by Lily Baldwin
Rory leaned to look past David at the ‘strawberry tart’ whose pretty face suddenly lit up with a wide smile. “Damnation,” he cursed and grabbed David’s hand out of the air, flattening it on the table. “What the hell do ye think ye’re doing?”
“I’m getting ye a warm and willing lass to share yer bed so ye can get yer head back to business.”
“I have not needed help filling my bed since I shaved my first whiskers. I already told ye—I’m not interested.”
David crossed his arms over his chest. “Yer lack of interest is the bleeding point. Fine. Have it yer way. Deny yerself a warm bed. That is yer own choice to make. Pine after some lass ye may never see again—also yer choice. But ye cannot allow this infatuation to distract ye from what’s important. The cause is bigger than us both. The pining of yer heart is of no consequence. Ye’ve made a vow to yer brothers-at-arms and to the abbot. Anyway, do ye think King Edward is sitting idly by with a drink in one hand and a ripe arse in the other? Nay. Ye and I both know this truce will not last. He spends his days bleeding his people dry with taxes to amass more weapons, horses, and soldiers. We must rebuild Scotland’s army as he does. Rory, the time to rally the people is now!”
Rory tossed down the rest of his ale and swiped the back of his sleeve across his lips. “Ye want me to rally the people, do ye?” He stood. “I’ll rally the people.” Cupping his hands around his mouth, he shouted. “We’re going to fight for Scottish independence. Who’s with us?”
The room erupted into cheers. Chuckling, Rory sat down and winked at David. “Don’t fash yerself. Ye know where my loyalties lie.”
Just then another barmaid leaned over and thumped down two full tankards, sloshing ale on the table. Rory pressed a kiss to her blushing cheek before raising his cup to David. “Alba gu bràth.” Scotland Forever.
David sat back in his chair, a rare smile playing at his lips. “Alba gu bràth.”
Rory set his tankard down and reached toward the wooden tray in the center of the table. He passed over the cheese and bread, choosing a red apple. A fleeting sadness caused a pang in his heart. Apples always reminded him of his wee sister, Rosalyn. She was one of thousands of innocents slain on the streets of Berwick when King Edward of England claimed the once Scottish city for himself. At the time, Rosalyn had been selling apples in Berwick’s once bustling marketplace. Six years had passed. The approaching winter would have marked her thirteenth year. His grip tightened around the apple as the all too familiar fury laid claim to his soul. The Berwick massacre had completely altered Rory’s life. Once he had worked the docks alongside his da, but both his parents had also been cut down in the streets. He and his four brothers and eldest sister had been forced to flee their demolished city, becoming exiles. That was when Rory first took up the cause, alongside his siblings. His dedication had never wavered, nor would it do so now. His first priority would always be Scotland.
He knew Abbot Matthew was right. The time had come to rally the people. He set the apple down among the bread and cheese and locked eyes with David. “Weapons,” he said.
“What the devil are ye talking about now?”
Rory leaned forward. “If Abbot Matthew wishes to turn farmers into soldiers, we’ll need weapons.”
The door swung open just then drawing Rory’s gaze. Into the Sunk Ship walked a scrawny lad. Rory guessed he had no more than ten years to his credit. He kept his eyes down and crossed straight to where the barkeep stood, uncorking a new barrel of ale. The man bent to give the lad his ear. Moments later, again without looking up, the boy dashed out the door. A shiver of expectation shot up Rory’s spine when the barkeep turned and looked directly at him and made the sign of the cross.
Rory stood. “Abbot Matthew is looking for me.”
David raised his glass. “To another mission. Alba gu bràth.”
“Indeed,” Rory said before setting out across the room.
“Rory!”
Rory glanced back when he heard David’s call.
“Maybe he can reveal something about Alex MacKenzie.”
Rory smiled. “Why do ye think I’m leaving now and not after I’ve finished my ale?”
Chapter Three
Morning sunlight painted the village in soft golden hues and wrapped around Alex like a warm blanket as she wound her way through the narrow village paths. Regrettably, her current mission did not involve smuggling coin or protecting rebel secrets; she was simply making the rounds, checking in on every MacKenzie in the village. Although she was happy to once again be home among her people, she was already feeling restless. She thrived on her secret work for the cause. Still, having been gone from the Highlands for nearly a month, it was her duty as lady of Luthmore Castle to ensure her people’s needs were met, and with her wee brother at her side, she was seeing to that—
Alex stopped and looked around. William was nowhere to be seen.
“Will,” she called back down the lane. Then a red-haired lad of twelve years, pulling a small cart laden with bread, cloth, and other essentials, came barreling around the corner, a broad smile lighting his freckled face.
“Arabel’s wee ones wouldn’t let me leave until I’d given them all shoulder rides,” Will said, arriving breathless at her side. He rubbed one of his shoulders. “Her oldest, Calum, is only three years younger than me. It was not an easy task.”
Alex laughed and resisted the urge to ruffle his hair. “The Lord will bless ye for the joy ye gave them.” Her heart swelling with pride, she pulled him close in a warm embrace. Will was not her brother by birth, but she could not have loved him more. He became her wee brother just weeks after he was born when both his parents had succumbed to illness.
Alex remembered that sorrowful day well.
It was the morning after her seventh birthday. Her mother, Alana, who regularly suffered from severe coughing spells, had awoken feeling a little short of breath. Over the course of the morning, the cough settled into her chest and soon she was wheezing and sweating. Alex’s father, Donnan, carried Alana to their chamber. Alex followed behind with careful steps, clasping a bowl with the cook’s remedy for her mother’s breathing attacks, a big scoop of mustard powder, mixed with vinegar and honey. Dipping her head, she smelled the concoction. The pungent fragrance made her eyes water. Once inside her parent’s chamber, her father laid her mother down. Still, she wheezed and sputtered for breath.
“I’ll take that now, Alex,” one of her mother’s maids said. “I’ll make a compress for yer mum’s chest, and she’ll feel better in no time.”
“Come along now, Alex,” her father said, drawing her gaze away from her mother’s suffering. Donnan scooped her into his arms. His gentle smile soothed her worry. “She’ll be better soon. Ye’ll see.” Then he glanced back at Alana. Alex did not miss the fleeting look of concern that pinched his features before he gave her a toss in the air and threw her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. “Come along, my sweet lass. We’ve work to do in the village.”
The sun had risen high in the sky, and Alex and her father were still making the rounds when the village midwife, Morag, came rushing at them, hollering for her laird.
“Ye must come, Donnan,” she cried. “Thomas and Rhona, the poor lambs, have taken a turn for the worse. ‘Tis grave. There isn’t a moment to lose. I’m on my way to fetch Father Kenneth.”
Alex and her father hurried to the cottage of a young couple who had been ill for days.
“We were just here, Da,” Alex whispered, gripping tighter to his hand. “Remember? A few weeks ago, we came to welcome their baby into the clan.”
Brows drawn, her father knelt in front of her. “I remember, pet. Now, listen. Wait out here for me. No matter what happens, do not come inside. Ye ken?”
Her heart suddenly felt heavy in her chest. Despite her tender years, she knew something truly dreadful was happening. She nodded in reply, unable to speak for the knot that had gathered in her throat.
“Good lass,” her father said. T
hen he pressed a hurried kiss to her forehead the instant before he turned and disappeared inside the cottage.
Within minutes of Donnan’s arrival, Father Kenneth hurried down the lane and went into the cottage. He had been there no time at all before stepping back out.
“Father, what’s wrong?” Alex asked.
He looked up as if only just noticing her there. “Ah, my lady, Thomas has left this earthly life. We can only pray for his soul now.”
Alex remembered well when other clansmen arrived to remove Thomas’s shrouded body to the church, followed by a wake of anguished villagers. Not knowing what else to do, she’d followed them.
“Tis such a tragedy. They were so very young.”
“Aye. He died as soon as the laird arrived, as if he’d been waiting for another man to take his place.”
“Little good it will do. Rhona is not long for this world either.”
“And the poor wee bairn. What’s to become of him?”
After a few moments, the mournful procession filled her with fear. Heart racing, she turned away and darted back to the cottage, longing for the protection of her da’s embrace. But just before her fingers connected with the slatted wood door, she froze, remembering her promise not to go inside no matter what occurred. Taking a deep breath, her trembling fingers pushed the door open—only a crack—not enough to see inside, just enough to hear Rhona’s dying pleas and rattled breaths and Donnan’s words of comfort.
“Take my son,” Rhona pleaded. “Make him yers, Donnan. ‘Tis the only way…to save him from the doom that has marked his new life.”
Her father’s warm voice reached Alex’s ears. “Yer son will want for nothing. I promise ye.”
“Nay,” Rhona cried, her voice straining against fatigue and pain. “I ken…ye’ll care for him. I’m asking ye to make him yers—not yer heir…just yer son… Give him yer heart.”
Alex peered around the door then, despite her father’s command to remain outside and away from the tainted air. Women knelt along one side of the dying lass’s pallet, sobbing, while Donnan knelt on her other side. Alex watched as her father took Rhona’s trembling hands in his own strong calloused ones. “I promise ye, I will. Yer son will be invited into my heart and my home. I will love him as if he were my own. He shall grow to valor. He will come to believe in his own worth, and above all, I will teach him kindness—the true mark of any man.”
Peace fell over Rhona’s face, softening away the pain that had marred her youthful beauty. “Thank ye,” she said in a whisper that barely reached Alex’s ears. Her father leaned over and pressed a kiss to Rhona’s forehead. Then he continued to sit with her, cradling her hands in his, whispering soothing words that Alex could not hear, but she could feel the warmth and peace they held.
“Aunt Alana is feeling a little better.”
Alex’s head jerked up. Her cousin, Mary, younger by two years, looked down at her, her little brows drawn together. Mary knelt beside Alex. “What has happened? Everyone is whispering and crying.”
“Thomas died,” Alex said, her voice breaking. “Rhona is going to die, too.”
Tears flooded Mary’s eyes. “But then their new baby won’t have a mum or da, like me.”
Alex swallowed the thick knot in her throat and nodded.
“But who will he live with?” Mary cried. “When my parents died, I came to Luthmore. Where will the baby have to go?”
Alex wrapped her arm around Mary. “I’m not certain, but I think he is going to live with us.”
Long after the sun had set and candles illuminated the small cottage, William’s young mother slipped from their world with the laird of the MacKenzie at her side. When her body was taken to the kirk to rest beside Thomas, Alex’s father took William from the woman who had been tending him. He turned to where Alex and Mary sat together, their backs against the side of the cottage.
Tears streaming down his cheeks, Donnan knelt and showed the girls William’s sweet face. “Alex and Mary, this is yer new brother. He is ours now. Take him into yer hearts and love him always.”
Remembering that day never failed to pain Alex’s heart, but the memories also served to inspire her. For it was on that day she realized the kind of man her father was, and now, at nineteen, she was old enough to have learned that not enough men were like Donnan MacKenzie.
To her father, being chieftain was not a right of birth; it was a privilege, a call to serve. The clansmen and women who looked to him as leader also saw a friend, a parent, someone they could lean on during times that tried the soul. He also ensured that all levels of leadership within the clan held tightly to the same principles whether steward, captain of the guard, or stable master. What’s more, binding himself to a woman who embodied these same ideals had been paramount in his selection of a wife, and he had found his match in Alana.
Alex used to strive to be exactly like her mother, but as she grew she realized that no one could ever be as kind, compassionate, and as refined as Alana. Unlike her mother, Alex was often rash, sharp-tongued, easily distracted, and incapable of yielding to the demands of convention, especially when there was so much work to be done. But her mother seldom scolded her for going about barefoot or wearing worn-out tunics. Kindness mattered most to Alana, a truth she had instilled in Alex. And before Alana passed away from her illness during her daughter’s thirteenth summer, she had made certain Alex understood that the wellbeing of the people came first.
Her father had struggled with his grief for several years. Donnan and Alana had loved each other dearly and had hoped Alex might know the same happiness in marriage. The thought made Alex sigh out loud. How would she find a husband worthy of her clan’s chiefdom?
A new wave of sadness gripped her heart as she started off down the lane, this time helping Will pull the wagon to give his shoulder a rest. There had been a time when she believed she had found a worthy man. When she was fifteen her father had betrothed her to one of his closest and most trusted friends, Lord Robin Campbell, who had possessed holdings several leagues south of MacKenzie territory. Although Robin had been more than twenty years her senior, she had supported her father’s choice from the start. Robin was a man of honor, conviction, and kindness—a truly great man like her father. But like her father, Robin had been unable to sit idly by and watch Scotland fall to its knees in front of an English king, and so he had taken up the cause. He put blacksmiths to work making weapons. He ran messages and collected funds. And he fought alongside her father, raising his sword high for Scotland at the battle of Dunbar. Despite honor being on their side, the Scots were defeated. Her father returned from war on the brink of death with injuries from which he would never fully recover, while Robin did not return at all.
“Welcome home, Alex,” a raspy voice called out, thankfully releasing Alex’s thoughts from the mire of despair.
Shaking off the past, she jogged over to where an old man sat carving a piece of wood. “Good morrow, Corc. How do ye fare?”
Corc rubbed his knobby knees, which peeked out beneath his plaid. “My old bones do a lot of talking these days, but I choose to ignore them. They never have anything interesting to say.”
Alex smiled and reached down to squeeze the old man’s gnarled fingers. “Yer a brave man, Corc, but if ye’re uncomfortable, have Morag make ye up a tisane to sip in the evening.”
He waved his hand dismissively. “I don’t want to be any trouble.”
Alex cocked a brow at him. “Ye know ye wouldn’t be any trouble. Anyway, Morag’s always good for a laugh, and ye know how she enjoys to gossip.”
Corc smiled, revealing the few teeth he still had left. “Aye, true enough—and then I’d have an excuse to see her other than my aches and pains. I can claim it’s all a ruse to find some decent conversation—no shame in that.”
Alex chuckled. “None at all.” Then she turned to Will. “Bring along some bread for Corc.”
Corc waved Will away. “Nay, the lassies here in the village keep me fat as butter.
Give that to someone else.”
Alex took the loaf from her brother’s hand and thrust it at Corc. “It makes me happy. Accept it as a favor to me.”
Corc’s face softened. Then he flashed his wide, gummy smile. “Ye know I can’t refuse now.”
“Oh, I know,” Alex said, winking.
Corc wrapped his weathered fingers around the loaf. “Thank ye, Alex. Ye’re a fine lass. Yer mother would be proud. We all missed ye while ye were away. But I think it right good of ye to visit Haddington in your father’s stead. Knowing yer father as I do, he values the time ye spend with the abbot, although I ken it must be dull for ye, cooped up praying with all those monks. The silence alone would kill me.”
Alex suppressed the smile Corc’s words prompted as flashes of her last ‘visit’ to Haddington Abbey came unbidden to her mind. Of course, few knew where she had really been. Even her escort to Haddington remained ignorant of her true purpose. Every time she went, the warriors were put to work ploughing Haddington’s fields, harvesting crops, repairing outbuildings or doing anything else to help the community. Alex, being the sole woman there, ate and slept in seclusion. Her men were completely unaware that their lady had actually left the monastery altogether.
Likewise, her most trusted adviser, Michael, steward of Luthmore, had no notion that she was an agent for the righteous cause of Scottish independence. Only Mary and her lady’s maid, Rosie, knew the truth. As far as the rest of the MacKenzie’s were concerned, she traveled to the monastery in her father’s stead, bringing his donations and taking the opportunity for prayer and contemplation within its hallowed walls.
And once upon a time this story had been true. But only once.
It was on her first visit to Abbot Matthew that she confessed her desire to take up the cause in Robin’s stead, and from that moment on, she and the abbot had been in league together. She smuggled stolen coin, delivered messages, and gathered weapons, just as Robin had done. Her most recent mission had involved a great deal of planning. The abbot had amassed a large amount of silver, which for more than two years had been hidden away within a small kirk in a village in the Highlands. Alex had volunteered to move the coin. It had not taken her long to think of the idea of lining her tunic with the silver; however, it had taken her, Rosie, and Mary an age to sew the individual marks in place. Alex’s breath caught. Remembering her coin-lined dress drove her thoughts instantly toward sky-blue eyes; coal-black hair; strong, capable hands; and full lips pressed hard against her own.
