The Highlander's Fiery Bride: A Steamy Scottish Historical Romance Novel Page 2

  Stopping her fingers from fidgeting under the men’s gaze, she smiled tentatively, “I take it His Highness was not pleased with your demand, My Lords?”

  “Pleased,” a man named Gunther snorted over his goblet. “The man nearly lost his senses when we threatened a third Baron’s war if he did not hold up the Great Charter his own damned father signed into law.”

  “Measure your words, Gunther,” her father warned tightly. “My daughter is not a fishwife.”

  The knock on the door drew the attention of the men towards the entry. Standing there was a man, dressed in the household livery, looking decidedly uncomfortable—if the sweat shimmering over his face was any indication—and holding a basket heaped with fruit.

  “Good day, My Lords,” he swallowed. “This was received for you, Lord Keswick. It’s another gift for your victory, My Lord.”

  Her father waved the man over, who after settling the basket on the table, bowed and left. Magdalene looked over the selection and her eyebrows lifted. The fruits in the basket were rare for this time of year and sitting like a queen on a throne, sat a large singular pear.

  The Lord of the Manor gasped the fruit and bit into it. His eyebrows danced up as his mouth stretched into a smile. “This is lovely. Remind me to find out who sent this to me and thank them.”

  Moving her eyes away, Magdalene went to examine the basket again, noting the red-skinned apples and fuzzy peaches, the latter with their rounded pink-gold spheres as interjections between the apples. She reached for the nearest apple when a harsh choke from her father made her spin to him.

  Her face instantly went bloodless. Her father was red in the face and his eyes were wide and bulging. His hands began scrambling, clawing at his throat and it was only when one her father’s men grabbed at him that her body lost is motionlessness. She screamed and lurched to him, only to get knocked away. Four men were a wall around her father now, blocking her from him and she screamed again, this time in frustration.

  “Let me through!”

  She had to see her father. But the wall of men around him did not let her through until…until one stepped away and the uneaten half of the pear tumbled from her father’s lax hand and stopped at her feet. Her body was quaking as the men moved away, pale-faced, and she knew what had happened without anyone saying a word. She reacted by slapping the basket away, flinging the fruits every which way.

  Her breath was short and harsh in her chest as she looked down at her father, laying on the floor…dead. His face was blotchy and his eyes were vacant.

  She collapsed on the floor and one word groaned from her lips. “Why?”

  Chapter 2

  Ratagan, Clan Williamson, Scotland

  “The witch struck again, Me Laird,” Logan grimaced. Two mercenaries that Angus, Laird of Clan Williamson, had sent to kill said witch, were almost unrecognizable with red-black burns covering the majority of their bodies.

  The Laird watched in grieved silence as the men were lifted from the wagon and carried into the Williamson castle, heading towards the infirmary. With their disappearance, he cursed under his breath, and when the anger blasted to his head, his fist struck out and punched against the wall in front of him.

  “That damn fire witch. We need a bolt of lightning to send her to hell once and for all.”

  “Amen to that,” Logan, Angus’ second-in-command, said tightly. “No matter what we’ve done, it doesnae matter…she always seems to outsmart us.”

  “A woman steeped in the Dark Arts will do that,” Angus scowled, raking a hand through his wild red hair in frustration.

  The witch they spoke of was a recluse inside a fortress in the Seabhag Crag Mountains, a spate of black rocks looming over a loch of dark water. Both the witch and the crags were too near his home for his comfort. Five years ago, tales of this fire-throwing witch had been rumors at first, nonsense, the Williamson Clan was sure, until they had been proven wrong.

  Three-and-a-half years ago, three hunters had been found burnt to their white bones. One who had escaped, suffering from only a singed arm, told them a harrowing tale of a madwoman cackling like a banshee and throwing fire from her palms at them. The rumors had suddenly become real.

  Angus cast a look up at the grey skies. It was a bit too distressing and possibly comical, the Laird thought, that a dispersing thunderstorm and the sun coming out was what signaled the end of the damned witch acting up again. After the third attack, Angus had taken it upon himself to rid the world of this devilish woman but twenty-two months down the road, he was no closer to getting what he needed than when he had started.

  Sighing, he hated that he had to report another failure to his council and, worse, his family. His young sister, Ailsa, had not been allowed to leave the citadel for those long two years in fear that she would fall into the witch’s trap. He hated subjecting his sister to such unneeded isolation when she could be free. His warrior brother Malcolm could fend for himself but he was not letting his sister or his diminutive mother, Lady Isobel, a healer with a penchant to gather herbs in those woods, get caught in the woman’s clutches.

  Taking the soft incline to the castle’s gate, Angus’ mind felt scattered and his heart was sorrowful. Knowing that he had sent two men to their deaths, hoping they were the key to ending his witch worries, was heavy on his heart. The single comfort he had was that the two men had no wives or children he had to cater to. Thank God that mercenaries were solitary creatures.

  The smell of the infirmary was one Angus had little love for. The memories of the many nights he had spent there with various injuries—knife cuts, fire burns, a broken wrist, a twisted ankle, and even the rake of a wildcat’s claw over his shoulder—did not endear him to the sickroom.

  Lingering at the doorway, Angus watched as the men were moved to beds. The healer women leaped into action, removing burnt clothes and ordering poultices to be made from the herbs in the sunroom, that was just through the southern arch at the end of the room.

  He grimaced when a baleful groan came from one of the men, half of his face a mess of black and bloody red. The burn was down his neck where the skin had melted to a sick white fatty layer and had mottled red and black spots around it. Patches of blackened skin flaked off while the healers moved around the men and when a large bubble of pus began to leak out, Angus turned away, hoping to keep the contents of his stomach where they were.

  He kept his eyes away while swallowing over the bile that was scalding his throat raw. His mother, Lady Isobel, suddenly came striding down the hallway, pulling the sleeves of her gown up her elbows. She looked all business, clearly going to help the healers and Angus, foolishly, stepped to intercept her.

  “Mother, please don’t—”

  Her piercing blue eyes stopped him with his mouth half-open. Her look was so daunting that his teeth clicked as he quickly shut his mouth.

  “That’s what I kent ye said,” Isobel said, while pushing him away and breezing past him.

  Angus stifled a snort and shook his head at his incredulity. His mother was not one to be deterred when she was on a cause. There was nothing he could do at the infirmary, so he went to the old meeting room his father had left him and tried to make some order of this chaos. There, he closed the door behind himself and sank weakly into the chair. Instantly, his rough hands came to cage his face and a tendril of despair ran through his mind.

  What am I going to do now? My last plan came to nothing. Rodham and Bhaltair were the best in Edina… If this is me last resort, what else is there? I need to get rid of this witch.

  His stress level was so high he could feel grey hairs growing out of his head with every passing breath. There was no information on who this witch was. He did not know her name, where she had come from, or why she loved to terrorize the people around her. People that—as far as he knew—had not harmed her at all.

  Reaching to a drawer, he pulled out a list of people who had been harmed or killed by this woman and he grimaced while taking his quill and turning the
page over. There, he added Rodham and Bhaltair’s names to the lengthy list. He turned the leaf over and glanced at the names stricken out with red ink, the bright hue signaling that these unfortunate people had died from their injuries. Only a few had survived and a handful of them had recovered.

  Something had to be done with this woman, but what? Where was the key to this debacle?

  “Ye’ll get a permanent line in yer face if ye keep doing that,” the dry-humored voice of his younger brother Malcolm said from the doorway.

  Sitting back, Angus massaged his brow, “I’m already getting grey, I dinnae see a problem with getting lines.”

  His brother shook his head and drew out a seat. Angus met the same shade of blue eyes that he saw in the mirror every day. He, his brother, and his sister had all inherited their father—David’s—deep blue eyes instead of their mother’s lighter shade.

  Malcolm was sympathetic, brushing a lock of his shoulder-length auburn hair from his eyes. The man, an eight-and-twenty-year-old soldier in the family army and a reputed lady’s man, sighed, “The fire witch again?”

  “Need ye ask?” Angus grimaced. “Rodham and Bhaltair might live for a day, but we all ken that they’re going to die. At least they will go somewhat peacefully.”

  “Then what are ye gonna do?” Malcolm asked.

  “Damned if I ken,” Angus sighed. “But she has to be stopped.”

  The soldier sat forward, “If ye would just allow me and me men—”

  “Nay,” Angus snapped. His tone had come out harsher than he had expected and he grimaced. Measuring his voice, he clarified, “I cannae risk ye, Malcolm. As for now, we dinnae ken anythin’ about this woman and until we dae, I cannae risk those who are assets to me and our Clan… nae yet.”

  “Nae yet,” Malcolm said with a lazy grin. A fringe of his hair flopped over his left eye. “I’ll be lookin’ forward to when ye do.”

  Narrowing his left eye, Angus glared. “When I do, it will nae be ye. Ye take too many risks, Malcolm.”

  His brother shuddered, “Ye ken, when ye do that, narrowing that eye, I swear I see Papa… without the beard, of course.”

  “That’s why I dae it,” Angus smirked before sobering. “Go and be useful, prepare the gravediggers, Malcolm. We have two bodies to bury by mornin’.”

  “Righto,” Malcolm said, standing with a stomp of his boots. “Try getting some rest, brother. Ye will earn yerself nothin’ by workin’ yerself to death.”

  Angus waited until the door closed to shake his head and wryly said, “Someone has to.”

  He turned back to the list in his hand, trying to figure out what next steps to take with this fire witch, until a headache began to pulse at his temples. He had not eaten or drunk anything from dawn and the rumbles in his stomach only made his headache worse. Rising reluctantly, he went to the kitchens and requested a light meal, water, and ale to be sent to his meeting room.

  Walking out of the kitchen, he was about to go back to his meeting room when a familiar raucous voice came from the nearby dining hall. Angus rolled his eyes. He could hear Malcolm’s friend Alistair bragging about the last boar he had killed barehanded. Alistair was a dark-haired beast of a man with arms the size of a hundred-year-old tree trunk and a chest that busted leather armor as if it was a string of cotton thread.

  Entering the room, he remembered the days when he was like his brother and his friends. Living the life of a simple soldier, carefree and able to do whatever he wanted. Free to go hunting before the crack of dawn, free to train in the heat of midday, and free to visit the taverns at night and see the wenches there. Sadly, responsibility had caught up with him after the death of his father, and he had been made the Laird. The memory of what the inside of a tavern looked like was now a very vague one in his mind.

  Striding out, Angus smiled at his brother and his three friends, Alistair, Roran, and Cinead, at a table. The last one, Cinead, had Malcolm in a headlock and his brother was faking choking to death.

  “All right,” Angus said authoritatively. “Enough of that. Cinead, release me brother before he expires. He has some use around here.”

  Malcolm narrowed his eyes as he was let free, “Just some?”

  “Aye,” Angus said while plucking an apple from a bowl nearby. “Maybe I should amend that to barely.”

  An orange was lobbed to his head and Angus snatched it from the air and threw it back with deadly accuracy. The fruit was a blur in the air and connected by clocking his brother right on his nose. It was comical how loud Malcolm yelped.

  “I am still yer big brother, Malcolm,” Angus grinned. “Which means I am still stronger, and faster than ye.”

  “For now,” Malcolm hissed, while rubbing the mark. “Go back to yer meeting room and leave us alone, old man.”

  At thirty, Angus still felt young enough to not be classed as old but, by his clans’ standard, he should have been married with two bairns by that age. Perhaps, he was old.

  “And ye should grow up,” Angus said, without much heat behind his words. He spotted a maid with this food and after nodding to Malcolm’s friends, he went back to the meeting room.

  Halfway through his meal, an expected knock came on his door and by the brevity of it, he knew it was his mother. Finishing the last gulp of his water, he called out, “Enter, Mother.”

  The tight look on her face told him that his expectations of the men were right. They were dead. His stomach sank and he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Did ye and yer women get to at least ease their pain?”

  Lady Isobel sighed, “We gave them herbal infusions first but when that dinnae work, we resorted to giving them the strongest mandrake root brew we had. It eased them enough so they could pass without the pain.”

  The food Angus had just eaten sat like a lump of rocks in his stomach. The faint comfort his mother had given him about the men passing without pain felt diminished compared to the guilt he felt knowing that he had sent them to their deaths.

  Never again. Angus swore. If anyone is going to kill that witch, it is going to be me. Nae me men, and nae any proxy…only me. I’ll shove that dagger into her heart with me bare hands.

  “It is nae yer fault, Angus,” Lady Isobel said knowingly. “We never kent she would have been so strong.”

  “I ken, Mother.” His words were placating but his tone was hollow and it showed how empty he felt.

  Lady Isobel left him with a request—a futile one, Angus thought—for him to not take the men’s death to heart and for him to try and get some rest. He heard the door close, with his eyes looking down on the faded swirls of the wooden desk under his hands. How could he not take it to heart?

  Running a hand over his face, Angus left the meeting room and the citadel entirely. Striding over the low-cut grass, he nodded in return to those who greeted him and went directly to the stables. His horse, Titan, a massive grey destrier, stood a good five hands over every other steed in the stable. His gaze was dark and intimidating, scaring most of the stable hands away. There were only two men besides himself who were willing and able to take care of Titan.

  He entered and spotted the horse, whose head had jerked up at the sound of his footsteps. Over the stall, he reached out and fondled the stallion’s jaw. “Ready for a ride, boy?”

  A part of him was always prepared for an answer whenever he spoke to the animal and despite knowing it was foolish, he was always disappointed when he got none. Leading Titan out, he saddled him quickly and heaved himself into the seat, and grasped the reins.

  He had to speak to someone, and he felt ashamed for not thinking of it sooner—their village priest, Father Matthew. If he was going to fight fire with fire, then he needed to know exactly what kind of dark arts he was up against. The only other option, one that the Christian in him disliked, was to see a Druid, if the holy man did not give him much. He never got to see either as a frantic squire came running to him.

  “Me Laird, yer brother and…” the poor boy was out of breath but the word brot
her had grabbed Angus’ attention anyway.

  He jumped off the horse and grabbed the panting squire, “Me brother what?”

  “He…” the boy was pale. “I overheard him sayin’ he and his friends are gonna find the fire witch and kill her. They just went off to the gate.”

  God’s Blood! Angus leaped into the saddle and spurred Titan into a gallop towards the woods. Vivid visions of his brother made unrecognizable by black burns over his face and body made Angus’ blood run cold. If Malcolm did not get killed by the witch, he would damn sure kill the foolish boy himself.

  Chapter 3

  Keswick, England

  The death of Brandon Crompton, Baron Keswick, had shaken the foundation of his Keswick Barony to its bones. The tenants were shocked and disheartened, the lords were dismayed, and the men in that room when the Baron had died, the leaders of his troops, were out on a mission for blood.