Her response had set the adults around her to stifling their laughter. It would hurt her to be made fun of.
Aidan recovered first.
“I would rather it be over as well, my dear.”
At some point, Nicholas knew that he had cast his lot in with the Highlanders. This was his family, and while nothing would ever replace the ones he had lost, he had gained far more than he had ever thought he would. It didn't matter if he never regained his lands in the South. He was in the place he belonged, and he would not give it up for anything.
He gave Maisie's hand a final squeeze and walked over to where Ava was talking with Aidan and Margaret. He offered his finger to the baby Margaret held, smiling when the tiny boy grasped at his fingertip with enthusiasm.
“You are worrying too much, Aidan,” Ava said. “They are my family.”
“It is because they are your family that I am worrying so much,” Aidan retorted. “You know that if Clan Blair offers to harm either of you...”
“Yes, you will rain the might of Clan MacTaggart on their heads. “Ava smiled at him.
Aidan scowled.
“It's not a light thing to offer, Ava. You and Nicholas fought for us when the brigands came. That is not nothing.”
“And neither is realizing that I am legitimate. And... whether I like it or not, I am of Clan Blair. Patrick Blair's blood flows through me, and that is not something that I can run away from. At the very least, I should go back and apologize to Roark.”
“You can apologize to Roark,” Nicholas said blandly. “I will be keeping my apologies for someone who deserves them.”
“We're married, it counts for both of us.”
“That's not true.”
Margaret laughed. He had always thought that the brave girl who pulled an arrow out of him on the road was special. Now he knew it for sure, and he was glad that there was a woman as sharp and strong as Margaret to keep her headstrong husband in check.
“What in the world is Clan Blair going to do with the pair of you?” she asked kindly. “You're almost too much for Doone Castle.”
“Well, that's something we'll all figure out, I suppose. And speaking of such, we should be away before we lose any more light. And you two, I'm sure, have business.”
“Be careful as you travel,” Aidan said. “The warring is only growing worse. We are trying to keep MacTaggart roads clear, but things change very fast.”
The fighting had begun again in earnest. Edward was devouring the southern part of the Highlands, but he had found the land and the people difficult to hold. Aidan and his brother Reade led Clan MacTaggart out into the thick of it, able to come home only when the fighting lulled.
“Of course, we will be,” Ava said, and she hugged both Aidan and Margaret.
Nicholas rode Cobie, and Margaret had made sure that Ava was both well-armed and had a frisky little bay mare to ride north. They rode out of Doone Castle and turned their mounts toward the main road.
“It feels like we've done this before,” Ava mused.
Nicholas turned toward her with a smile.
“I don't think we have. We are prepared, well-fed, well-rested, we have two horses, and of course, you are wearing my ring.”
Ava smiled, running her thumb over the narrow golden band he had had made for her. It was a thing of beauty, but simple, something she could wear whether she was coaxing a cow out of a wallow or swinging a sword.
“No, not all that, Nicholas. Just... we are on the road, and we do not know what the future will bring.”
“We never know what the future will bring. I have been guessing ever since I came north, and I am always wrong. Happy to be so, as well, which is a surprise.”
“Yes. Are you afraid?”
He looked at her, and he saw the strength in her eyes, saw the will and determination there. They would go to Clan Blair, and if Heaven was kind, they would make their peace with her family. If that peace cost too much, they would leave.
“When I am with you, my love? No, I am never afraid.”
* * *
Elsewhere …
Devon Montgomery stared as the wave rose up higher than the railing on the deck. It looked to him like the end of the world. The rain slashed down on them, and lightning lit the sky with a flash of horrifying white light.
In that single moment, he could see everything. He could see the men running around on deck, their faces frozen with exhaustion and terror. He could see the captain trying to steer them through the storm. He could see the place where the mast had snapped off like a twig in an angry child's hand.
I shouldn't be here.
I should be in Scotland, fighting at Edward's side. I should be with my men. I shouldn't die here, drowned like a dog...
He took the coil of rope that someone handed to him, running back to the men who were trying to prevent the mast from pulling away from the ship entirely. He got the rope to the right man, but then the ship bucked, sending him crashing to the deck.
They used to call me the Rock of Leister. Probably should have known that you shouldn't take a rock to sea...
Despite the desperation of the situation, Devon found a small amount of humor in the idea. In the storm, it felt like nothing mattered at all beyond his ability to stay upright, to help where he could. If he could survive this moment, he could survive the next, and possibly the next, and the one after that.
Then another wave crashed into the ship, followed by another right after. He was braced for the first but not the second.
Devon was a man who had faced death in battle since he was a teen. He had been afraid, but there was nothing like the force of the Northern Sea as it swept him from the deck and out into the open ocean. He thought he heard some men shouting, but he knew that there was nothing, absolutely nothing they could do to save him.
He went under the water immediately. He fought his way back to the surface, gaining a precious mouthful of air before being pushed under by another heavy wave. He was fighting from second to second, the water battering him like fists.
I cannot die here. I cannot...
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Preview of Next Book
Thank You
for reading my book.
The Highlander’s Promise is Book 03 in the series.
The next book is targeted to release on 05th May.
While waiting…
If you have enjoyed reading it, I believe you will enjoy reading the previous book.
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Here is the sneak preview of the previous book.
See below …
CHAPTER 01
November 1302
Maras Castle, England
“You must know, Margaret, that you have no choice in the matter.”
Margaret Barton was silent. The tall and willowy young woman sat as straight as a marble saint in her chair, her back ramrod straight, her chin up. Her dark hair was braided but not covered, and her pale bare hands held her embroidery hoop and her needle lay quietly in her lap.
Show him no fear. He expects fear, or worse, gratitude, and he will have nothing from me.
When she made no response, a dark cloud crossed the newly-made Earl of Norwich's face. Harry Stratham was handsome, blond-haired and broad-shouldered, tanned from his time in the saddle and with a ready boyish grin that had charmed more than his share of serving girls and traders' daughters. Most of them never saw the darkness that Margaret knew lived at the heart of the young nobleman; she guessed that the ones who had glimpsed it were too afraid to speak of it. If they could speak at all afterward.
“I know that you are not so cold as you pretend,” he said, his tone cajoling. “With that hot Scots blood of yours, you'll find some joy in it, better than a girl of pure British blood might.”
Margaret couldn't stop from showing her surprise from crossing her face, which made Harry grin. In the flickering light of the hearth, his face seemed to twist into something dark and de
vilish, something that resembled more the carved gargoyles on the abbey walls than the face of an English knight.
“Did you think your father was rich and powerful enough to quell all of the rumors? Even he wasn't so powerful. I know, and I will not shame you for it, darling. It can be our little secret, something that perhaps we'll talk about of a long winter's evening. You can tell me about everything you've always wanted to do, everything you've been too ashamed to reveal. There's no shame with me, Margaret. I hope you know that.”
This was the first time he had been so very blunt, Margaret realized with some unease. He had hinted before. He had insinuated, in his nasty way. He had implied, even when they lit the candles for her own father's funeral some six weeks ago.
This was far more direct, and she was beginning to have the sneaking sensation that he would not be put off by her silence or her pretending ignorance.
Margaret stood to her full height. She was almost as tall as he was, though far slenderer, and she lifted her chin up proudly, as her father had always taught her to do. There was no trace of a Scottish accent in her voice, and she did not falter when she spoke.
“I'm afraid, my lord, that I do not know what you are talking about. You have caught me as I was just finishing my needlework. I will bid you good night, as I am going to my bed.”
Her tone was like the ice that gathered on the steep roof of the main hall on a cold winter's night. Her dark eyes were the howl of the wind. She bowed her head with the barest courtesy that a young woman should show to a lord, and she stepped around him.
For a moment, Margaret thought that she had put him off for another night. She would have another day, maybe another handful of days to figure out what in the world she was going to do about this, to plot how she was going to stay out of his hands and his bed.
She was reaching for the door when, with a deep sound that was more like a growl than anything human, he seized her hard by the shoulder and spun her around. She was caught unprepared, and he was able to pin one flailing arm and slam her back against the door. For a moment, Margaret was breathless, but before she could open her mouth to scream, Harry was kissing her, his foul mouth sealed over hers, his scent in her nostrils, his body pinning her to the wooden door.
“Here,” he whispered into her mouth. “You like it, don't you? Of course, you do. You were made for this, little half-blood. You'd let me do it in the yard if you didn't think your noble father would turn in his grave.”
His words filled her with a kind of fury she had never felt, too hot and too raging to allow fear into her frame. She struggled against him, trying to lift her knee to drive it into his groin, but he had pressed his thigh between her legs, pinning her to where her feet were almost off the ground. When she realized that she could feel his manhood grow hard against her thigh, Margaret felt almost lightheaded with disgust.
“Can you feel what you do to me? By Heaven, I swear you are the devil's witch to enchant me so.”
His mouth slobbered its way down to her ear, making a full-body shudder run through her. She knew too well how this night was going to end if she didn't do something, and she knew it would only be the start. She had to get away from him, and she had to do it now.
Think. It is the only advantage you have over this lust-addled monster right now. Think, think!
She realized that while one hand was pinned above her head, somehow the other was still free. She had been beating at him ineffectually with her embroidery hoop but dangling from that hoop was still her steel needle. She went still, working the needle from the thread into her fingers.
Harry must have thought that she meant to given in, because his free hand came down to close on her breast, so hard that she cried out.
“You like that, I knew you would...”
She didn't pay any attention to his foul words. Instead, she put the needle, steel and as long as her little finger, in place. She knew getting to Harry's eye was unlikely, so she went for the hand that was holding her wrist instead, taking a hard grip on the needle's shaft and driving up as hard as she could without looking.
The response was sudden and gratifying. Harry let go of her immediately, and when he pulled away, he took the needle with him. She saw with some pleasure that she had driven it squarely under the nail of his thumb somehow, and dark beads of blood were welling up around it.
He was shouting her name, shouting all kinds of foul threats, but it didn't matter. She was out of his arms, away from him, and she lifted her skirts and ran out of the room.
Maras Castle had stopped feeling like home after her father died. Now the long halls and grave tapestries felt more like a trap than anything else, and she thought that if she didn't get out, get some honest wind on her face, she would go insane.
She didn't bother to go for her cloak or her heavy boots. Instead she ran from the main keep into the courtyard. The cold rain sleeting down was like a hard slap, but it meant she was no longer in Harry's arms, and that was all she could want, all she needed. For a moment, she let the water strike her bare head, but then she turned toward the humble chapel in the west yard.
The chapel was a beautiful little building, the work of her father's wife, whom she had never met. It had stood empty for almost two years now, since kindly Father Roland had died, and she and her father had taken their service in the village. The local abbey had not found a replacement that it and her father had agreed upon, and then, of course, it was too late.
Margaret was too distraught to question the fact that there was already a candle lit at the altar. Instead, she stumbled into the holy shelter with a murmur of bone-deep gratitude. Out of instinct and long habit, she made her way to the front of the chapel, where she and her father had sat every Sunday.
She sat on the hard wooden bench, her hands clasped in front of her. She didn't know what was going to happen next, but the only important thing was that she was no longer with Harry, no longer suffering his hands on her, listening to his terrible words.
“You make a pretty picture there, your hair all aglow in the candlelight, but perhaps you already know it.”
Her body jerked like a fish on the line at the low rough words, but before she understood them, she heard the sway of the vowels, the burr and the lilt together, and her heart cried out home.
Margaret's head snapped up, and the man who stepped out of the darkness was tall and broad. His clothes were still damp, showing that he had come out of rain just as she had, but he wasn't wearing a cloak, allowing her to see the breadth of his shoulders, the narrowness of his hips. She couldn't quite make out his features in the dim light of the chapel, but she knew that his hair would be as black as sin and there would be a scar under his eye.
“Aidan MacTaggart,” she whispered.
He's grown up, filled out, fulfilled the promise of what I always knew he would become.
He came to sit on the pew next to her as if he had done so every Sunday, but there was no hint of a smile on his face, nothing of the loving young man she had known almost a decade ago.
“Hello, Meggie. What in the name of hell did ye call me for?”
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CHAPTER 02
Aidan came to the woods by Maras Castle just a little after sunset. He was two weeks from home, two weeks that he could ill-afford as the laird of Clan MacTaggart, he was sick of the lowlands and of the English, and if he had half an excuse to turn his horse around and start north again, he would have done so.
Of course, he didn't.
If he could have done that, he would never have come south in the first place, traveling through the country that he and his people had so recently been at war with, keeping his mouth shut so his accent didn't give him away, and doing his best not to take offense at every slur he heard about the North.
Aidan had cursed himself for a fool when he opened that letter instead of burning it as it deserved, and he cursed himself again now as he considered the castle. It was smaller than Doone Castle, the ancest
ral seat of Clan MacTaggart, but while it would likely hold out well against a raid, it wasn't alert enough to keep out one determined man.
He had been afraid that he might have to try to scale the wall, but instead, under the cover of the driving rain, he was able to make his way in through the small bailey gate. During times of trouble, it would be blocked off with a load of rubble from above, preventing entry or exit, but now the gate's latch was rusted and snapped when he thrust a heavy branch into it and pushed. Aidan held back a dark laugh as the gate swung in.
Heaven help the English if the Bruce ever decides to go on the attack instead of simply wanting to hold what is ours.
He made his way like a shadow through the bailey, staying close to the wall and going as still a statue whenever the guards came by to make their rounds. They seemed unused to it, and he remembered that in the village they had been talking about the newly-made Earl of Norwich, who had brought his own men from the South.
That'd be Margaret's new protector. Aidan shrugged off how poorly that idea sat on him. If she hadn't called him down from the North, he'd never be any the wiser, and none of this would have been his problem.
The chapel was obviously overgrown and deserted, and when he tried the door, it wasn't even locked. The only window was high above the door, so he reckoned it safe enough to light one of the dusty beeswax candles he discovered in a box under the altar. The entire place was nothing but dust and ash, which suited Aidan's purposes well enough. He stripped off his cloak and made his way to the small cell at the back of the chapel, where the friar himself would have lived. It was a bare little room, but there was a peg to hang his cloak on and a cot to rest on, at least for a while.
It was risky to be here, right under the Englishmen's very noses, but it would serve, at least for what he needed. He would come, reassure himself that Margaret was fine, and return to his proper place in the North.
In the silence of the chapel, with the rain rattling on the slate tiles overhead, the ridiculousness of his situation caught up with him. He was the Laird of Clan MacTaggart, responsible for every member of his bloodline and the land that they had held for centuries. Last year, Robert the Bruce had declared a tentative peace with Edward of England, and by all rights, he should be in the North, working his holdings, protecting his people, and seeing to the responsibilities that were uniquely his. He was lucky that his younger brother Reade had been at home and ready step up to look over things in his place, and where Reade might be too flighty to keep an eye on things, his new bride Elizabeth would steady them.
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