Read Captured by a Laird Online
Authors: Margaret Mallory
Tags: #Chick-Lit, #Historical, #Love Stories, #Medieval, #Romance, #Scotland, #Women's Fiction
Captured by a Laird
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
CAPTURED BY A LAIRD © Copyright 2014 by Margaret Mallory
Excerpt from Claimed by a Highlander copyright ©2014 by Margaret Mallory
Excerpt from The Guardian copyright ©2011 by Peggy L. Brown
Excerpt from Knight of Desire copyright ©2009 by Peggy L. Brown
Cover Design © Seductive Designs
Image copyright Couple © Hot Damn Stock
Image copyright Background © depositphotos/Kacpura
Image copyright Red Kilt © Jenn LeBlanc/Illustrated Romance
Image copyright Blue Kilt © Hot Damn Stock
Image copyright Hair © Period Images
Image copyright Celtic Brooch © depositphotos/andreyuu
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, contact:
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ALSO BY MARGARET MALLORY
(Available in ebook, print, and audiobook)
THE RETURN OF THE HIGHLANDERS
ALL THE KING’S MEN
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DEDICATION
For my friend Ginny Heim, whose willingness to give me her honest opinion
on my manuscripts has saved my readers from many a boring passage.
Table of Contents
Excerpt: CLAIMED BY A HIGHLANDER
CHAPTER 1
Scotland
1517
Burning her husband’s bed was a mistake. Alison could see that now.
Yet each time she passed the rectangle of charred earth as she paced the castle courtyard, she felt a wave of satisfaction. She had waited to commit her act of rebellion until her daughters were asleep. But that night, after her husband’s body was taken to the priory for burial, she ordered the servants to carry the bed out of the keep. She set fire to it herself. The castle household, accustomed to the meek mistress her husband had required her to be, was thoroughly shocked.
“Do ye see them yet?” Alison called up to one of the guards on the wall.
When the guard shook his head, she resumed her pacing. Where were her brothers? They had sent word this morning that they were on their way.
As she passed the scorched patch again, she recalled how the flames shot up into the night sky. She had stood watching the fire until dawn, imagining the ugliness of the past years turning to black ashes like the bed. The memories did not burn away, but she did feel cleaner.
Destroying such an expensive piece of furniture was self-indulgent, but that was not why she counted burning it a mistake. While she could not tolerate having that bed in her home, it would have been wiser to give it away or sell it. And yet she simply could not in good conscience pass it on to someone else. Not when she felt as if the bed itself carried an evil.
Instinctively, she touched the black quartz pendant at her throat that her mother had given her to ward off ill luck. It had been missing since Blackadder broke the chain on their wedding night. After the fire, she found it wedged in a crack in the floor where the bed had been.
“Lady Alison!” a guard shouted down from the wall. “They’re here!”
The heavy wooden gates swung open, and her two brothers galloped over the drawbridge followed by scores of Douglas warriors.
Praise God
. As the castle filled with her clansmen, Alison immediately felt safer.
One look at Archie’s thunderous expression, however, told her that his meeting with the queen had not gone well. Without a word, her brothers climbed the steps of the keep, crossed the hall where platters of food were being set out on the long trestle tables for the Douglas warriors, and continued up the stairs to the private chambers. They never discussed family business in front of others.
“She is my wife!” Archie said as soon they were behind closed doors. “How dare she think she can dismiss me as if I were one of her servants?”
Alison tapped her foot, trying to be patient, while her brother, the 6
th
Earl of Angus and chieftain of the Douglas clan, stormed up and down the length of the room. When Archie’s back was to her, she exchanged a look with George, her more clever brother, and rolled her eyes. This was all so predictable.
“I warned ye not to be so blatant about your affair with Lady Jane,” George said in a mild tone.
“My affairs are none of my wife’s concern,” Archie snapped.
“A queen is not an ordinary wife,” George said as he poured himself and Archie cups of wine from the side table.
Alison found it ironic that the Douglas clan owed the greatest rise in their fortunes to Archie’s liaison with the widowed queen. Usually, it was the ladies of the family who were tasked with securing royal favor via the bedchamber.
Archie, always overconfident, had gone too far. While the Council had been willing to tolerate the queen’s foolishness in taking the young Douglas chieftain as her lover, they were livid when the pair wed in secret, making Archie the infant king’s stepfather. The Council responded by removing the queen as regent. She fled to England amidst accusations that she had tried to abscond with the royal heir.
“How was I to know my wife would return to Scotland?” Archie said, raising his arms. “Besides, I’m a young man. She couldn’t expect me to live like a monk while she was gone.”
Doubtless, the queen, who was pregnant with Archie’s child when she fled, expected her husband to join her. But while the queen paid a lengthy visit on her brother Henry VIII, the Douglas men retreated behind the high walls of Tantallon Castle and waited for the cries of treason to subside.
That was two years ago. And now, Albany, the man who replaced the queen as regent, was on a ship back to France, and the queen was returning. Archie had gone to meet her at Berwick Castle, just across the border.
“Is there no hope of reconciling with her?” Alison ventured to ask.
“I bedded that revolting woman four times in two days—and for naught!” Archie thrust his hand out. “I had her in my palm again, I swear it. But then some villain sent her a message informing her about Jane.”
“Must have been the Hamiltons,” George said, referring to their greatest rivals.
“Despite that setback, I managed to persuade the queen—through great effort, I might add—that we should enter Edinburgh together as man and wife for all the members of the damned Council to see,” Archie said, his blue eyes flashing. “But then she discovered I’d been collecting the rents on her dower lands and flew into a rage.”
No wonder the queen was angry. After abandoning her, Archie had lived openly with his lover and their newborn daughter in one of the queen’s dower castles—and on the queen’s money.
“You’re her husband,” George said, leaning back in his chair. “Ye had every right to collect her rents. Still do.”
Alison did not want to hear about husbands and their rights. She folded her arms and tamped down her impatience while she waited for the right moment to ask.
“Enough talk. We must join the men.” Archie threw back his cup of wine. “We’ll ride for Edinburgh as soon as they’ve eaten their fill.”
George was already on his feet. She could wait no longer.
“Ye must leave some of our Douglas warriors here to protect this castle,” she blurted out. “The Blackadder men are deserting me.”
She hoped her brothers would not ask why. She did not want to explain that burning her husband’s bed had insulted the Blackadder men and spurred many of them to leave. They disliked having a woman in command of the castle, and she had unwittingly given them the excuse they needed.
“I can’t spare any men now,” Archie said, slapping his gloves against his hand. “I must gather all my forces in a show of strength to convince my pigheaded wife that she needs my help to regain the Regency.”
“The Hamiltons will attempt to do the same,” George added.