Highlander Betrayed (Guardians of the Targe)

by Wittig, Laurin

  ALSO BY LAURIN WITTIG

  Charming the Shrew

  (The Legacy of MacLeod – Book I)

  Daring the Highlander

  (The Legacy of MacLeod – Book II)

  The Devil of Kilmartin

  Jewels of Historical Romance, an anthology

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 2013 Laurin Wittig

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Amazon Publishing

  P.O. Box 400818

  Las Vegas, NV 89140

  ISBN-10: 1477807276

  ISBN-13: 9781477807279

  Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2013907702

  For

  Samantha and Alex

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PROLOGUE

  Tower of London, February 1307

  NICHOLAS FITZ HUGH could no more ignore the thick clusters of lavishly clothed courtiers nervously awaiting King Edward’s audience than he could the itch deep in his gut pressing him to escape the suffocating, odiferous confines of London and once more be about the king’s business somewhere else. Anywhere else.

  The acrid scent of nervous sweat inexorably drew his attention to the couple standing closest to him. They whispered feverishly about money they had hidden from the tax collector. Reckless idiots. It didn’t require a spy’s skills to take advantage of their stupidity. There were plenty here who would make sure the information got to the exchequer’s ear. The couple would pay their taxes, one way or another, likely with their lives.

  It took little experience to know one did not cross the king. Nicholas wanted to shake his head at their folly. Instead, he let his gaze glide effortlessly over the crowd, studying his surroundings even though he had no specific assignment. Taxes unpaid were of no import to him. He traded in high treason, betrayals, collusion, and many other forms of danger to the king’s rule.

  At least he did when the king had a task for him.

  Forcing his breath to move in and out evenly, calmly, as he proceeded slowly through the crowd, he wanted nothing more than to be away from this place, these people; to be taking on a mission the king deemed only Nicholas able to accomplish. He had been waiting nearly three months for the king to summon him. Now that he finally had, it meant there was something more important afoot than tax evasion.

  Nicholas leaned against a wall halfway down the long side of the stuffy room and wished he could ignore those around him, but the rich silks and velvets and bright colors worn by most of the company were designed to draw one’s attention, like a peacock flaunting his tail feathers.

  Nicholas closed his eyes, suddenly exhausted by how tedious this part of his life was. Petty squabbles, gossip, and the fetid stink of London were the best entertainment he could hope for at court.

  “Master fitz Hugh, sir.” A piping voice forced Nicholas’s eyes open. A young page, not more than ten or eleven years old, bowed before him, drawing surreptitious glances from many of those gathered there.

  “What is it, boy?” Nicholas said, carefully hiding the irritation of suddenly being the one watched.

  “The king would see you in his private chamber, sir,” the boy said quietly. “Will you follow me?”

  Nicholas nodded, surprised and curious that he should be summoned to that room he had never before entered. He followed the page out a side door, down a short frigid corridor and into a marginally warmer room. The walls were draped in ancient tapestries depicting battles from the past. A large bed with thick posts of oak, carved with mythical beasts and draped in heavy aubergine curtains, took up one corner of the room, near the hearth. King Edward stood opposite the bed, by a window, his tall frame swathed in a heavy mantle of dark-blue velvet trimmed in creamy ermine. The gloomy grey light of late winter washed out his features, making him look older than his sixty-odd years.

  The page melted out of Nicholas’s line of sight, no doubt taking his place by the door where he would stand unnoticed until their king next commanded him to some errand.

  Nicholas bowed to King Edward. A rush of excitement raced up his spine as he awaited the monarch’s attention.

  “Rise,” Edward commanded.

  “Sire.” Nicholas took note that none of Edward’s usual advisors was there. Whatever the task was, it was not one Edward wanted widely known. “I am your servant.”

  Edward’s mouth tightened into a single determined line. “You have been a long time in London.”

  Nicholas nodded. “I have, sire.”

  “You have enjoyed your leisure?” the king asked.

  “I have.” Not. No matter how good of terms he was on with the king, he’d not complain about waiting for his summons for nigh on three months. No one would dare such an impertinence with this man. Nicholas smiled, his pleasure at this private audience genuine. “I am, however, as always, at your command, my lord.”

  The king looked at the page and with a flick of his long-fingered hand dismissed him. He waited until the door was closed, then beckoned Nicholas to approach.

  “You are politic, as always, Master Spy. I know well how you chafe at lingering in my court. I have been awaiting news. When it came it was not what I wanted, so I find I have need of your very special skills. Others have failed where I think you can succeed.”

  A challenge indeed, but this was the sort of task Nicholas enjoyed the most—besting his fellows, an opportunity to prove once more that he was worthy of the king’s great regard. Nicholas did not hesitate to let his pleasure at the king’s assessment of his skill show on his face.

  “I have never failed you, sire. I shall not start now.”

  “I expect no less.” Edward turned back to gaze out the window, though he seemed lost in thought rather than drawn by the view. “It is no secret who your father was,” the king said. Nicholas kept his breath even, his hands relaxed at his sides. He carefully maintained his pleased expression of a moment ago, though it did not suit this odd turn in the conversation. He did not know where the king led him, but no good had ever come from the vicious Lord Hugh of Stanwix, Nicholas’s sire.

  When Nicholas didn’t respond, the king glanced over his shoulder and raised one grey-and-ginger eyebrow. “It is also no secret that your mother was Scottish.”

  Nicholas verified what the king already knew with a single nod. An English knight having his way with an unwilling Scottish lass was not unheard of, though his sire had been particularly vicious. His mother’s clan had accepted her bastard bairn, even if his mother never could, though they’d never embraced him as one of their own. Later, when he’d left Scotland behind him for a new life, he’d confronted h
is father and learned firsthand just how brutal the man was.

  Nicholas had known the circumstances of his birth for as long as he could remember and apparently so did everyone else. The only difference was that he didn’t care. He’d determined a long time ago that his parents had nothing to do with the person he was now.

  The king watched him for a long moment. Nicholas had seen more than one powerful man squirm under such royal scrutiny but he waited.

  “What do you remember of Scotland?”

  “Some, your majesty. I know it to be a backward, rough country filled with barbarians.” That wasn’t exactly his memory of the place, but it was the expected description. “I have not been there since I first came to my father’s manor at Stanwix when I was ten and two. I have but few memories of my time there.” Few he’d share at any rate.

  The king ran a finger and thumb over his mustache, smoothing it in a gesture Nicholas had seen often. “Do you remember enough of the Scots to become one?” He turned to face Nicholas and captured his gaze. “I have seen you become a Welshman in the blink of an eye. Can you do the same as a Scotsman?”

  Being a spy required the ability to blend in with those spied upon. The ability to throw oneself into whatever life was required, body and soul, often made the difference between success and death. Early on, when first he’d come to his father’s manor in northern England, Nicholas had discovered he had a knack for going unnoticed. When his father refused to acknowledge him, Nicholas had survived by blending in with the other kitchen lads and keeping out of sight of his sire. He also began to learn how to trade in information, securing his position by such means when he had to, until he’d decided to move on to London.

  The skill had served him well over the years, eventually landing him right here in the king’s service.

  But could he become a Scotsman?

  He’d only met one or two Scots in all his travels as an adult so he reached into those childhood memories he thought he’d forgotten, only to discover they were right there, waiting for him. He remembered the sound of his mother’s voice, the cadence, the way she had rolled her R’s and swallowed the odd Scottish sound for what a proper Englishman would pronounce as a K. He remembered the way her sentences ended on an uplifting lilt, as if every utterance were a question.

  “Well?” Edward demanded.

  Nicholas reached deeper into his long-buried memories, reminding his senses of the Highland warriors he had trailed after as a wee boy. He adjusted his stance, imagining himself barefoot, clad in a length of heavy plaid he had once tried to wear when he was a lad.

  He imagined a two-handed broadsword in his hands, the wind off the Highland mountains whipping his hair into wild tangles, as he remembered seeing the chief of his mother’s clan once, a long time ago. He chose a name for himself that was fitting—Nicholas of Achnamara—his Scottish name given to him by a mother who did not want him.

  Opening his eyes, he looked at Edward, allowing all the natural impertinence he’d carefully suppressed over the years to flood into his own.

  “Aye, m’laird. I do not speak the Gaelic well anymore, but ’twould need only a wee bit of mummery to pass as a Scot long banished from my bonny Highland home.”

  Edward stared, silent, brooding. At last he nodded. “I do not know how you do that, but I am well pleased that you wield such a skill for England.”

  “I am your servant, as ever.” Nicholas stood straight again, dropping the musical lilt from his voice with relief and an unsettling feeling he could not pinpoint. “I am to go to Scotland?”

  “You are. This task calls for your particular skill at passing for what you are not, though in this case that is perhaps not entirely true. It calls for subtlety, for manipulation, for a greater ability to win information from unwilling sources than most spies hold. You are most skilled in all these areas, are you not?”

  “I am, my lord.”

  Edward turned his back on Nicholas and paced away from the window. When he reached the far side of the room he turned back, eyes narrowed as if he weighed the man.

  “You know the Stone of Destiny was taken from Scone, in Scotland, and brought to me.”

  “The coronation stone of the Scots? I do.”

  “It was supposed to break their spirit, make them see that I am the rightful king of Scotland, but the barbarians still refuse to give me their fealty.”

  Edward was not termed the “Hammer of the Scots” because he felt affection for the people there. The king had a volatile temper in the best of circumstances, and anything involving the Scots was never the best of circumstances. Nicholas said nothing and kept his expression neutral, though the flicker of pride he felt in the stubborn irascible Scots surprised him.

  “It has come to my attention that there is another object that is held in great esteem by the Scots, an object with the power to protect those Highland brutes from invasion, or so says their superstitious tale.” Edward strode to an ornately carved chair that sat near the hearth and threw himself into it, scraping the chair backward over the planked floor. He motioned for Nicholas to come closer.

  “It is called the Highland Targe,” the king said, ridicule thick in his voice and in the dismissive wave of his hand.

  “A shield?” Nicholas asked, holding his hands toward the heat of the roaring fire. He’d seen targes aplenty as a lad—round, wooden shields, often with short spikes sticking out of their centers. The Scots favored them as weapons as well as for defense.

  “The story is that there is a clan in the southwestern Highlands who are the keepers of this Highland Targe. Clearly it has not done its job,” the king said derisively. “But the Highlanders of the area lay great store in its powers and use it as a means of rallying resistance against their rightful king.

  “I want you to find this pagan idol. I want you to bring it to me so they will know they cannot keep anything from me, that anything they hold in high esteem, other than their rightful sovereign, shall be taken from them.”

  “Do you know more about where this Highland Targe might be, sire?” The Highlands were a wild country, vast, dangerous, and difficult to traverse. And they were beautiful in a way he’d never found elsewhere. A long-buried ache threatened to break loose within him, but he crushed it back into the darkness, as he always did.

  “It seems to be somewhere in the vicinity of a village called Oban, on the southwestern coast, though my man in the area has been unable to learn anything more specific than that.

  “You will make your way there as soon as possible. Move north as the weather breaks. I trust in your abilities to find the Targe from there.”

  “Very good.” He buried the ambivalence that threatened to drown out the familiar thrill of a new undertaking humming in his veins. He had an assignment from the king and he would not let any regrets from his past interfere. “Am I to make contact with your man when I get there?”

  “Aye. You know him well already: Archibald of Easton.”

  He did. Archie and he often worked together on the king’s business. The man was the closest thing Nicholas had to a friend, but he was not the most skilled spy with whom Nicholas had worked. He tended to take short cuts and rush into things before all the facts were gathered. Still, they had had many a successful adventure on the king’s business.

  But… His mind spun quickly through various possibilities. If Archie had been unable to learn no more about the Highland Targe than its general location, the door was open for Nicholas to sweep in and work his particular brand of spying magic, especially since he had lived as a Highlander and understood them as Archie never would.

  He would work with Archie, but it would be Nicholas’s efforts that would make the mission a success and would seal Nicholas’s place as the king’s most favored spy, a position he’d worked long and hard to reach and one he would not forfeit for anyone.

  Edward met Nicholas’s eyes and held him in his steely gaze. “Archibald has been instructed to expect you and to share everything he has learned
. The two of you may well be able to accomplish what he alone has not been able to.

  “I expect you will deliver the prize by midsummer’s eve. If you cannot transport it, destroy it and send me a piece of it as testament to your success. I know my trust in your abilities is not misplaced, Nicholas.”

  Pride filled Nicholas’s chest. “I will not fail you, sire.”

  “I am counting on that.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  Scottish Highlands, Spring 1307

  ROWAN MACGREGOR OPENED the wooden shutters, letting the weak spring sunshine into her aunt Elspet MacAlpin’s bedchamber. The large room at the top of the tower that housed the MacAlpin clan chief’s family had small windows that looked both into the castle bailey and out to the glorious country that surrounded Dunlairig Castle.

  Rowan took a deep breath of the air flowing in through the window. It was cool and crisp, and filled with the aromas of spring—damp earth, growing plants, new life. The freshness of it quickly overcame the heat of the room and diminished the sickly sweet smell of illness that pervaded the chamber. Briefly Rowan wished she could escape the room and take to the familiar greening slope of the forested ben outside the window. It was a small mountain compared to others that rose around them. This one, though, for all its lack of imposing height, rose steeply from the deep loch below the castle except for the large, nearly flat area the castle perched on, not too far up the slope from the loch.

  She took one more deep lungful of the fresh spring air, then turned back to the chamber and the women who were mother and sister to her in her heart, if not her blood. Her aunt loved this time of year and if the fresh air enticed her out of her sickbed, even for a little while, it was worth the chill.

  “ ’Tis a beautiful day at last, Mum,” Jeanette, Elspet’s blond-haired, blue-eyed eldest daughter, said, tucking another blanket around the frail woman. “Do you not want to go outside for a wee while?”