Margo Maguire (2 page)

Chapter 1

The Minch, just outside Loch Ewe. Summer, 1720.

T
he sea was calm, but there was enough wind to carry Lachann MacMillan’s ship, the
Glencoe Lass
, northward toward the Minch, the sea that lay between Scotland and the western isles. Lachann’s destination was Kilgorra, a fertile island at the edge of the Minch that guarded the entrance to Loch Ewe, and hence the passage to Braemore.

Lachann and two of his kinsmen stood at the bow of the ship and watched as they approached their destination.

The isle was broad and hilly. The northwestern side consisted of a wall of black rock on a promontory that rose straight up from the sea. Kilgorra’s massive castle was situated at its peak, the windows of the keep still dark without the afternoon sun. The castle’s walls and towers were perfect for posting lookouts to alert the Kilgorran army and sailors to encroachers.

But Kilgorra had no army, no sailors trained to fight.

Lachann’s cousin and good friend, Kieran Cameron, looked askance at the land ahead. “Are you sure this is what you want, Lachann? To wed Laird MacDuffie’s daughter, sight unseen? ’Tis said she is as plain as an oatcake.”

“Of course he does,” Duncan MacMillan answered for Lachann. “Once he weds Catrìona, the old laird will make him his heir, and then there will be no more chance for pirates to attack Braemore lands.”

“Aye, but there is more to taking a wife than coveting her father’s lands.”

“Oh, aye?” Duncan challenged. “Name one thing.”

“Well you certainly wouldn’t know. You are the—”

“And you have been wed how many times, Kieran?”

“Enough,” Lachann said, ending the argument before it could gain any momentum. “Braemore needs Kilgorra. Even if the laird’s daughter is a mud hen, if I must wed her to assure the protection of Braemore, so be it.”

He did not care who Catrìona was, nor had he any interest in her appearance. He’d learned not to trust his eyes when it came to women. He’d loved his fair Fiona fiercely, but when Cullen Macauley had arrived on Skye and paid her father so handsomely he’d not been able to refuse . . .

Lachann’s grandfather might have forbidden him to murder the damned bleeter, but Lachann had come up with another solution. He and Fiona could have left Skye, could have left their clans to strike out on their own.

But Fiona would not run away with him. She might have wept while professing her love for him, but she’d cited her duty to her clan, and she’d chosen her father’s will over anything she’d felt for Lachann.

That had been the last time Lachann had allowed his heart to rule his choices.

“Tell me again, Lachann,” Kieran said. “Are you committed to this marriage? Is there a way out if you . . . Well, if she is too . . .”

Lachann and his brothers had been corresponding with Bruce MacDuffie all summer. All they needed now was Catrìona’s consent, and, once given, they would wed as soon as possible.

Lachann had no doubt he could convince the lass to marry him.

“I’m not entirely committed,” Lachann said. “Catrìona must agree.”

“You’ll have no trouble, Lachann,” Duncan said.

Kieran laughed. “Nay. I’ve yet to see you fail with a lass you’ve chosen to bed.”

Aye, because he was careful, choosing only the most carefree, the most willing of lasses. Never again would he choose the kind of woman who could damage his heart as Fiona had done.

“Enough,” Lachann said. “We need Kilgorra. We’ll create a fighting force that can defend the isle as well as the channels ’round it. No ships will sail past without our knowledge and consent.”

“And Braemore will be safe from a sea attack,” Duncan said.

“Aye.” That was all Lachann cared about.

On the Isle of Kilgorra.

T
he massive brigantine sailed into Kilgorra’s harbor and tied up at Kilgorra’s pier just as Anna MacIver rowed her curragh to the far end of the pier. She could see that this was no trading vessel.

As its crew lowered the plank, Anna could only gape in awe at the first man to disembark. With his regal bearing and aura of command, the highlander could only be Lachann MacMillan.

And he’d arrived a full day too early.

Anna did not think she’d ever seen a finer specimen of highland might. Tall and dark-haired, his shoulders were broad and muscular, his legs as sturdy as tree trunks. The angle of his jaw was entirely uncompromising, but his lips were full and . . . interesting. Unlike the rest of him, they were not the least bit rigid.

Anna’s heart thrilled at the sight of him, but she quickly tamped down any excitement she might feel. For what business did she have, gaping at the young man from Braemore? He had certainly not come to meet her.

Which was just as well. The last thing Anna needed was a man . . . a husband. Her mother, Sigrid, had had two of them, and where had her marriages gotten her?

To a home far away from her family and everything she’d known in the Norse country, married to a Scottish husband who’d died, leaving her with naught but a wee daughter to care for. And then a second husband, the laird of Kilgorra, whom she’d met and fallen in love with when he’d visited Kearvaig soon after Anna’s father’s death.

Sigrid had returned to Kilgorra with Laird MacDuffie and had soon gotten with child. But when both Sigrid and the bairn had died, MacDuffie had forgotten all about his stepdaughter. For the past fifteen years, Anna had been left to her own devices on Laird MacDuffie’s island home, serving her mother’s widower and stepdaughter according to their whims.

Anna made do, for what choice did she have? She did her work and escaped whenever she could to her own wee isle across the narrow straits off the Kilgorra coast. Luckily, ’twas a mountainous, forbidding place that no one cared to visit—especially not when Gudrun, the Norse maid who’d come to Scotland with Anna’s mother—had let it be known the place was beset by a fearful
sluagh dubh,
a dangerous, malevolent spirit.

To Anna’s knowledge, there was no
sluagh dubh
on Spirit Isle, but the wary Kilgorrans believed it. And they all believed Anna and Gudrun had some method to keep the terrible spirit at bay.

True or not, the tale suited her well.

Anna tied her curragh to a post on the pier and stepped out of the small boat. She would have stayed on Spirit Isle longer on this bonny morn but for MacMillan’s visit. He had not been expected to arrive until the morrow, and Anna knew there would be hell to pay when her stepsister Catrìona realized he was already there and Kilgorra Keep was not fully prepared.

At least she and the other servants had already cleaned the bedchambers that were to be used by the men from Braemore, sweeping out the old rushes, washing the floors, putting fresh linens on the beds, and laying fires in the grates. She had directed Alex and Graeme to prepare the barracks where the laird’s warriors would reside, so there could be no complaint there.

Anna reached for the basket of berries she’d picked on the isle, but the familiar sharp wail of a wee bairn caused her to turn and look for the infant’s mother, her very dearest friend. Kyla Ramsay staggered toward Anna, her face and arms bruised and bloody. It looked as though she was about to faint.

Anna quickly took the child from Kyla’s arms. She was about to ease her friend down to the curragh when there was a rush of footsteps, and then a pair of brawny arms caught Kyla and cradled her against his chest with ease.

“Where’s the best place to take her?” the highlander asked, his voice deep and rich. “The public house?”

“No!” Anna cried. For Birk might well be there, drunk and mean and ready to do further damage to his wife. “Ah, no, sir . . . ,” she said more calmly. “If you would carry her just there . . .”

Holding Kyla’s bairn, she led Lachann MacMillan to Janet Carnegie’s cottage, some distance from both the public house and the lane where the stone croft Kyla shared with her husband was located.

Janet came out as they approached her cottage, and led the way inside to a simple pallet near the fire. “Put her there,” she said. “ ’Tis good that ye brought her here, Anna.”

The highlander laid her down, then stood back, his arms crossed over his broad chest.

“Ach, the clarty bastard has beat her again,” Janet remarked with a frown, as though ’twas every day that a stranger brought a broken and bleeding young woman to her cottage.

Anna could not help but take note of MacMillan’s kindness toward her poor friend. He must have seen Kyla’s wobbly approach on the dock and recognized her distress, else he wouldn’t have known to move so swiftly. If not for his quick actions, Kyla might have crashed to the wooden decking at the harbor, causing even more injury to herself than Birk had done.

“You are called Anna?” he asked, and Anna nodded. “You know who did this to her?” His tone was gruff and incredulous.

“Her husband,” Anna replied. His deep blue eyes captured Anna’s full attention. They were rimmed with the blackest, thickest lashes—far too beautiful for a man. But Anna sensed a wariness in those eyes, as though he trusted no one and nothing.

Good,
she thought. Then he would not be taken unawares by the leeches up at the keep. Anna’s stepfather was a useless drunkard, and Catrìona was the vilest woman on the isle.

Anna could not understand what the appeal of Kilgorra could possibly be to a braw fellow like this warrior from the mainland. Who would ever
choose
to stay here?

“Lachann.” One of MacMillan’s men stepped into Janet’s cottage and placed Anna’s basket of forgotten berries on a table. “I’m sure they took note of our approach into the harbor up at the castle. Laird MacDuffie will be expecting us.”

“Aye,” MacMillan replied. He wasted no further time in Janet’s cottage but turned quickly and made his exit.

And somehow, Anna found her breath again.

T
here was little that Catrìona MacDuffie liked better than a man’s intimate touch. Some of her earliest memories were of the impossible yearnings she’d felt while watching the young men in the fields and the fishermen hauling in their nets. She’d always loved the hard, heavy lines of their bodies—their square jaws and thick whiskers, their solid muscles bunching and flexing as they’d worked.

She’d grown into a plain face and body, and she knew she would never receive much male attention. She’d seen the other lasses, some much younger—Kyla and Anna, for instance—who never failed to capture the wandering gazes of every man they passed, both married and bachelor.

’Twas one more reason to despise Anna MacIver.

To make matters worse for Catrìona, she was the laird’s daughter. What man would look at her with the same kind of admiring eyes that followed Anna MacIver, knowing he would have to answer to her father, the laird?

None of the island men were suitable candidates for marriage, and the one time her father had actually sought a proper husband for her had been a disaster. Catrìona would rather have had no husband at all than the waster from the Isle of Lewis he’d invited to court her.

The man had been as ugly as he’d been useless, and had seemed to think he deserved better than Catrìona.

Aye, well, she’d found a strapping young lad to her liking, a sailor from the ship that had brought her would-be suitor from Lewis. She’d had her way with the fellow, and he’d discovered that she might not have had the comeliest face or form, but she’d been entirely female.

And Catrìona had discovered everything that had been missing in her life, but her pleasure had been short-lived. When her lover had set eyes upon Anna MacIver, he’d forgotten all about Catrìona MacDuffie.

L
achann and his men returned to the pier, where several long, low boats were docked. They were fishing birlinns with their sails down and heavy nets stowed tightly in their hulls.

The birlinns were not fighting vessels, and Lachann didn’t intend to use them as such. His own brigantine was outfitted with four guns and would likely be able to ward off a sea attack, unless she happened to be outnumbered. Then Kilgorra would need land fighters—an army of well-trained, well-armed men to defend against a raid on land.

Lachann thought it unconscionable for such a rich isle to be without defenses. Word was that MacDuffie had grown old and feeble, even as Kilgorra’s distillery had become increasingly productive and known far and wide for its fine whiskey. Traders came to the isle specifically for it, and Lachann suspected that if any powerful chieftain decided to invade and take control, Laird MacDuffie would have no choice but to yield.

The old laird had welcomed Lachann’s proposal for developing a defense for the isle, and if Catrìona accepted him as her husband, Lachann would eventually become laird in MacDuffie’s place. ’Twas yet another very good reason for coming to Kilgorra. The chance for Lachann to become laird of his own realm.

A few years ago, his brother Dugan’s gamble had made his family and his clan wealthy. Aye, Lachann had been part of that venture and had shared in the treasure they’d found. But Lachann intended to distinguish himself in his own right. As laird of Kilgorra, he would do exactly that, even though leaving Braemore, leaving his kin and clan, was the most difficult thing he had ever done.