Highlanders for the Holidays: 4 Hot Scots

by Glynnis Campbell

  “For that, we may thank your Da,” the MacKinnon suggested.

  Hugh’s cheeks burned hot.

  What had he done now? Of course, he would be their demon, their ogre. He was the monster who stole in at night to steal little children from their beds—

  Except that he had.

  Not Hugh precisely, though of course, he was the one who’d detained young Malcom for the king. FitzSimon studied the youth a bit closer, realizing with a start that he recognized the face. It belonged to none other than the child he’d once harbored within his home.

  Malcom MacKinnon worked side by side with his kinfolk, his shoulders shaped by the weight of too many heavy loads. He was a strapping young lad, Hugh thought—just the sort of man he’d always envisioned to take his place. Too bad he was not of Hugh’s blood.

  How much time had passed? He counted upon his fingers. Eleven years since the day he’d cast his daughter away. Ten since he’d last beheld her face. And Malcom, he must now be about seventeen.

  His gaze sought and found the children across the field. They were all seated together, shoving sweet tarts into their faces. His gaze returned to his daughter—the child he’d denied for far too long. He longed to hold her in his arms. Had she ever in her miserable childhood enjoyed a single sweet tart? He didn’t know, couldn’t recall.

  His throat felt too thick to speak, and yet he tried. “Do they have enough—” clothes, food, what else— “to last the winter long?”

  Eleanore slowly shook her head.

  “What will they do? What happens now?”

  Without a word Eleanore swept her hand along the landscape, and suddenly they were standing in the same field at twilight. The hillside fell silent; no laughter echoed through the meadow. He had the sense that many years had passed. The landscape was much changed. Like Aldergh, the castle on the hill stood no more. Stone by stone it had been dismantled, until all that remained was a stone footprint upon the hill, guarded by half turned stones. The land was barren, overgrown with thistle. The barns were gone. No more peasant homes remained.

  Were their fates somehow tied to his?

  Hugh reconsidered the gravestone upon Chapel Hill—and then, as though he’d conjured it, he was standing over the tombstone once again, with Eleanore flickering like a candle by his side. He shivered beneath a gentle snowfall. A single flake fell upon his beard. Beside him, his pale dead wife wept a crystal tear. It fell to the ground, melting into the snow. Hugh peered down at the tombstone lying disfigured at his feet, one corner lopped off as though someone had taken a hammer to the stone. The words it bore finally brought him to his knees…

  Etched in soft stone—not even deep enough to endure the years—was carved: Here lies Hugh FitzSimon, last heir of Aldergh Castle. The year engraved upon the stone was 1135, the month, December.

  Eleanore spoke softly beside him. “Knowing is my gift, Hugh. While there is breath there is yet hope…”

  Panic seized him. “What must I do? Tell me!” He lifted his hands in supplication. “Anything, Eleanore, please tell me what to do!”

  Much diminished now, Eleanore’s light appeared weaker. She touched his shoulder gently, so delicately that Hugh might have mistaken her touch for a snowflake.

  “Before the fire burns low in the last hour of the last day before the winter solstice, you must change your heart, Hugh FitzSimon.”

  “’Tis already changed, Eleanore! I am changed. Which fire? Please! Tell me, please?”

  Eleanore spoke softer yet as she began to fade away. “Unattended, love is like a flame, burning lower day by day.”

  “Eleanore,” Hugh pleaded. She was barely visible now. He reached out, trying to catch her to him, but his hands fell away from her translucent form.

  “You will know love when ’tis returned,” she said, her voice drifting away.

  And then Hugh was kneeling in the cold dark corridor of his home, left wretchedly alone. His wife was gone. Stricken with grief, he rose quickly from his knees in the empty silence of his hall and bolted into the solar.

  Despite that he had already blown it out, the candle on his desk sat burning still, smoke curling up toward the ceiling as the tallow burned dirty and low.

  What day is this?

  Hurrying to the desk, Hugh pulled the newly delivered parchment from his belt, unrolled it swiftly and peered down at the writing, drafted in the studied hand of a Godly man. Illumined by the candlelight, the text changed before his eyes, as though written by some unseen hand. It now read:

  “In the name of the deceased, Baron Hugh FitzSimon, dead this twenty-second day of December in the year of our lord 1135…”

  Was this a waking dream?

  Behind Hugh, the hearth fire raged no longer, but there upon the floor laid the charred remains of his cloak. Proof that he was not mad. A sudden gust, like a ghostly sigh, lifted the ends of his gray mane and the candle on the desk flickered softly. Hugh hurriedly cupped his hands about the flame, protecting it from going out.

  Before the fire burns low in the last hour of the last day before the winter solstice, you must change your heart, Hugh FitzSimon.

  “Do not forsake me, Eleanore!”

  He had so much to do, and so little time to do it!

  Chapter 1

  Chreagach Mhor, Scotland, December 21, 1135

  The fire drove them from their beds in the wee hours of the morn. The landscape raged like an inferno, consuming crops and trees, setting fire to the night itself.

  Thankfully, it spared the majority of the villagers’ homes, as well as the keep and some of the surrounding buildings. All but one of the storehouses had been reduced to ash. For nigh on a week, the clan had labored through a warm spell that would very soon end. Unseasonably temperate for the Ides of Winter, it afforded them a rare opportunity to work from sunrise beyond sunset.

  At seventeen, Malcom MacKinnon was as braw as any man, able to work his share and then some. And so he did. Theirs were unforgiving lands, in troubled times and a Scotsman hadn’t the luxury of sitting about on his rear, ordering servants about. He’d witnessed such behavior only once in his life—years ago, while being held by Hugh FitzSimon. Thank the Gods his stepmother was naught like her odious Da.

  Despite that Page wasn’t Malcom’s true mother, she was nonetheless the light of his life. His father worshipped her as well. She could do no wrong—not in Malcom’s eyes, nor in his father’s. She worked harder than any Highland lass, and harder yet than some of the men.

  He eyed auld Angus, seated once more on his pimply auld rump, drinking liberally from his uisge flask. When it came to Seana’s uisge that man had a tolerance none could rival. Angus claimed it loosened his joints, but from what Malcom could tell, it simply loosened his tongue and then glued his arse to the bench, from whence he might never again rise.

  He watched Angus now, trying to get up, and half hoped he wouldn’t make it. Judging by the way he wavered and then fell upon his rear at least three times before making it to his knees, he would be a far greater liability returning to work.

  Shaking his head, Malcom returned his attention to repairing the roof.

  So much damage was done, but the mood was hopeful and the help of their neighbors was much appreciated. He barely recalled a time when the clans were at war. Now it was more like than not that MacLean brats were running about, stealing tarts from their windowsills and Brodie brothers were lolling around, draining his father’s ale—and then their willies onto their bushes.

  The only one thing that hadn’t changed much in all these years was that his grandfather—Dougal MacLean—kept mostly to himself. Despite that the old man had made peace with his only remaining daughter, he couldn’t seem to bring himself to extend that peace to Malcom’s Da—and by virtue of that fact, Malcom as well.

  MacLean still blamed Malcom’s father for his eldest daughter’s unfortunate death, but rather than acknowledge that he had had some part in that, and that both Malcom and his father were bound to share his
grief, he forsook them both and kept to himself. The last time he saw Old Man MacLean was at his daughter Alison’s wedding.

  MacLean had no sons, and rather than see his legacy continued through his grandson, or even his daughter, he was prepared to let his lands go fallow. Already, his clansmen had abandoned him to serve the Brodies. He was but a grumpy old man, sitting alone in a dark house—or at least that’s how Malcom imagined him and he felt aggrieved by the fact.

  But although the clans were not so antisocial as Dougal MacLean, perhaps the biggest surprise of all was that Malcom was taking orders from Gavin Mac Brodie’s wife—a dún Scoti maid that Gavin wed some years past. Catrìona Brodie, like Page, worked harder than most of the men, though in her case, her skill was rather surprising. Catrìona could weave a thatch roof as tight as you please. She could design a hut with greater skill than any draftsman, and she could lay bricks with a keener eye and tighter seams than any bricklayer. But, be damned if she wasn’t a bossy wench, taking over their crews from the instant she’d arrived on the scene.

  “Here,” she said to Malcom. “Take this to your Da.”

  Malcom eyed her with a lifted brow, though he took the rolled parchment she handed down to him from the rooftop, wherein she’d scribbled a few more changes for his father to see. He did not much appreciate being ordered about, and wondered what his Da would think when he handed him yet another new set of Catrìona’s blueprints.

  Annoyed, he nevertheless started down the hill, mulling over what sort of clan raised a lassie to work like a man—and to act like one too.

  Page’s bossiness could be excused, Malcom supposed, for she’d been left to fend for herself, much like Seana Brodie had been. But at least those women knew to give their men obeisance in front of others. Catrìona treated her husband with the same bossiness with which she treated Malcom.

  “Do this. Do that,” she would say. And Gavin Mac Brodie would rush to do her bidding, all the while grinning like a bampot, as though he thought it would gain him some wonderful prize. What Malcom wouldn’t give to be away from this place—somewhere where he could begin to matter. Here, he was only the MacKinnon’s son, and all his counsels were scoffed at.

  Down, deep in his soul, he felt a coming tide … a surge of something foul. Trust was simply not something Malcom gave so freely.

  All his grumblings were forgotten the instant he spied the riders coming up the hill.

  Hastening to his father’s side, Malcom handed him the parchment from Catrìona without a word.

  His father turned the parchment in his hand. “What’s this?”

  “From Cat,” Malcom said, rolling his eyes, and fixing his gaze upon the approaching riders. “She says the chimney is better positioned to the middle of the roof.”

  “Does she?” his father said, and stuffed the parchment into his belt to deal with later, his gaze returning to the riders. “Where are your sisters?” he asked.

  Malcom shared his concern for their safety. He did not suffer strangers easily. “Page took the women to the brook.” All save Catrìona Brodie, he didn’t bother to add. She, more than any of them, needed a bath, for she sweated like a man.

  “Good.”

  It wasn’t until the riders were halfway up the hill that Malcom realized who it was. A wolf’s-head banner snapped in the breeze, and he peered back at Catrìona.

  * * *

  A bit farther down the way, near a bend in the road, a small cavalcade stopped for a rest. Broc Ceannfhionn held the wagon reigns, considering a detour.

  There were a number of cairns along the landscape here, but most of these were not built by the hands of seven-year old boy. He, more than anyone, understood what it was like to see a village burn… The scent of seared flesh and the haunting refrain of terrified screams tainted his childhood memories. And yet none of these were things he ever wanted his children to suffer. Although mayhap it would behoove them to know from whence they’d come?

  Very near where he’d buried his beloved dog, Merry—bless her sweet four-legged soul—he had erected a cairn for his murdered kinsmen and carved each of their names upon the stones, earmarked with the year of their deaths. Their bones rested leagues away, but this was Broc’s private monument to a life he’d abandoned and a people whose legacy would perish along with his own death… lest he fathered a son—and now he had.

  A sliver of sunlight stabbed him in the eye and he turned away, casting his gaze backward along the cavalcade, settling his sights on his flaxen-haired boy seated in one of the carts near the new wet nurse. There was barely enough room for the children amidst food supplies and heaping piles of cloth, but none of them had complained.

  Griffin was nine. Maggie was ten. His eldest, Suisan, was already twelve. And Lara, at seven, was the image of her minny, with bright red hair and soul-stirring green eyes.

  He’d never told any of them how their grandparents died… all his children knew was that Broc’s mother and father and all his kinsmen all perished under unfortunate circumstances and that was how Broc had come to live most of his life with the MacKinnon clan. They’d embraced him as a child of seven into their fold—something for which he would be indebted to them until the day he died. Whatever he had was theirs to share—which was why he’d dragged six hefty wagons along a mountainous countryside, and spent two entire days rebuilding a wheel to replace the one they’d lost after dragging the lot across a wide burn.

  By all the accounts Broc had received, Chreagach Mhor lay in ruins. And so they’d come expecting to spend the entire winter, bringing as many of their household as they could spare, and leaving Broc’s most trusted men to garrison the keep.

  Dunloppe’s defenses were entirely secure, and, for the moment, they were no longer at war.

  Mulling over the complexities of a visit to his parents cairn, he considered asking his wife for counsel. Seated next to him, she was as lovely as the day he’d met her, her curls aflame beneath the afternoon sun.

  As though by instinct, Elizabet peered down in the direction of the cairn—where Broc had first confessed his love for her. After a moment, she met his gaze, crooking her arm about his and squeezing gently, guessing at his thoughts. “Only think on it awhile, my love. If you still feel the need to share, we can stop by on our way home.”

  Broc nodded, considering his children, who’d barely known a day of hardship. Even more than the MacKinnons, they were blessed.

  Elizabet said, “Perhaps of greater import than the way they died is the legacy you will leave in their names?”

  Together, they peered back at their band of wee ones sitting in the carts.

  His daughter Suisan was becoming such a little lady. She’d kept all her siblings preoccupied the entire journey, telling them stories and playing games all along the long, bumpy way. All four children were perfectly content at the instant, leaving Broc to worry less about his brood, and more about the state of affairs of Chreagach Mhor.

  It pained him immensely to think of his laird—he would always think of Iain this way—in such dire straights. Even now, ten years gone by, he could not quite fathom himself laird of his own demesne. And yet he was. He was proud of all he’d accomplished—risen literally from the dust of his own clan—and for this he had mostly Iain to thank.

  Leaving the cairn for later, he clicked the reins, moving along down the road, eager to see his cousin Constance—willful little lass that she was—to know the woman she had become.

  Beside him, Elizabet pulled her heavy cloak around her shoulders and pinched a loose fabric from her dress. “I’d forgotten how long this journey could be.”

  Noting the weariness in her face, Broc nodded back toward the cart where the children rode. “Why do you not take a rest? You need not keep my company the entire way.”

  “I am fine,” his wife persisted. She gave him a crooked smile. “If you can do it, I can do it,” she said saucily. “Anyway, when was the last time you spent so long in a saddle or in a wagon seat, my dearest husband? You’ve
hardly left our home save to attend the King’s council. You must have sores on your bum the same as me.”

  Broc chuckled low. “’Tis God’s truth,” he said, and gave his wife a bit of a grimace, offering on a more serious note, “You know I wadna ever leave ye, but for the agreement I have made with David. I like my bed very well, thank you, please. One damp winter in a cauld dungeon is quite enough discomfort to last a mon his entire life.”

  They fell silent after that assertion, and Broc realized the memory of that particular winter must plague his wife even more than him. In fact, he wished he hadn’t brought it up at all, for that was the winter he’d come far too close to hanging on the gallows—both he and Lael dún Scoti.

  In truth, he was greatly pleased Elizabet had insisted on coming along. Not only could the MacKinnons use all the help they could get, but he never relished leaving his family alone for very long. Dunloppe he could lose if it be God’s will, but Broc could never bear to lose the love of his life or the children they’d born together.

  “We’ll arrive there soon,” he ventured to say.

  Elizabet’s answering smile could scarce hide her fatigue. “Do not fash yourself, Broc Ceannfhionn.” He smiled, because she’d used the name he’d given her when they’d first met, Broc the blond. His wife kept him humble—as did the name itself, given to him by Iain MacKinnon on the day Broc arrived at Chreagach Mhor.

  “’Twill be alright, Broc Ceannfhionn,” Iain had said, giving Broc hope.

  Now it was Broc’s turn to return the favor.

  * * *

  Aidan dún Scoti arrived with more than two-dozen strong backs to join the reconstruction. Each man saw to his own mount as Iain greeted the dún Scoti laird.

  It humbled him to know that a man like Aidan—who rarely left his vale in the Mounth—would come so far to help. Allies though they were, they were hardly neighbors. Now, more than ever Iain was coming to realize the value of the brotherhood they’d formed ten years before—a bond of seven noble clans that included all of the dún Scoti—the hill Scots—who bore no other name, the MacLeans, the Montgomeries, the Brodies, and the last of the McNaught and MacEanraig clans.