Highlander’s Torn Bride
Adamina Young
Contents
A Welcome Gift
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
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Also by the author
About the Author
A Welcome Gift
I want to thank you very much
for purchasing my book.
* * *
As a gift I wrote a full length novel for you called Highlander’s Perilous Love.
You can get it for FREE at the end of this book.
Enjoy!
1
The sun was blasting against the water, creating ripples of glittering light as the waves rose and fell in a constant rhythm. The view caught Margaret off guard, for it was so rare that the sea here in Thurso, nearly as far north in the Scottish Highlands as one could get, was ever anything other than an ominous gray. Her eyes became entangled in the waves as they rose up to white peaks before caving in upon themselves, dragging her thoughts with them as they plunged into the sea.
“Margaret! Get moving or I’ll take it out of yer pay!”
Margaret Gunn snapped away from the spell of the sea, uttering a few quick apologies before she rushed back along the dock, rejoining the herd of men moving back and forth between the dock and the ship pulled up alongside. Piled high on the dock were hundreds of freshly tanned hides, all bundled together so they could easily be sold to shops all throughout Europe. The men, and Margaret, were hired by the merchant to see that the ship was properly loaded with his wares.
Two men, a pair of new hires, sneered, watching her as she crouched and wrapped her arms around one of the bundles. Their sneers lessened only a bit when she stood, lifting the bundle with the same ease as any of the other men.
Margaret ignored their stares. If she stopped to care about every man’s opinion, to verbally correct their misjudgments, she would never have time for anything else. The rest of the men on the dock had already learned that she was a hard worker, not lessened at all by her gender. These men would, eventually, do the same.
But, of course, they would sneak in whatever jabs they could in the meantime.
“Pissing away the day watching the sea… Tis all he could have expected from a woman,” one of the new hires said to the other as they walked ahead of her, laughing as they crossed the gangplank and then descending down into the ship’s hold.
The scent of leather and sweat filled the small space, penetrating her nose even though she had not dared to take a breath. The bundles of hide had been stacked carefully, with each pile reaching the ceiling before the next one was started. On a ship like this, space was precious. Every inch needed to be filled.
“Well, lad, do you ken how the wee lass will get her stack all the way up there? Tis quite a bit taller than her,” one of them said, casting a glance back in her direction, an aggravatingly smug look on his face.
“Perhaps she’ll give ye a kiss if ye offer to help her,” the other man replied, the condescending look on his face equally aggravating.
Margaret stopped her march and glared at them both.
“Ach, look! We made her mad. Donna ye look so upset, lass, ye’ll ruin yer bonny looks.”
Margaret lifted the bundle above her head and, with a soft grunt, let it fly through the air. The two men ducked as it flew overhead, looking up only just in time to see it land with a satisfying thud at the top of the stack.
Margaret curtsied and left the hold, unable to contain the satisfaction that bubbled up to crack open a wide smile on her face.
It took an hour to finish loading the hides, and another hour after that for the merchant to approve the work and pay them. Margaret watched as the sun began to sink in the sky, transforming the blue into a mixture of golds and oranges that would, under other circumstances, threaten to steal her breath away. But, for once, she had to try and keep her thoughts trapped safely inside.
Remember to buy candlesticks. Remember to buy candlesticks. Remember to buy candlesticks…
Margaret recited the reminder like a trance as she ran from the dock, the jingle of her pay comforting in her pocket. The evening traffic of Thurso was maddening, and Margaret had to dodge this way and that on the grimy cobblestones in order to get anywhere. All around her, fishermen were shouting their prices for the daily catch, merchants were rushing their carts this way and that—not caring about anyone or anything in their path—and large clusters of women stood over large dye baths, pressing freshly woven linens under the solution until the color was perfected. No one noticed the lass in a lad’s clothes as she rushed past.
Margaret sighed when she reached the town square, realizing that some orator had gathered a crowd, further congesting what would have already been unbearable to navigate. As his booming voice pinned the crowd in place, Margaret did her best to slip through the clusters of transfixed listeners, for once grateful for her smaller frame.
With one final push, Margaret stumbled out of the crowd on the opposite end of the square. She glanced up and found that the dark and penetrating gaze of the candlemaker was already upon her. She sat in her usual place, perched at the seat of her small wagon, as if she was willing to whip her horses and ride off at any moment. The cart was laden with candles of every shape and size, sorted into small and efficient baskets throughout the cart. If a customer approached with a particularly large purse, the candlemaker would even lift her seat and reveal another basket, one that was filled with candles that had been set with flowers and dyes before being carved into intricate patterns.
It had been a long time since the woman had ever presented Margaret with that basket.
“Trousers again, lass?” the candlemaker asked as she reached back and picked up a pair of plain, thick candles that were cracked and rippled from quick, uncaring dips in the wax buckets. They were the cheapest she had, and they were all Margaret could afford.
Margaret forced a stiff smile to her lips and nodded, feeling suddenly conscious of her heavy brown trousers and blue linen shirt. She wished that there was another candlemaker in Thurso. One who didn’t know her and the heights from whence she had fallen.
The crowd saved Margaret from vocalizing a response. Split in two, half of the people gathered were suddenly cheering, while the other half groaned and shook their heads angrily. The candlemaker’s eyes slid up to the orator, her usual frown tilting upward with bemusement.
Shoving her thumb in the direction of the orator, Margaret asked, “What’s the occasion?”
“You havena been listening? Course not. Well, twould seem that Queen Mary has finally decided how to punish Clan Gunn for their part in the Gordon Rebellion.”
Margaret felt her breath catch as her heart began to race. When whispers of a possible Gordon-led rebellion against Queen Mary had slipped through the Highlands, her clan had openly declared support for the rebels. But, before the men of her clan could march south to join the Gordon forces, the news arrived that the queen had already defeated them at Corriche. It had been hundreds against thousands—a battle lost even before swords had been drawn.
Though the Gunns hadn’t had the time to move against the queen, their intentions had been too clear to go unpunished. So, the questions of what the punishment would be and when it would arrive had turned into an all-consuming conversation between her clansm
en. The questions had been suffocating them, infecting every conversation and moment of idle thought.
Would the queen demand hostages?
Would the laird be summoned to court for a trial and inevitable execution?
Would the queen and her loyal clans march north to remind them that the royal horse was always the one to back?
But that had been nearly a year ago. Margaret had started to believe that the punishment had secretly been upon them already, for she wasn’t sure that anything would prove to be worse than the months of fear. The queen had, by doing nothing at all, robbed the Gunns of a year of laughter and peaceful sleep. They had been living in a purgatory, unable to think toward a future when they were not sure what it would look like. In Margaret’s opinion, a worse punishment than the clean finality of death.
“What is it then?” Margaret asked, wishing she had taken a moment to listen to the orator before the now booming reactions of the crowd had drowned out his voice.
“Marriage,” the candlemaker said, eyeing Margaret with more interest. “Lady Isobel to one of the Mackay lads.”
Margaret winced. She had been wrong. There were two things crueler than death.
Marriage was one thing, but marriage to a Mackay, a sworn enemy of her clan, was another thing entirely. The Mackays were always the monsters in the bedtime stories designed to keep children from running too far from home, and there was good reason behind it. Generations of Mackay cattle rustlers and bandits had made those lands perilous for any person with the name Gunn. Not, of course, that the Gunns were alone in their fear, for her clan had returned every slight in kind, stoking the fires of distaste into a raging feud.
“The Lady Isobel,” the candlemaker started, causing Margaret to turn back to face her and the ever so curious curl to her lips, “is your cousin, is she not?”
“Aye,” Margaret said. And, before anything more could be asked, she took a step forward, disappearing into the crowd.
The last lingering pinks and purples of the sunset had only just been overcome by the navy of the night sky when Margaret saw her home off in the distance, the light glowing through the windows serving as a beacon to call her home. Finally seeing the house there, high on the hill, made Margaret quicken her pace.
The house, built of whitewashed stone, was one of the grandest in the countryside surrounding Thurso. Her father had built it for her mother shortly after they eloped, and he had always said that it was his way of earning forgiveness from her grandfather, who had not wished for his highborn daughter to run off and marry a merchant—no matter how wealthy and successful the merchant was.
Margaret rushed up the final steps leading to the house and pressed her hands against the door, taking care to avoid the crisscrossed pattern of studded iron straps set into the wood. With a heave that made her sore shoulders object, Margaret pushed it aside, calling, “I’m home…”
Instantly, a thunder of feet echoed above her. Margaret paused, listening to the little thuds move through the house above her before, finally, two sets of little feet, belonging to two little girls that were as different as storm and sun, came rushing down the staircase before her.
“Margy!” shouted the younger of the two, a six-year-old lass with blonde curls that bounced around her face, as she rushed down the last few stairs before throwing herself at Margaret’s legs. “We have been waiting forever for you.”
“Twas a big job today,” Margaret replied. “Why aren’t you in bed, Laura? Or you, Mariah?”
Margaret looked up at Mariah, the older of her two younger sisters, and winced when she saw the expression on her face. The family had always joked that Mariah and Laura had inherited their personality from their hair: Laura, bright and bubbly, had hair the color of sunshine; Mariah, with unusually bright red hair, had the sort of personality one would expect from an untempered wildfire. Which meant that now, as she stared up at Mariah looking red-faced and angry, Margaret knew the worst was coming.
“Tell Margaret what you did today, Laura,” Mariah said through gritted teeth. “Tis why we stayed up to wait for her.”
Margaret watched Laura take a piece of her hair and twist it around her finger. It was a tell, one she had inherited from their mother. Whatever Laura was about to say, Margaret would have to assume that it was a lie.
“Well, I was trying to help some lost kitten, when—”
“Nah!” came a voice to Margaret’s left. “Start again and say it true.”
Margaret’s eyes drifted over to the woman standing in the doorway. Tall and lean, with flour dusted across her face like freckles, Ann was the picture of a perfectly terrifying Highland housekeeper.
“Well, you see, I was playing in the rocks on the backside of the hill—” Laura started, looking down at the worn floorboards and twisting her toe against one of the knots.
“The ones that we are not allowed to go near!” Mariah interjected, the pitch of her voice high as she attempted to withhold the gust of anger within her.
“Yeah, those ones. Well, I slipped and fell and accidentally tore a hole in my boot,” Laura finished, spitting out the conclusion as quickly as she could.
As if she now had permission to release, Mariah sprung into a tirade about how ferociously Laura ought to be punished. Playing on those rocks had always been a capital offense in this household, owing to the fact that the hill there was steep and the rocks jagged. Her older brother had played there once in his youth, resulting in a gash from shoulder to navel that they had believed to be fatal. He survived, but had never outgrown the stiffness in his arm. Laura escaping the fall with only a ruined boot was nothing short of a miracle.
But, even as fear for her sister’s safety made every nerve in her body tingle, all Margaret could feel was the weight of a few small coins in her pocket. They weren’t enough for new shoes.
“You should lock her in her room for a week so she can learn how to sit still and entertain herself in a more civilized way!” Mariah was shouting when Margaret finally pulled her thoughts out of her pocket.
“Enough! Go to bed, both of you. We will discuss punishments in the morning,” she said.
Laura, seeming to think that Margaret’s response meant she was getting away with it, smiled and went rushing up the stairs, pushing past Mariah, who had a strange look of calm on her face. Margaret caught her sister’s eye and sighed, giving her a little wave of encouragement to speak whatever it was that was still on her mind.
“You ken, if you let me go work with you, we could pay for new boots more easily,” Mariah said.
“No,” Margaret replied, “absolutely not.”
“But—”
“We have had this discussion,” Margaret interrupted. “I will not allow you to consider taking on a job until you turn sixteen. I need you here, helping Ann with the house, and with Laura.”
“I am fifteen already, you’ll not be able to stop me for much longer,” Mariah said, her voice laced with angry warning.
“Fine,” Margaret shot back, rubbing her temple with frustration. “Now, it has been a long day and I have much to think about, so please go to bed.”
“Things to think about? You mean you have a visitor set to come?” Mariah scoffed. “You ken, I am—”
“Alright,” Ann said. “Ye speak yer peace in the morn. Up to bed, lass.”
With a huff and a few stomps, Mariah went back up the steps. A loud slam moments later indicated that she had, in fact, made it back to her and Laura’s shared room.
Margaret groaned and slumped onto the steps, dropping her head into her hands.
“Want to talk about it?” Ann asked, leaning up against the railing. Only one year older than Margaret, Ann had always been her closest friend. She had been the only one to stick around when the inheritance left behind by Margaret’s parents had dried up, vowing to stick with Margaret through thick and thin.
“Isobel is getting married to a Mackay,” Margaret said, her words coming out muffled through her fingers.
; “Yer cousin Isobel?”
“The very one.”
“To a Mackay?”
“Aye, Queen Mary’s orders, I guess.”
“Tis a terrible fate for a Gunn to wed a Mackay.”
“Aye, tis.”
“Such a thing is only deserved by those who are truly awful.”
Margaret nodded.
“So,” Ann said, releasing a long slow breath, “tis a good thing that Isobel is truly awful.”
A laugh burst from Margaret’s lips, a laugh that was quickly mirrored by Ann, resulting in the pair of them trapped in a fit of giggles. It was true: Isobel was awful.
Margaret loved her cousin, but only because of that strange impulse in one’s blood to love one’s relatives unconditionally. Her and Isobel had been born within a week of each other and, because of this, their mothers had been keen on seeing them become the closest of friends. Whenever Margaret’s father would leave for business, her mother would pack her up and bring her down to the laird’s house in Braemore, where she would stick Margaret in a room with Isobel with the expectation that the friendship would form. All that had ever formed was tolerance.
Both of the girls had too much of their fathers in them. Margaret, the daughter of a self-made merchant, had always been a practical, sensible, and resilient girl. Isobel, on the other hand, was the daughter of a laird, full of entitlement and selfish whims. Where Margaret craved order, Isobel created chaos. It had always been that way between them, with Isobel always getting her way and Margaret learning to just grit her teeth and smile while she counted down the days until they returned home.
Wiping a tear from her eye and snorting back more giggles, Margaret tried to compose herself. “Should not be so funny. Tis an awful fate, even for Isobel.”
Highlander's Torn Bride (Highlander's Seductive Lasses Book 2) Page 1