Highland Hero (28 page)

“I pray ye are certain, that ye truly ken what ye may give up, for I dinnae think I could bear it if ye left again.”

“Why?”

The words stuck in Isbel’s throat for a moment as she stared at him. Then she decided it was her turn to be honest and bare her soul. Kenneth had not spoken of love yet, but he had certainly been forthright, and he was going to stay.

“Because I love ye,” she whispered and gave a squeak of surprise and a little discomfort when he hugged her tightly.

“Sorry,” he murmured, realizing how he was squeezing her. “Now I am sure we will survive, no matter how apart from the rest of the world we are, for we will have our love to keep us strong.”

“
Our
love?”

Isbel knew she was trembling a little as she raised herself up on her elbows to stare at him. She was not sure which made her more unsteady, her anger or the fact that Kenneth truly cared about her. He could at least have the courtesy to say it clearly, she mused, and understood why she felt angry. Kenneth wanted the words from her but expressed his love in vague, sweeping statements.

“Ye dinnae look too loving just now, my bonnie elf,” Kenneth said, eyeing her warily.

“I am nay sure I feel too loving. Ye pull the words from me, my fine knight, but I hear naught from ye.”

“But I have told ye how I feel.”

“Aye, I ken that ye think ye have and that is what is so annoying. Ye have spoken of staying, of needing and wanting me, and e’en of how glorious our passion is. Ye have not said how ye feel about me.”

“Ah, Isbel, I love ye with all my heart and soul.”

Her anger fled so quickly, replaced by such a strong surge of joy, that Isbel felt weak. She collapsed in his arms and fought the urge to weep. Kenneth would probably have a difficult time understanding that a woman could cry simply because she was so happy.

“Now I am certain we will abide well together,” she said.

“Ye were concerned that this happiness wouldnae last?”

“Aye, for I didnae ken that ye loved me. I dinnae think we will skip merrily through the years ever smiling, but love is needed to hold two people together. Now I ken that we have that, that our bond is strong and will endure.”

“We must be wed as soon as possible.”

“There is a priest but a day’s ride from here.”

“Then we shall travel to him on the morrow.”

“I dinnae suppose Pullhair can attend.”

“Nay, and I am sorry for that. Howbeit, I believe our marriage will start more smoothly if we dinnae approach the priest with a brownie at our side.” He smiled at her when she looked up at him. “Now kiss your husband and tell him how much ye love him.”

“Are ye going to demand that of me a lot?”

“Oh, aye, most every day.”

“And may I demand the same?”

“Ye will ne’er have the need to ask, for I will tell ye in every word and every act. Ye have won me, lass. Ye have woven your magic around me.”

“Nay, love has,” she said and kissed him.

Epilogue

Kenneth wrapped his arms around his wife and smoothed his hands over her swollen belly. It had been three years since he had raced back to Bandal and he knew he had made the right choice. For all of its strangeness, Bandal was home and Isbel was the mate of his heart and soul. If he had not returned to her, he knew he would have never felt whole again.

He looked around the bailey and smiled with pride. There were now others living and working at the tower house. After being duly warned, a few of his kinsmen and their families had joined him. It had been proven that all one had to do to learn the secrets was to live and love Bandal and care for its mistress. His people had needed some time to adjust but now they, too, accepted the magic all around them, even took pride in it.

“Young Robert has become very quick on his feet,” Isbel said and pointed toward their son as the sturdy boy of two ran across the bailey, a nursemaid hurrying along behind.

“May it please God to make our next child as strong,” Kenneth murmured, lightly kissing the top of her head.

“And as protected,” she said as she turned in his arms and smiled up at him.

“Aye.” Kenneth laughed and shook his head. “I think he draws the spirits to him even more than ye do.”

“He does. At first Pullhair was disappointed. He thought I was to bear another Lily and how could that be when my child was a male. It did not take him long to see that Lily’s spirit is very strong in the boy.”

“Very strong.”

“Ye sound proud of that.”

“I am.”

Isbel hugged him. “I dinnae think ye can ever ken how much I love ye.”

“It cannae be any more than I love ye.”

“Even after ye decided to stay, I still feared ye would ne’er fully accept the magic of this place, that it might still drive ye away from me.”

“Never.” He tilted her face up to his and brushed a kiss over her full lips. “I will ne’er leave again. I realized that there was one part of Bandal I could never live without, one of its magics that was no less than the very blood in my veins. That magic is ye, Isbel. Even if all the rest vanishes in the blink of an eye, Bandal will still be my home, for its mistress holds me firmly in her spell.”

Isbel curled her arms around his neck and kissed him. Fate, she decided, could at times be extraordinarily perceptive.

Tatha

Chapter 1

Scotland, 1385

“Weel, there be another of the wretched lasses settled.”

Tatha Preston halted as she reached for the latch on her father’s chamber door. His deep voice penetrated even the thick oak of the door, but she did not fully comprehend what he was saying. The way he referred to her and her sisters as “wretched lasses” stung. It always did. Malcolm Preston, the laird of Prestonmoor, was always complaining about the fact that thirteen of his fifteen children were female. The way he said
settled
sounded ominous to her, and she pressed her small, slender body closer to the door, eager yet frightened to hear more.

“Are ye certain they will offer no complaint?” asked an even deeper, rougher voice Tatha recognized as that of her eldest brother, Iain. “All the lasses arenae as meek as Margaret and Elizabeth.”

“Those two were settled at cradleside, as is natural,” replied Malcolm. “It isnae that hard to settle one or two daughters. ’Tis nigh on impossible to manage when ye are cursed with thirteen of them.”

Married?
Tatha thought, and felt a cold knot of fear twist tightly in her stomach.

Marriage was something Tatha had given little thought to, despite being nineteen. From a young age she and most of her sisters had understood that there were no dowries for them, that the two eldest sisters had used up what little coin and land there had been for such things. Unlike her sisters Bega and Isabel, who, at three and twenty and one and twenty, were unhappy spinsters, Tatha had seen it as a good thing. Without the usual lands, alliances, and coin tainting a betrothal, she had thought she would have the luxury of choice, might even experience the miracle of marrying for love. It sounded very much as if her father intended to steal all that away.

“I just dinnae feel right about selling them,” muttered her other brother, Douglas. “What sort of mon needs to buy himself a wife anyway?”

“I am sorry if this offends your delicate sensibilities, laddie,” Malcolm said with a sneer. “God’s bones, it isnae all that different from the way such matters are usually handled. Money and land exchanged hands when your first two sisters were wedded off. Aye, and most of it left our hands. Now at least we can get some benefit from the arrangement. And dinnae think the mon putting up the bride price goes away unhappy. He may get no dower, but he gets a healthy young lass of good blood to warm his bed, tend his hearth, and bear his bairns. ’Struth, I think the way I am doing this is by far the fairer way.”

“And it certainly helps to fill our empty pockets,” drawled Iain.

“Weel, aye, there is that sad truth,” agreed Douglas. “I just wish the men werenae such sad specimens. It would seem that the lasses deserve better.”

“They have naught now and no promise of anything,” snapped Malcolm.

“Just dinnae expect them all to smile and thank ye. Bega and Isabel may not say too much, as they seem to be verra concerned about being spinsters, but Tatha willnae accept all of this so verra sweetly. Nay, not when she discovers the aging rogue who has bought her.”

“Sir Ranald MacLean is wealthy, with some verra fine lands to the north.”

A shudder went through Tatha. She knew Sir Ranald. He had been lurking about quite frequently of late. She still had bruises on her backside from his last visit, when she had been a little too slow to completely avoid his pinching fingers. The man had to be fifty if he was a day, had a sickly complexion, was lecherous, and was soft, like some pampered, overfed woman. He had also buried three wives with only one spindly legged, sneering son to show for their sacrifice. Marriage to him would be pure hell and nothing less.

Creeping away from the door, Tatha maintained her stealth until she felt she was far enough away not to be heard, then raced up the stairs to the weaving room where her sisters were gathered. She had to warn them of the plans being made for them. When she burst into the room she saw the way her sisters looked at her in surprise and then dismay, touched with a hint of disgust. Tatha was suddenly not sure they would see anything wrong with what their father was doing, and it saddened her. Although there was still hope that the six youngest girls, ages fifteen to nine, would display some pride and backbone, the others seemed to have accepted their father’s oft-repeated opinion that they were little more than a burden upon him. Nevertheless, it was her duty to warn all of them.

“Ye really must learn some manners, Tatha,” said Isabel, her voice heavy with disapproval.

For a moment, Tatha considered letting Isabel remain blissfully ignorant of her fate; then she shook aside her annoyance with her prim, self-righteous sister. “Father is selling us,” she announced.

“What nonsense is this?”

“Ye are aware that there are no dowers for any of us?” Her sisters nodded, the older ones looking far more downcast by their circumstances than the younger ones. “Father has found an answer to that problem.”

“He has found the means to dower us?”

“Nay, Isabel, he is allowing men to pay him to take us for their wives. He is selling us off to the highest bidders.”

“And there are men who are ready to concede to this arrangement?”

Isabel actually looked delighted, and Tatha wondered if her sister truly understood all of the implications. “Our father is selling us off like cattle, Isabel.”

“He is getting us husbands.”

Tatha glanced at her other sisters and realized that they were going to allow Isabel to speak for all of them. “And what sort of mon needs to buy himself a wife? Have ye thought verra much on that?” She noticed a fleeting look of consternation on Bega’s round face but, before her hopes could be raised too high over this hint of rebellion, it was gone.

“They will be husbands, something we have little or no hope of obtaining now,” Isabel said firmly.

“Oh, aye, husbands. Useless, disgusting men like Sir Ranald MacLean. That is the gift my father gained for me.” Only her younger sisters showed any sign of sympathy for her. The ones of marriageable age revealed only relief that they were not going to be given to such a man. “Doesnae that make ye begin to worry o’er who may be buying you?”

“Nay,” Isabel replied before anyone else could speak. “We are spinsters. Our fate, until now, was to grow old and barren in our father’s house. Even a bad husband will be better than that. At least we will have our own households to lead and, God willing, bairns.”

“Weel, I dinnae see it that way.”

“Mayhap ye should. Ye too are a spinster, or near to. Aye, and ye are a too-thin lass with flame-colored hair. Red-haired and left-handed. Two curses in one wee lass. Ye also hold some verra odd ideas. Nearly blasphemous. Some have e’en whispered that ye are a witch, just as Aunt Mairi was. Aye, ye do have a verra fine pair of blue eyes, but they arenae so fine as to outshine all of your faults. If I were you, I should shut my mouth, bite down hard on my sharp tongue, and take what ye can get and be thanking God for it.”

“Nay, I think not.” Tatha fought down the pain caused by her sister’s harsh words.

“And just what do ye think ye can do?”

“ ’Tis none of your concern.”

Tatha walked away, deeply saddened by this further proof of how different she was from her sisters. She had been her Aunt Mairi’s favorite, spending most of her time in the old woman’s tiny cottage. It was not only that Aunt Mairi had had nearly all of the raising of her that had separated her from her sisters, but the things Aunt Mairi had taught her. The woman had intended that Tatha would take her place as the healer for the clan. She had taught her niece all about herbs, medicines, and the arts of healing. She had also filled Tatha’s greedy young mind with a myriad of old beliefs, beliefs the Church frowned upon. Such beliefs had been what had marked Mairi as a witch and threatened to mark Tatha with the same brand. In the year since Mairi had died, many people had sought Tatha out to make use of her indisputable skills at healing. Some people, however, also made the sign of the cross whenever they saw her.

As she slipped into the room she shared with her sisters Elspeth and Jean, Tatha wondered if her skill in the art of healing was one of the things Sir Ranald wanted her for. The man did not look very well at all, and Tatha now recalled Sir Ranald’s deep interest in her knowledge of herbs. She dragged her saddle packs out from beneath her tiny bed and started to fill the panniers with her meager belongings even as she wondered if Sir Ranald suffered from some specifically male difficulty, for the herbs and medicines he had been the most interested in had been the ones pertaining to lust and one’s performance in the marriage act. As she packed her herbs and small collection of stones, she decided that the man was probably just twisted in some sick, carnal way.