Highland Storm

C
opyright © Tanya Anne Crosby

All rights reserved.

A
ll rights reserved
. No part of this publication may be used or reproduced or transmitted in any manner whatsoever, electronically, in print, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of both Oliver-Heber Books and Tanya Anne Crosby, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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O
nce Upon a Highland Legend

Highland Fire

Highland Steel

Highland Storm

T
he winds
of war were stirring in the north.

Casting his eyes on Moray, the eighth son of Malcom Ceann Mor and the sixth of the Margaretsons made good his threat to conquer the north. Even now, David mac Mhaoil Chaluim was rallying his troops, men who would remain loyal to Scotia’s crown.

“I mean to leave,” the young man said, and hearing the familiar voice, the old woman halted abruptly before the entrance to the cave.

Turning to face the younger dún Scoti, Una leaned upon her staff for support. The patch over her one bad eye was worn and her skin was withered as a prune. Her coloring held a pallor that made Keane want to stay. “I know,” she said, and a smile hovered on her blue-cast lips.

Of course she always knew.

Una had been with their clan for all of Keane’s living memory. She was the mother of them all, their healer, their elder. She was the longest living guardian of the Stone from Scone. “Would ye come sit for a spell?”

“Not today,” Keane said.

Not tomorrow either, for by then he would be gone.

“Ah, well,” she lamented, and seemed to comprehend.

If he lingered now, he might never leave, and his sister Lael had summoned him to Keppenach to help keep her the peace whilst her husband rode to war with Scotia’s king.

The old woman eyed him steadily, her green eye shimmering. “I told your Da, your brother as well… a man will oft meet his destiny on the path he chose to avoid.”

All men must stand for what they believed in. Keane realized this as well as most. “I am not afraid, Una, no matter what my brother may believe.”

She nodded, and the stone in her staff’s hilt winked against the twilight. If some part of Keane had hoped she might stop him, the look in her eye only reaffirmed his need to leave. “Will you speak to Aidan for me? Will you tell him why?”

The old woman shrugged. “Your brother is not your keeper, nor is he your king, but if you would give him half a chance, he might surprise you.”

Even as he lingered, the sky grew darker still.

“Aidan would never understand,” Keane said.

The laird of the
dún Scoti
was not quick to embrace change, neither would he accept Keane’s decision to abandon the vale whilst the surrounding lands were so full of strife. Aidan feared the kingdom of Scotia would descend upon Dubhtolargg, when in truth, they were all but forgotten here in the Mounth. At least this way, Keane could make himself useful to his sister. Here, he withered in the role he’d been given.

Una sighed again, the sound as heavy as the Stone that lay hidden in the belly of their ben. “Ye must follow your own path, Keane dún Scoti. But ye look to your heart, not your head.”

Keane nodded soberly. Already, there had been too many words spoken for his taste. What he’d come to hear was simply that he had a right to go, and now that he knew it from her own two lips, he closed the distance between himself and the old woman, embracing her fiercely. Wobbling a bit, she tapped him gently on the back. “Whether ye choose to face him or nay, I ken ye’ll know what to do when the time arrives.”

“Never fear,” he reassured her. “Ye taught us well.”

Under the twilight, her one good eye twinkled with unshed tears. “Nay. Ye found your way well enough all on your own.” She sounded more stoical then he’d ever heard her sound before, like a mother whose children were abandoning her to the ravages of old age.

“With a bit o’ help,” he reassured, and reaching out, he shook Una gently by the shoulders to make his point. “None of us could have done aught without ye, Una. Come another day, I will return. Ye have my word.”

She looked at him sadly, as though she knew something Keane did not. “Go on wi’ ye now,” she shooed him. “Be on your way afore I rap ye good upon the head.”

She waved her staff to make the point, but the familiar gesture only made Keane smile—not because she wouldn’t do it, mind you, but because she had done it already a thousand times before and each time with a heart full of love.

But that was that. Goodbyes were said. Keane gave her a final hug and hurried down the hillside. Under cover of darkness, he packed his bags, and left his sister Cailin to share the news: another wolf of Pechtland had departed the vale.

T
he men
of Moray were warriors, the women lovely and fearless, the heart and soul of Moray’s men. With eyes the color of honey and hair as radiant as a winter’s flame, ’twas said that even the gods above were enamored by their grace and beauty.

But grace was not Lianae’s forte and neither was she the beauty her mother and sister had been. Her hair was more blond than red, and her eyes were the color of dirty
uisge
, not bright and shining like her sister Elspeth’s. Nevertheless, she was the youngest of two living females in a long line of Moray queens—the other being her toothless aunt Gruaidh.

Lianae had not been the Earl’s first choice, but on the other hand,
he
was no choice at all. So long as she girded her loins there was still a chance the blood of Óengus might rise again. This was the prayer of the Mormaerdom. For all that King David hailed himself a benevolent King, he surrounded himself with blackguards like William fitz Duncan and turned a blind eye to all their evildoings. So this was how he meant to rule—putting others to do his dirty work whilst he donned the cloak of a saint.

Saint David—pah!

Parcel by parcel, the land of Moray was being granted to England’s odious barons, and the man seated before her was the most treacherous fiend of all, he who styled himself
de
Moray.
De
Moray, not
of
Moray, because despite that he was the son of a Scots king, he was no better than a Norman usurper himself.

Like his father before him—and King David as well—fitz Duncan had been raised by the English to serve the whims of an English king. Already, through his mother Uhtreda, he was the patriarch of Northumbria, making him one of the richest barons in northern England, and King David would name him the Earl of Moray as well.

Dressed in pale blue brocade, with a hat and a pair of foppish red shoes that were as pointy as his nose, King David’s nephew and son of a murdered king—her sister’s murderer as well—ignored Lianae, speaking directly to her brother. “Her insolence will not be brooked,” he said, enunciating the words in the Norman accent as he peered down his skinny, beak-like nose.

Much to her dismay, her brother Lulach matched the Earl’s diction, eschewing his lilting Moray brogue. “Never fear, my lord… once Lianae realizes her good fortune, she will come to heel.”

My lord? My lord!
She despised the Norman articulation of her brother’s words. The pain in her jaw flaring, Lianae stood abruptly. “I am not a dog! I will not
come to heel!
Ha’e we no’ already witnessed what this man would do? Ha’e ye no affection for our sister?”

Never mind her own rising misfortunes! Even as they spoke, Elspeth’s body lay above stairs, growing cold, her neck stained with bruises that were put there by the Earl himself. If Lianae had not gone in to see her this morning after the night’s celebration, he might have easily concealed his sins—but then neither would she be in this untenable situation.

Reaching out, fitz Duncan’s guard shoved Lianae back down into her chair, constraining her by her shoulder, squeezing painfully in warning.

Fitz Duncan cast her an embittered glance. No doubt, half his rancor this morning was due in part to his displeasure in ending with the
wrong
Moray sister. Well, he should have kept his hands to himself! Although now, if he should manage to convince Lulach to accept a new union, Lianae realized he would make her rue the day she came to be his wife.
“Cil-onaidh,”
she hissed beneath her breath.

The man was an
idiot and a fool.

So
was her brother Lulach.

“Lianae, please,” Lulach begged. After a long pleading silence, he turned to re-address the Earl. “Forgive her, my lord. She is merely frightened. But of course, we did not expect…”

Lianae waited for her brother to finish.
What, Lulach?
They did not expect Elspeth’s new husband would strangle her in her marriage bed.
Say it,
Lulach, she begged silently.
Say it.
Accept the truth of what has been done. Confess what you would do to me—to your own flesh and blood!

Forsooth, but if there was any remorse at all for the events leading to their sister’s death, there was little evidence of it in the Earl’s expression. Cruelty was manifested in his voice, a barely suppressed violence that presented itself as boredom, although Lianae recognized it. It tightened her nerves like the overdrawn strings of a bow. “Frightened, or nay, the girl will learn her place.”

The girl?

Lianae was not a
girl.
She was a princess of Moray!

Learn her place?

And what place was that? To step up and be his wife, now that he’d managed to murder the other?

“I will
not
,” Lianae bit out again, but she might as well have never spoken. Neither of the men seated at the long table even bothered to look at her. They continued their discourse, as though Lianae were no longer present.

“Aye, she will,” her brother promised, and it was all Lianae could do to hold her tongue. Their land was defiled, her brother seduced by—what? Peace at any cost?

Five years ago, in his quest to control the Highlands, David mac Mhaoil Chaluim finally kept his threat to bring down the Mormaerdom, killing her father during the great slaughter at Stracathro in Forfarshire. Only two of her brothers survived the massacre, and now Lulach, named after their maternal grandfather, was proving himself to be as wretched as his namesake. He was a fool to believe David of Scotia would allow him any boons for this union. It was a contract made in vain, for once Lianae took her vows, she would be trapped, not only in wedlock to a lying, murderous fiend, but in collusion with their mortal enemy. The Mormaerdom would be lost forever—for not only was William Elspeth’s murderer, he was also the commander in charge of the very army that had wrested Moray from its rightful heir—her father.

“You must realize, Lulach... there are others I might choose—women who are comelier, and whose gratitude is far more easily won.”

Lianae opened her mouth to tell him to shove the pointy end of his shoe up his ironclad arse, but her brother cast her a pleading glance. The Earl's man kept a firm hand upon her shoulder, pinching painfully.

“Aye, my lord,” Lulach said, “but Lianae is the last of Óengus’s daughters. As such, she may help dissuade a new rebellion.”

“Gruaidh is more than willing.”

Lianae rolled her eyes at the mention of her aunt.

“Aye, though Gruaidh may not be able to bear your children, nor is she quite so… pleasing.”

The Earl flicked a glance toward Lianae. “Neither is your sister once she opens her mouth.”

Gritting her teeth, a memento of her own brief time alone with the Earl moments before, Lianae lifted a hand to the bruise on her cheek, urging Lulach to acknowledge it, but her brother refused to look her way again.

Lianae's heart wrenched.
Oh, Lulach,
she wanted to ask,
where has your courage gone? Where now your scruples and foresight?

“I will make certain she understands her duty.”

The Earl flicked Lianae another, more embittered glance. “See that you do.”

“Aye, my lord… and if you would but give us a moment alone?”

His face a mask of boredom, the Earl sighed, but he raked his chair back from the table. He stood, acknowledging Lianae with another ill-tempered glance, and there in his gaze she spied something cold and foreboding. He was warning her without words, and she already knew what dangers that entailed. Had her sister angered him somehow? They might never know what happened in that room. Pressing a hand against her cheek, Lianae shuddered over the images that accosted her. Her sister’s lips and skin had been as blue as the sapphire gown she’d worn to take her vows. And still Lulach would sell her for—what?

Despair choked away her breath, along with any remaining protests.

Her brother stood, and Lianae made to do so as well—not out of deference, but to leave. Once again, the Earl’s guard pushed her down into the chair, biting his strong fingers into the hollow beneath her shoulder, until her mouth parted for a cry of pain she refused to voice—at least not in front of these monsters.

Outliers! Murderers!

The Earl of Moray turned from the table, and only then did his bootlicker release Lianae’s shoulder and move away, falling in step behind his master like the dog he appeared to be. Make no mistake, Lianae would
not
marry the Earl, but she recognized the stubborn set of her brother’s jaw and she knew he would not relent. It would serve no one to voice another protest. Nay, she must find another way…

Lulach waited until the Earl and his men were gone from the hall before turning to address her. “Lianae,” he said quietly. “Ye
must
learn to hold your tongue. If ye would but mind yourself, ye could inherit much, my sister.”

Lianae’s fingers balled so tightly that her nails dug into her palms.

Once upon a time, she had adored Lulach for his gentle nature. This moment, his gentility seemed more a weakness, and the slender, slightly downturned chin a tell. The hall doors closed, one by one, and the heavy raucous sound ricocheted off the hallhouse ceiling. To her mind, it had the sound of a cell door.

“I dinna wish to marry that usurper,” Lianae said quietly.

Her brother sighed. “Lianae, he won his place the same way the men of Moray all once did, by the grace of his sword.”

“Nay,” Lianae argued. “He was appointed by King David, who is nae better than an outlier himself. He was raised under Henry’s tutelage.
All
these men were groomed to take our place, and ye give them time and they will quash every last Morayman and woman from this land.”

“He is Duncan’s heir and bears the blood of kings,” Lulach reminded her.

“On his hands!” Lianae said in outrage.

“Ach, Lianae. Be fair. His father was our king for a time.”

“Ach, yoursel’!” Lianae said, looking at her brother incredulously. “Dinna ye see, Lulach? King Duncan was murdered by his own brother, and if the rumors be true, William would collude with David even despite this fact! That should tell ye all ye need to know about the mon’s character. He would sell himself so easily to his father’s murderers. At any rate, he’s but a bastard and his mother is an outlier as well. They are all Henry’s minions—every one!”

Lulach frowned. “’Tis long past time to make our peace, sister. Óengus is dead—”

Lianae gave a raw little laugh. “No one knows this better than Elspeth!” Tears pooled in her eyes at the images that accosted her anew. Her sister’s rent dress, her eyes open and bulging. Fitz Duncan not even had the decency to close her lovely amber eyes. The memory threatened to undermine Lianae’s composure in a way that not even the last hour’s discussion had managed to do so.

Her brother ignored her tears. “Our brothers, dead…”

“Nay!”

She and Lulach shared a heated look, and Lianae tried to gauge what he knew. Neither Ewen nor Graeme had been spied for many, many months, but Lianae knew they must be out there, biding their time, waiting for the right opportunity. Óengus had taught them well.

“Dinna ye ken, Lianae? We canna fight any longer—not if we are meant to survive.”

And there it is.

Her brother’s expression was full of fear, and Lianae’s heart wrenched for the man he could have been. She knew this was not entirely his wish, to see her wed to a monster. But Lulach wasn’t strong enough to stand against despicable men. She wanted to forgive him, she truly did, but she couldn’t. He would sell her all too easily. Her sister—their sister—was already dead. Lianae might see the same fate—and for what? For Lulach’s self-assurances? To line his coffers? Why?

There was only one way to avoid this fate. It was to allow her brother to assume she would relent. His mind was already made up. “When?” she asked, swallowing her grief. “When would you have me commit this atrocity?”

“Tonight.”

“Tonight!”

Tears welled again in her eyes.

“Lianae,” her brother pleaded. Despite his youth, there were all-new wrinkles etched in his brow, frown lines that hadn’t previously existed. His wife also seemed older than her years, but Lianae couldn’t help any of them; but she most certainly intended to help herself. She was not prepared to become a sacrifice. Her body longed to spring up from her seat and run screaming out the door, but she sat.

Peering into the balcony, she caught sight of a figure at the rails, peeping down. William fitz Duncan was not a man who took his chances. No man in the line of succession could rest at ease. Not since the day Kenneth MacAilpín up and murdered the sons of seven Pecht nations had Scotia known lasting peace. Cousins murdered cousins. Brothers murdered brothers. Sisters were naught but chattel to be bartered away.

Her mind grappled for a plan.

The bathhouse was a filthy puddle of sweat, an immodest structure left standing after the retreat of the Roman legions. It was the last place anyone would get themselves clean. But that’s where Lianae must find herself tonight… somehow.

Beneath the bathhouse was a tangle of pipes, fed by sweet Highland streams. The pipes were all sealed now, and the bath itself was refilled once a week by a procession of unhappy servants. But Lianae knew how to access those pipes. From there, she could escape into the woods, although she mustn’t give rise to suspicion. She must go with the clothes on her back. And once she assented here now, they would return her to her room only long enough to fetch her wedding attire—Elspeth’s wedding attire. She cringed, for the thought of taking that odious dress and putting it on her person left her with a pang in her belly that gnawed at her from the inside out. A knot formed in her throat, but she forced words past it, “Very well, but please… at least allow me the courtesy of taking my vows after a bath. As you can see I am filthy.”

Lulach lifted a brow.

Does he remember?

She and Elspeth used to enter the pipes from the woodlands, and peek within the bathhouse, giggling with delight over the education they’d received in there—some not so titillating. Forsooth, she’d had little idea how much men liked to pass wind when you put more than two together into a tub.