A lacking her puissant husband, Duncan MacKenzie, the Black Stag of Kintail, accepted with notable tolerance. E’er a man apart, he even complimented her most inept efforts, never letting on that her skills were anything but splendiferous.
Forbearance she did not expect when he returned from paying a call to Kenneth, their nephew, and discovered that her dread taibhsearachd had once again visited her.
Linnet glanced at the hearth fire and sighed. Even after a long and happy marriage, her otherwise fearless husband still felt ill at ease when it came to her special gift.
Her second sight.
As seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, the taibhsearachd was something she’d lived with since birth. And while it was ofttimes a blessing, it was more often a curse.
“Aye, a curse,” she muttered, letting out a shaky breath.
Shuddering, she set aside her needlework and wriggled her stiff and tired fingers. It was no use sitting on her hearthside stool, jabbing her needle into the hapless cloth. Her gift had unleashed a nightmare this time, and all her usual distractions were failing her.
She couldn’t forget what she’d seen.
Or undo its truth.
The action she’d set into motion because of it; a bold undertaking sure to unleash her husband’s wrath.
“O-o-oh, he’ll be sore vexed,” she admitted, speaking to Mungo, a tiny brown-and-white dog curled at her feet and who belonged to her stepson, Robbie, and his lady wife, Juliana.
Biting her lip, she reached down and tousled the dog’s floppy ears, gladly obliging when he rolled onto his back to have his belly rubbed.
With Robbie off with Duncan at Kenneth’s recently restored Cuidrach Castle, and Juliana gone at Linnet’s own behest, wee Mungo was in her care.
And from the way the little dog trotted after her, never leaving her side, she could almost believe that he, too, possessed a touch of her gift. That he knew how much trouble would soon descend upon her.
Sure of it, she moistened her lips and stood, grateful to stretch her legs and move about the lady’s solar. Even if she would’ve preferred awaiting Duncan’s return on the wall walk of Eilean Creag’s high-towered battlements, as was her usual wont. A habit she doubted she’d allow herself to indulge for a good, long while.
Not after such a fright.
Shuddering again, she hugged herself, rubbing her arms until the gooseflesh receded.
Only then did she glance at the carefully bolted window shutters, wishing she could risk opening them to the brisk evening breeze.
But she didn’t dare.
Sparing herself a repetition of the grim vision she’d seen the last time she’d looked upon the still, shining waters of Loch Duich was more important than filling her lungs with fresh night air.
Air she knew she’d need as soon as the door flew wide and she came face-to-face with Duncan wearing his most thunderous expression.
An unpleasantness that was about to crash down upon her, for she could hear angry voices and the sound of hurrying feet pounding up the turnpike stair.
Two sets of heavy, masculine feet.
Accompanied by two identical glares, for Robbie would be with him and equally displeased.
Then, before she could even smooth a hand over her hair or shake out her skirts, the door burst open and the two men swept into the room. Chill night wind from the stairwell’s arrow slit windows gusted in as well, its rushing draught gutting a few candles and making the torch flames flicker wildly.
But not near so wild as her husband looked.
Frowning darkly, he strode forward, sword-clanking and windblown, his eyes blazing. “Saints, Maria, and Joseph!” he roared, staring at her. “Tell me you haven’t sent my daughters to the north. To anywhere. And without my consent!”
Looking equally mud-stained and disheveled, Robbie shook his head, his expression more of disbelief than fury. “Surely we misheard.” He glanced at his father. “Juliana would ne’er ride off without telling me. If she had need to make a journey, she would’ve waited until I returned from my own.”
“She went because I asked her. She—” Linnet broke off when Mungo streaked past her to hurtle himself at Robbie’s legs.
Scooping him up, her stepson clasped the little dog to his chest, some of the darkness slipping from his face, washed away by Mungo’s excited wags and yippings, his wet slurpy kisses.
Duncan snorted.
His brow black as his tangled, shoulder-length hair, he ignored his son and the squirming dog and glanced around the fire-lit room before heading straight to a table set with cheese and oatcakes, an ewer of heather ale. Helping himself to a brimming cup of the frothy brew, he downed it in one long gulp, then swung back around, looking no less fierce for having refreshed himself.
“God’s wounds, woman, I have loved you for long.” He narrowed his eyes on her, his stare piercing. “But this is beyond all. I canna say what I will do if aught happens to either of my girls.”
Linnet clasped her hands before her and lifted her chin. “Our daughters are well able to look after themselves,” she returned, meeting his glare. “They are escorted by a company of your best guardsmen. Juliana”—she glanced at Robbie— “accompanied them for propriety’s sake.”
“That doesn’t tell me why they are gone,” Duncan shot back, looking at her long and hard.
“You know I would have known if danger awaited them.”
“Faugh.” He folded his arms. “’Tis still a bad business.”
Linnet held her ground, flicked at her skirts. “I sent them away for a reason.”
Duncan arched a brow. “And would that be the same reason you’ve barricaded yourself in here with all the shutters drawn tight? You, with your love of fresh air and open windows?”
“To be sure, I would rather have the shutters flung wide,” Linnet admitted, lowering herself onto her stool. “I—”
“By the saints!” Robbie’s voice echoed in her ears, already sounding distant, hollow. “Father, do you not see?”
Vaguely, Linnet was aware of Robbie setting down Mungo, then grabbing his father’s arm, shaking him. “She’s closed the shutters to block the view of the loch! Like as not, she’s had another one of her spells. The taibhsearachd …”
But Linnet heard no more.
Truth be told, she wasn’t even in the lady’s solar anymore, but standing on the parapet walk of Eilean Creag’s battlements, enjoying the wind in her face and a splendid Highland sunset.
A glorious one, with the still waters of Loch Duich reflecting the jagged cliffs and headlands, the long line of heather and bracken-clad hills rolling away beyond the loch’s narrow, shingled shore.
Only then the open moors and rolling hills trembled and shook, drawing ever nearer until the vastness of Loch Duich narrowed to a treacherous defile. A deep, black-rimmed gorge hemming a rushing, raging torrent, all white water, rocks, and spume.
Linnet cried out and reached for support, her legs threatening to buckle as she clung to the parapet wall and stared down at the vision before her, the most-times tranquil loch’s dim-shining waters nowhere to be seen.
She saw only the steep-sided ravine and the churning, boiling water. The deadly, racing cataracts and the black, glistening rocks lining the water’s edge and thrusting upward through the flying spray.
The tall, well-built Highlander caught in the furious cauldron, his strapping body crashing against the rocks, then shooting onward, downstream, tossing and rolling in the wicked current, his plaid and streaming auburn hair the only notable color in a whirl of frothing, life-stealing white.
But then the white narrowed further, becoming nothing more ominous than the whiteness of her own bright-gleaming knuckles as she held tight to the cold stone of a merlon in the battlements’ crenellated walling.
The horror was past.
Linnet drew a great quivering breath and blinked, half-expecting to find herself slumped against the stone merlon, a chill night wind tearing across the ramparts, buf
feting her trembling body and whipping her hair. But she was in her tapestry-hung lady’s solar, the window shutters still securely latched and the hearth fire crackling pleasantly as if nothing had happened.
Sadly, she knew otherwise.
And from the looks of them, so did her husband and her stepson.
“Holy Christ, Linnet,” Duncan swore, proving it.
He knelt before her, holding her hands in a bone-crunching grip, all vexation gone from his handsome face. “Why didn’t you tell us straightaway why you were holing yourself up in here?”
He glanced at Robbie, took the ale cup he offered him and pressed it against her lips. “Drink,” he urged, looking almost as shaken as she felt. “Then tell us what this has to do with Arabella and Gelis.”
“And Juliana,” Robbie added, likewise dropping to his knees in the floor rushes.
Linnet blinked again, still dimly aware of the tragedy she’d just seen. And for the second time. She shivered, gratefully taking another swallow of the heather ale.
Seeing the vision twice only underscored its inevitability.
“Our girls and Juliana will be fine,” she said when she could speak. “’Tis Young Jamie that concerns me. He is the reason I sent them to Baldreagan. To—”
“‘Baldreagan’?” Duncan’s jaw slipped. “Every clapper-tongued kinsman belowstairs claimed you’d sent them to visit Juliana’s Strathnaver kin and then on to Assynt, to spend time with Archibald Macnicol and his sons at Dunach.”
“That you’d hoped Kenneth’s wife’s father might know of suitable husbands,” Robbie put in.
“I may have said something of like,” she owned, a bit of color returning to her cheeks. “Archibald is a great northern chieftain and his sons are making distinguished names for themselves.”
She sat up straighter on her stool. “The girls are of marriageable age,” she said, her tone and the jut of her chin revealing she was now fully recovered. “Some might even say past marriageable age.”
Duncan sniffed.
His foul mood returning, he pushed to his feet. “What do my daughters’ tender ages have to do with James Macpherson?” He stared down at her, his hands fisted around his sword belt. “You know he quit service with Kenneth to return home to wed, if Kenneth had the rights of it.”
To his surprise, his wife shook her head. “He returned home to die,” she said, her voice catching.
“To die?” Duncan could feel his eyes bugging out.
His wife nodded. “I’ve seen his death,” she said, sounding so sure of it, his nape prickled. “He is going to drown in the Rough Waters, just like his brothers. That’s why I sent the girls. On a pretense to order a new stirk for you, but, in truth, to urge Jamie to be careful.”
Duncan’s head began to ache. “Have you not always told me naught could be done to alter such things as you sometimes see?”
“Aye, that is the way of it,” she admitted, looking miserable. “And I warned the girls not to let on to Jamie what they know. Such knowledge might bring on his doom with greater rapidity.”
“Then why send them in the first place?”
“Because they are sensitive enough to know who at Baldreagan they can trust,” she said, looking at him as if he were a simpleton. “They’ll find the right soul to warn.”
Duncan grunted. “If a warning was all you hoped to accomplish, why didn’t you just send word to old Devorgilla of Doon? She could have worked a spell or winked at the moon and sped a message to Baldreagan without my daughters needing to traipse clear across Kintail.”
His wife pressed her lips together, clearly annoyed. “Devorgilla knows without messengers when her aid is needed,” she finally said. “Just as I know some action is required of me when I am visited by my gift.”
Getting slowly to her feet, she walked past him to the little table spread with oatcakes, cheese, and ale. “If Devorgilla is meant to help Jamie, she will,” she added, looking down at the table but touching nothing. “For myself, I have done all I could.”
“And if neither your help nor Devorgilla’s is needed?” Robbie joined her at the table, helping himself to a good-sized chunk of cheese. “What if it wasn’t Jamie you saw? But one of his already drowned brothers?”
“By God, he’s right!” Duncan flashed an admiring glance at his son. “Those Macpherson lads all looked alike.”
Replenishing his ale cup, he drank deeply. “Aye, that will be the way of it,” he declared, looking immensely pleased.
“Nay, that was not the way of it.” Linnet glanced up from the table; she could feel the heat flooding her face. “It was definitely Jamie. There can be no mistaking.”
“No mistaking?” Duncan and Robbie chorused.
She shook her head. “None whatsoever.”
Duncan stepped closer. “And how can you be so sure?”
“Jamie squired here,” Linnet reminded him, unable to meet his eyes.
“Jamie, Lachlan, and a goodly number of others as well,” he shot back, eyeing her significantly. “I dinna see what that has to do with it.”
It had everything to do with it—and was something she just couldn’t push past her lips.
“Squires and young knights often take their baths in the kitchens,” she blurted at last, hoping they’d understand.
But they didn’t.
Both her husband and her son stood gawping at her, slack-jawed and owl-eyed.
Totally uncomprehending.
Certain her flaming face would soon burn brighter than the hearth log, she blew out an agitated breath and said the only other thing remaining: “Jamie is a big lad.”
Duncan and Robbie exchanged glances.
Neither spoke.
But after a moment, a pink tinge began to bloom onto Robbie’s cheeks. “Oh,” he said.
“Exactly,” Linnet agreed, grateful at least one of them understood. “And that is how I know it was him. By the time his body reached the deep pools at the end of the rapids, his plaid had been torn from him and he was naked.”
“Naked?” Duncan echoed, making it worse.
Linnet nodded. “Naked and tossed about often enough in the water for me to know without a doubt that I was looking at James Macpherson. Young James of the Heather.”
The image still branded in her memory, she paced to the nearest window and yanked open the shutters, at last breathing in the brisk, strengthening air she so sorely needed.
“And,” she added, staring down at the night-blackened waters of Loch Duich, “if naught can be done to prevent it, he will soon be as dead as his brothers.”
Jamie’s hope for a pleasant evening spent wooing Aveline Matheson before the hearth fire vanished the instant they rode into Baldreagan’s bailey and he spied the chaos.
Anything but emptied and quiet—the castle inhabitants tucked in and snug for the night—the supposed house of mourning appeared under siege.
And he and his bride seemed to have arrived right smack in the middle of the assault.
An invasion by MacKenzies!
Jamie’s brow furrowed, but there could be no doubt. He’d spent half his life at Eilean Creag, squiring for the castle’s formidable laird. He’d recognize these bearded, plaid-hung clansmen anywhere.
As would any Highlander; leastways those of a warrior bent. The MacKenzies were amongst the most fierce fighting men to stride the heather, commanding respect and awe where’er they went. As generous and openhanded to their friends as they struck dread into the hearts of their foes.
And Jamie knew them as friends. The very best of friends.
“Suffering saints,” he breathed, their presence transporting him to another, larger and more imposing bailey.
His heart clenched and at once a flood of memories crashed over him.
Good memories.
These men weren’t just any MacKenzies. They were the Black Stag’s men, and some of his best, if Jamie’s eyes weren’t lying to him.
Braw stalwarts to a man. Kintail’s pride.
Swinging down onto the cobbles, Jamie looked around. The whole of the moonlit courtyard teemed with men, skittish horses and excited, barking dogs.
He even caught sight of his own beast, Cuillin. Ever in the thick of things, the old dog’s shuffling gait and milky eyes didn’t stop him from joining in the revel and din.
But the MacKenzies caused the greatest commotion.
There were scores of them and they hastened hither and thither, some hefting heavy travel bags on their shoulders, others helping Baldreagan’s stable lads carry extra hay and grain into the stables lining the far wall of the bailey.
Stables with room to house at least sixty horses, though considering the ruckus coming from that direction, he guessed a good many more were now squeezed into its stalls. A few had even been crammed into the sheep pens near the postern gate and if that wasn’t surprising enough, light blazed from every window of his father’s five-storied keep.
But before he could wonder about the unexpected visit, he felt a touch on his arm. Aveline stood peering up at him, her eyes round and luminous. Her pale, flaxen hair shimmered in the moonlight and she looked so beautiful he almost forgot to breathe.
He had forgotten to help her dismount.
Already a stable lad was running forward to see to her riderless steed.
Jamie bit back a curse. “My apologies,” he said, jamming a hand through his hair. “I meant to lift you down, but I was so surprised—”
“I don’t need apologies.” She leaned into him, a fetching twinkle in her eyes. “Just as I didn’t melt in the rain back at the cairns, neither will I shatter if I slide off a horse unaided.”
She stood on her toes, pressing a quick kiss to his lips.
A quick, soft kiss, and with just enough hint of tongue to make him wish they were still in the sheltering dark of St. Maelrhuba’s chapel and not the crowded bailey.
But already she was pulling away.
“Of course, you were surprised,” she said, glancing around at the bustle. “Who would have thought we’d find Baldreagan overrun with MacKenzies?”
Jamie looked at her. “You know them?”
Aveline smoothed her cloak, suddenly uncomfortable.
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