Sue-Ellen Welfonder

by Master of the Highlands

  ’Twas the clan’s greatest treasure.

  And his father and every MacLean laird before him would return from their graves in protest if e’er it passed through Baldoon’s gates.

  Some amongst the elders even claimed tragedy of untold proportions would be released if e’er it did.

  “The tragedy has already come to pass,” Donall said, confirming Iain’s conviction that, at times, his brother could read minds. “A heavy sacrifice must be made lest greater ill befall this house.” He paused, his dark eyes narrowing. “Or would you rather I commanded you put to the cliff?”

  “So my penance is to deliver our family’s most valued treasure into the hands of Dunkeld’s canons?”

  “Taking gifts—humble offerings—to Dunkeld to replace what they’ve lost is your duty as my brother, and son of this house.” Donall regarded Iain for a long moment, then slid a meaningful look at Gavin MacFie. “He will accompany you.”

  “MacFie?” Iain glanced at the burly Islesman.

  Not unpleasant to the eye, Gavin MacFie stood head and shoulders over most men, had an open, honest face, and warm hazel eyes. His thick auburn hair could be called a bit unruly, but he kept his beard neatly trimmed.

  And at the moment, he shuffled his brogue-clad feet in the floor rushes and looked more uncomfortable than Iain had e’er seen him.

  The bampot’s ill ease fueled Iain’s own. “Do the good saints have a score to settle with him as well?”

  “Nary a one,” Donall said, his voice sounding tired. “He goes solely to keep an eye on you, and”—he paused, a look very close to genuine sympathy clouding his face—“to make certain you heed your penance.”

  “So at last you tell me the whole of it.” Iain folded his arms. He’d known there’d be more.

  Donall released his breath on a resigned sigh.

  Iain tensed, and waited.

  Though, in truth, his brother’s sigh, followed by a brief glance at the raftered ceiling, proved eloquent enough.

  “I want you gone before daybreak,” Donall said, his voice surprisingly soft for such harsh words. “On your journey to Perthshire, you shall draw halt at every sacred place you happen upon. Be it holy well or tree, stone cross or martyr’s shrine, you are to prostrate yourself and pray to be purged of your temper.”

  “And you’ve charged MacFie with assuring I do?”

  Donall gave him a tight-lipped nod.

  The MacFie’s face turned near the same shade of red as his unruly hair.

  Cruel and swift, comprehension swept aside all remaining vestiges of Iain’s befuddlement. He stared at his brother—now every inch his laird—the glimmer of regret in Donall’s dark eyes smiting him more than aught else.

  “Is that all?” he managed, his voice blessedly void of emotion.

  Donall lifted a hand, and for the space of a heartbeat, Iain half expected him to reach for him, mayhap clasp him to his breast in a gesture of brotherly camaraderie— something he could have sorely used—but Donall lowered the hand as quickly.

  “There is more, aye,” he admitted, the words thick and choked-sounding… as if dredged from the most desolate corner of his soul.

  Iain waited, his defenses already throwing up shields.

  “Christ God, but I loathe that we’ve come to this,” Donall vowed, his lairdly reserve breaking. A shudder ran the length of him, and when it had passed, he was once again all chief, his face expressionless.

  He cleared his throat. “As the first rains of spring come gently, then gradually build to a steady, lashing downpour, so have we suffered your increasing foulness of mood”—he paused to draw a breath—“You must now brave the fury of the storm you’ve called upon yourself.”

  Iain braced himself and hoped no one else heard the roar of his blood, the wild knocking of his heart.

  “You, Iain, younger son of the great house of MacLean, shall ne’er again set foot on Doon lest you adequately master your temper,” Donall declared, his voice rife with finality. “As I and the Council of Elders have decided, so be it.”

  So be it.

  Hours later, long after moonrise, the words still echoed in Iain’s splitting head, and much to his annoyance, his every attempt to outstrip them proved a fool’s exercise in futility.

  The devil himself couldn’t craft a more fruitless pursuit.

  Nor one so maddening.

  Salt wind whipping his hair and stinging his eyes, he spurred his shaggy-coated garron down Doon’s wee strip of a boat strand. Faster and faster he rode, streaking past thatch-roofed fisher cottages and sailing over any impediments daring to rise in his path.

  And still the shame of his banishment held pace with him, its black portent pounding through him in macabre rhythm with the drumming clatter of his horse’s hooves on the pebbled beach.

  Ne’er again set foot…

  Iain frowned, a fresh tide of anger washing over him, his fiercest scowl powerless against the pursuing words. They tore after him with the persistence of sleuth-hounds fast on a scent.

  Equally persistent, and even more troubling, came the uneasy sensation of being watched.

  Observed by unseen eyes, his progress along the moon-silvered beach more than well noted and not by the auburn-headed lout riding so annoyingly close beside him.

  Blinking against the lashing wind, Iain risked a glance at his brother’s friend—now his guardian—half-expecting, nay, hoping, to find the knave’s hazel-eyed perusal fixed on him.

  But Gavin MacFie appeared wholly concentrated on matching Iain’s reckless pace whilst skirting, or jumping his own garron over the many upturned skiffs and coracles scattered about the narrow, crescent-shaped beach.

  If anything, the easy-mannered oaf seemed intent on not looking at him.

  But someone—or something—was. He could feel it in the chills rippling up and down his spine, the ill ease seeping into his bones.

  And whoe’er, or whate’er it was, probed relentlessly.

  The sensation sent a maelstrom of icy shivers speeding over his nerve endings and deeper: unholy tingles twisting through him in search of a chink in his armor, a way past his barriers for a glimpse at his soul.

  His heart.

  An organ so withered and forsaken, even he didn’t care to examine its depths.

  Warier by the moment, Iain shot a quick look at the wind-tossed sweep of the curving bay where full two score of MacLean galleys rocked at their moorings.

  Their sails neatly furled, the single masts and upthrusting sterns and prows made black silhouettes against the pearl gray sky. Each warship banked twenty-six oars, though a few boasted forty, and one or two only had sixteen.

  Swift and feared at sea, this clear and windy night the galleys lay impotent and silent, their rocking slumber guarded by the enclosing headlands, the lot of them at peace… save one.

  His brother’s prized birlinn, a sleek twenty-six-oared beauty, the pearl of the fleet, waited patiently for Iain. Already drawn halfway onto the strand, seamen swarmed all over and around it, busily preparing for a hasty departure.

  A knot of dark-frowning crewmen struggled with two packhorses, their attempts at cajoling the poor beasts into stepping over the vessel’s low-slung side reaping little more from the frightened animals than white-eyed snorts of protest.

  Humblies, full-bearded and naked of chest, stood waist deep in the foaming surf, the open sea behind them, each man ready to hurl his all into pushing the birlinn into the deeper, wider waters. Others, seasoned MacLean seamen, bustled about on board, clearly eager for the shipmaster’s order to raise the great square sail.

  But Iain scarce noticed the scrambling men, hardly heard their shouts and chants… and took even less heed of someone’s repetitive beating on a metal-studded targe. His gut clenching, he focused on the ship’s long row of vacant-eyed oarports.

  Every last one of them seemed to bore holes straight into him.

  Disquieting stares, accusing and cold, but by no means penetrating.

  Na
y, that particular nuisance came from a much greater distance than the soon-to-be-launched birlinn.

  That much he knew.

  Cursing beneath his breath, he dug in his heels, urging his mount into a full gallop, but the instant his beast obliged, surging forward in a great burst of speed, it found the sought-after chink.

  A wee but patently vulnerable fissure in his heart, a crack narrower than a hairbreadth, but a weak spot all the same, and so well hidden he would’ve ne’er believed it existed.

  But it did, and all his senses roared with the knowledge, the impact loosing a fresh tide of the strange tingles.

  Tingles no longer cold and menacing, but fluid and warm.

  Heated and beguiling.

  And spilling unchecked into long-neglected areas of his body, the prickly sensation now a stunningly golden warmth. Dangerously seductive, and spiraling round his nether parts… much like a woman’s gently curling fingers.

  Nay, more like the swirling tongue of a well-skilled temptress.

  A very well-skilled temptress.

  “Dia!” Iain near shot off his saddle, his maleness set afire, tightening in immediate and direst response to the exhilarating waves of tingling heat whirling across and through his groin.

  He did slip, lurching crazily to the left and almost losing his seat.

  “Before you!” Gavin MacFie cried, his shout slicing through the madness.

  The spell shattered, Iain grabbed his saddlebow, righting himself just in time to hurtle round a looming mound of broken creels and barnacle-encrusted drying nets.

  Barreling up beside him, Gavin seized his reins, jerking Iain’s steed to a skittering halt. “Have you run mad?” he panted, his eyes wide, his face pale beneath his freckles. “You near plowed straight into that stinking pile.”

  Iain only stared at him, his hands clutching the saddlebow so tightly his knuckles gleamed white. He couldn’t have answered if his life depended on it… his throat had completely closed and his mouth felt drier than cold ash, his tongue withered and more useless than the tarse he’d believed good for naught but relieving himself.

  Aye, I’ve run mad he wanted to shout, his inability to do so vexing beyond belief.

  He’d run full mad and then some, for the golden warmth that had sluiced through him with such a vengeance had done more than stir his long cold vitals… it had begun to melt the outermost edges of his heart.

  Yanking back his horse’s reins, he stared up at the heavens, utter turmoil whirling through him, the last aftertremors of the strange, crackling heat still rippling the length of him, curling through his limbs.

  He blew out an agitated breath, indulged himself by tossing a glower at Gavin.

  How could he ‘lose his hotheadedness’ when he might well have lost his mind?

  His quandary heavy on his shoulders, he kicked the sides of his still-heaving mount and, leaving MacFie to follow or nay, spurred down the remaining stretch of beach, the familiar cold already stretching its icy fingers back round his sorry excuse for a heart.

  And several nights later, as his brother’s well-manned birlinn sped him across the silver-glinting waters of the Hebridean Sea, a wholly different kind of cold plagued Madeline Drummond.

  Many miles distant, she tossed and moaned in a fitful sleep. The best she could hope for in the dubious shelter of an abandoned cot-house. Fist-sized chinks in the walls bid entry to the knifing wind, while the cold damp of the earthen floor seeped with ease through her borrowed cloak.

  Beneath two nubby-wooled plaids, Nella’s generous warmth pressed protectively against her, but even that well-meant comfort failed to banish the chill.

  Nor ease the darkness of the anguished heart hammering so fiercely in her breast… a heart not her own, but clinging to hers in need. As it had done each night since she and Nella had left Abercairn.

  ’Twas a strong-pounding heart, a man’s, and a good one.

  Just badly damaged and in direst need of repair.

  The succor of light and warmth.

  Another blast of icy wind whistled through the gaps in the wall, sending more shivers down Madeline’s spine, a fresh bout of gooseflesh across her chilled skin. But neither the cold nor her troubled dreams kept her heart from reaching for the pained one seeking such desperate union with hers.

  So as she slumbered, even long after the blustery night had calmed, some needy part of her own deepest self sent the shadowy man of her dreams all the golden heat and brightness she could summon.

  And hoped upon hope that if good fortune hadn’t abandoned her completely, one of these nights she’d reach him.

  Chapter Three

  ALMS! FOR THE SAKE OF good St. Kentigern, have mercy!”

  The raised voices of the wretched grated on Iain’s ears as, a fortnight later, he swung down from his garron before the crowded steps of the west entrance to Glasgow Cathedral.

  Scowling, he tossed his horse’s reins to one of the two young but well-muscled seamen his brother had deigned to send with him, and tried in vain to close his nose to the foul reek all around him.

  Quarreling dogs and the cries of peddlers behind their market stalls added to the general confusion, while the smells of raw meat, ale, and new bread blended with the stench of the slow-moving torrent of humanity, the whole proving a malodorous blight against the day’s brilliant sunshine and cloudless skies.

  A strong gust of wind whipped at his cloak, the brisk kind of wind that would have been clean and fresh if blowing across the rolling moorlands of his Hebridean home, but here…

  Shuddering, he set his jaw and silently cursed the need to inhale. Ne’er had he seen such an assemblage of miserables. Naught he’d encountered thus far had prepared him for the teeming mass of the luckless pressing into the cathedral.

  Each hapless soul, worthy or unworthy, crept, crawled, or limped forward, a motley gathering of cure seekers eager to perform devotions at the saint’s tomb.

  All hoping for a miracle.

  Or a dole.

  An old man hobbling along on one leg blundered past him, a dark swarm of humming flies buzzing about open sores on the unfortunate’s arms and neck. Bile rising in his throat, Iain leapt out of the man’s way only to find himself jostled by filth-encrusted children and a gaggle of witless women. Mumbling disjointed prayers and nonsense, they trailed after a young lass with a withered arm and a face cruelly marred by the pox.

  Half-afraid of losing what scant victuals he’d imbibed that morn, he scanned the full-packed closes and wynds opening off the crowded High Street, desperately searching for a swift escape route and finding none.

  Lest he wished to scale the well-guarded walls of the nearby canons’ manses and risk a wild dash through their sequestered gardens. Frowning, Iain cast aside the notion as quickly as it had come.

  Any such action would only give MacFie a new scandal to report to his brother.

  Nay, flight would not prove easy.

  Still, a fierce instinct for self-preservation drove him to dig in his heels and keep looking. Sadly, to his great regret, he saw only chaos.

  Monks and friars milled about, selflessly lending what aid they could to the lame and the needy, their well-meant efforts repeatedly hindered by scamps and charlatans faking the direst ailments in hopes of an obol.

  Some of these latter even writhed on the cobbled pavement, the bubbling foam on their lips smelling more like sharp-scented soap than the froth of the truly diseased.

  Iain pressed the back of his hand against his mouth and nostrils. Very soon, he would be diseased—sorely afflicted of stark, raving madness—if he didn’t find an immediate way to procure himself out of this stinking sea of calamities and cutthroats.

  “Nay, nay, nay. A thousand times nay.” Bracing his legs in a defiant posture, he folded his arms and leveled his most resolute stare—one of firm refusal—at Gavin MacFie. “A score of mean-tempered, whip-wielding fishwives couldn’t persuade me to take another step. And I care not a merry whit what you report to Dona
ll, nor how blessed the good St. Kenti—”

  “Your brother laid particular worth on your paying proper homage to St. Kentigern,” Gavin cut him off, his voice infuriatingly smooth. With a show of determination every bit as hard-bitten as Iain’s, he slanted a telling glance at the second young seaman… the one guarding the two sumpter beasts and their precious cargo.

  The one who, though a mite lack-witted, stood a few inches taller than the good-sized MacFie himself—and packed more muscled might in his wee finger than Iain’s, Donall’s, and Gavin’s irrefutable brawn combined.

  “The choice is yours, my friend.” Gavin watched him, his usually sunny face set in solemn lines.

  Slowly stretching his arms above his head, he cracked his knuckles… and had the poor taste to appear as at ease as if they stood in the middle of the sweetest spring meadow, and not elbow to elbow with the unwashed, unkempt, and diseased. “Go peaceably as befits your station and your purpose here, or…” He lifted broad-set shoulders, the simple gesture more eloquent than any further threats.

  Spoken or unspoken.

  Iain glowered at him, then slid a furious look at the seaman, secretly suspecting MacFie of feeding the mucker sweetmeats or mayhap wide-legged lasses just so the oversized lout would e’er do his bidding.

  And do it unquestioningly.

  Too vexed to concede—yet—Iain squared his wide-set shoulders and drew himself to his full height… an imposing tallness all but a scant hairbreadth short of Gavin’s own. “I am your laird’s brother,” he declared, trying to lay authority into the words. “Save Amicia, his closest kin.”

  “You are doing penance,” Gavin returned with an all but imperceptible nod at the well-muscled giant.

  The young seaman stepped closer.

  Heat inching up the back of his neck, Iain ignored the implied threat and narrowed his eyes at his unsmiling companion. His gaoler. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  Silence answered him.

  “You would.”

  Gavin cocked an impervious brow. “If you leave me no other choice, aye.”

  For a long tension-filled moment, Iain pressed his lips together, frustration, hot and seething, coursing through his veins. “Then lead on,” he ground out at last, with a quick upward glance at the impossibly blue sky. “If you can plow a way inside.”