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PROLOGUE
“You know what we planned, Keira?” Marion McTavish asked as she held her daughter’s hands tightly. “We need to escape from this place because one day I think your father will do something very bad to us. I am sorry to say this, lass, but he is a very wicked man.”
Keira nodded. She was not supposed to know, but she had heard from her playmates, the children of the servants, who knew all the gossip, that her father had stolen things, although she did not know what those things were.
At only nine years old, she did not have a great understanding of the world, but she knew right from wrong not only from the holy books but instinctively. She felt it as surely as she felt the wind on her face, and she knew that her father was a bad man, even though he tried to hide it under a façade of kindness.
“So we will wait until he goes to Edinburgh and go away then.” She paused and looked deeply into Keira’s eyes. “But you must not tell anyone, not even one of your friends, because if your father finds out, we will be in very great trouble. Promise me, darling.”
“I promise, Mother,” Keira replied solemnly. “When is Father going away?”
“Next Sunday, Keira,” her mother replied. “That is all you need to know. I will come and help you pack a few clothes, and we will go with Malcolm.”
Keira’s brow creased with puzzlement. “Why is Malcolm coming with us, Mother?” she asked.
Marion gazed at the troubled, innocent little face before her. Was Keira ready for this knowledge? Marion had been having a love affair with Maloclm McKnight for months while still being obliged by her marital vows to submit to her husband’s attentions. Archie McTavish had married her merely to give him a son, but if the baby inside her was Malcolm’s, she did not want him to be raised by a cruel despot like Laird Archie McTavish. Even if it was the laird’s own child, she did not want her precious infant falling into his hands, so she had decided on a plan of escape.
Not long now,she thought as she gazed at her daughter, and a wave of love and tenderness swept over her. They had to get away.
Keira suddenly looked anxious. “May I take Wee Marion with me?” she asked as she cuddled the rag doll she had named for her mother. Wee Marion was the love of her life, and Keira never went anywhere without her.
“Of course you may,” Marion replied, laughing as she pulled Keira into her arms. “She is one of the family, after all.”
* * *
“We will soon be gone, hen,” Malcolm McKnight whispered as he took the hand of the woman he loved more than life itself and raised it to his lips.
He was a strong young man, not much older than Marion, and they had loved each other since their gazes locked across the floor of the great hall in Glenmar Castle. She had been dancing, and he had been standing guard at the edge of the floor, but both knew that something momentous had happened between them.
A day later she had sought him out on a pretense of needing a guard to ride with her to the village of Glenmar to visit the seamstress to repair a dress. This was an errand that could have been done by her maid or a servant, but she told everyone that she wanted to pick some flowers for Vore Tullye celebrations, which was two days away. The mistress of the castle was a good target for bandits, so she took a guard with her.
Accordingly, they saddled their horses and rode over the drawbridge into the pine woods nearby. There was a clear path through it, which they rode on for a hundred yards or so before Marion turned her horse into the forest. They walked further in amongst the trees until they could no longer see or be seen from the path, then they dismounted.
Malcolm stared at the beautiful young woman before him uncertainly, not knowing quite what was expected of him. “Milady?” he asked. “What—”
She walked forward and put a finger over his mouth. “As soon as I saw you, I knew you had to be mine,” she said softly. “Do you feel the same way?”
Malcolm gazed down into her dark brown eyes and swallowed nervously, a thousand different thoughts tumbling through his mind at once. What would happen if he so much as kissed Lady Marion and anyone found out? If he made love to her, he would most certainly be put to death, and she would be cruelly punished. His traitorous man’s body was betraying him, but he had to ignore the hardness of his arousal. He had to say no.
Marion saw that he was going to refuse her by the way his expression changed, and she cursed herself for being so stupid. What had she been thinking? He was a young man with his whole life before him, and she was about to ask him to do something that might end it.
“I am so sorry,” she said regretfully. “I should never have said that. Please forgive me and forget I said anything.”
She turned away but was suddenly jerked backward as Malcolm’s hand caught her wrist, and she was pulled against the hardness of his chest. Marion had only a second to look into a pair of dark green eyes before Malcolm’s mouth swooped down on hers, and she was kissed more thoroughly and more sensually than she had ever been kissed in her life. She clung to him, feeling the hardness of his manhood against her belly and the sweet ache and wetness between her thighs that was her woman’s response. She wanted him desperately.
When they broke the kiss, they were both almost breathless.
“That shouldnae have happened,” he murmured. “You are a married lady. What if the laird finds out?”
“The laird will not find out,” she replied, then stepped forward and kissed him again.
For a few seconds he hesitated, then he growled, swept her into his arms, and set her down with her back to a tree. She made no complaint as he kissed her again and kneaded one of her breasts gently with his big hand.
“I have been wanting tae do that since the first time I met you,” he whispered. “I cannae help myself. Tell me tae stop, Marion, please.”
“No.” Her voice was a whisper, but it was firm and definite.
“Are you sure?” he asked doubtfully.
