A Highlander's Temptation

by Sue-Ellen Welfonder

  “Then he’d meet a surprise, for I am no’ my grandsire or my father, rest their souls.” Darroc patted his sword hilt and gave Mungo a hard smile. “I say it is time he learns the true measure of the name MacCon—”

  “And I say our race will disappear as fast as the tide if you won’t be seeding it soon!” Mungo set his jaw, his good eye flashing hotly.

  Darroc gritted his teeth.

  What he wanted to do was throw back his head and laugh.

  He did plenty of seeding each time he sailed to Glasgow for supplies. And if such an urge plagued him betwixt journeys, his good friend Olaf Big Nose and his camp was only a day’s sail away. The little Norse settlement provided more free-spirited, well-made wenches than a hot-blooded man could savor in a fortnight.

  Fine, big-bosomed lasses as willing to flip up their skirts as they were to flash a smile. Wonderfully skilled Valkyries, capable of milking seed from any man, sometimes with just a single heated look.

  Darroc curled his hands around his sword belt, certain he could feel a flush creeping into his cheeks.

  Unfortunately, he was also certain Mungo didn’t mean that kind of seeding. He meant the kind that would see Darroc with a parcel of bawling, squirming bairns.

  Feeling trapped, he looked up at the scudding clouds, hoping the seneschal would drop the matter.

  A thick finger jabbed into his chest proved how futile that hope was. “For the price of that birlinn yonder, you could have sailed to Orkney or Shetland and fetched a fine bride.”

  “Perhaps I do not want an Orkney or Shetland bride?” Darroc circled Mungo’s wrist with a firm but gentle hand, removing the prodding finger from his breast.

  That Mungo didn’t suggest a Highland bride bit deep. The unspoken admission that there wasn’t a clan who’d welcome such a union pierced Darroc’s pride.

  “I will seek a wife when the time is fortuitous.” He turned back to the sea, not wanting Mungo to see any pain that might flicker across his face.

  “And when might that be?” Mungo placed himself between Darroc and the bay. “There’s some of us might no’ live long enough to celebrate the day.”

  Darroc frowned.

  The old man knew how to parry.

  “I will consider the matter once we’ve dealt with the MacKenzies.” Darroc folded his arms, his gaze set on the distant horizon. “Then and no’ a day before.”

  But when the seneschal gave another snort and stomped off down the strand toward the steep track that wound up to the cliff-top castle, Darroc rammed both hands through his hair and blew out a hot breath.

  Mungo wasn’t the only one who knew how empty his words had been.

  Albeit not for the reason the seneschal might guess.

  It was true that he’d not seek a bride until he’d won back his family’s honor and avenged himself on those responsible for blackening it. But it was also true that he loved this rocky, wind-blasted isle his people now called home.

  Even if he were able to return to the lost MacConacher lands in Argyll, he knew in his heart he’d never go.

  Just as he knew he’d never bring a bride here.

  MacConacher’s Isle wasn’t made for women.

  Much as he wished otherwise.

  Saints pity him.

  Chapter Two

  Try again.”

  Duncan didn’t bother to temper his tone. Nor did he care if his wife or his ale-sipping Sassunach friend saw the heat stealing up his face. Truth was he didn’t feel a twinge of guilt. It was his daughter’s life that was at stake, after all. So he thrust a hand through his hair and forced himself to push Linnet one more time.

  “Perhaps if you gaze into the fire or look down at the loch?” The suggestions sounded brilliant to him. Both methods had worked in the past.

  But Linnet only shook her head.

  “Duncan… my heart.” Her tone was quiet and sad. “You know I cannot summon my gift at will. Were we meant to know such things, the answer would appear. As is”—she looked up, her eyes troubled—“I see only blackness.”

  “She’s also freezing.” Sir Marmaduke set down his ale cup and took a folded plaid from the top of a coffer near the door. Then he crossed the room to where Linnet sat on a low, three-legged stool. He settled the tartaned cloth around her shoulders with a careful exactness surely designed to bedevil less placid souls.

  “To be sure, she’s cold!” Feeling most un-placid, Duncan whirled to the window and closed the shutters with a bang. “It is autumn if you’ve forgotten.”

  Turning back to the room, he dusted his hands. “I was about to fetch a plaid for her myself.” He glared at his friend, not about to admit that he hadn’t noticed her shivering.

  He was chilled, too.

  Though it was fear for his daughter that jellied his knees and iced his blood. If his wife and Sir Marmaduke—the meddler—Strongbow chose to ignore certain dire travelers’ tales they’d heard of late, he knew better. And he wasn’t taking any chances. Not with word that the dread plague fumes, long believed to be a Godsent damnation of the English, were slowly creeping into Scotland.

  It didn’t matter that the malaise had only been reported in St. Andrews, a corner of the land as remote from Kintail as the moon.

  Such a noxious cloud could drift anywhere.

  That a distant scattering of seal-infested isles on the outermost edges of the Hebridean Sea might prove a better refuge than Eilean Creag’s own walls was something he chose not to consider.

  So he crossed his arms and summoned his best scowl. “If you see only blackness,” he reasoned, pinning his stare on his wife, “then we know naught will come of Arabella’s fool notion. She’s intended to stay here.”

  Behind him, Sir Marmaduke snorted.

  Linnet peered up at him, her teeth chattering in a way that raised the hairs on his nape. “You’re hearing what you want me to say.” She drew the plaid more snugly around her shoulders, her gaze not leaving his. “The darkness means that I cannot see into her future, not the path it will take.”

  A muscle began to twitch in Duncan’s jaw. To be sure, he was hearing what he wished. Such was a chief’s due. But for the sake of domestic harmony, he decided to keep the thought to himself.

  “I can tell you that no harm will come to her.” Linnet pushed to her feet and came forward to uncross his arms. “Not here, nor if she leaves us for a time,” she said, reaching for his hand and twining their fingers. “That surety I can give you.”

  “Hah!” Triumph surged through Duncan. “So you have seen something.”

  The look on Linnet’s face crushed his hope. “Nae, though I would that it were so. I know it here.” She released his hand to place her own over her breast. “As would any mother who loves.”

  “Humph.” Duncan refolded his arms. “That tells me nothing.”

  She lifted her chin. “Then you know less of a woman’s heart than I would have credited.”

  Duncan clamped his mouth shut before he said something he’d surely regret.

  Sir Marmaduke strode all too casually to a table and refilled his ale cup. Duncan stared daggers into his back, knowing what was to come. He braced himself, aware that he wasn’t going to like it.

  “And I say,” the lout began, his English voice annoyingly sage, “that you know absolutely naught of a daughter’s heart. Arabella is your eldest. She has seen her younger sister wed and now she’s learned that Gelis—”

  “The lass is no’ jealous of her sister!” Duncan stared at his friend, gall sweeping him. “A more docile, sweet-natured maid ne’er walked these hills. She—”

  “She is a woman now.” Sir Marmaduke retained his usual calm. “A woman overripe and aware of wants and needs you’re keeping from her.”

  “Overripe?” Duncan could feel his eyes bulging, the veins throbbing at his temples. “You’re her uncle, by God’s hallowed bones! How dare you—”

  “I do because it must be said.” Sir Marmaduke took a sip of ale. “Without doubt, Arabella has a kind
ly disposition. But she is also stubborn even if she seldom shows it. She’s a strong young woman and”—he glanced at Linnet as if seeking agreement—“the truth is if you disregard her wishes now, you do so at your peril.”

  Duncan’s brows shot heavenward.

  Words failed him.

  A red haze blurred his vision and he started to blast his interfering friend with every curse he knew. Sadly, he only spluttered like the village idiot.

  He’d caught soft footfalls outside the solar door. It wouldn’t do for someone to hear his bellowing and alert the whole castle that he was having another rant.

  It’d been bad enough seeing glimmers of sympathy cross his men’s faces in the hall earlier. Barely veiled flashes of support meant for Arabella and not him, their chief and the man with whom they ought to be commiserating.

  Their lack of loyalty sat like a hot, iron ball in his gut.

  And promptly let him forget his wish not to shout.

  “The only peril about to visit us is my fist when it crashes into your nose!” he roared, glaring at Sir Marmaduke.

  Outside the door, Arabella took a deep breath and tried to back away. Unfortunately, she couldn’t move. Her legs had somehow turned to lead and her feet appeared nailed to the floor. So she stood frozen, certain she had but an eyeblink before her father found her on the threshold, listening.

  She knew he’d heard her.

  His ire rolled at her in great, angry waves that penetrated the thick oaken planks of the door. Even so, she strained her ears. A rustle of linen, combined with her mother’s sigh, promptly rewarded her.

  “Leave be, Duncan.” The softly spoken words came as balm to her soul. “You know Arabella is not a maid to have her head turned lightly if that’s the reason you’d begrudge her such a journey.”

  “I’d deny her nothing!” her father snapped, his deep voice making the door tremble. “Arabella is no lass to lose her heart to a man unworthy. She’s no’ the sort to fall for a glib-tongued oarsman on a merchant ship. No’ with my own best men guarding her!”

  “You say so?” Sir Marmaduke again, clearly readying for a verbal strike. “If you are sure she won’t succumb to temptation, you can have no objections to letting her go.”

  Her father made a sound in his throat that could’ve been a growl. Arabella could almost see him scowling at the ceiling, his gaze black enough to scorch the rafters. She also imagined he’d blow out an agitated breath and ram his fingers through his hair.

  She knew him well.

  And she knew he was livid.

  Sir Marmaduke sounded anything but. “You’ve as much as admitted that your men would guard her fiercely.”

  Another garbled humph proved her father’s only reply.

  “He’s right, Duncan.” Her mother’s support made her heart soar. “There isn’t a man in your garrison who wouldn’t give his life to protect her. There can be no harm in—”

  “No harm?” Her father’s outburst shook the door again. “’Tis no’ roving-eyed Orkney merchantman I’m fashed about! Or have you forgotten the pestiferous darkness sweeping our fair land?”

  Arabella’s eyes widened, comprehension flooding her.

  The pest.

  He could mean naught else. Several nights ago at the high table, he’d railed against the tales brought to them by a traveling minstrel. He’d insisted the malaise known to have cut a devastating swath through England was God’s own damning of the Sassunachs. He’d closed his ears to the bard’s claims that the pox had crept into Scotland.

  When the bard then named several notable men who’d fallen to the scourge, her father brought his fist down on the table. He’d glared around, loudly declaring that the mighty hills of Kintail would turn away any clouds of doom long before they reached his walls.

  And if such a terror dared, he’d added, his deep voice ringing, he’d simply send his loved ones to an even more secure hideaway.

  A place distant and remote.

  On recalling his words, Arabella drew a tight breath. There wasn’t a place in the world more far-flung than the Seal Isles.

  Her father didn’t know it yet, but he’d blustered himself into a corner.

  Arabella’s heart began to pound again, this time hard and slow. She agreed with her father that the pestilence wouldn’t cross the Highland line. And she doubted even more that such vileness could taint the Hebrides.

  Still pressed against the door, she glanced at an arrow slit in the opposite wall. Afternoon sun filled the narrow opening, the soft light turning the stone splay a lovely shade of deep gold.

  A good portent, Gelis would say.

  Arabella shivered.

  Any other time, she would have clucked her tongue at such fancy.

  As it was, she allowed herself a glimmer of hope. She could feel it growing inside her, a sweet rush sweeping up to warm her cheeks and make her pulse quicken.

  Then she heard another swish of linen. Soft steps she knew were her mother’s, the sound immediately followed by a deep and heaving sigh. A masculine sigh steeped in resignation and—to those who knew her father—the first sign he ever gave of his pending capitulation.

  Her mother’s voice floated through the door. “Ah, well.” There was a trace of victory in her tone. “If the minstrel’s gloom and doom is what’s bothering you, perhaps we really should send Arabella on a voyage through the Hebrides.”

  “Indeed.” Sir Marmaduke sounded almost jovial. “Did the bard not say that the only surety against the plague was flight? I seem to recall him telling us that Lowland worthies were fleeing, running away to the most remote corners they—”

  “You recall stories your wet nurse told as she suckled you!”

  Arabella started at her father’s bellow.

  Sir Marmaduke continued as if he hadn’t heard. “Be glad I have such a fine memory as yours is obviously lacking. Or will you deny your own words? How you stood in the great hall earlier, declaring that such ills as are ravaging the south will never reach these hills?”

  “I ken what I said!”

  “And so does everyone who heard you.” Sir Marmaduke won again.

  Arabella held her breath.

  Her father paced. She felt frustration in his hurried footsteps. It throbbed in the air, thick, hot, and agitated, even through the door’s heavy oak planking.

  “Whatever you do now, my friend, you have little choice but to let the girl go.” Sir Marmaduke’s voice rose above the angry footfalls. “You’ve backed yourself into a corner.”

  Her father stopped his stomping at once. “Did I ever tell you I like you better when you hold your flapping English tongue?”

  Silence answered him.

  Quiet in which Arabella was sure her uncle either shrugged or flicked a speck of lint off his sleeve. Such was the usual pattern of their bickering.

  “My daughter,” her father groused, “will go with me to Kyleakin and she’ll have her choice of whate’er goods the merchant ship can offer. As for anything else”—he almost choked on the words—“I will think on it.”

  Nae, he’d see her off, even if he did so sourly.

  He couldn’t do anything else.

  And knowing it sent a jolt of excitement whipping through Arabella.

  Already feeling the brisk Hebridean wind stinging her cheeks, she eased away from the door. She imagined the thrilling roll of the large merchant ship. How it would cut the waves, its bold path sending up salt spray to mist her face. Heart pounding, she thought, too, of night skies filled with stars and air sweet with the tang of the sea. Almost trembling in anticipation, she closed her eyes and said a hushed prayer of thanks.

  Then, smiling for the first time in days, she hitched up her skirts and slipped back down the corridor, making for the great hall and dinner.

  Not surprisingly, her appetite had returned.

  And with it, a sense of joy and purpose such as she’d never known.

  The worst was behind her.

  Now she just had to hope nothing els
e went wrong.

  MacConacher’s Isle wasn’t made for women.

  Darroc’s own words circled back to haunt him as he stood at one of the four tall windows of the bleak chamber he thought of as the notch room. Fully bare except for a tiny hearth and the windows, one gracing each blank, cold-stoned wall, the room didn’t even offer the comfort of strewn rushes, though Darroc made certain that the floor’s sturdy wooden planks stayed well scrubbed.

  For all that, the room did have two redeeming features.

  It held pride of place as the topmost chamber in Castle Bane’s tower. And the four windows offered magnificent views of the sea in every direction.

  Indeed, the room could have been quite grand if its history weren’t so grim.

  Pushing that particular darkness from his mind, he reached for the special mallet and chisel he kept on the window ledge. Then, with the ease of much practice, he set to work adding another notch to the long row of nicks in the side of the window arch.

  He took great pleasure in each tiny chip of stone that flew away beneath his tapping, the gritty dust that rose around him like a gray-white cloud.

  He ignored the baleful stare of his dog, Frang, who sat just inside the doorway. An enormous, fierce-looking beast, the dog had only entered the notch room once. And that was years ago when Darroc first brought his people, or what remained of them, to MacConacher’s Isle.

  On exploring Castle Bane’s long-empty tower, and knowing its past, he’d been intrigued by the notches filling one of the window arches. Little more than faint scratches, it wasn’t difficult to discern their significance.

  Frang, tagging along beside him, took one sniff of the notched window and shot from the room with his tail between his legs.

  Darroc frowned.

  Then he set down his mallet and chisel, his task finished.

  His notches were celebrations.

  Each one marked another day in his quest for vengeance. Every rising and setting of the sun brought Clan MacConacher closer to regaining their former glory. Not that any one of them strove for riches. They knew better than most that a good man carried his wealth inside him. It was clan pride and honor that mattered.