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Chapter One
Scottish Highlands 1637
Ailsa MacLeod rode hard at the stone wall, anger and frustration conquering her common sense. Her dress rode up in the wind and she gripped hard with her thighs against Fingal’s flanks as he just made it over by a whisker. The gloom of Benscreavie woods was just up ahead, there no one would find her and she could find some peace, if only for a few sweet hours. She had to get away from Cailleach castle and the bustle of her sister’s wedding preparations for a chance to think and have a moment’s respite from her mother demanding that she behave with the propriety of a laird’s daughter.
The threat still rang in her ears. ‘Your days of scampering around the highlands like a wildcat are over, missy. You’ll knuckle down and do your duty, like your sister, make no mistake. This wedding of Morag’s is a fine opportunity for you to meet with the most eligible men in the clans and it is your duty to marry well and marry soon. You need a strong man with a firm hand who’ll put bairns in your belly and bring an end to your willfulness. Though where we’ll find one to take you in hand God knows.’
So there is it was. Her fate was sealed and there was no escaping it now. One of the wedding guests would claim her, the bride price would be negotiated and she would be sold like cattle to the highest bidder. Then she would be owned and used to breed heirs and all her youth and beauty would be thrown away on a man she would never want.
Her mother, Hester MacLeod, was a woman of prodigious fertility who had spent her whole life fawning over Ailsa’s father and disappointing him by producing a procession of four daughters but only one son and heir. With the oldest married off and her sister, Morag, to be wed in the coming days her mother’s every waking hour was now devoted to sacrificing her youngest daughter on the altar of political alliance. Morag’s wedding would be an excellent opportunity for her mother to sniff out potential husbands from the neighbouring clans.
As her resentment festered, Ailsa pounded on up through the meadow, strewn with its carpet of buttercups pushing their glossy yellow faces to the sun. A herd of shaggy ginger cattle looked on her plight with indifference as they raised their huge heads casually, wide wet nostrils flaring for signs of danger and then resumed cropping the spring grasses. She used to love this season with its soft warmth after the harshness of winter, its sense of a new beginning. But her optimism for the future faded as her mother’s familiar grievance stuck in her head. ‘If you would only apply yourself to neatening your appearance and comporting yourself in a ladylike manner you may well catch a husband of your own.’
It was all so humiliating, the idea that she should set out to catch a husband as one would a fat, speckled trout!Ailsa would have none of that. Her sister may surrender meekly to a lifetime of servitude to a husband, but she could not bear such a fate.
As she reached the woods Fingal’s hooves fell silent on a carpet of fallen pine needles. He took her further into the green womb of peace and solitude as she let him dawdle along, wrestling with a way out of her predicament. On returning home she would be punished for all sorts of transgressions. Stealing away from home at first light dressed in a maidservant’s clothes for a start. The coarse petticoats and tight dress felt rough against her skin, ripe with the sweat of their true owner, but worth the discomfort. Ailsa hadn’t wanted anyone living close by the castle to recognise Laird MacLeod’s daughter and give word so that they could drag her back. She took care to stay off the well-worn tracks so as to avoid the many guests from the neighbouring clans all streaming towards the castle, like ants to a honey pot.
Ailsa decided to keep riding and not stop until all the anger and worry swirling about in her head was gone. ‘If it’s a whipping I’m in for I shall have some sport first Fingal. Let us enjoy our stolen freedom for just a while,’ she said, spurring him on to a headlong gallop through the woods. Fingal’s pounding hooves threw up a shower of mud to spatter her stockings but she barely noticed. Wet branches whipped her face as faster and faster she went, her hair, the red-brown of chestnuts, flying out wildly.
She rounded a sharp bend and Fingal came to an abrupt halt, rearing up and pawing his hooves in the air. There, not a hundred yards away, a large group of riders were thundering towards her. There was no time to go around them and though she tried her best to control him, Fingal reared up again and unseated her. Ailsa fell hard into a large puddle of mud, gasping as its icy shower splattered her and the air was driven from her lungs. A dull ache shot through her ankle. Dazed and winded she was vaguely aware of movement and the jabber of voices as the woods became a blur of green. It was hard to breathe and a violent shivering took hold of her.
Something big and black was approaching, a strong grip on her elbow pulled her up and suddenly she was looking into hooded eyes, as dark and fathomless as a loch on a stormy day. Ailsa’s head cleared and she saw before her a youngish man, overwhelmingly large so close up and handsome in a forbidding kind of way. His face wore an expression of concerned exasperation.
‘Are you alright lass?’ he asked, shaking her vigorously. ‘Are you hurt?’ His voice was commanding and somewhat terrifying and with difficulty, Ailsa managed to suck in a breath of air.
‘You’re hurting me, let go of my arm,’ she gasped, choking back tears. Some other men on horseback were crowding round now, staring boldly and her cheeks felt as though they were on fire. There were about a dozen of them, all heavily armed, dirty and dishevelled - strangers, travellers and not part of her clan by the looks of them. They could be mercenaries or criminals for all she knew so she must not show fear.
‘Winded most likely but lively enough,’ the man shouted to his companions.
Through a tangle of wet hair, Ailsa risked a glance up at her captor into dark brown eyes of extraordinary beauty for a man. They were fringed with thick black lashes and were intensely curious with the spark of a fierce intelligence. As her wits returned she took in tousled black hair hanging loose down to the jawline of a hard face streaked with dirt. He looked her up and down casually and then reached a hand up and slowly pulled the hair back off her face.
Seeing him more clearly, as her head cleared, only fed her fear. Several days old stubble darkened his jawline and his clothes were encrusted with mud. There was a black pelt slung across his broad shoulders and it was as if he were part beast himself. There was an air of suppressed violence and danger about him, and his companions too. He narrowed his eyes, trying to puzzle her out.
‘Tell me, girl, why were you riding so fast and so dangerously? Is someone chasing you?’ he demanded.
‘No!’ she replied.
Ailsa wrenched free her arm and stood up, but the world seemed to spin away from her and she lost her footing in the mud. This time she felt an even stronger grip of two vice-like hands on her waist and a wall of tartan-clad chest pressed to her face. She was forced to hold on to the man to stay upright. The subtle smell of heather clung to him, earthy and woodsy, andsomewhat hystericallyshe thought, ‘I wonder who he’s been rolling in the heather with?’She burst into nervous laughter as panic took hold.
‘Look at me, stop laughing,’ he commanded, shaking some sense into her. ‘Now are you hurt, girl, did you hit your head? You had quite a fall, albeit the muck softened your landing’
‘No I’m not hurt,’ Ailsa replied.
‘A village girl most likely and an uncommonly pretty one,’ he shouted to his friends.
Ailsa’s blood boiled at his arrogance, talking about her as if she weren’t there.
‘How old are you, girl?’ the stranger continued.
‘Old enough to look after myself,’ she snapped. ‘Now I’m unhurt, or I would be if you’d just let go of me. I wish to be on my way.’
‘I don’t intend to let you go until I am satisfied you won’t collapse in the mud again. Can you ride?’
‘Yes, it’s not the first time I have fallen off a horse. Now please let me go and I will be on my way and trouble you no more’.
‘You’re not troubling me,’ he said with a sardonic grin, looking at her with more interest, his eyes holding her gaze and his face inches from hers. He showed no intention of releasing her. The look in his eyes had changed from concern to something like admiration and Ailsa’s heart raced with panic. She wished she had not ridden out alone. She wished to be anywhere but here with all these men staring and this enormous man putting his hands on her. As she squirmed to free herself it seemed to amuse him.
‘You should stop a while and clear your head or you’ll as like fall off again and break your pretty little neck you fool. Where did you get the horse? Did you steal it?’
