Captured Heart

CAPTURED
HEART

a HIGHLAND HEARTS novel

HEATHER

McCOLLUM

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2012 by Heather McCollum. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

Entangled Publishing, LLC

2614 South Timberline Road

Suite 109

Fort Collins, CO 80525

Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com
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Edited by Libby Murphy and Liz Pelletier

Cover design by Heather Howland

Sketches by Irene Rea

Print ISBN 978-1-62061-057-2

Ebook ISBN 978-1-62061-058-9

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition September 2012

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I dedicate this book to all the teal warriors out there battling ovarian cancer. May we all find our healing blue light.

And to my teal army helping me SHOUT Against the Whisper! You amaze me constantly with your unending compassion, prayers and love. You all have Captured my Heart.

29 October of the Year our Lord God, 1518

Dearest Meg,

They are coming for me. I’m so sorry I must go to God now. I pray my Lord keeps you safe. Mistress Collins promises she will carry this letter and my journal to my brother. Pray God Rowland releases you to his care.

You must flee Rowland Boswell if he comes for you when you are grown. I fear he will use you. He is evil and his lies have condemned me to flames. He planned to kill young King Henry and Princess Mary and will stop at nothing to save himself. I took his letters detailing out his treasonous plans. They are hidden somewhere safe. Heed my words and find them! They are your only weapon against him.

Remember I love you now and for eternity.

Your ever faithful and loving mother,

Isabelle

Chapter One

English/Scottish Border: September 1535

Meg Boswell pressed her forehead into the damp neck of her horse as she clung to his mane. Fingers of moonlight stretched down, flickering against woman and beast as they galloped along the narrow road flanked by shadows and trees.

Aunt Mary’s hasty directions beat in Meg’s head:
Stay on the north road that follows the river up into Scotland.

Good Lord!
She couldn’t even hear the river anymore. Was this still the right road?

Pippen’s hooves clopped hard against the packed dirt. A crisp night wind tossed the leaves overhead, twirling many down to cover the road. Meg coaxed the crumpled parchment from her cloak pocket and smoothed it as she balanced easily in Pippen’s sway.
God, keep me on the right path.
She blinked and held the scrap up to a flash of moonlight. Aunt Mary’s blocky letters were engulfed in shadow. With her empty hand Meg touched her thumb and index fingertips together and drew them apart slowly as if honey stuck between them. A soft blue bubble expanded into the size of a chestnut, illuminating the poorly written words.

Rachil Munro, Alec Munro. Scotlind to west bi see.

Meg hastily snuffed out the blue orb and secured the note.

She reached out to Pippen with her senses. The horse’s breath came in labored puffs. His lungs expanded and contracted, muscle fibers stretched with exertion, heart pounding, nearing its limit.

Meg swallowed past the clenching in her throat and pulled back on Pippen’s reins. “Whoa,” she breathed. She glanced behind her. Only darkness. No torches or snapping hounds. No hangman or executioner. No Rowland Boswell.

She sucked down the cool air.
Breathe deeply
. Panic chased people off cliffs, and panic had already ruled her day. Calm thinking must save her now, for she definitely needed saving.

Uncle Harold may be too afraid of English law to help, but Aunt Mary wasn’t. Fear of witchcraft accusations chased all healers, even if she didn’t have the curse that Meg had to hide. When they’d received word that Meg’s father, Rowland Boswell, was half a day away and coming to retrieve her, Aunt Mary had packed up Meg and thrown her onto a horse. Boswell wrote that Meg was to be assessed for godliness and married to a prestigious man at court.

Assessed for godliness? In other words he planned to test her for witchery. And Meg wasn’t going to sit obediently at home waiting to be examined, tried, and burned on the same false charges as her mother.

A branch in the thick woods snapped. Meg choked on a breath, coughing on the acrid taste of subdued panic. She glanced once again over her shoulder.

Let no one see your light
. Aunt Mary’s words beat through Meg’s memory in the silence. Eyes wide, searching the shadows, she pulled her bow to rest in her lap.
Nothing. ’Tis nothing.
She was well ahead of her father. She would get away.

Pippen nickered and twitched his ears. Meg stroked his sweaty neck as she scanned between the flanking trees. How many nights of terror would there be? Did this road lead to the Highlands like Aunt Mary had said, or would she need to ride across moors and mountains to the west? She should have taken more supplies, sought more direction. Yes, panic had ruled the day.

Pippen trotted a step or two, kicking up his hind feet. Meg patted the horse’s neck. “Nickum’s out there. He wouldn’t leave us.

“Nickum?” Calling out in the silent night made her feel naked, revealed.

Unfamiliar yellow eyes reflected the moonlight as they peered out from the trees. Not Nickum. Meg put two fingers to her mouth and blew, sending a shrill whistle into the stillness.

The night breeze picked at her curls, tickling them across her cheek. She tucked the stray pieces behind an ear and touched Pippen’s neck to assess his physical condition again. Contact with his skin made this quick and easy, second nature to her. Another thing to hide.

One small tap with her heels and the horse hopped into a trot and then loped into a canter.

Too bad none of her little curses fought off wild animals and bandits and smothered witch’s flames. Meg readied the bow and twisted in the saddle. Six sets of yellow eyes stared out from the trees. Her heart leapt. Wolves! As they stalked out into the open, Meg breathed and gripped the nocked arrow.

The wolves were smaller than Nickum, but they ran in a pack. They were skinny, hungry. Unlike Nickum as a cub, these hunters saw Meg and Pippen as a means to survive, a huge meal to keep their pack fed.

“Not without a fight.” Meg raised, took aim, and fired, three separate movements strung together in lethal harmony as natural to her as breathing.
Just like at practice with Uncle Harold
. A yelp cut through the stillness as the nearest beast rolled off the path.

The warning should have scared them off. However, they kept to the hunt. The moon cast white across their gray snouts and tipped ears as they loped several yards behind. Meg aimed again. The creature dodged at the last moment and the arrow sliced off into the night.

Breathe. Imagine a direct line from your arrow to the target.
Once more she shot, this time piercing a rump. The beast’s muffled cry followed as he dodged into the woods.

Four more
. She loaded, fired, and missed. She turned and clung low to Pippen, digging the heels of her boots into the horse’s sides. Pippen plunged through the splashes of moonlight that filtered down between the leaves of the thinning trees. She peered under an arm. Her heart dropped into her stomach as one wolf snapped at Pippen’s ankles.

“Go away!” she screamed. Fury pulsed, filling her and squelching fear. She didn’t want to kill them and she didn’t want to die.

The front wolf bent low, ears back, eyes narrowed. It plowed forward and the others followed. She notched another arrow, this time sitting up straight she aimed downward.

Whump!
The arrow pierced the beast’s back, and he careened off to the gully. She twisted to the other side, balanced on the charging horse. Pippen’s coat slicked with sweat. The poor horse couldn’t outrun them.

“Nickum!” Was he out there? Had the pack taken him down first?

Meg twisted. At the same time Pippen jumped, stretching his body over a fallen log. The arrow fired into the air as she clung to Pippen with her thighs, determined to hold on. He veered into the trees.

Wham!
A branch slammed into her chest and plucked her off the horse.
Can’t breathe!
She hung for a moment before falling to the hard ground. It happened too fast to scream. The impact rattled her body, as a spike of pain sparked lightning behind her eyes.
No!
She must remain conscious. She heard snarling, snapping.
Oh God!
She must stay… Then nothingness.

…

One must move slowly after a trauma, especially one to the head.
Meg repeated the advice until the words began to make sense. Slowly the darkness began to make sense again. It had been night. She’d been riding somewhere fast. Her heart pounded. Where had she been going? She groaned and brushed at the tickle in her ear. North? Yes, to Scotland.

“My head,” she whispered, and finally blinked her heavy lids. She fingered the back of her hair and winced upon contact with a lump, sticky with drying blood. Nickum lay next to her, watching through glowing wolf eyes. Was there concern in his blank stare? Nickum whined and laid his muzzle on her chest. Definitely concern.

She raised a hand and splayed fingers through her friend’s fur. “I’m still whole. If this isn’t some awful nightmare, you’ve probably saved my life.”

She ached everywhere as she rolled toward the wolf’s mud-splattered coat. “Nickum.” She pushed her face into the dense fur, needing the comfort of a warm protector. Upon contact Meg knew where all his scratches and bites were under the thick coat. Her fingers trembled as she searched for them. He had obviously battled.

“Any other hurts?” She closed her eyes and inhaled, focusing on the core of power that sat below her breastbone, just under the oddly shaped birthmark. She imagined it as a bright blue light like the one she could summon between her fingers. Meg pushed the power up and out of her hands to thoroughly search her friend. The muscles of his heart squeezed and relaxed with a strong steady beat, his stomach rolled half full, his bladder sat empty. Some muscles around one shoulder were bruised but it wasn’t serious. She released a breath. “Just some scrapes and bites.” She’d use ointment on them. She jabbed two fingers through his thick fur to yank off a small tick she’d detected on his neck.

She rolled gingerly to one side to stand with the help of a young oak. Nickum stood against her to add support. She breathed in again, but this time she let the bright blue ball of light spread through her own body, searching for injury. Bruises would darken her back and the arm that had taken the brunt of the fall. Thank the good Lord, her head injury was contained outside the skull. She opened her eyes and noticed dawn seeping into the dark blue sky.

“I will survive the night.” She splayed her fingers through Nickum’s fur. “With a bump on my head.”

She glanced around. The bodies of three wolves lay nearby. Her fingers curled into his coat. “Let us find Pippen.”

Pippen stood sweaty and trembling near a twisting creek. The creek tumbled along the face of a rock wall made up of towering moss-covered boulders. She whispered gentle words to her horse while she surveyed his injuries. She tied his reins loosely to a tree behind large holly bushes.

“Nickum?” she called softly, her gaze running the length of the rock face. Yellow eyes reflected out of a dark crevice. “You found a cave, clever wolf.” Meg stepped into the pitch darkness toward him, totally trusting his instincts.

Out of habit, she glanced over her shoulder. Of course no one was there. She was alone in a cave in the forest. Yet the fear of discovery still kicked her heart into a run as she formed a small glowing orb between her fingers. The size of a currant, it illuminated the wide chamber once she walked past the narrow entrance. A deep earthy smell of moss and decaying leaves infused the sheltered space. She crouched in front of Nickum and scratched his ears.

Meg managed to pull several clay jars from her leather satchel with one hand while the other held the blue orb. It was better than a candle that could burn out, but she couldn’t just set it in the corner to light the small shelter. Conjuring the light shot her blood through her body in case she’d need to flee.

The ointments she’d made with figwort and St. John’s wort would help Nickum. But first she’d have to wash the worst of his bites. She forced a smile at her reluctant patient who outweighed her three times over. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

By the time the horizon had lightened to dawn, Meg had managed, after one brief scuffle, to clean and apply some salve on the worst of the wolf’s wounds. Nickum shot out of the cave as soon as she let go.

“Ungrateful,” she called to his retreating tail.

Meg gingerly lowered onto her cloak and closed her eyes. She exhaled long and willed the tension to dissolve along her aching muscles. It had been the longest night of her life. Oh, how she would relish this sleep.

Minutes later the sound of thunder roused her. She groaned and covered her head with the cloak. The thunder continued…and continued. She pushed up on her elbows. A sunbeam shot into the cave opening instead of the rain she’d expected. She listened to the ebb and flow of the deep pounding and stood to peek outside. The source of the rumbling came from farther down the rock wall.

She stood by the opening to the cave listening, trying to discern the source of such noise. She should stay put, hidden in the dark cave. A voice? She swore she heard a voice, a man’s voice. Meg’s heart leapt into a sprint. Could her father have caught up to her?

Her eyes shifted to where she’d tied Pippen to a bush outside the cave opening. “Pippen?”

He was gone! Her only means of escape. She had to find him.

Meg grabbed her bow and quiver before slinging them over one shoulder. She stepped out and made a quick search of the bushes close by. No Pippen. She’d tied him to the bushes, hadn’t she?

Meg jogged the path that lay along the rock face. She pushed past a bramble bush and stepped into…hell.

The clashing, scraping noise and grunts of men, the tangy smell of blood and iron mixed with campfire smoke. The sights, smells, and sounds of battle tangled around her where she stood, suffocating her. Meg covered her mouth with the inside of her elbow and squinted through the haze created by the sun heating the dew off the grass. Men ran everywhere, yelling, cursing, slashing. Blood-painted men lay scattered amongst the ferns and beaten down cornflowers.

There were two distinct groups scattered together, hacking and falling. One wore English clothing, the other Scottish kilts. Definitely a border skirmish. Not her father’s doing. There on the other side of the meadow stood Pippen. Relief barely penetrated Meg’s shock at the vicious carnage. She’d never seen a battle up close, only the aftermath, which was when her Aunt Mary took her to patch up injuries.

Why would a troop of Scotsmen be on this side of the border? Crossing these days was practically a declaration of war with King Henry VIII’s reformation and Scotland’s King James V’s harboring of Catholic refugees. The two stubborn monarchs had made tensions between Scotland and England even more brittle. Had war been declared without Uncle Harold knowing?

A large Scotsman strode through the mist. His powerful stride pulled Meg’s attention. The haze swirled around him as if he compelled it to move aside. His bare, muscled arms brought down smooth and powerful slashes against two of the English. Uncle Harold had told story upon story of the mighty warriors in the north, about their bravery and skill unlike the paid English military.

The Englishmen fought back as one, trying to lunge at him from opposite sides. Each time they attacked, their blades met steel, not flesh. Meg watched, frozen, as the Englishmen weakened under the Scotsman’s claymore until in one swift stroke the fearsome warrior sliced through the shoulder of one.