by Tessa Murran
‘Get below decks out of the wind, before you freeze to death,’ he snarled, grabbing hold of her and hauling her to her feet. At the top of the ladder leading downwards, Morna panicked and twisted away.
‘No, I cannot go down there into the dark.’ She could barely speak or swallow, the breath left her lungs as a screaming panic ripped through her belly.
Will’s brows drew together in a fearsome scowl, and he stared into her eyes intently.
‘Fair enough, Morna Buchanan. I’ll not force you down there. Stay above if you must, but sit low, out of the wind, until we reach safe harbour.’
He turned to his man, a big fellow with a long, black beard and flinty eyes. ‘Fetch a blanket from below Waldrick, and be quick about it.’
The man disappeared below and Will looked away from her, out at the ocean, with a hard look on his face. He seemed angry with her. Why would he not look at her? Morna felt her temper start to rise. This man owed her his life and yet he was indifferent to her plight.
She remembered her desperation when she had come across him with her brother Cormac after Bannockburn was all over. The Scots army had won, though it was at great cost, the field soaked red with the blood of slain Scots fighters. Will had been caught on the wrong side of that battle, accused of fighting for the English and condemned to die. Even now, Morna did not know the truth of it. Was he a heartless traitor or a man who had chosen a side at the last moment, in a surge of patriotism? Either way, just before an axe took his head, she had rushed in and pleaded for his release. Her brothers, Cormac and Lyall, had King Robert’s trust, and they wielded considerable power in the Highlands, and so Will had been set free.
Now here he was, not even deigning to look in her direction.
Suddenly loud shouting and cursing came from the hatch and a man emerged from it with a sword tip pressed to his neck. Waldrick followed and cuffed the man across the back of the head with his hilt, sending him sprawling across the deck.
‘Found this wretch hiding below,’ he said. ‘Must have snuck aboard in all the chaos.’
‘More fool him, for now, he must sing his song to us,’ said Will. He turned to Morna. ‘He will tell me where they were taking you and for what purpose.’ Their eyes locked, Will’s as blue and angry as the surging waves all around them.
‘Laird, laird,’ shouted one of the men, smiling and pointing towards the prow of the ship.
Morna squinted into the wind. A long way off, a soaring cliff was visible through the rain and, clinging to its edge, as if it grew out of the rock beneath it, was the gloomy hulk of a castle. She could feel Will’s eyes on her, penetrating, watchful.
‘What is that place?’ she ventured.
‘Fitheach Castle, stronghold of Clan Bain. It is my home and, for miles around, this is my land. It all belongs to me now, as does everything on it.’
Did he mean her as well? Morna risked a glance at him. ‘I thank you for saving me if indeed that is what you have done?’ She should not voice her thoughts aloud to him, but she was alone and miles from home with a cold stranger, and she needed some reassurance so that her thumping heart would be still.
‘Do not be fearful. Your ordeal is over. You are safe now, with me, as my guest. This is my land, my clan and I hold sway here. Nothing can touch you,’ he said, taking hold of her arm to steady her as the ship swung around towards the shoreline. ‘You’ve no reason to fear me, unless you give me one, that is.’
There was something about his words which made her heart jump in her breast.
Morna shook his arm away. ‘I never thought I’d see you again, William O’Neill.’
His dark brows drew together, and he narrowed his eyes.
‘William O’Neill is dead,’ he said, in a voice like ice. ‘Forget him, for he died a long time ago. I am a Bain now, to the marrow of my bones.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You will soon enough and when we have washed the sea off you, Morna Buchanan, you will tell me what has been done to you and by whose hand.’
Chapter Four
As the ship drew closer to shore, Morna looked up at the vast cliffs. Low cloud had swept in, swallowing the castle in white. A colony of seabirds rose from a large rock at the centre of a gently curving bay which formed a natural harbour of sorts. As they sailed past, the bitter smell of their droppings caught the back of her throat, making her nausea rise again, but at least it was calmer now they were beyond the worst of the waves.
The men anchored the ship against a rocky outcrop reaching out from the cliffs like a welcoming hand. Will did not meet her eye as he helped her scrabble out of the ship and onto dry land. Morna clung on tightly as he guided her towards the shoreline. It was hard going, her wet dress clinging heavily to her legs and the rocks treacherously studded with jagged barnacles and limpets. At one point she stumbled and, with a sigh of impatience, Will picked her up and carried her. Up close, he was even more intimidating, and so she stayed silent.
Morna risked a glance up at him to see him staring down at her. Will’s eyes were a deep blue, vivid in a face tanned to the pale gold of honey, and fringed with dark lashes, at odds with his dark blonde hair. The scar, a half-moon, starting at his temple and ending at the top of his cheek, just made those eyes more compelling.
‘You are exhausted,’ he said.
Morna swallowed hard. ‘So would you be if you had been locked in a crate for a day and a night, thinking you were going to die.’
‘Trust me, whoever did that to you will suffer worse,’ he said, and she believed him.
They rounded a towering rock face, and Morna gasped. Before her was the gaping maw of a cave. Water flooded in with a rushing sound and sucked back out again, the constant movement having worn the walls smooth over time. The light faded into its black throat, and Morna shivered. The suffocating darkness had the look of a tomb. She wanted to scream and run, but Will strode onwards, leaping up and down the rocks at the cave’s edge as nimbly as a goat. It was as if she weighed nothing at all.
‘Where are we going?’ she said.
‘To the castle, where you can get warm, but first, we climb,’ he said, depositing her on the ground.
‘Climb?’
‘Aye, this is the quickest way, up through the cave. Can you walk?’
Morna nodded. The other men started to file past them with lit torches, handing one to Will, who took her hand, shaking with cold, and pulled her along behind him.
‘I can’t do it. I can’t go back into darkness,’ she gasped.
‘We will go through the darkness together, and then there will be light,’ he said patiently as if she were a child. ‘Take my hand. I will keep you safe, I swear it.’
Morna took hold of Will’s hand, its size and warmth a comfort of sorts as they headed into the cave.
The steady drip, drip of water, all around them, accompanied their climb along a stone path, seemingly hewn from the rock. A musty smell, salty and dank, filled her nostrils as they went further into the cave. Morna looked upwards and clenched Will’s hand fiercely. The roof of the cave was moving as if it were alive. Bats, thousands of them, wriggling and squirming, the light from Will’s torch reflecting off their shiny wings.
Morna’s legs failed her, causing her to stumble. Had it not been for his strong hand in hers, she would have injured herself. As if sensing her struggle, Will pulled her roughly to one side and let the other men draw far ahead, until their torches disappeared in a last flickering of shadows.
They set off again, more slowly this time.
Will took hold of her arm. ‘What a treat it is to see you again, Morna, though not in the most pleasant of circumstances. How did you come to be on that ship?’
‘I was taken.’
‘From Beharra?’
‘What do you know of Beharra?’
His grip tightened. ‘I crossed paths with your brother, Lyall, some years ago.’
‘I know. He told me that you threatened him.’
‘Ah,
I was just having some sport with him, is all. I do recall he was in the company of a fine- looking redhead.’
‘That would be Giselle, his wife now.’
‘Ah. Well, I don’t know what she was back then, but I do know they were both naked, swimming in a loch. All over each other, they were. Did he tell you that now?’ he said, raising his eyebrows.
‘No, he did not,’ said Morna, her face burning.
‘He also told me you were wed.’
The words dropped into the gloom like stones, too loud, as Morna tried to collect her thoughts. ‘Can we stop a moment. I am out of breath,’ she gasped.
Will smiled in the torchlight, devilish and dangerous. ‘Rest a while here.’ He jammed the torch into a cleft in the rock and folded his arms across his chest. ‘So, this husband of yours,’ he said casually, ‘will he be out looking for you?’
‘I…of course my husband will be looking for me.’
‘T’was a bit careless of him to lose you like that. The man must be a fool.’ He took a step closer and loomed over her. ‘But I am not, and I know full well you don’t have a husband, Morna.’
‘How could you possibly know that?’
‘Because I make it my business to know. How old are you, girl?’
‘Twenty, and I am no girl, I am a woman.’
‘If you are a woman you should be wed by now, with a gaggle of brats hanging from your skirts.’
‘Well, I am not. Why would you care either way?’
‘I should like to know the answer to that myself. And I don’t care that much, I just don’t like being lied to by someone whose life I just saved.’
‘You forget, I saved yours once.’
‘Aye, so we are even and owe each other nothing save the truth, and I will have it now, Morna Buchanan. We’ll not move from this spot until I get it. I can stand here all day and soon, the torch will burn out.’ Will brought it closer to her face, almost blinding her. She had to tell him something.
‘I was betrayed by my brother’s trusted right hand, Ramsay Seward. He took me from Beharra and sold me. I trusted him, and he sold me off, like a slave, to Ranulph Gowan.’
‘A Gowan?’ Will took another step forward. ‘He sold you to your brother’s sworn enemy? Why dare Cormac’s wrath to do that?’
‘Because Ramsay offered me his hand and I rejected him.’
‘You spurned his love, so he betrayed you?’
‘Aye.’
‘I know full well how that feels,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘Did Ramsay do that to your face?’ he said, his fingers gently grazing her bruised cheek.
‘He knocked me out cold, and when I woke up, I was on his horse, miles from Beharra, heading for Ranulph Gowan.’
‘And Gowan. What is his part in this?’
‘I think he took me as revenge on my brother. He was awful, he put me in that crate and nailed it shut, though I pleaded with him not to.’ Morna tried hard not to cry as she re-lived her fear and desperation.
Will grabbed one of her hands and examined it in the torchlight. ‘Is that why your fingernails are torn and bloody because you tried to claw your way out?’
Morna swallowed her fear back down. ‘Aye,’ she whispered.
‘I wonder that he locked you away like that. Was he worried he would be found out and someone would recognise you?’
‘How should I know?’
‘Perhaps he is vicious and did it to make you suffer.’
‘Well, he succeeded, for it was awful.’
‘I can see that. Those men who took you did they do anything else to you?’
A muscle was going in Will’s cheek. Morna knew full well what he meant, and indeed, she had feared it throughout her ordeal. With shame burning her face, she replied, ‘No, they had some other purpose. I don’t know what that was.’
Will took a deep breath. ‘See, the truth is not so hard, is it? Come, we will press on to the light.’
Morna followed Will upwards, unease turning her belly. The path narrowed in places, so tight that she had to squeeze between jutting rocks, her breath coming in rapid gasps, feeling sick with terror as if the walls were closing in on her. Each time Will went first and held out his hand to guide her through. His were big and rough, and she clung to him tightly. He was her only lifeline in this hellish place. She didn’t quite know why, but she had decided it was best not to tell Will about Owen Sutherland and his proposal. The less Will knew about her life, the better.
They finally emerged from the darkness, halfway up the cliff but on the opposite side of where the ship had anchored. The cave tunnel must have cut through its middle. Here, the land rose in a gentler slope, and they climbed onwards, through the wet grass and stony ground, until they reached a plateau at the top.
The mist had cleared leaving the daunting edifice of Fitheach Castle clearly visible at the end of a narrow promontory stretching out to the sea. On three sides there were sheer cliffs so anyone trying to breach its walls would have only a narrow strip of land on which to manoeuvre. Fitheach was grim, windswept and, by the looks of it, impregnable.
By the time they reached its gates, the sun had broken through the clouds, turning Will’s hair golden as he stopped and turned to her and said, ‘Welcome to my home, Morna.’ He smiled into her eyes with a kind of pride and her knees almost buckled, for Will O’Neill or Bain or whatever he called himself, was possessed of such manly beauty that it stirred her soul to look on it.
She should have put him out of her mind years ago, but she could see now why she hadn’t. He had been on the turn from boy to man back then, still growing muscle and sinew and height. Now he was well over six foot of sheer strength, all long limbs and broad shoulders. Everything about him screamed power and brute force. She glanced down and caught a glimpse of his left hand before he put in down to his side where she could not see. It was mangled in some way she hadn’t noticed in the darkness of the cave. He must have caught her staring for his smile faded, and he glowered at her.
The boy she had met long ago was now very much a man, and infinitely more dangerous.
Clutching her side to still the ache in her ribs, Morna tried to keep up as he stalked off. She got little chance to see Fitheach for, as soon as they entered its main yard, Will pulled her into a low doorway and down some steps. They emerged into a kitchen, humid but cosy. Before the fire, an elderly woman, with a face as lined as a crumpled piece of parchment, was filling a barrel with steaming water from a bucket. The smell of sweet herbs and heather coming from it was a small kind of comfort.
Will seemed eager to be away for he turned to her and said abruptly, ‘This woman is Braya. She will get you warm and clean. Take some rest and we will talk later.’ With that, he whirled around and left her alone with the woman.
Barely summoning a smile for the servant and too exhausted to care about anything, Morna allowed the woman to peel off her wet clothes and gently help her into the barrel. Even as the woman scrubbed hard at her hair and her body, Morna could scarcely keep her eyes open. With a lolling head, she let herself be dried and followed meekly as Braya led her along dark corridors. Fitheach seemed to be hewn from stone, for it was all rough edges and harshness. There was little adornment softening the walls, just small shuttered windows, and there was a constant whining song of the sea winds, gusting in through the shutters and under the doors. It was hard and unyielding, as was Will now, or so it seemed to her.
Morna had remembered him as an angry, young man, full of bitterness at the hand fate had dealt him but one who also had a rough charm and a way of looking at her that stirred her heart. But so far, he had not offered her one word of kindness. All he had done was question and command.
For years she had taken out her memories of that night when she met him, the way he had looked at her, the spark of infatuation she had nursed in her foolish, little girl’s heart. All those longings for him were an illusion, the daydreams of a child. Time to be strong now. She could trust no one here and confide in no one. Get a
way and back to Beharra as soon as may be, she told herself. Bend this man to your will, as you’ve bent others, and then all will be well.
Chapter Five
Will strode up and down the castle ramparts as the sun died on the horizon, bleeding red onto the water. He could not be still for an instant and, as the hours passed, his mind would not be turned from Morna Buchanan, curse her to hell. Surely she had slept enough by now?
Sweet, little Morna Buchanan, a full-grown woman now, not the soft yet defiant girl he’d met on that bloody killing-ground of Bannockburn. He had never forgotten her all these years and the debt between them. He owed the very beat of his heart to Morna and, without her, he would be bones and rotten flesh in a field somewhere, not Laird of a mighty clan. His lip curled in disgust at the memory of it. How shameful to be indebted to a woman.
Will cursed himself for a weak fool for, dirty, dishevelled and terrified, Morna still stirred something in him. The years had given her womanly curves, hard to ignore as that wet dress had clung to her body. He had carried her over the rocks because he wanted to know what she would feel like in his arms. When he had looked down into those eyes, the warm brown of horse chestnuts, a strange kind of longing had swelled in his breast. But those eyes betrayed her, for Will had always known how to read people, and he was sure that Morna was lying to him in some way.
How could one such as she end up in such dire straits? By God, she was sister to Cormac and Lyall Buchanan, men powerful enough to sup on good terms with Scotland’s King. Once, he could have hoped for a life with that kind of power, at the head of Clan O’Neill, but those hopes had been cut down by the same King who gave favour to the Buchanans.
‘What are you doing up here, Will, pacing and muttering like a feeble-minded fool?
Will started at Waldrick’s voice. So absorbed was he in thoughts of Morna that he hadn’t realised he had been talking to himself. He glowered at Waldrick. ‘I am trying to think.’
‘Aye, and I know full well what about.’