The Highlander's Iron Lady: A Steamy Scottish Historical Romance Novel Read online

  The Highlander’s Iron Lady

  A Scottish Historical Romance Novel

  Lydia Kendall

  Edited by

  Robin Spencer

  Contents

  A Little Gift for You

  Scottish Brogue Glossary

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  Extended Epilogue

  Daring the Highlander

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Also by Lydia Kendall

  About the Author

  A Little Gift for You

  Thanks a lot for purchasing my book. It really means a lot to me, because this is the best way to show me your love.

  As a Thank You gift I have written a full length novel for you, called Falling for the Highlander. It’s only available to people who have downloaded one of my books and you can get your free copy by tapping the image below or this link here.

  Once more, thanks a lot for your love and support.

  Lydia Kendall

  About the Book

  He was cursed never to find love. But fate had different plans...

  When Hilda Leighton visits the Highlands for the first time, she discovers she has been set up in a marriage scheme. But even though her opportunity to marry a Scottish Laird is considered great, she tries to avoid it at all costs.

  Camden Aragain, Laird of Troudel, is the right hand of Robert the Bruce. Though he is every woman’s dream, a curse cast upon him many years ago has made it impossible for him to fall in love. Until he sets eyes on the breathtaking Hilda.

  Fate brings them together and a new adventure begins, for both of them…

  But when they fall victims of abduction and Camden is left to die, Hilda learns of an old foe...a ghost from Camden's past that will endanger not only their lives but the future of Scotland as well.

  Scottish Brogue Glossary

  Here is a very useful glossary my good friend and editor Gail Kiogima sent to me, that will help you better understand the Scottish Brogue used:

  aboot - about

  ach - oh

  afore - before

  an' - and

  anythin - anything

  a'side - beside

  askin' - asking

  a'tween - between

  auld - old

  aye - yes

  bampot - a jerk

  bare bannock- a type of biscuit

  bearin' - bearing

  beddin' - bedding or sleeping with

  bellend - a vulgar slang word

  blethering - blabbing

  blootered - drunk

  bonnie - beautiful or pretty

  bonniest - prettiest

  cannae - cannot

  chargin' - charging

  cheesin' - happy

  clocked - noticed

  c'mon- come on

  couldn'ae - couldn't

  coupla - couple of

  crivens - hell

  cuddie - idiot

  dae - do

  dinin' - dining

  dinnae - didn't or don't

  disnae - doesn't

  dobber - idiot

  doesn'ae - doesn't

  dolton - idiot

  doon - down

  dram - a measure of whiskey

  efter - after

  eh' - right

  'ere - here

  fer - for

  frein - friend

  fey - from

  gae - get or give

  git - a contemptible person

  gonnae - going to

  greetin' - dying

  hae - have

  hald - hold

  haven'ae - haven't

  heed - head

  heedstart - head start

  hid - had

  hoovered - gobbled

  intoxicated - drunk

  kip - rest

  lass - young girl

  leavin - leaving

  legless - drunk

  me - my

  nae - not

  no' - not

  noo - now

  nothin' - nothing,

  oan - on

  o' - of

  Och - an Olympian spirit who rules the sun

  oot- out

  packin- packing

  pished - drunk

  scooby - clue

  scran - food

  shite - shit

  sittin' - sitting

  so's - so as

  somethin' - something

  soonds ' sounds

  stonking - stinking

  tae - to

  teasin' - teasing

  thrawn - perverse, ill-tempered

  tryin' - trying

  wallops - idiot

  wee -small

  wheest - talking

  whit's - what's

  wi'- with

  wid - would

  wisnae - was not

  withoot - without

  wouldnae - wouldn't

  ya - you

  ye - you

  yea - yes

  ye'll - you'll

  yer - your

  yerself - yourself

  ye're - you're

  ye've - you've

  Prologue

  Scotland, 1314

  The fog had lain heavy in the morning. Atop a hill overlooking the Bannockburn, the Scotsmen stood in their ranks. Their banners hung from their posts, soaked in the morning dew, and beneath them long pikes stood in bristling lines. The air was still in the mist, and all the warriors come that day stood silently, overlooking the fog-hidden banks of the Bannock Burn.

  Camden brushed a strand of his flaming hair back behind his ear, his face caked with bright war paint and his eyes squinting with a lethal seriousness at the calm grass before them.

  “Are ye thinking about yer brothers?” Camden’s father spoke beside him. The two of them looked very much like father and son, save for Camden’s father’s beard stretched near to his waist, which was carefully braided. Camden, on the other hand, sported a clean face, showcasing his strong jaw and a nose that had been broken once or twice.

  “Aye,” Camden answered bitterly, feeling the hilt of his sword with the tips of his fingers. “I should have been with them.”

  “If ye had, ye would be dead.”

  “Perhaps they wouldnae be.”

  “Live not in the past, me son,” Camden’s father clapped him on the shoulder. “We are here now to avenge them.”

  “Or to die,” Camden said softly. He ran his finger along the edge of his sword hilt, collecting the dew there on his fingernail. Then he kissed the drop of collected condensation against a bright English rose that sat tucked into his Highland garb.

  From the rose he brought his finger to his face and touched what remained of the dew to his lips. It was cold, and he could smell the lightest essence o
f the rose on the water’s residue.

  “Look,” Camden nodded down to the misty riverbanks. “The English are come.”

  On the English came, their bright banners flapping in the breeze, the heavy hooves of the horses hammering down against the earth, tearing away clumps of sod and mud as the constable urged his company forwards. The horses heaved their hot breath, and for Roger Horseley, that fearful English captain, time slowed, as if a few grains of sand had clumped together at the neck of the hourglass.

  Roger was no stranger to fear, for he had befriended it at a young age. Time and time again, that childhood friend had pushed him through harrowing encounters, driven him through the Scottish rebels, and on to victory. Roger had devoted his life to the English army, to his King, and now on that failing June day he drove his horsemen onward once again.

  Roger leveled his lance again, hearing the call of his soldiers, and his fighting spirit welled within him. Once more he would break the Scottish lines, and once more he would distinguish himself before his betters.

  Beside him rode Lord Robert de Clifford, adorned in all his fine plate mail, his crest shining out in the sun’s shadow. Lord Clifford raised his sword. With it bellowed the trumpets of his retinue. On he went! On towards the Scots! His men were behind him, crying out their terrible war chants, descending on the huddled masses of Scottish spears.

  Roger bellowed a mighty cry, his knights rallying behind him. The Highlanders were in sight now, their tight schiltron formation taunting the horsemen to do one better. They were cheering, bracing their long pikes against the earth, flexing their jaws so with the sounds that their caked war paint chipped at its creases.

  “For England!” Roger screamed through his steel visor, his limbs shaking from his horse’s footfalls. His knights were there, Lord Clifford was there, he saw the banner of Lord Beaumont strike out on his right, and the Scottish screamed once more.

  The English knights struck.

  What exactly happened, Roger could not be sure. What he could discern was being flung from his saddle, his horse falling away below him, and then a terrible impact against the ruined earth.

  His arm burst out in wrenching pain as he tumbled backwards, his shield ripped from its perch by the long reach of a Scottish pike. The screams were all around him, echoing through the steel confines of his plate helmet.

  Roger struggled to stand, heaving himself up from the mud, his arm useless and the wind gone from his lance lunges. He gasped for life, drawing forth his sword with his one good hand, and tried to make sense of what was around him.

  The cavalry charge had failed. Roger’s spirit sank into his plate armor boots as he watched his knights plucked from their saddles by the Scottish spears. A Scotsman, breaking from his formation, charged Roger with his pike held from the waist.

  Roger slapped the spear away with his sword, cringing from the pain, but lost his balance, falling backwards against the carnage. The battle-hungry Scotsman stood over him, raising up the spear’s point, and Roger thought his life done with.

  But it was not to be. For Lord Clifford, himself dismounted in the collision, came then to Roger’s aid, his sword shining with the setting sun, and the Lord cut the Scotsman down.

  Lord Clifford grabbed Roger’s flailing hand and with great effort helped the constable to his feet.

  “Stand!” Lord Clifford shouted through his visor. “Stand in the name of King Edward!”

  All around them, the Scots took the English knights down from their horses. Roger could see that the charge was lost, but still the brave Lord Clifford fought on as the Scots surrounded him on all sides.

  “Clifford!” Roger screamed, waving his good arm in the air to retreat, but he could not be heard. Lord Clifford’s armor stood out among the pleated plaids of the Scottish ranks, and to him his warriors flocked. English footmen grouped together on Clifford’s command, driving ever into the Scottish lines.

  “Break them! For England! For England!” Clifford was incessant, waving his bright blade, again leading his men nowhere he would not go himself. Roger felt a surge of fire within him, inspiring heat that washed away the brutal pain in his left shoulder. He could not abandon that English hero, not in that thick hell, and so he went forward into the fray.

  In that chaotic clanging of crude weapons, the Scottish held. Then, at least in the minds of Roger and all the other English commanders, the Scottish did something they had never done before. They began to push their wicked pikes forward, grinding their circular schiltron formations deeper into the mess of English knights, unseated and shaken.

  From his place in the cluster of it all, Roger saw Lord Beaumont’s banner fall. His billmen, those ranks of English soldiers armed with their hooked farming tools, were overtaken, and the English left began to crumble under the Scottish pike advance.

  “Withdraw! Withdraw! Back to the King!”

  And that was only the first day. They called the field Bannockburn, for it stood betwixt the so-named river and the great heights of Stirling Castle. It was there the English army, under Edward II, bivouacked, then retreated to in disbelief.

  Then the morrow came, trumpets tearing apart the stillness of the morning mist, rising the astounded Englishmen from their beds, and Roger watched with horror as the Scottish host – Robert the Bruce’s grand army –marched down from their hill, pikes bristling in the dew. King Edward's nephew quickly formed the vanguard, and threw forward the Welsh levies. Roger saw Lord Clifford, rallying forth his men in line behind the Earl of Gloucester. Roger himself wrangled round his infantry, shouting out commands, and the Scottish army collided with the Welshmen.

  Down the levies went beneath the Scottish pikes, and the English heavy infantry surged into the fight under Lord Clifford’s shining standard.

  “To Gloucester!” Roger cried, and he went into the mayhem with his sergeants behind him.

  Roger’s arm still suffered from the previous day’s injuries, and he found himself helpless to lift his shield, yet he swung on with his sword arm as best he could.

  The Scottish army churned onward, pacing further into the English lines. The blast of trumpets caused Roger to twist, and he saw King Edward’s remaining host—every spear and sword at the ready—march into the melee.

  Swords rang on axes and hauberks, while pikes shot through plate armor, and English arrows rained down overhead, raking the rear of the Scottish ranks. Roger struggled on, yet he found himself only losing ground. Roger craned his neck above the din to see the shape of the field, knocking a spear point aside, and saw the state of King Edward’s bannermen.

  Roger saw the English failing, pushed further and further back by the menacing huddles of Scottish pikes. It was a feeling of serenity and disbelief that washed over him. Something he never thought possible was happening. The Scottish men were taking the day.

  The English resolve began to fail as still the schiltrons came on, raking deep into the English masses. But still Lord Clifford stood as a beacon of bright hope for all those who would not yet lay down their arms as the Scottish formations broke apart to pursue the first of the fleeing English.

  In that moment, a landless Scottish noble drove at Lord Clifford with everything he had, seeking to break what was left of the English defense, and the two came at each other where the fighting was thickest.

  The duel was brief and savage, and at the end of it a strapping young Highlander, hair wild and matted with blood, eyes burning with a savage ferocity, watched his father fall to Lord Clifford’s blade. Grasping up his family’s claymore, that young Scotsman came at Lord Clifford with a fearsome Northern fire, driving the baron from his stance. Twisting backwards, Lord Clifford stumbled in the quagmire, raising up his sword to protect himself, but it was too little against the striking strength of the tenacious Scotsman.

  With the first blow that the Highlander struck, the English rose he wore in his garb fell from its perch. The second blow he struck ended the life of Lord Robert Clifford, lord of Appleby Castle, and Lor
d Warden of the Marches.

  The English broke. The mixed masses of levy billmen turned and ran, and when they turned around they saw Scottish light cavalry harrying their escape. Roger could see King Edward’s banner, that King Edward II, riding off towards distant Stirling Castle, and so could all the army. The battle had been lost.

  “To our victory!” Robert the Bruce, King of the Scots, held his cup aloft in Stirling Castle’s great hall. As he raised the toast, the amalgamation of surviving Scottish Lairds cheered and hollered and drank. They had won the day, a victory the likes of which they had only ever dreamed of, and yet it had come to be.

  “Hail Scotland!” the King beamed.

  “Hail!” the nobles chorused back.

  Camden sat towards the rear of the hall, staring down into his reflecting ale. He did not share the mood of his fellow noblemen, for he replayed the closing moments of the battle over and over again through his mind’s eye.