Across a Dark Highland Shore (Hot Highlands Romance Book 2)

ACROSS A DARK HIGHLAND SHORE

Across a Dark Highland Shore

By Kelly Jameson, author of SPELLBOUND

Text copyright © 2015 by Kelly Jameson

All Rights Reserved

Book cover image: romancenovelcovers.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, incidents or locales is entirely coincidental.

No distribution or reproduction is permitted without the written permission of the author. For more information, write
[email protected]
.

From rocky Duard, from Mingarry grey,

The terror of the clans has passed away.

They sleep, the plaided warriors of Maclean,

Where dust of battle may not rise again.

Sheathed is the claymore,

vanished from the era

The white-winged pride of Ocean Chivalry;

Hushed is the slogan, bloodless flow the waves,

And Death seems buried in those island Graves!

M. Macdonald

1

The Highlands

New Year’s Eve, 1446

Isobel MacKinnon could not recall a winter that had been so cruel.

For weeks now it had been storms and raw winds hammering from the north, winds that snatched one’s breath and made one’s bones ache with misery. She’d known since she was a child that north winds portended endings and separations, and there had already been far too many of those events.

Snow and ice descended with bitter fury on valley, wooded glen, and moor, leaving all that lay outside the MacKinnon keep in a quiet, brittle stillness. Nothing seemed to move or breathe. Inside the keep, quite the opposite was true—heather ale and whisky flowed warmly in the great hall as clan members raised their cups in loud, drunken celebration. Even in their defeated state, they shouted the clan’s ancient war cry, “Remember the death of Alpin!”—a rallying chant about the King of Dalriada, who had died in 841 and whose son had united the Picts and Scots those many years ago.

Isobel watched waves of swirling smoke rise from the kitchens in preparation for feasting they could ill afford after so much loss. Even in kinder seasons, there was a need to scrape the porridge drawer and measure the grain with care, but the feasting tonight would be enjoyed with reckless abandon.

It was Hogmanay, the last day of the year, and Isobel quietly went about her duties, having learned long ago to avoid crossing paths with anyone, especially Glynis and Forba, her boisterous, older half-sisters. It was so dark outside that the candlelight hardly allowed one to see the length of the great hall. Boys who fetched firewood were like shadows darting about, like the flash and streak of silver fish barely visible in a swift-moving burn. Rosy cheeked men and women played dice in the meager light of the fat-dripping candles on the chandeliers, occasionally clapping their hands together in glee or shouting insults at the other players.

Isobel was bemused. There was nothing to celebrate this frigid, barren winter. The clan was in chaos. There were too many widows and fatherless children now, too many men lying cold in the clan cemetery on the hill.

Only weeks ago, she’d watched, shivering violently, as her own father’s body was burned on a funeral pyre. A small procession of mourners had been led to the chapel, and they’d walked three times sunwards around it to keep the chief’s spirit safe in his afterlife. A few women, mourning veils hiding their faces, wailed the
Coronach
. Isobel did not want to think about what the spectacle must have looked like from beneath a veil—shadows and bright flames making it all seem even more unreal and otherworldly.

As hungry flames erased Brodie MacKinnon’s physical being from the world forever, sparks leaped into the night, disappearing beneath bare, gnarled tree limbs and scattered stars that were far too bright. His life, his memories, nothing left. And with his departure, Isobel lost whatever little protection she’d had from her pitiless sisters.

The decimated clan had made only a half-hearted attempt at a lykewake, the mourning feast between a death and a burial, showing great disrespect and shameful drunkenness. They made a bigger celebration now for Hogmanay, using up precious stores they would need for the long, difficult months ahead.

Brodie’s wishes were that he be buried at sea, but the cold and ice had made that impossible. It wasn’t just that he had no wish to be encased in a linen shroud that was then sewn in deerskin and placed in a wooden coffin. He hadn’t wanted to be buried in the ground because of the wolves. He had a fear of the unclean, brutish beasts. So it had been fire.

Isobel did not like fire. As a small child, she had barely escaped being burned alive in her village croft when it was struck by a jagged finger of lightning. After the fire, she’d dreamt about it for many moons. She’d awake screaming, flailing her little arms, still feeling like she was stumbling through darkness, inhaling gutters of smoke. Her mother had managed to push her through the door to safety but hadn’t lived herself. Isobel had been eight summers at the time. She still had nightmares about reaching her tiny hand out to her mother just before the flames swallowed her up forever. So in the end, flame had swallowed both her mother and her father.

Isobel’s hip and left arm bore angry scars from the flames, and she was conscious about keeping them covered. Though ugly, the marks on her body were a constant reminder of her mother’s selfless act, of the one person who had truly loved her. After the fire, Brodie had taken her in and allowed her to dwell among the servants of the keep, much to the chagrin of Glynis and Forba. Her father had been far from perfect, but he had been brave, more so in his last days. And he had suffered much in those last days, mostly due to the actions of her half-brother Calum.

There had been many deaths the summer before Brodie’s death. All because of the treachery of Calum. He’d been buried at sea during the hot summer and it had not been a well-attended burial. Who was left, and who had cared?

Isobel hadn’t known her half-brother very well, but she’d been in the gardens and had seen him fall from the tower. She would never forget the sight, or the sounds of his screams, as he fell. He was a bastard son of Brodie’s, a madman who had tried to usurp their father’s power in his last days, had gone so far as to kidnap Brodie and imprison him in the clan’s own fetid dungeons before he died. Isobel had brought Brodie food in secret and kept an even bigger secret: she’d helped him escape. But it was too late.

While Brodie had been chained in his own dungeons, Calum and his devout circle of mad followers had led an ill-fated and unsanctioned attack on the powerful MacAlisters to the south, with whom they’d been at peace for many years, and he’d placed the blame for the attack falsely on Brodie.

Kade MacAlister had come back from Ireland after a three-year absence to find his brother Niall and his fiancée Fenalla dead as a result of the attack, burned to death in a croft.
[1]

Too much fire. Too much death. Having lost her mother the same way, Isobel could understand his pain.
Kade, a warrior with a fierce reputation and the newly appointed MacAlister chieftain, vowed swift revenge. When he learned that Calum had been responsible for the attack on his clan, and not Brodie, he came after Calum…and events were set in motion that led to Calum’s fall from the tower that day. Kade MacAlister was a fair man and had not slaughtered Brodie for his son’s treachery; he had not punished the father for the child’s sins. But Brodie was old and weak and had died the winter after Calum’s fall from the tower.

Clan MacKinnon had never recovered from Calum’s foul deeds. Leadership among the MacKinnons was now practically non-existent. The men who yet lived fought amongst themselves as the keep fell into sloth and disrepair, grappling over sour wine and heaping platters of meats. Soon, there were not enough platters to go around, some of the women and children going hungry as a result.

Isobel swept rotting rushes from the flagstones while the other girls, who were supposed to be helping with the odious task, drank ale and cavorted in the dark shadows with some of the lads. Yet Isobel was thankful that she was practically invisible to those around her, including the sulky, ill-tempered maid with whom she currently shared a bed in the servants’ quarters, among rolls of handspun yarn and chests of linen. Isobel was missed unless they tripped over her or decided to poke fun at her. Her fingers were often dirty and chafed from carting firewood and peat about, sweeping rushes, and washing linens, and in the warmer months from pulling herbs from the damp ground, leaving her clothing stained.

All of her garments were common and worn. The only special thing about her was her gift. She had the Sight, but had kept it hidden for as long as she could. Until she’d revealed a vision of a bloody battle and many deaths to her friend Wynda, the blacksmith’s garrulous daughter. Wynda had been the only person she’d told.

After the horrible attack on their keep by the MacAlisters, Wynda had told others about Isobel’s vision and they began to look at Isobel, they began to
see
her, they began to come to her for healing and because they thought she could tell their futures, which made her uncomfortable. Then they began to
blame
her. If she had foreseen the bloody battle with Kade MacAlister and his men, why had she not warned the clan?

Isobel didn’t always know what her visions and her dreams meant. So how could she warn anyone of anything? She was frightened of her gift. Each night before she fell asleep, she prayed she would not dream. But often she did. Not only of fire and death but of a tall warrior on horseback aiming an arrow at her heart—a great warrior with midnight-black hair and a sprig of crowberry on his plaid, which was red with thin stripes of green and blue. In her dreams, the warrior with intense eyes seemed to step from the blackest well of night.

With word of her vision, the whispers truly began, the furtive looks, the fear reflected back at her through her clan members’ eyes.
Witch. Witch.

Stories about her began to circulate, even beyond her own clan. Despite the many times she’d healed her sisters’ ailments and spoken charms over them, her sisters now openly accused her of being a servant of the devil. They increased her tasks and their taunts, and Isobel withdrew more and more into herself. She began to realize that her previous invisibility had been a blessing.

Even now, as music and laughter flowed, as those in the great hall consumed barley bannocks with knobs of butter and salt, cheeses, roast beef, ale, and whisky with no thought of tomorrow, Isobel felt a gnawing fear. A premonition. Children fenced with sticks as if they were swords. Red wool plaids swirled dizzily about her. Two men brawled, bloodying each other’s noses, and then they shook hands and drank whisky together, laughing and clapping each other on the back. A few moments later, they were brawling again.

Isobel was trodden on and laughed at as voices cheered and pottery was thrown and broken. She was poked and pinched. It was so cold she could see her own breath.
Och, would she never be warm and well fed again?

Her heart hurt for the cottagers who braved the bitter, black night to make their way to the keep but were turned away empty-handed by fat men with greasy lips and bloated bellies. The faces of the little boys and girls made her especially sad. They stood in the freezing night, their cheeks splotched red with cold and their breath making tiny ghost clouds. Though they were given nothing, they sang anyway, their innocent, warm voices shimmering in the air.

‘Twas the first year Isobel could remember that the Hogmanay tradition of giving bannocks to everyone who came to the keep was not kept. ‘Twas a small comfort, and if Brodie were still alive, he would’ve seen to it that all—from the smallest child to the most wizened and bent-backed villager—were given bannocks for good luck.

Isobel understood comforts. There were so few in her world that she clutched at small things, safe things, like the necklace and pendant hidden beneath her gown. Shortly before he’d died, Brodie had given her the necklace. “I should’ve given it to ye long ago, lass,” he’d said. “It was a trinket I bought from an auld gypsy who came through the village once, selling such things. I always felt sorry for the gypsies, wandering about the lonely moors, selling things like baskets, trinkets, and heather, which we can tug from the ground ourselves. The gypsy was stoop-shouldered and hungry, and carried all she had in life on her small back. She came walkin’ out of the mist of the glen almost like a wraith. She had this necklace. I was drawn to it and bought it and gave it to yer mum. ‘Twas a small thing but it made yer mum so happy.” He sighed. “Would that I coulda given her more. But love doesna always come to us on our own terms. We have to decide whether or no’ to accept it into our lives, to risk all for it, when it does come.

“The gypsy claimed the stone in the necklace was charmed, a love pendant of sorts. An auld Viking charm that had been around for many years. After yer mum died in the fire, I found it in a trunk that was half charred and put it away and didna think of it for a long time. I missed yer mum sorely and e’ery reminder of her hurt. ‘Tis a worthless chunk of stone, but like I said, yer mum loved it. So I want ye to have it. Ye should have it.

“Ye see now why yer sisters hate you so, Isobel? ‘Tis because ye are different. Because yer mum wasna my wife. And, I fear, ‘tis partly because yer sisters are spiteful, petty creatures by nature. They dunna make me proud. Ye are no’ like them.” 

“Why are ye giving me the necklace now?”

“I fear my days grow short. If I should die soon, ye must no’ be sad. Ye must remember that the young shouldna be buried with the auld. I’ve made many mistakes in my life, Isobel. It is too late for me to make amends for all of them. I know yer life has no’ been easy. I hope this necklace, which I advise ye to keep hidden at all costs from yer sisters, even while ye wear it, will give ye some small measure of peace. When ye look at it, I hope ye will still believe, a little bit, in hope and love, no matter what yer future brings. Do ye ken? Will ye take it?”

“Yea, father.” Isobel remembered stroking and admiring the deep blue stone and then looking into his tired face. “Father, sometimes things like stones can show us things we canna learn elsewhere. There are lessons in fists of cloud and the bunched backs of hills, even in the reflections of deep lochs.”