Synopsis from Amazon:As she peered over the edge of the gallery, Sabrina Cameron trembled at the sight of the sun-bronzed giant striding into view. But she never recognized the stranger ... not until the moment she found herself surrounded by arms of warm steel — and drowning in smoldering green eyes that had once held cool disdain but now shimmered with passion. Morgan MacDonnell, the boy, had been her tormentor. Now it looked as if Morgan, the man, would prove infinitely more dangerous .... Though hatred divided their clans, Morgan MacDonnell had come to Cameron Glen hoping for a truce ... only to find that by evening's end the only way to avert bloodshed between the two families was for him to marry his enemy's daughter. But even as Morgan spirited Sabrina away to his rugged fortress, his battle would not be won. For this delicate rose of a girl would put up a bold fight ... and the spoils of victory would be nothing less than a heathen MacDonell's heart.
My rating: 4 stars
Excerpt:
PrologueSCOTLAND, THE HIGHLANDS
1718
Sabrina Cameron rubbed one of her mother’s plump tea roses beneath her uptilted nose. Tiny feathers of pollen tickled her nostrils. She sneezed, then clapped a chubby hand over her mouth and burrowed deeper into the hedge.
The MacDonnells were coming, and one careless move might see her bones melted to Cameron stew before this day was done.
She shivered in horrified delight. The MacDonnells had haunted her nightmares for most of her short life. Fearsome giants they were, her brothers whispered by candlelight, half man and half beastie. Great shaggy creatures who walked on two legs and wore nothing but fresh animal skins. The children of Cameron Glen trembled in fear of them, and men full grown took care not to wander far from the village after dusk.
On moonless nights, when the hounds whimpered and howled around the manor walls, it was said a MacDonnell was stalking the shadowy forests, searching for a naughty boy or girl to carry back to his lair.
Sabrina parted the glossy leaves to peer out. Her mother knelt at the edge of the garden path, stabbing the earth around her rosebushes with a silver trowel. Low-hanging clouds that boded rain splintered the sun into dazzling spills of red in her upswept hair. A knot of pug-faced puppies nested on her abandoned mantle.
A grunt and a giggle sounded a warning as the iron gate came crashing open and Sabrina’s brothers galloped into the garden. Brian rode on Alexander’s shoulders, bellowing orders and whacking him with a rowan twig. Alex’s whinnies rose to yelps. He arched his back, tumbling his younger brother into the slick grass. They rolled, locked in battle, straight into the folds of their mother’s skirt.
Elizabeth Cameron separated the roiling mass of strawberry curls with a skill born of ten years’ practice. The boys hung by their tunics, trapped into sheepish surrender.
She shook them gently, her English accent clipped with annoyance. “I ought to bang your stony little heads together. Do you want your baby sister to learn your roguish ways?”
She brushed at the grass stains scoured into the knees of their finest trews. Brian returned the favor by spitting on his palm and scrubbing a smudge of dirt from her cheek.
Alex clicked his heels together, his own Scots burr bristling with importance. “Papa sent us with a message. The MacDonnell is a-comin‘.”
Brian cast the quivering hedge a sly glance. “And they say he’s hungry. With a taste for wee black-haired lassies.”
Sabrina came scrambling out of her hiding place. “Did you see him? Is he truly covered with hair from head to toes?”
“Aye, and he’s got sharp, pointed fangs fan-dripping with blood.” Alex curled his hands into claws and bared his teeth at her.
“Alex!” his mother said sharply. “Stop filling your sister’s head with nonsense.”
“Pay your mother heed, lad.” The lilting burr snapped all their heads around. “My princess’s wee ears are fairly bursting with nonsense now.”
“Papa!” Sabrina hurtled toward the man at the gate.
The Cameron’s presence seemed to fill the walled garden as he swept his only daughter up into his arms. She was such a tiny replica of him that he might have sculpted her with his own hands. Her dark blue eyes sparkled beneath smoky lashes. As Sabrina smacked his beard with kisses, he winked at his wife over her inky curls.
Sabrina tweaked the chest hair spilling over his doublet. “Is it true, Papa, that MacDonnells have great tufts of hair on the soles of their feet and all their spoons are carved of human ribs?”
Alex and Brian punched each other, choking back giggles.
“Perhaps you should ask our guest yourself when he arrives.” The Cameron glowered at his sons. “Until then, do not heed the gossip of young idiots.”
As he lowered Sabrina, she gazed up at him, a whisper away from confiding her deepest hope about the MacDonnell. But he was already striding toward his wife.
He pressed a kiss to her upturned lips. “I’m in your debt, Beth, for agreeing to let the lad come. If the MacDonnell can trust me to foster his son for the summer, perhaps he can learn to trust me in other ways as well.”
Alex poked a worm with a stick. “Papa commands we be kind to the boy. He says we must make him welcome and never mention the fact that his papa is a treacherous bastard as likely to gut a man in his sleep and roast his entrails as —”
At his wife’s shocked gaze, the Cameron clapped a hand over Alex’s mouth. “I never said that. He must have heard it from one of the other men.”
Brian took advantage of Alex’s captivity to deliver a pinch to his brother’s thigh. Alex tackled him, fists flying. Sabrina took a step out of their path and fell over the sleeping puppies, who awoke with a cacophony of piercing yelps.
From where she sprawled in the grass, Sabrina was the first to see the boy. His stillness was absolute. She had no way of knowing how long he had stood there, watching them. Too long if the sullen set of his jaw was any indication.
Curiosity overcame her fear. She climbed to her feet. The MacDonnell did have a lot of hair, but most of it hung in a wild, sandy tangle past his shoulders. His furs weren’t fresh or dripping blood, but ratted and worn bare in spots. Sweat and dirt streaked his face and grimed the bare feet poking out from beneath his leggings. A tattered pack hung over one shoulder. To Sabrina, this MacDonnell did not look particularly fierce.
But as she crept toward him, she realized she was wrong. A feral energy coiled in his stance. He reminded her of an animal, wild and far more dangerous for being cornered. Her nose twitched at his crisp scent. He smelled of freshly turned dirt and sunshine as if he’d spent more than one night sleeping under the pines. His skin was bronzed, his eyes the dusky green of a glade on a summer day. The undeniable light of intelligence glimmered in their depths.
She danced forward and made an awkward dip. “Hello, boy. Welcome to Cameron.”
The blows between Alex and Brian ended in a soft thud. The puppies’ yips died to whimpers. With a haughty flick of his eyelids that would have done a monarch proud, the young MacDonnell dismissed Sabrina as if she had been a slug that pushed its way out of the dirt at his feet. Her cheeks flamed.
The fire in them cooled as her father’s hands fell on her shoulders. “My daughter phrased our welcome as well as I could have. Welcome to Cameron, lad.”
“I ain’t your lad,” he barked. “My name is Morgan Thayer MacDonnell, son of Angus MacDonnell and heir to the chieftainship of MacDonnell.”
Sabrina was impressed by the number of “MacDonnells” he’d managed to cram into one sentence. He stood so straight that it made her spine ache. She offered him a tentative smile. He looked away. Brian and Alex blinked at him, their gazes measuring but not unkind.
“We hope you’ll do us the honor of considering Cameron your home until the end of the summer,” her father said.
“Can’t come too bloody soon for me,” the boy murmured in a burr thick enough to cut with a blade.
The Cameron opened his mouth, but his wife waved him to silence. She was the only one who realized Morgan kept his jaw clenched to keep it from trembling.
Elizabeth came forward and gently laid her hand on his cheek. “I dare say you’ll be missing your mother and father, won’t you, son?”
He shoved her hand away. “Never had no mother and I won’t be needin‘ one now. ’Specially not some bloody Sassenach.” Sabrina did not understand the word, but her mother paled.
The lad did not flinch when the Cameron’s shadow fell over him. He stood tall and straight, his eyes blazing a cold green fire. He had to crane his neck to look the Cameron in the eye, but he did it. Brian and Alex snickered. Sabrina covered her eyes and peeked through her fingers, bracing herself for the boxed ears that would surely result from such impudence.
But her father’s thunderous brow slowly relaxed into crannies of amusement. He reached to ruffle Morgan’s hair; the boy was too stunned to duck. “Spoken like a true MacDonnell, lad. A warrior born and bred just like your father. You’ll serve Cameron well.”
Morgan quivered with rage. “I serve only MacDonnell. I hate the Camerons.”
Brian’s and Alex’s snickers broke into open laughter. Morgan swung toward them, fists clenched. “How dare you laugh at a MacDonnell, you wee freckled weasels? I ought to knock your teeth down your throats!”
The boys found this new threat even funnier. They doubled over, clutching their sides. Before their mother could reprimand them, Morgan bolted the garden, leaving the Cameron standing alone before the gate.
“Boy! Boy!” Sabrina called. If the MacDonnell disliked Brian and Alex, perhaps he would not disdain her simply for being a girl.
Without a word of explanation, she ducked through the hedge and scrambled over the wall after him.
“Sabrina!” Elizabeth cried out.
The Cameron caught his wife’s arm. “Let her go. If anyone can charm a heathen MacDonnell, ‘tis that one.”
Finding a niche in the ivy that twined along the wall, the laird of Clan Cameron heaved himself up and watched the two small figures race across the meadow only a length ahead of the gray, scudding clouds.
“God go with you, princess,” he whispered. “I fear you’re going to need all his wiles and your own as well.”
“Boy! Wait, please, boy! Wait for me!”
Sabrina’s chubby legs pumped up and down. Her cries deepened to gasps. The sun had dipped behind a mass of roiling clouds and the boy was already a dark speck melting into the forest. She mentally added running well to his list of talents before falling flat, burning her knees on the stubby bracken. Spurred on by the scent of the approaching rain, she scrambled up and plunged after him into the murky gloom of the towering oaks. A root twisted around her ankle, sending her tumbling.
She landed on her rump and cheerfully deduced she was lying at the bottom of a ditch with her skirt over her head.
“Are all you Camerons cursed with both stupidity and stubbornness?”
Sabrina poked her head out from under her skirt. Morgan MacDonnell stood over her with arms crossed, staring down his nose at everything that was supposed to be tucked safely beneath her smock.
She pushed down her skirt and offered him a hand. “Hello, boy.”
He pulled her up, then wiped his hand on his grubby tunic as if her touch had soiled it. “My name is not Boy. I am —”
“— Morgan Thayer MacDonnell,” Sabrina intoned solemnly, “son of Angus MacDonnell and heir to the chieftainship. You serve only MacDonnell and hate all Camerons. And I am Sabrina, the daughter of Dougal Cameron.”
“There’s no denyin‘ that.” Morgan’s voice was choked with bitterness. “You’re the devil’s own image.”
Sabrina frowned, searching her mind for some common ground where they might meet. “Do you like worms?”
“No.”
“Beetles, perhaps?”
“Warriors have no time for such nonsense.”
Her frown deepened. Brian and Alex had time for worms, beetles, and the spiders they delighted in putting in her bed. Perhaps she should ask him if he really did have tufts of hair growing on his feet. But the grim set of his jaw discouraged her. Thick, sandy lashes veiled his eyes.
“What do you like, then?”
“Fisticuffs. Swords. Guns.” His sulky lips parted to reveal a row of straight white teeth, not a fang among them. “Winnin‘.”
Sabrina felt slightly dazzled, as if the sun had crept out from behind a stubborn cloud. Emboldened by his smile, she laid her hand on his arm. “There now. I do believe we shall be friends. I like you most fiercely already.”
He stared down at the pudgy little fingers stroking his arm. Morgan had never known anyone in his life but clan and enemy. An array of emotions flickered through the lush green of his eyes. Shock. Fear. Uncertainty. Longing.
He wrenched his arm away from her. “I ain’t your friend. And I don’t like you.”
Her smile flickered but did not fade. “Why, of course you like me! Everyone likes me. Papa says I could charm the whiskers off a wildcat.”
Morgan’s eyes darkened. Sabrina took a step backward. “Have you no understandin‘ of anythin’, lass?” he asked. “I don’t like you. I don’t like your brothers. And I sure as hell don’t like your Sassenach mother and your filthy-rich bastard of a da.”
Sabrina’s eyes welled with tears. The adoration she had received all her life had not prepared her for his rancor. His words held none of her brothers’ good-natured teasing.
He flung out his arm in a gesture of contempt. “Go ahead and cry. I’d expect no better of a silly wee babe!”
“I am not a babe! I am six years old!”
He advanced on her. Sabrina held her ground until he reached out and gave her chest a slight push. She sat down abruptly in the leaves. Tears spilled from her eyes.
She scrambled to her feet, rubbing her eyes and sucking back sobs. She started up the slope, choking out each word. “Papa won’t like it that you pushed me.”
Morgan’s mocking laugh rang out behind her. “I dare say he won’t. Run to your papa, princess. Tattle on me. Tell him the rude boy pushed you down and bruised your precious pride. Perhaps he’ll toss me in his dungeon to rot as his father did to me own grandfather. Or have me beheaded as old Eustace Cameron did to Lachlan MacDonnell.”
Sabrina stopped. Her back straightened. Drawing every inch of dignity she could muster into her tiny frame, she faced him, sniffing furiously. “Oh, no, Morgan MacDonnell. I’m not a babe and I’ll not tattle on you. There’s nothing you could do to make me tattle. And I swear to you, you’ll never make me cry again. Not if I live forever will I shed a tear for such a wicked boy. You — you —” Her limited trove of insults did not contain a word vile enough for him. “— MacDonnell!”
She marched the rest of the way up the slope, digging in her toes and grasping at exposed roots to keep from sliding back down at his feet. She scrambled over the rim of the ditch, chased by a flood of Gaelic curses she was better off not understanding.
The first fat raindrops pelted her as she broke into a run. A rumble of thunder drowned out the broken noises that rose from the ditch as Morgan MacDonnell, heir to the chieftain of MacDonnell, wrapped his thin arms around a tree and cried, his bitter tears mingling with the rain.
Dougal Cameron was toasting his toes in front of a crackling fire when his daughter burst into the drawing room. Dripping all over her mother’s precious Oriental rugs, she flung herself into his lap.
“Caught in the storm, were you, lassie?”
She nodded, her head bumping his chin. He cradled the small, damp bundle to his chest and waited for her shivers to abate. At first he feared it was sobs that shook her, but when she lifted her eyes to him, they were dry and bright with anger.
“You should have boxed his ears, Papa. He’s a very naughty boy.”
“Aye, that he may be. But the MacDonnells are a rough and tumble lot, princess. I fear the lad needs a bit of love and understanding more than he needs his ears boxed.”
Her little face screwed into a terrible frown. “I do not wish to displease you, but I shan’t love him.”
The Cameron chuckled. “ ‘Tis just as well. I suspect that face of his will earn him love enough in the years to come.”
She hooked her arms around his neck and pressed a kiss to his beard. “I love you, Papa. I will always love you best.”
Dougal buried his chin in her silky curls, torn by his desire to spare her the mortal pains of love and living. “ ‘Tis not so, princess,” he said softly. “But ’tis a pleasant thought. A pleasant thought indeed.”
Chapter 1
SCOTLAND, THE HIGHLANDS
1730
“The MacDonnells are a-comin‘! The MacDonnells are a-comin’!”
The cry shot like cannonfire through the sleepy village of Cameron Glen. The villagers raced madly through the cobbled streets, not knowing whether to hide their livestock or their children. One cynical crofter tipped back his chair, took a long, slow draw off his pipe, and announced dourly that sheep or daughter would do just as well to a MacDonnell in an amorous bent of mind.
The few who could afford the luxury of curtains jerked them shut. Hammers tapped in frantic rhythm as boards flew up over windows and doors. The Camerons and the MacDonnells had been feuding for so long that no one could remember the cause. To the villagers their laird’s foes were still more myth than men. For decades they had done their thieving and ravishing in stealth. If a village lass returned from a mountain walk rumpled and dazed, knowing whispers would greet the subsequent swelling of her belly and the birth of her tawny-haired babe.
Kneeling in the road, a withered old man gathered a group of awestruck children around him. “I was but a wee lad meself, but I’ll ne’er forget the last time the MacDonnells marched through Cameron Glen. Giants they were, o’er eight feet tall wi‘ thighs as wide ’round as tree trunks.” A freckled little girl hid her trembling face against his leg. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “And ‘round each of their waists hung their tumble trophies — the severed heads o’ the Camerons.”
The children squealed in delicious horror. Caught up in his own lurid tale, the old man cast the manor house on the hill an ominous look. The stone tower of ancient Cameron Keep sprouted from its timber-framed wings like an embattled mushroom. He knew the MacDonnells had been invited to Cameron not to battle, but to banquet. But why would Dougal Cameron invite his enemies to his home when he knew they were more inclined to eat the family than the feast?
His palsied hand absently smoothed a boy’s cowlick. “Daft,” he muttered. “Our own laird’s gone as daft as a rabid hare.”
At that precise moment, the occupants of Cameron Manor might have agreed with him. The drawing room had been thrown into chaos by an army of servants and helpful Camerons. Caught up in the pervasive atmosphere of terror and glee, Sabrina rushed back from the old buttery, where she had hidden her mother’s silver tea service. She tripped over the small, grizzled dog curled up in front of the hearth. He bared his one remaining tooth and snapped at her.
“Sorry, Pugsley,” she murmured, pausing to straighten his jeweled collar.
“I won’t have those ham-footed Highlanders stomping my rugs to death,” Elizabeth Cameron announced. Heedless of her silk skirts, she dropped to her knees on the bare stones and began to roll up a plush Persian carpet.
“No worry, Mama.” Brian lounged on an overturned Louis XIV gilded armchair, ignoring Alex’s obvious grunts for help beneath the weight of an ornately carved Elizabethan chest. “The MacDonnells will never make it this far. We’ve been at peace for almost a month. Without our throats to cut, they’ll be cutting their own by now. I predict extinction in” — he drew a gold pendant watch from a ruffled pocket — “three hours and seventeen minutes.”
“I’m surprised they haven’t extincted themselves already with all that inbreeding,” Alex gasped, letting the chest drop dangerously near the polished toes of Brian’s shoes. “I’ve heard they share women like other men share —”
“Alex!” Elizabeth cleared her throat, jerking her head toward Sabrina’s avid face.
Her elder son lapsed into silence. He might tower over his mother by half a foot, but he knew when to curb his tongue. Beneath her willowy slenderness lay a spine of fine English steel. The coils of gray in her fiery hair had yet to soften the temper that accompanied it.
Sabrina affected a sophisticated shrug. “Don’t scold on my account, Mama. Why, only this morning I learned a new song from one of the kitchen maids.” She locked her hands at the small of her back as she’d been taught to do when serenading guests and primly sang:
Ride hard the MacDonnells wi‘ their wild golden locks,
Fierce their long claymores, but nary as fierce as their —
“Sabrina!” Her mother gasped a warning.
“— tempers?” she hastily warbled.
Alex choked back laughter and applauded. “Carry down your clarsach, Mum! My baby sister can entertain our guests after we sup tonight.”
“If I’ve my way, she’ll be bolted safely in her chamber until those lascivious rogues are gone,” her mother said grimly.
Sabrina knew that if her mother had her way, she’d be bolted safely in her chamber until her journey to London in the spring. It was her mother’s fondest wish that Sabrina’s jovial uncle Willie introduce her to some eligible country parson who couldn’t find the Scottish Highlands on a well-marked map.
“It seems our MacDonnells are known for more than just their fighting prowess,” Brian said dryly.
“As are you, dear brother,” Sabrina whispered in his ear, “if that gossip about that little milkmaid in the village is true.” He reached to yank one of her curls, but she danced out of his reach. “Did old Angus MacDonnell truly pay court to you. Mama?”
A smile softened her mother’s lips. “Indeed he did. The gallant fellow offered me a side of beef from a stolen cow, Cameron I suspect, and his own black heart. I’ve always felt a bit guilty. When I chose your father over him, it broke a peace of almost” — she counted on her fingers — “six hours.”
Sabrina’s cousin Enid, who was visiting from London, trotted from the room, clutching two Ming dynasty fluted vases that had braved stormy seas and rutted roads to travel from Peking to Cameron. A thump and the sound of shattering glass was followed by a muffled “Oh, dearie me.” Sabrina winced.
Sighing wearily, her mother sank back on her heels and surveyed the drawing room. Stripped of its exotic treasures, the hall was a barren shell that hearkened back to another era, when the tower had been the heart of a primitive fortress instead of the drawing room of an elegant manor house.
They all knew that even now Dougal Cameron was in the courtyard instructing their clansmen on the finer points of courtesy that would allow them all to survive this night. One overturned wine goblet or upset pepperbox could result in a massacre that would destroy the illusion of civilization Elizabeth Cameron had devoted a lifetime to preserving. Her fierce passion had coaxed both her genteel children and her precious English roses from the harsh Highland soil. Her dejection wounded them all.
Hoping to cheer her, Sabrina stood on her tiptoes and plucked a crystal rose from its vase on the mantel. “The Belmont Rose, Mama. Shall I hide it in the buttery with the rest of your things?”
Her mother rewarded her with a smile. “No, princess. ‘Twas a gift from King James to my father for saving his crown at the battle of Sedgemoor. Carry it up to the solar, where no one will be tempted to crush it.” Spirits restored, she wiped her hands on her skirt and began firing off commands. “Bestir your lazy self, Brian, and help Alex with that chest before I take the starch out of your ruffles. Enid, stop sniveling behind that fire screen, or I shall write William and tell him what a silly goose he’s raised for a daughter.”
Heartened by her mother’s recovery, Sabrina climbed the curving stairs to the gallery, twirling the rose’s smooth stem between her fingers. She’d always found the Belmont Rose an object of fascination.
Fragile and exquisite, the handblown glass glowed beneath the sunlight streaming through the oriel windows. Her fingertip traced a petal more delicate than all the teardrops she’d never shed for one MacDonnell. As she entered the serene gloom of the solar, a knot tightened low in her belly, a knot she’d thought to be long unraveled.
For five summers Morgan MacDonnell’s shadow had fallen across her life. Five summers of waiting for the next hairy spider to drop down her back. Five summers of stumbling over the grubby foot that shot into her path. His final blow had landed the summer she was eight when he had finally befriended her brothers and enlisted them in his pranks. Her wistful affection for the tall, proud boy had been slowly buried like a stone in her heart.
His father had summoned him home in his sixteenth summer after some fool MacDonnell got himself gutted stealing a Cameron sheep. Swinging on the garden gate, Sabrina had watched him go, mystified by the tears that choked her throat. Her fondest wish had come true. Morgan MacDonnell wouldn’t be coming back to Cameron Manor. Not next summer. Not ever.
Until tonight.
With painstaking care Sabrina laid the rose on the crushed-velvet runner atop her mother’s harpsichord. The wretch was probably dead by now, she thought unkindly, stabbed by one of his own treacherous kin or shot dead in the bed of some jealous crofter. When he was only fifteen, the maidservants had already begun to admire the broad flare of his shoulders and the bold invitation in his sleepy green eyes that had never looked at her with anything but cool disdain.
Sabrina wandered to the window. Her restless gaze followed the jagged crest of the mountains. Snowy white clouds raked their peaks. The MacDonnells might even now be lumbering out of their lair and down the rugged trails toward Cameron. Did the only son of Angus MacDonnell ride among them?
She shook off a sudden chill, hoping neither she nor her father would find the price of peace too high.
As Morgan MacDonnell rode out of the shadow of the mountains, he kicked his mount into a canter. Warm autumn sunlight breached the clouds and spilled over the meadow in defiant splendor. He narrowed his eyes against its brilliance. Pookah’s hooves pounded the aroma of heather from the spongy turf. The wind tore at Morgan’s hair, urging him forward, bending him low over Pookah’s mane until he almost believed he could outdistance them all and ride to freedom.
“Morgan! Morgan me lad! Where’s that blasted son o‘ mine gotten off to?”
At his father’s roar, Morgan rolled his eyes heavenward, thankful God had given him shoulders broad enough to bear the weight of his clan. He reined in the horse and wheeled around. ‘Twas just as well the harsh reminder had come so quickly. There was no place for a MacDonnell in this world of open meadow and soaring sky. Even on Pookah’s wings, he could ride forever and never find a place where he belonged. The mountain cliffs were both his sanctuary and his prison, the only home he would ever know.
He nudged Pookah back up the trail, forcing him between two of his squabbling kinsmen.
“Eh, Morgan, this rascal stole my cheese. Mind if I shoot him?” his cousin Ranald asked, drawing his pistol.
Ranald had inherited his Gypsy mother’s snapping dark eyes and raven hair. People tended to look twice at him as if to see if he was really as handsome as they thought or if the striking beauty of his features might have paled when they glanced away. Morgan felt like a homely gargoyle next to him.
“By all means,” Morgan replied, smiling pleasantly. Ranald cocked his pistol at the young thief s paling face. “That is, if you don’t mind me breakin‘ your neck when you’re done.”
Pouting, Ranald lowered the pistol. “Dammit, Morgan, I ain’t killed nobody all day. My trigger finger is gettin‘ stiff.”
Ranald’s prettiness was surpassed only by his lack of judgment. Morgan plucked away the moldy hunk of cheese, fed it to Pookah, then knocked both the men’s heads together hard enough to leave their ears ringing.
Shepherding the motley remains of Clan MacDonnell to Cameron was like herding a flock of quarrelsome children. During the eight-hour journey, Morgan had broken up three fistfights, thwarted two rapes, and buried a great-uncle. His uncle hadn’t even the dubious honor of being dispatched by a relative. He’d simply fallen off his horse in a drunken stupor. Before his head had struck the rock that would kill him, his more resourceful clansmen had relieved him of both purse and boots. Morgan had dug the grave in stony silence while the others wept loudly, passed around a jug of malt whisky, and toasted the old man’s journey to hell.
“Sorry ‘boot your uncle, lad,” one of the men called out as Morgan picked his way up the rocky path. “Ol’ Kevin was a bonny fellow, he was.”
“Kerwin,” Morgan growled under his breath.
“Aye,” another agreed. “No one could spin a tale ‘round the fire on a cold winter night like puir ol’ Derwin.”
Christ, Morgan thought, the man had been dead an hour only and they couldn’t remember his name. He wondered if they would forget him so easily.
“Morgan! Damn it to blasted hell, where’s that lad o‘ mine?”
Morgan ground his teeth. There were times when he wished his father would forget him altogether. He drove Pookah into a lope until he reached the old man’s side.
Angus MacDonnell’s eyes twinkled in their deep crannies as he gazed up at his son. “Ah, there’s the fruit o‘ me loins.” He nudged the hooded figure riding beside him. “Took a mighty oak to plant such a strappin’ seed.”
“Aye, but even the mightiest of oaks can wither with age,” Morgan shot back.
His father cackled at the gentle jibe. “The lad’s wit draws more blood than his ax. As sharp as his ol‘ da, he is.”
Morgan grunted, refusing to commit himself. He’d never worn the mantle of his father’s pride comfortably. It had been too long mixed with cunning, jealousy, and the willingness to use his only son as a pawn against Dougal Cameron. Since Morgan had last returned from being fostered by his father’s enemy, he’d been the true leader of Clan MacDonnell, and they both knew it.
“Greedy wee bugger.” Angus’s voice rose with each word. “Never had a mother, so he just latched on to whatever comely teat he pleased.”
“Still does,” Ranald called out, evening the score for Morgan’s earlier interference.
The men burst into bawdy laughter. Morgan aimed, cocked, and fired his finger at Ranald. Ranald clutched his heart in mock distress and weaved in his saddle.
Angus’s shoulders were hunched beneath the weight of his moth-eaten plaid. A yellow pallor tinged his leathery skin. “A glorious day this is,” he called out, “when those scoundrel Camerons come crawlin‘ to us on their bellies, beggin’ for peace!”
A cheer rose from his clansmen. Angus took advantage of the pause to tip an earthenware jug to his lips. Morgan exchanged a glance with the hooded figure at his father’s side. The hood bobbed in understanding, and Morgan winked gratefully. The faithful shadow had ridden at his father’s side for as long as Morgan could remember, tugging off Angus’s boots when he lapsed into stupor, covering him from the damp night chill and watering his whisky to keep him from meeting the same fate as the unfortunate Kerwin.
His father had an audience now. He no longer needed a son. Morgan sent Pookah cantering down the hillside, leaving his clansmen to their dreams of remembered glories and imagined victories. He preferred the warm, sinewy reality of Pookah. The approaching twilight shed cooling pockets of air in their path.
As badly as it chafed him to admit it, Morgan knew the Cameron’s invitation was an errand of pity, not humility. The MacDonnells had wenched, robbed, and skirmished their way into too many graves, leaving Morgan master of little more than a band of rash outlaws. Only the tattered armor of their ferocious reputations kept the Grants and Chisholms to the north from declaring open warfare. Their last hope for survival lay in allying with the Camerons. But Morgan had no intention of crawling to Dougal Cameron on his belly. Not to save his clan. Not even to save his life.
He topped a rise to find the Cameron’s domain spread across the glen below like a checkered quilt. The disparity between their lives struck him a harsh blow.
The MacDonnells skulked in the mountains like rabid wolves. The Camerons presided over a spacious valley dotted with fat livestock and ringed by well-tended fields. The MacDonnells lived in a crumbling ruin in imminent danger of sliding down a cliff. The Camerons lived in a manor house nestled among rolling hills and crowned by a castle tower.
The bloody Camerons even had a princess.
A rare smile touched Morgan’s lips. Would Dougal’s daughter remember him? For five summers the stubborn child had remained true to her pledge. She had never once tattled on him, not even when his mischievous tricks bordered on cruelty. Upon discovering he had picked all the threads out of her embroidery, she had simply tilted up that wee prim nose of hers, telling him silently that she expected no better from a no-count MacDonnell.
If a pistol ball exploded through his heart before he reached the manor gate, Morgan would know whose dainty hand had wielded the weapon.
Oddly cheered at the thought, he thundered down the slope, letting loose a jubilant Highland cry that would give the villagers of Cameron Glen nightmares for months to come.
Sabrina wiggled forward on her elbows to peer over the edge of the gallery, bunching her cumbersome nightdress beneath her.
“Careful,” Enid whispered, nibbling nervously on one of her fat braids. “My brother Stefan once got his head caught in the banister and we had to saw it off.”
“His head?”
“No. The banister.”
Enid, Sabrina’s Belmont cousin, had arrived on their doorstep that spring with a trunk and an apologetic letter from Uncle Willie, hinting at some sort of disgrace. Sabrina found it difficult to imagine the docile girl being involved in anything more sordid than hoarding sugarplums from the dinner table. Her only vice seemed to be her craving for the lurid scandal pamphlets her brother sent from London. Tonight her round face was flushed with excitement at the prospect of being ravished and murdered by a clan of Highland savages.
The drawing room had been stripped to spare medieval splendor. Braces of candles and bowls of oil had usurped her mother’s ornate lamps. Hazy light flickered over the faded tapestries that had been carried down from the attics to adorn the walls. At each end of the hall, banners emblazoned with the Cameron crest fluttered from the massive rafters. Sabrina found the effect enchanting.
The Cameron men milled below — Sabrina’s uncles, cousins, and brothers, lean and resplendent in their stylish cravats and waistcoats. Her father had draped a narrow shoulder plaid over the sleeve of his velvet coat in deference to his heritage. Most of the men had wisely left their women at home, but as mistress of the manor, Sabrina’s mother flitted among them, exotically defiant in a shimmering saque gown that would have served her equally well during her days as a lady-in-waiting for Queen Anne. Pride swelled in Sabrina.
“Mama looks like a queen, doesn’t she?”
“Quite,” Enid dutifully agreed, although her hands were pressed over her eyes in terrified anticipation.
Fists thundered on the massive door at the end of the hall Enid almost bit her braid in two. Sabrina gave her cousin’s icy arm a squeeze.
Total silence reigned below. The doors swung open with an agonizing creak. Sabrina swallowed a knot of trepidation. Even Enid dared to peek through her fingers as the Camerons turned as one to greet their guests, her father flanked by the tense forms of Alex and Brian.
An old man strutted into the hall, trailed by a parade of ragged but forbidding men. Most were dressed as their chieftain was in mismatched tartans and trews. Sabrina shuddered, wondering how many people had died to clothe them. From what she had heard of the MacDonnells, she suspected their victims had found themselves stripped before their bodies had even cooled. The wilted plumes of their bonnets danced in the breeze from the open door.
The old man’s gnarled fingers clutched the hilt of a rusty claymore that dragged the ground with each step. Sabrina’s father had a similar antique mounted on his chamber wall.
“Dougal Cameron, ye worthless son of a whore!” the MacDonnell bellowed. Enid gasped and shifted her hands from her eyes to her ears.
Sabrina’s father swaggered forward, hands on hips and legs splayed in arrogant challenge. “Angus MacDonnell, you foolish goat-spawned bastard!” he roared in return.
The chieftain of the MacDonnells cocked his head like a canny parrot. “Is that any way to greet an ol‘ friend?” he whined before throwing his arms around her glowering father and drawing him into a crushing embrace.
The hall resounded with alarmed cries. Brian and Alex rushed forward to ensure the wily old man wasn’t hiding a dirk in his knobby paw.
“The Glasgow stage lost a great actor in that one,” Sabrina whispered.
“I once read of an actor whose wig caught afire and —”
“Shhhh,” Sabrina hissed, not wanting to miss a word of her father’s reaction.
Dougal waved back his would-be rescuers and slapped Angus on the back. “Friend or enemy, Angus MacDonnell, welcome to Cameron Manor. Tonight we lay down our old grudges to feast together.” He stepped back and spread his arms wide. “As a sign of our goodwill, my men have laid down their weapons as well.” Arching his eyebrow, he gave the MacDonnell’s ancient claymore a pointed look.
A rumble of discontent and profanity rose from the motley band of Highlanders, but when their chieftain drew out his claymore with a flourish and tossed it down, they had no choice but to follow suit. An arsenal of broadswords, pistols, harquebuses, dirks, muskets, and clubs emerged from scabbards and hidden pockets to rain down on the stone floor. The clatter was deafening.
Sabrina took advantage of the confusion to search their ranks for Morgan’s slender form. But all thoughts of her old nemesis fled as a man who had been hanging behind the others stepped through the door in a swirl of night mist.
“Holy Hannah,” Enid breathed. “The legends are true! They are giants!”
Sabrina’s breath caught in her throat. The MacDonnells were tall, but this man towered head and shoulders over every other man in the hall. He neither strutted nor swaggered as his clansmen did. He didn’t have to. He wore no bonnet and his sun-burnished mane hung well past his shoulders. A belted hunter’s plaid of misty blue and black hugged his massive form, and Sabrina realized with shock that he was not only bare-kneed, but barefoot as well. He made the Cameron men in their European dress look effete by comparison. Sabrina wouldn’t have been surprised to hear a mad skirl of bagpipes herald his arrival, wailing in time to the throbbing drumbeat of her heart.
His back was to the gallery and she could see the tension knotted in the massive breadth of his shoulders as he drew a monstrous Lochaber ax from his belt. A primitive thrill of fear clutched her heart. It was too easy to imagine his muscled arms swinging the gleaming blade, cleaving off the heads . . .
Enid nudged her, already fumbling for the bottle of hartshorn she carried in her pocket to avert potential swoons. “You’re deathly pale. You’re not going to faint, are you?”
Sabrina wrinkled her nose and shoved the pungent spirits away. “Of course not.” She shook off a shiver, trying to convince herself revulsion had prompted it. “I just don’t fancy large men. Especially large men with such enormous . . . muscles.”
A dreamy sigh escaped Enid. “I shouldn’t be so hasty to dismiss him if I were you. I know girls in London who would say he’s everything a man should be.”
And more. The words rose unbidden to Sabrina’s mind. Furious at herself, she dug her chin deeper into her hand.
The man stepped up to the pile of weapons, the haft of the ax poised in his palm. He hesitated, the motion fraught with deliberate insolence. Sabrina frowned. That lethal combination of grace and arrogance chimed an elusive warning in the back of her mind.
Although her father was tall, he had to tilt back his head to meet the stranger’s gaze. Sabrina couldn’t fathom the long, enigmatic look that passed between the two men, but suddenly the tension in the hall shot even higher than it had been upon their enemies’ arrival.
The eyes of every MacDonnell lifted to the stranger, and Sabrina realized that for all of Angus’s posturing, this man was the true master of their clan. And the true danger to the Camerons.
The ax slid from his fingers and thunked down on the pile. Sabrina’s breath escaped in a relieved whoosh.
As if realizing he was losing his audience to a more master player, Angus MacDonnell bustled toward her mother. “Beth!” he cried, his wheedling tones ringing through the hall.
“Ah, me beautiful Beth, would that e’er a face so fair had graced me own table!” He brought her clasped hands to his lips.
Sabrina stiffened, outraged. “Why, that disreputable rascal! Nobody but Papa dares to call her Beth.”
Her mother, gracious as always, curtsied before him, then took his arm to lead him to the table. Sabrina noted with satisfaction that her mother towered several inches over the wizened gnome. A man shrouded in a hooded plaid followed in their wake, dragging his left leg behind him.
“Eerie creature, isn’t he?” Enid whispered.
Sabrina nodded her agreement, not finding him nearly as eerie as the muscled barbarian squeezed between her brothers.
Three long trestle tables had been arranged in a U shape. Her father and the MacDonnell sat side by side at the center of the connecting table, their backs to the heavy tapestries strung along the wall. Elizabeth took her place at her husband’s side, while the hooded man hovered like a cloud of doom behind the MacDonnell’s bench.
After perfunctory grumbling over the fact that all the knives had been removed from the table, the MacDonnells fell upon the feast prepared for them. The hall resounded with satisfied grunts and growls, but very little conversation. The Camerons exchanged amused glances. A striking MacDonnell with an aberrantly dark tangle of hair plucked up the entire haunch of venison intended for that table and began to gnaw on it. Sabrina’s mother gave the gaping maid a frantic signal.
Enid’s eyes softened with sympathy for a kindred soul. “The poor dear must be starving!”
As goblets and bellies were filled and refilled, the mood mellowed. Snatches of song and bursts of good-natured talk came drifting toward the gallery. Sabrina’s gaze was drawn back to the blond behemoth. Unlike his clansmen, he picked at his meat and drank only water, leaving his goblet of wine untouched. Perhaps he feared it was poisoned, she thought. But then, why would he allow his clansmen to partake of it? He sat in the midst of them, yet apart, resisting all of Brian’s and Alex’s attempts to draw him into conversation. Wariness tautened his massive shoulders, stretching the worn tartan to dangerous lengths.
A pang of empathy tugged Sabrina’s heart. She knew how it felt to be surrounded by others yet feel alone. As an only daughter blessed with two rowdy brothers, adoration had been her birthright. But adoration did not always mean acceptance. Her brothers still tended to treat her like a child, but she accepted it as the price she must pay for their love.
A snore tickled her ear. Enid had dozed off, her head pillowed on folded arms. Leave it to her cousin to choose a sound slumber over the most thrilling night in Cameron history. Shaking her head in bemusement, Sabrina peeled off her woolen shawl and laid it over Enid.
In the hall below, Angus MacDonnell had raised his goblet. His slurred voice began an endless litany of toasts to the MacDonnells, the Camerons, and the entire Scottish race. Sabrina wouldn’t have been surprised to see the flamboyant little rooster jump on the table.
Her gaze slid away against its will. The bench was empty. The tawny-maned barbarian was gone. A hollow feeling opened deep in her belly.
Then a flicker of movement caught her eye. She slammed her cheek against the floor, praying the shadows beneath the banner would hold. The stranger had taken advantage of his chieftain’s boasting to slip up the stairs undetected. Her heart thundered in her throat as she peered toward the opposite end of the long gallery to see him disappear into the sanctuary of her mother’s solar, his stealthy grace a disquieting contrast to his size.
Her hands knotted into fists. The wretch had to be up to no good. Leave it to a MacDonnell to use her father’s hospitality as an excuse for thievery or ambush. Indignation flooded her, tempering her fear. She cast Enid a frantic glance, knowing already that her stolid cousin would be of no help.
Her lips tightened. She might never have a better chance to earn her brothers’ respect. Alex and Brian might believe her too callow to face a banquet hall of MacDonnells, but she wasn’t too callow to face one MacDonnell caught in his treachery. She envisioned her brothers’ mouths dropping open as she marched the sneaky giant down into the hall at the end of a Cameron blade. Let the crafty Angus charm his way out of that one!
Refusing to give herself time to lose her nerve, she leapt to her feet and sprinted for the darkened corridor that led to her father’s chambers.
Morgan slipped into the solar and drew the door closed behind him, shutting out the raucous merriment below. Soothing fingers of peace and dark enveloped him. Leaning his back against the door, he drew in a hungry breath. His nostrils tingled at the attar of roses that lingered on the air. This room had haunted him for seven years, and he had to see it one more time if only to banish its charms from his memory.
His eyes slowly adjusted to the dark. Misty moonlight trickled through the casement windows, spinning a delicate web of light and shadow over the solar’s treasures. A muffled chirp and rustle warned him he had awakened the tiny yellow finches that always hung in a golden cage behind the door.
“Hello, wee fellows,” he whispered. “No need to set up a squawk. ‘Tis just Morgan. Remember me?” He lifted his finger to the cage, only to discover it had grown too big to fit between the bars.
Unaccountably chagrined, he left the birds to their mutterings and padded toward the bookshelves. If the hall below was the head of Cameron Manor, the solar was its heart. This was where the family had gathered each night to share stories and laughter and songs. To Morgan it had seemed the gateway to another world, a world of books and music and paintings, a world where a man could dare to dream.
His summers at Cameron had served only to set him apart from his own kind. They had trimmed the rough edges from his speech, rendered his ideas more dangerous. Upon returning to his clan each autumn, he’d been forced to parry the taunts of his clansmen and fight for his very survival until eventually there was no one left to best. His father had watched his battles with ill-disguised glee and savage pride, knowing his future as chieftain was assured.
He drew out a leather-bound volume. Already half in love with Elizabeth Cameron by the summer he was fourteen, he had proudly spurned all of her offers to teach him to read. But that hadn’t stopped him from skulking in the shadows while she read aloud to her children each night. He would grip his knees in excitement as her cultured voice recited tales of bold warriors and cunning gods who sailed the seas in mighty ships. He would sneak back the next morning to caress those same books in his reverent hands.
The book fell open to a richly illustrated woodcut. It was his old friend Prometheus, nailed to a rock, his face contorted in agony as the eagle dove down to peck at his liver. Sometimes Morgan felt a bit like poor beleaguered Prometheus, eternally chained to a bleak cliff while his clan ate him alive. He slammed the book shut. He’d do well to remember its words were only gibberish to him, its pictures only childish fables.
A hand-carved clarsach was propped on a table beside the harpsichord. Morgan plucked one of its gossamer strings. A delicate note shivered on the air, jarring the silence. He jerked his hand back. He had often wondered if his own life would have known such genteel pleasures if Elizabeth had chosen to wed his father instead of Dougal Cameron. Or would Angus have eventually crushed even her indomitable spirit?
Morgan knew nothing of his own mother except what his father had told him — that in his own crude, violent struggle to enter the world, Morgan had killed her. The note of pride in Angus’s voice had both appalled and shamed him. His father hadn’t even troubled himself to remember her name.
A sparkle of light caught his eye. A crystal rose lay nestled on a wing of velvet atop the harpsichord. A strange ache caught in his throat. A rose, sweet and feminine, like a charm from one of Elizabeth’s beloved fairy tales, fragile, yet enduring enough to change even a beast like him into a prince.
He chuckled at his own whimsy, but was still helpless to keep from lifting it, from twirling the delicate stem between his callused fingers to watch its luminous petals capture the moonlight.
Without warning the door behind him crashed into the opposite wall. Morgan swung around to find himself facing yet another exotic creature of myth.
A princess, her cloud of dark hair tumbled loose around her shoulders, the light behind her throwing every curve beneath her ivory nightdress into magnificent relief. Her slender fingers were curled not around a scepter, but around the engraved hilt of a ceremonial claymore.
Silvery fingers of moonlight caressed the five feet of steel that lay between her hands and his heart.
“Hold your ground, rogue MacDonnell,” she sweetly snarled. “One false move and I’ll be taking your head back downstairs without the rest of you.”
Morgan didn’t even feel the pain as the rose snapped in his hand, embedding its stem deep into his palm.
Synopsis:
