.
“What do you think of Camlochlin, so far?” one of them asked her while Maggie fed Isobel some tea and propped her pillows.
They all glanced at her, awaiting her reply.
“I know it may sound silly, but I feel like I’ve come home.”
“It doesna’ sound silly at all.” Across the bed, Mairi smiled at her. They all did.
Aye, she was home. At last.
Chapter Thirty-seven
And surely you don’t mean for us to travel over those cliffs.”
Colin looked at Gates across the fire. “Of course not. We will make our journey over the hills. I’ll tell ye all about Elgol’s cliffs so that ye’ll understand the nature of the landscape ye’ll be calling home.”
“Is it very cold?” Sarah Gates asked him, snuggling closer to her husband and reaching for her sister’s hand.
“It can be, aye,” he told her honestly. “And quiet.”
Sarah’s kin, consisting of her mother, Helen Harrison, her two brothers and their kin, and her younger sister, Leslie, all wore the same pensive expression.
“Well,” her eldest brother said, breaking the silence around the campsite, “it’s better than being arrested or shot for our beliefs as our father was.”
On this, they all agreed. Gates’s in-laws had already lost much.
“But your people are Catholics too, are they not?” Sarah’s mother asked. “Why would they take us in?”
Aye, the fact that these people were active Covenanters wasn’t going to go over well with his kin. He and Mairi used to go out at night and hunt members of these small anti-Catholic sects, and now here he was bringing almost a score of them home.
What choice did he have? ’Twas either ensure their safety—which he couldn’t do unless he brought them to Camlochlin—or watch Gates go off into battle against the king’s men.
He sure as hell wasn’t about to do that. He and Gates were friends, and besides that, it would make Gillian very happy to have her captain remain in her life.
“They’ll take ye in because I will remind them that ye suffer, same as they did.”
They shared a light supper from the provisions the Harrisons had taken with them when they left their homes. It had taken much to convince them to leave but finally they’d heeded George’s warning. The king had made a promise in Colin’s presence, just after he commanded Lord Devon’s immediate death, that all Protestant divisions would end at his fist. If they wanted a bloody war, he would give them one.
“Ye must come now,” Colin reminded them as he lay his head down in the grass. “I willna’ be returning this way again. Ye’ll have peaceful lives, and if William succeeds at taking the throne, ye can return to yer homes.”
It was another reason he wouldn’t bring them to Camlochlin across the cliffs, though it cut a day of traveling. None knew the pass; it was kept reserved for kin alone. A MacGregor needn’t worry about arrows in his chest when he returned from the cliffs. The hills, though, they were reserved for strangers. Most times, unwanted ones. He would have to ride
ahead and wave his plaid to signal his peaceful arrival until he was more clearly recognized.
“We’re coming,” Sarah said, speaking for the rest of them with their approval.
“Get some sleep then. We ride for Glenelg in the morning.” Colin closed his eyes, then opened them again a moment later and ground his teeth at the stars.
It sickened him to think how his heart accelerated in anticipation of setting his eyes on Gillian again. Or the way his belly tightened from the inside out when he thought of holding her in his arms. He was a warrior, for hell’s sake, not some peach-faced whelp.
But he missed her like hell.
“Colin?”
“Aye?”
“You have my thanks in this,” Gates said. “In getting all of us out of England.”
Colin closed his eyes and thought about everything that had happened since leaving Gillian at Dartmouth. Having little choice to do otherwise, James had relieved him of his duty. Colin was going home, either as a deserter, or as the man who gave the king back his daughter and who had the power to take her away. He’d met Gates on the road back to Essex and warned him of the king’s intentions. It had taken almost a fortnight to gather the captain’s wife and her kin in Norfolk, and another fortnight to reach the Highlands. He was bone weary, but knowing Gillian and Edmund were waiting for him drove him onward.
He tapped his hand on the ground and opened his eyes again. “George, do ye think she’s fergiven me?”
He heard nothing for an eternal moment but the sharp snap of twigs in the fire. The captain couldn’t have fallen asleep already. Mayhap he didn’t want to answer with the truth he suspected.
What if she hadn’t forgiven him? What if she couldn’t?
“I know I kept much from her, but—”
“From both of us,” George finally spoke. “How did you manage to remain so guarded and determined to your purpose? I couldn’t have done it,” he said in a humble tone. “Not if I loved her. I would have broken and told her whatever she wished to know. I admire your strength of will.”
Colin lifted his head off the ground and laughed at his friend. “Are ye jesting? My strength of will was shattered the day after I met her. As fer remaining determined to my purpose,” he said, sobering at the truth of it all, “do ye think I came to Dartmouth to fall in love with my enemy’s cousin and snatch her from his hands? Nothing has purpose anymore but her… her and Edmund.” He fell back to the earth and the stars twinkling at him. “There is nothing to admire, my friend.”
This time it wasn’t Gates who answered him, but Gates’s wife. “I disagree.”
Colin paused his mount at the top of the crest as the sun began its slow descent over Camlochlin. His heart stalled a little at the raw beauty of a sky bursting into flames of bronze and yellow. The gossamer mist rolling off the mountains high above captured the light and painted the vale in shades of warm umber and lavender. How could he have ever been so eager to leave this place?
There were still many people outdoors, either finishing their daily chores or sitting out to admire the coming evening. He was still too far off to make out if Gillian was among them.
Unfolding his plaid, he swirled it over his head and dug his boots into his horse’s flanks. A horn sounded and a fiery arrow pierced the sky above the orchid whitecaps of the bay. He slowed a bit and gave the guardsmen time to recognize him while he scanned the vale from the shoreline to the braes of Bla Bheinn to his right.
That was where he saw her, leaving his sister’s unfinished house with Aurelius barking around her skirts and Edmund and Malcolm running ahead of her. They hadn’t seen him yet and he slipped out of the saddle to watch them a wee bit longer until they did.
He was glad Gates wasn’t here yet to witness whatever the hell was wrong with him that his eyes should well up like a lass’s. He gritted his teeth, then let out a resigned sigh. This was what love did to a man. It made him feel more alive than ever before. It made him a father who had done everything to see that his son enjoyed his childhood. It changed a warrior into something better and stronger—a husband.
He lifted his hand and welcomed the rush of warmth that near melted his heart all over his ribs when Edmund spotted him and took off shouting his name. He watched Gillian recognize him and pause in her merry steps as if she’d seen an apparition.
Hell, he’d missed her. He moved toward her, drawn by a power he knew no man could conquer. He reached Edmund first and lifted him high in the air and then kissed his curly crown on the way back down.
“You came home.”
“Aye,” he replied, lowering Edmund’s feet to the ground while Gillian closed the gap between them. Hell, he’d missed her face, her wary smile, the way her eyes searched his and found everything he’d ever wanted to be. “To ye, if ye’ll have me.”
She smiled, forgiving him all and setting his heart aflame. “Aye, Colin MacGregor. I’ll have you. But what of your war? What of the king?”
He caught her up in his arms and, looking into her eyes, fell in love with her for the hundredth time. Every day without her had been dull and endless. “Let the kingdoms fight for their king if they choose to. They will fight without me.” Aye, what was battle? What was war compared to the thrill of starting a new life with her, to becoming a father to Edmund? “I love ye, lass,” he told her, dipping his head to kiss her. He’d dreamed of kissing her for a fortnight. He wanted to kiss her for a lifetime. He sighed with pleasure as their lips met and she went soft and willing in his arms.
They would live here, safely guarded by mountains and mist and, most deadly of all, MacGregors. Let England fall to the Protestants.
He had bairns to make.
Author’s Note
On November 5, 1688, William of Orange landed with the Dutch army in southwest England. The bishop of London crowned him, together with his wife, Mary, at Westminster Abbey on April 11, 1689.
Upon William’s accession to the throne, the acts of proscription against the MacGregors were renewed, and it was not until 1775 that the penal statutes against them were finally and permanently repealed.
Davina Montgomery has lived most of her life sheltered, locked away in an abbey. When her home is attacked, she picks up a bow and aims at the first man she sees: a fierce and undeniably sexy Highlander…
Please turn this page for an excerpt from the first book in the series,
Ravished by a Highlander
and discover how it all began.
Available now
SOUTHERN SCOTTISH BORDER
SPRING 1685
Chapter One
High atop Saint Christopher’s Abbey, Davina Montgomery stood alone in the bell tower, cloaked in the silence of a world she did not know. Darkness had fallen hours ago and below her the sisters slept peacefully in their beds, thanks to the men who had been sent here to guard them. But there was little peace for Davina. The vast, indigo sky filling her vision was littered with stars that seemed close enough to touch should she reach out her hand. What would she wish for? Her haunted gaze slipped southward toward England, and then with a longing just as powerful, toward the moonlit mountain peaks of the north. Which life would she choose if the choice were hers to make? A world where she’d been forgotten, or one where no one knew her? She smiled sadly against the wind that whipped her woolen novice robes around her. What good was it to ponder when her future had already been decreed? She knew what was to come. There were no variations. That is, if she lived beyond the next year. She looked away from the place she could never go and the person she could never be.
She heard the soft fall of footsteps behind her but did not turn. She knew who it was.
“Poor Edward. I imagine your heart must have failed you when you did not find me in my bed.”
When he remained quiet she felt sorry for teasing him about the seriousness of his duty. Captain Edward Asher had been sent here to protect her four years ago, after Captain Geoffries had taken ill and was relieved of his command. Edward had become m
ore than her guardian. He was her dearest friend, someone she could confide in here within the thick walls that sheltered her from the schemes of her enemies. Edward knew her fears and accepted her faults.
“I knew where to find you,” he finally said, his voice just above a whisper.
He always did know. Not that there were many places to look. Davina was not allowed to venture outside the Abbey gates so she came to the bell tower often to let her thoughts roam free.
“My lady—”
She turned at his soft call, putting away her dreams and desires behind a tender smile. Those she kept to herself and did not share, even with him.
“Please, I…” he began, meeting her gaze and then stumbling through the rest as if the face he looked upon every day still struck him as hard as it had the first time he’d seen her. He was in love with her, and though he’d never spoken his heart openly, he did not conceal how he felt. Everything was there in his eyes, his deeds, his devotion; and a deep regret that Davina suspected had more to do with her than he would ever have the boldness to admit. Her path had been charted for another course and she could never be his. “Lady Montgomery, come away from here, I beg you. It is not good to be alone.”
He worried for her so and she wished he wouldn’t. “I’m not alone, Edward,” she reassured. If her life remained as it was now, she would find a way to be happy. She always did. “I have been given much.”
“It’s true,” he agreed, moving closer to her and then stopping himself, knowing what she knew. “You have been taught to fear the Lord and love your king. The sisters love you, as do my men. It will always be so. We are your family. But it is not enough.” He knew she would never admit it, so he said it for her.
It had to be enough. It was safer this way, cloistered away from those who would harm her if ever they discovered her after the appointed time.
