Sue-Ellen Welfonder - [MacLean 03] (39 page)

“Even so, I regret the loss of the other,” she said after a while. “The ermine lining was dear.”

And it must’ve pleased the grizzle-headed crone to present her with such a magnificent gift.

That was what troubled her.

“Think you I care aught about fancy furs, lassie?” Devorgilla quipped, angling her head to peer up at Amicia. “Think you I dinna ken such frippery means scarce little to you?”

Amicia blinked, confused. “Then why bother sewing such a priceless lining into the cloak?”

“Hech, hech, it was what was
inside
the cloak that mattered, as I suspect you discovered, but I had good reason for choosing such a noble fur for you, never you doubt it,” she said, a familiar twinkle entering her eyes.

A mischievous twinkle well-known throughout the Isles.

Well-known and respected, even feared by some.

“I suppose that reason, too, must remain a secret?” Amicia probed, her expression pure MacLean challenge.

Unimpressed, the crone planted her hands against her bony hips and breathed deeply of the fine spring air.
Hebridean
air, and as wise souls would say, the best in the land. “Och, nay, lassie, that I will tell you,” she said at last, her wizened face splitting into an impish grin.

“’Twas for
him
that the ermine lining was meant, not you. A wee precautionary measure—should suchlike be needed.”

“I do not understand.” Amicia blinked at her, wholly confused. “For Magnus? But why?”

Devorgilla cackled with glee. “That wee bairn you carry is mushing your wits, lassie, if you still dinna know.”

Scrunching up her eyes, the crone peered hard at Amicia. “’Twas this
second
cloak I always meant you to have, see you? I kent its good craftsmanship and durability would please you more than ells of silky fur and glittery gew-gaws for claspings. But you needed such a mantle so that when it left your possession, yon braw laddie would see how little you mourned its loss.”

“Oh!” That came out on a sudden, gusty breath.

Now she understood.

“You wanted him to have tangible evidence that such finery is not what I hold most dear?”

The crone nodded, looked pleased. “Aye, that was about the way of it.”

“And do you think he knows that? Do you think he knows how much I love him?”

To that, the
cailleach
threw back her cowled head and laughed—her jollity answer enough.

And full aware she’d get no more out of her, Amicia turned aside and stared out to her husband’s galley, pleased when she caught a glint of sunlight on his handsome auburn head as he stood beside the helmsman.

Just that quick glimpse warmed and delighted her, minding her of how she’d slid her fingers through his silky, bronze-gleaming hair that very morning as they’d lain abed, savoring its cocooning warmth until the very last moment, their bodies and hearts intimately entwined.

So reluctant to leave each other’s arms.

Even for such a joyous and triumphant day.

“You needn’t wallow in such fierce longing, you know.” Devorgilla slid her a shrewd glance, clucked her tongue again. “A love with the depth of yours will last the few hours until you are in his arms again.”

Amicia glanced sharply at her, instinctively slipped a loving hand down to cradle the bulge at her middle, something in the crone’s tone lifting the fine hairs on the back of her neck.

But Devorgilla was no longer looking at her—nor at the silver-bright sea and the many galleys racing to and fro across the waves.

“Aye, lass,” the cailleach said, her voice distant, almost as if she’d turned her attention inward or
backward
in time, “those who love so truly have each other for always—even beyond time and oceans. Such deep love burns ever bright and can ne’er be extinguished.”

And as if they’d heard and agreed with her, two silent observers standing in shadow at the base of Reginald’s tower smiled deeply into each other’s eyes and nodded.

Then, in the pleasing knowledge that their blessing had finally been recognized and accepted, they joined hands and, turning, faded back into the tower’s stones.

Warm
stones, beautiful and shimmering.

Stones that would ne’er know cold again.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

S
UE-ELLEN WELFONDER is a dedicated medievalist of Scottish descent who spent fifteen years living abroad, and still makes annual research trips to Great Britain. She is an active member of the Romance Writers of America and her own clan, the MacFie Society of North America. Her first novel,
Devil in a Kilt,
was one of
Romantic Times
’s Top Picks. It won
RT
’s Reviewers’ Choice Award for Best First Historical Romance of 2001. Sue-Ellen Welfonder is married and lives with her husband, Manfred, and their Jack Russell Terrier, Em, in Florida.

More Sue-Ellen Welfonder!

Please turn this page for a special preview of

ONLY FOR A KNIGHT

available in July 2005.

The Legacy of the Black Stag

I
N THE MIST-SHROUDED FASTNESSES
of Kintail, a rugged country of sea lochs, wild heather hills, and moorlands on the western coast of Scotland, one man has e’er held sway. Since time beyond mind some might say, Duncan MacKenzie, the famed Black Stag of Kintail, has called this hauntingly beautiful place his own.

His, and the great house of MacKenzie, the most powerful clan in the region.

Truth be told, those who visit Kintail cannot help but be awed by the grandeur and magic of the land, and the tall tales circulated about its legendary chieftain. A deceptive air of tranquility and timelessness clings to the dark peaks and shadowed glens, a peace made possible only by the puissant Black Stag’s competent rule—and his formidable reputation.

Few are those who would cross him.

And most who have tried are no more.

Yet, of late, during long Highland nights beside the fire, the more bold amongst the tongue-waggers declare that the Black Stag has grown complacent and would surrender his lairdship to his only son and heir, Robbie MacKenzie. A braw young man whose task would seem tame, inheriting a land so favored, its people already loyal and true.

But all is not as it seems in the soft Highland air and broad, cloud-hung hills of Kintail, its purple moors and empty glens.

For deep within the most remote corner of this wide expanse of hill and sea, change and disruption tremble and stir like an ancient benediction chanted just beneath the surface to echo and re-echo across the heather until even one so mighty as the Black Stag cannot deny its truth.

Or run from the burdens and memories of the past.

Robbie, too, must tread the path of fate.

A path indelibly inscribed on his destiny and unleashed by the whispered last wishes of a frail and dying woman.

Chapter One

GLENELG IN THE SPRING, 1344

“R
EPAY DUNCAN MACKENZIE?”

Juliana Mackay stared down at her mother, reaching to smooth the threadbare plaid tucked so lovingly about the older woman’s thin body. She hoped she’d misheard the ill woman’s unthinkable request.

After all, her mother had lost much strength in recent days, the words had been rasped in little more than a dry whisper.

Straightening, Juliana wiped her palms on the many-times-patched skirts of her kirtle and struggled against the urge to flee from the pathetic sight before her. She wanted to wrest open the rough-planked door and run from the mean little cot-house of sod, heather-thatch, and stone, until she’d put all her cares and woes behind her.

Instead, she drew a deep breath and fixed her gaze on the peat fire smoking beneath a heavy iron cooking pot.
Repay Duncan MacKenzie.
The very notion ignited her spleen and twisted her innards.

Aye, she’d surely misheard.

But in case she hadn’t, she squared her shoulders and folded her arms. A stance meant as much to stave off any further such impossible appeal as to keep herself from yielding to her own panic and fears and raining a thousand well-peppered curses on the man whose family had brought such grief to bear upon her own.

Juliana clenched her hands. Duncan MacKenzie deserved a
hundred thousand
curses piled onto his head.

But she knew without asking that any such outburst would only plunge her mother into another coughing fit.

“The Black Stag is one of the most heavily pursed lairds in all the land,” she said at last, trying not to see the feverish glint in her mother’s eyes—the desperate plea hovering there.

But even by the feeble glow of a lone tallow candle, the ravages of impending death stood all o’er Marjory Mackay’s once-beautiful face.

And the truth of it jellied Juliana’s knees and brought out the worst in her.

Such as her seething resentment that her mother, long-time hearth-mate to the laird’s unlamented late half-brother, Kenneth MacKenzie, had been forced to raise her children in a dirt-floored, one-room hovel, divided only by an ox-hide curtain. This, despite the scant monies and aid the MacKenzie laird had sent their way over the years.

“Duncan MacKenzie has trod heavy-footed over you for all your days,” Juliana bit out, using her own booted foot to nudge a loose pebble from the hard-packed earthen floor. “He ne’er acknowledged your bond to his brother nor cared that my father sired two bairns on you—the Black Stag’s own niece and nephew!”

Frowning, she paused to grind the pebble back into the dirt. “He holds gluttonous feasts in his stout-walled Eilean Creag Castle yet e’er left you, his own brother’s leman, to scrape the barest living from these hard hills, soothing his conscience by having a milk cow or a jangling pouch of siller delivered to us whenever he recalled our existence.”

“He had his reasons, child,” Marjory Mackay wheezed from her pallet.

Juliana sniffed. “I mislike that you would even consider owing him restitution.” Stepping closer to the pallet, she dabbed at her mother’s brow with a damp cloth. “I have ne’er heard aught more . . . unnecessary.”

Marjory closed her eyes, pulled in a ragged breath. “Times were worse than you ken, food scarce. Without the MacKenzie’s largesse, you and your brother Kenneth would have had to endure an even harsher, more comfortless life. Think you I can . . . exit this world without repaying the man whose aid spared my bairns from hungering?”

“You are not going to die.” Juliana wrung out the cloth, squeezing it tighter with each word before redipping it into a wooden bowl of cool springwater. “I will not allow it.”

A delicately-veined hand, astonishingly strong, reached to circle Juliana’s wrist. “The good Lord alone decides when a body is to join Him, lass, but I . . .” A bout of breathlessness stole Marjory’s words and the flecks of pink-stained spittle she coughed up twisted Juliana’s heart.

“If the good Lord or His great host of saints have any mercy in their wing-backed souls they shall work their wonders to see you well again,” Juliana snapped, the words coming sharper than she would have wished.

“You must do as I ask and deliver the monies to the Black Stag for me. I have a missive for him as well, written when I first sensed my end was near.” Marjory half-raised herself from the pallet, her glassy-eyed gaze sliding to the rolled parchment on the cottage’s sole table. A crude and pitiful excuse for a table that wobbled on four uneven legs.

“I do not have much longer,” she added, squeezing Juliana’s wrist before letting her hand fall back onto the plaid coverlet, the last of her strength clearly leaving her. “I would know this done.”

Following her mother’s gaze, Juliana pressed her lips together and said nothing. She’d seen her mother laboriously scribbling away on the precious piece of parchment—the saints only knew where she’d obtained it or the inkhorn and quill now resting so innocently beside the curled missive. Such luxuries were scarce in this narrow glen where they lived, all but cut off from the outside world.

“Duncan MacKenzie has siller enough of his own—and to spare!” Juliana glanced at the rusted, iron-latched strongbox where she knew her mother kept what coin her brother Kenneth sent to them.

Hard-earned monies intended for their mother’s use and not to be hoarded, unspent.

And of a certainty, the monies were not to be delivered into the hands of the notorious Black Stag for the singular purpose of adding to that one’s already overflowing coffers.

Her gall nigh choking her, Juliana glared at her mother’s pathetically battered money coffer, resentment flowing through her like a deep and sullen river. Truth was, if her mother had put the monies to good use, mayhap refurbishing the thatch of their cottage’s leak-plagued roof or repairing the countless chinks in the stone-and-sod walls, perhaps then Marjory Mackay’s ailing would not have taken such a ferocious turn for the worse.

As it was, Juliana could only pray to God for her mother’s recovery—or a peaceful release from her travails.

That, and wish the Black Stag of Kintail to the lowest, most wretched of hells.

Bristling, she hoped her vexation did not stand writ upon her face. “The MacKenzie has not sent you aid since Kenneth and I have grown. Had the man e’er desired repayment, he would have surely demanded such by now,” she said, amazed by the steady calm of her voice.

She jerked her head toward the strongbox. “Yon coin comes from Kenneth—your son, I’d beg you to recall. And I vow, were he here, he would be of like mind. Duncan MacKenzie is a hard and savage man. He has no need of restitution.”

Biting her lip to tamp down the flood tide of heated epithets dancing hotfoot on her tongue, Juliana paused to press the cool cloth to her mother’s feverish forehead. “On my soul, would you desire the truth of it, there are those who say Duncan MacKenzie has a devil in him and you ken he has e’er lived in fine style. I doubt he would even appreciate the gesture. So why deign him with such a boon?”

A long, shuddering sigh escaped Marjory’s parched lips. “Are you so blind, lass? Can you not see the matter has scarce little to do with the coin—or even whether or no the Black Stag appreciates the message I would have you bring to him?”