The Highlander's Redemption (Mills & Boon Historical) (Highland Brides - Book 1)

‘It was always I who decided what we would do,’ she said, grasping Calumn’s hand to clamber over a fallen tree trunk which barred their way. ‘When we were younger, I mean, Guillaume and I.’

‘That doesn’t surprise me.’

‘He didn’t mind. Guillaume’s always been very good-natured.’

‘Not quite so biddable a year or so ago, though,’ Calumn reminded her caustically.

‘That’s true.’ She had been angry, but now she was glad, for if he had not run off, she would not have met Calumn. Wisely, she kept this thought to herself.

‘Has it never occurred to you to wonder why he hasn’t come home?’

‘Of course it has. It’s obvious something must have prevented him. He’s been ill, or imprisoned or—or something of that nature,’ she finished lamely. ‘What is it? What are you thinking?’

‘The most obvious thing—assuming he’s not dead—is that he’s found someone else.’

‘But we are betrothed,’ she said blankly.

‘Madeleine, when I was in the army I saw it happen often,’ Calumn said, taking her by the hand. The path on the lower slopes which wound through the forest to the loch was wide enough for them to walk side by side. ‘Young men fall in love very easily.’

‘But even if he did, he would not just forget all about me.’ Though she had not thought of it before, now the idea had an awful appeal. Unfortunately, knowing Guillaume as well as she did, it had not the ring of authenticity.

‘So, even if he has taken another woman, you won’t mind,’ Calumn persisted.

She searched inside herself for some emotion, but drew a blank. ‘I’ve never thought about it,’ she said, nonplussed by her own lack.

‘If you loved him, you’d be able to answer that question straight away.’

‘You mean I should be jealous.’ She tried again, but still there was nothing. Wondering if she were immune, she thought fleetingly of Calumn with another, and struggled to conceal the resultant surge of something black and vengeful. Not immune. Furious with herself, she turned on Calumn. ‘This is absurd. How can I be jealous when I don’t even have any grounds to think that he has met someone?’

‘It’s absurd to think he hasn’t, in all this time.’

‘Well, if Guillaume has—has some experience, then he will not mind that I have too,’ Madeleine said, clutching desperately at straws.

Calumn gazed at her in astonishment. ‘Do you really think de Guise will want his wife to have been tutored by another man?’

‘No, when you put it like that, but—what I mean is—well, you would not mind, would you?’

‘You’re quite mistaken. If I was ever inclined to take a woman to wife—which I never have been—but if I was, I’d want to know I was the first man and the last to make love to her.’

‘So you would expect her to be faithful and true while you are not. That is so unfair!’

‘On the contrary. If I was in love, that’s exactly what I’d be. If I was in love, I would have no desire at all for another. That is what being in love is about. I believe I’ve pointed that out to you before.’

‘Then in your eyes I am ruined.’

‘Ah, but I’ve taken great care not to ruin you. De Guise will never know, provided you are prepared to lie to him, which you obviously are.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘If you marry him, you will be living one big lie and you know it.’

She did, she thought wretchedly, she knew it very well, but why did he have to throw it so mercilessly in her face! She glared at him, struggling in vain for some reply which would put him down and answer his question without embroiling herself in subterfuge, but none came. ‘Let’s not argue, Calumn,’ she said finally. ‘Whatever has happened to keep Guillaume here, I know it is not another woman. He would not forget his promise to me. More importantly, he would never abandon La Roche.’

‘More importantly? You think his home is more important than you are?’

‘Well, yes, La Roche will still be there long after I am dead. Do not you think the same about Errin Mhor?’

Calumn frowned heavily. ‘‘Tis what my father thinks. What I’ve been raised to think, that I should marry for the sake of the lands. I suppose I used to think that, too.’

‘And now?’ Madeleine prompted. They had reached the tree line by the loch. Wandering over to the water’s edge, they sat down together on the sand. The surface was choppy from the light breeze which had blown up offshore.

‘Now? No. I have lost the right to love Errin Mhor. And even had I not, I would not marry for the sake of the land. Such marriages as you contemplate provide cold comfort. The children they produce are valued only for their ability to inherit. If I married, I would want a wife who would love me, not my possessions. Soil and earth, no matter how richly cultivated, do not keep you warm at night. Bairns should be a blessing, not a bargaining tool or a weapon.’

His bleak tone pierced her heart. ‘You sound as if you’re speaking from bitter experience,’ she said compassionately, putting a hand on his arm.

To her surprise he shook it off angrily. ‘I am, but at least I’ve learned from it. Would that I could teach you the same lesson. You want me. I know you want me, yet still you carry blithely on with your plans to wed another man,’ he said savagely.

‘Calumn, I don’t …’

He shook her hand away from his arm. ‘Have you really thought about what that will mean, my sweet Madeleine? How it will be when you lie cold and unmoved beneath him, enduring his caresses for the sake of your precious heir. Will you remember how it was between us? How I make you feel? The places I can take you to? Will you regret that you and I did not do out of wanting what your husband must do to you out of duty?’

Her eyes were heavy with unshed tears. She knew he meant to hurt her, but she could not grasp why, for surely his stubborn need for her to admit he was right did not merit such a vicious attack. She had thought he cared for her in some way. Now, the way he was looking at her made her doubt that, too, on top of all her other doubts. The urge to confide in him fled. She could only stare at him wordlessly.

‘What, have you no answer for me?’ Calumn continued in a brutal tone which made her shiver. ‘No, for though you’ll tell yourself any number of lies, you know better than to attempt the same with me. The truth is, Madeleine, that every time you make love to your husband, you’ll be wishing it was me. Even though you and I have not actually made love. Fool that I am, I thought I was doing the honourable thing. Perhaps I was wrong.’

She found her voice at this. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You want to. I want to. What’s the point in my behaving so honourably, when you are thinking so dishonourably? It seems a shame to deny you such a sweet memory.’

The very idea of her with another man made the bile rise in his throat. At least this way he would leave his mark upon her. He would be her first. He would be the one she thought of. Always. The fierceness of the need to possess her took hold of him like a raging fever. He pulled her to him suddenly, holding her hard against him, locking her tight with hands that were demanding. ‘What do you say, ma chérie?’

She was dazed. Lost. Hurt. And appallingly excited. Wanting gripped her so fiercely it squeezed the breath out of her. She clung to the only certainty left to her as a drowning sailor will cling at the wreckage of his ship. Her need for him. The rightness of that need. ‘Yes,’ she said huskily.

For seconds he stared at her, as if unwilling to believe what he had heard. Then he kissed her and she kissed him back, hard, passionately, furiously, as if her own temper had been tightly leashed and was now let go, and when he tried to pull away from her, she dug her nails into his arms to punish him for his cruel words. Possession. The need to possess. To take. And to give. Something unstoppable had started.

Passion lit higher and brighter, surging more violently than before. Hands and lips demanding, bodies responding more fiercely from knowing each other, more fiercely still from a deeper need as yet unsated. This was passion borne of need, need which must be satisfied, not pleasured. A hunger held them in its grip, so immense it was as if they had been fasting. A need which was a punishment too, for saying the unsayable, for forcing on the other a glimpse of the unseeable.

Clothes tugged and ripped and pushed hastily aside. Kisses, starving kisses, hands clawing and bruising, touches on the edge of pain but not felt enough. Nothing would be enough except that most intimate touch. That most intimate plundering. That most intimate possession. Nothing would be enough until they were melded, welded together, seared and burned together, spent together.

Her lips were bruised from kissing, but still she clung, desperate for more. She lay beneath him now on the sand, her skirts around her waist, his hand cupped around the heat and wet between her thighs, and she pushed shamelessly against him, moaning, saying his name over and over again. Her hand reached for him, hard, hot, pulsing in her grip, and she heard him moan too, heard him say her name. He inched her legs apart so that she was embracing him with her knees. She arched up against him. She could feel him nudging between her thighs, so close, the tip of him touching her. She dug her nails into his back. He gripped her bottom, tilting her up for him and she held her breath, for it seemed that she had been waiting for this moment since she was born.

And she waited. But it did not happen.

‘No!’ Calumn let her go. He sat up, pulled her skirts around her legs, his eyes closed as if he was in pain, and in truth he was in agony. He got to his feet and pulled her with him. ‘Not like this. I won’t take you like this.’

Madeleine shook her head as if the motion would clear it of the whirling from the force of their passion. ‘Why not?’ she asked baldly, already raw with the pain of his rejection.

He looked like a devil, standing before her, his body glistening with sweat, his eyes glittering dark with something fierce. Something which made her recoil. The look he threw her was like a flaying. ‘My honour is all that I have left to me. I won’t allow you to strip me of it, nor will I permit you to use me as your excuse. You are a very, very desirable woman, Madeleine Lafayette, but I won’t take you. Not on these terms.’

Not flayed, stripped bare to the flesh and bone. And not by Calumn, but by the truth. The extent of her own dishonourable behaviour shocked her. She stood rooted to the spot for a moment, staring at him, then instead of righting her clothes suddenly pulled them all off, discarding them in a frenzy, leaving them in a muddle on the damp sand, angrily slapping at Calumn when he tried to prevent her, pushing him away from her when he tried to hold her back, set only on escape and release as she had always sought it before. Naked and furious she plunged into the icy-cold waters of the loch.

She did not hear him call her name. She did not see how he waded in after her, stopping short, thigh deep, on the steeply shelving bank, his eyes searching anxiously for her. She swam under water, emerging some distance from the shore, her hair streaming behind her, arms and legs synchronising to power her out, away, beyond his reach, beyond her own thoughts, letting the cold and the resistance of the current, and the slap of the waves and the soothing action of each stroke of her arms and paddle of her legs use up all her energy.

Only when she felt her breath come sharply, her limbs become heavy, did she turn back, clambering out over the jagged rocks to the sandy shore where Calumn was waiting anxiously to wrap her in the comfort of his filleadh mòr, rubbing her dry, blowing heat into her fingertips and toes with his mouth, seating her, silent and shivering, in the mouth of the cave while he lit the fire and prepared a meal. She ate silently. She wanted to cry, but she felt she did not deserve to feel sorry for herself. And she was afraid that if she did she would not be able to stop.

As the moon rose in the velvet black of the sky, they lay by the fire wrapped in their separate plaids listening to the lap of the water, the contented whickering from the horses, the rustling in the nearby woods of the various night creatures. Each in their own way shocked by the force of their feelings, they had not spoken, save for common courtesies, since she had returned from her swim.

Madeleine lay motionless, aching for the feel of Calumn’s arms around her, knowing she had not the right to ask, for the terms of their relationship had altered fundamentally. If only she could turn back the clock. But to do so would be to lose the best part. What she really wanted to do was to obliterate the past. To have been able to step on to Scottish soil unencumbered. To wipe the slate of her life clean and start afresh. If only she could. Instead, she must face a bleak future indeed. Now tears did fall, silent and painful, like pinpricks.

‘Come here.’ A comforting arm around her shoulders pulled her close. Warm fingers stroked her hair. Words, strange words in a beautiful language were whispered in her ear. She asked what they meant, but Calumn only hushed her and told her to sleep.

‘I can’t.’ She felt as if she would never sleep again.

As if she should not. For to sleep was to dream. She did not want to dream.

‘When I was a child,’ Calumn said, ‘a bairn really, about two or three years old, my mother used to tell me the fairies would take me away in the night if I didn’t go to sleep. Wicked things, fairies. You’d be amazed the lengths you have to go to just to keep them at bay.’

His voice was warm and crooning with a hint of irony. He spoke to her like a child, and like a child she was soothed by his presence and his tone. ‘What sorts of things?’ she asked.

‘When a bairn is born all the mirrors in the house must be covered lest his image is taken by the fairies. They’ve a terrible appetite for bairns, the little creatures have—we call them kelpies. ‘Tis thought if they are not kept away from the birth by a cross of rowan, they will steal the child and substitute a changeling of their own. Salt, or earth in the bairn’s mouth as soon as he has had his first cry, and the father’s dirk in his cradle, will ward them off.’

Madeleine snuggled closer. ‘Poor fairies; in Breton folklore they get a very bad name, too. Les Dames Blanches are particularly evil. There is one, Melusine, who disguises herself as a woman, but every week, on a Saturday, she has to take her real form as a sea serpent.’

‘We have that legend, too. A selkie is a seal who takes a woman’s form. Old Shona MacBrayne, the local fey wife, was always full of tales of selkies.’

‘What’s a fey wife?’ “

‘In the village some call her a witch—and I’m sorry to say, so does my mother. A woman who knows about healing, herbs and potions. The old ways. One of the cunning folk who can talk to the fairies, maybe even cast spells. When I was wee it used to be a great game, chapping on her door and running away.’

Madeleine gave a watery chuckle. ‘The further north we travel, the more you sound Scottish. It’s lovely, but I have to work very hard to understand the words. I wish I spoke your Gaelic. It sounds like Breton—do you want to hear some?’

‘Go on then, lass,’ Calumn said. She could feel the smile in his voice like a warm posset.

She thought for a moment, then recited something. ‘It means, wait for the night before saying that the day was beautiful.’

‘It’s night now.’

‘Yes.’ She realised he was waiting for an answer. ‘I wish the day had not been quite so beautiful.’

The sweetness of her answer was painful. ‘Go to sleep, Madeleine.’

‘I can’t sleep.’ But she was yawning.

‘Hush. Just try,’ Calumn said, pressing a kiss to her brow. ‘Hush now,’ he said, stroking her hair. And Madeleine slept.

As the night sky thickened and the moon made its ghostly way across the heavens, Calumn lay awake, cradling Madeleine in his arms. Tomorrow they would reach Castle Rhubodach, and he must hand her over to her fate. He did not want to let her go. Not to de Guise. Not to anyone.

She was his. He felt it like he felt the call of Errin Mhor when they were on top of the mountain today. Madness, for what did he have to offer anyone? These last few days, he had come close to a happiness which he had not thought possible. When she was gone, he knew he would be lonely. She had awoken such longings in him, had been the instrument of his homecoming. She could very well prove the instrument of his downfall, if he were not careful. Or perhaps his saving grace?

She stirred in her sleep and he pulled her closer, tenderly tucking the plaid under her chin. Frustration, that’s all it was, this possessiveness. Frustration, and of his own making, too, for she had been as intent on giving as he had been on taking. A noble frustration then, he thought, mocking himself. Calumn fell into a troubled slumber.

Chapter Six

‘Traitor.’

Madeleine’s eyes snapped open.

‘Traitor,’ Calumn mumbled. He was dreaming. A nightmare, by the sounds of it. He had pushed her away, was lying in his shirt, sweating and tossing his head from side to side.

‘Calumn,’ she said gently, shaking his shoulder. ‘Calumn,’ this time more firmly.

He started, sat up, gazed unseeing at her. ‘Rory?’

‘It’s Madeleine.’

‘Madeleine.’ His eyes were blank. ‘I’ve a terrible drouth.’

‘Drouth?’

‘Thirst. I’m thirsty.’

She scrabbled for the pewter drinking cup and filled it quickly from one of the many burns which fed the loch. He drank deeply from it, then opened his eyes properly, focusing his gaze on her. ‘I woke you. I’m sorry.’

‘You were dreaming. Do you want to talk about it?’ She pulled the plaid back over them both, stroking his hair, damp with sweat, from his temple.

He stared at her in the half-light, still dazed from the horror of his dream. ‘No.’ His denial was instinctive.

Madeleine ignored it. ‘Is it linked to your scar?’ she asked, laying her hand fleetingly on his stomach. ‘I know you were in the army. Did you get this in battle?’

‘Culloden,’ he said, the word harsh and clear in the night air. She had the right to know. He wanted her to know, he saw that now, stripped of his defences by the ferocity of the dream. He wanted there to be some truth between them.

Madeleine inhaled sharply. ‘You fought at Culloden? Against the Jacobites? Mon dieu.’

‘I took a blow from a claymore. I was lucky not to die, they told me. I sometimes wish I had.’

‘Don’t say that!’ She wrapped her arms tight around his waist, placing her cheek on his shirt where the question mark of his scar was, feeling the heat of his skin through the soft material. She held him thus, comforting him like a child, her own mind racing. It dawned on her almost immediately. She sat back so that she could look at his face. ‘You fought opposite Guillaume. That’s why you didn’t tell me. You thought I would hate you for it.’

‘Don’t you?’ His voice seemed drained of emotion. He spoke as if he were far away, behind a barrier she could not breach.

‘Of course I don’t.’ She shook him by the shoulder in an effort to penetrate the wall he seemed to have erected around himself. ‘Calumn, I could never hate you, please don’t think that. Even if by some monstrous co-incidence Guillaume had died at your hand, it would not be your fault. He chose to be there.’ She made no attempt to disguise the bitterness in her voice, nor her long pent-up anger at Guillaume, which she had never until now acknowledged. ‘It was his choice, his decision to leave me and La Roche to fight for that—that popinjay prince.’

Calumn was forced to smile. ‘Don’t go speaking about Bonnie Prince Charlie in that tone when we get to Castle Rhubodach, it’ll not find favour.’

‘Anyway, it’s not really about Guillaume, is it?’

Calumn’s smile faded.

‘It’s because you fought against your own people that you stay in Edinburgh—that’s why you’ve given up what you call the right to call yourself a Highlander, isn’t it?’

‘Aye. Partly. Maybe.’ Calumn dropped his head into his hands. ‘You don’t understand.’

‘Then tell me. Make me understand, Calumn,’ Madeleine said earnestly. ‘Please. Tell me what it is, this black thing you carry around inside here.’

She laid a hand gently on his scar. ‘I really want to know.’

Though the habit of silence was a strong one to break, the temptation to unburden himself was immense. He wanted her to know. To be his confessor and his judge. For some reason, he trusted her, as he trusted no one else, to do both wisely.

‘Tell me about the dream, Calumn,’ Madeleine prompted. ‘Do you have it often?’

‘Too often.’

‘And whisky helps keep it away.’

‘It does, if I take enough of it.’ He frowned, trying to clear his head. ‘Are you sure you want to hear this?’

She nodded. Her face was alabaster white in the moonlight, her mouth set in a determined line, her eyes gazing unwaveringly into his own. She gripped his hand tight and he told her it all, finally let it all come pouring out of him like poison from a wound. The battle. The noise. The smells. The driving rain and sleet. The boggy moor. The terrible fear that when the word came to advance he would not be able to, that his men would think him a coward. And when he did advance, the worse fear of killing his own kin.

‘I felt as if I was being split in two,’ Calumn said, his voice raw. ‘My men relied on me. In battle, especially when you’re in the middle of battle, you have to trust absolutely that your comrades are on your side. Always, until that point, I had been, without question, but never until that point had I been asked to fight with my own against my own. It was like attacking myself.’

He broke off to stare into the distance. Beside him, Madeleine sat listening intently, moved by the raw emotions she could see flitting like lost souls over the sculpted planes of his face.

‘I didn’t have a choice,’ Calumn continued bleakly, ‘but I still had to choose. Join the Jacobites? But I didn’t believe in their cause. Desert? I thought about that, but it was just opting out. I chose to fight, to fight with the regiment that was my life, to save the Highlands from the consequences of the Young Pretender’s grasping self-interest. He didn’t care about Scotland, all he cared about was the crown. He didn’t care either that he was splitting his own country asunder in trying to take it. So I faced my own people across the battle lines while I stood side by side with my own men. I shouldn’t have had to choose. If it wasn’t for that bastard Charles Edward, I wouldn’t have had to. If it wasn’t for him, none of us would have had to. Do you see now why I hate him?’

Madeleine pressed his hand. ‘Yes, I do see. And Rory? Who is Rory?’ she asked gently. ‘Rory is my brother.’

‘Your brother! Mon dieu, you mean he was there, on the Jacobite side?’ The full horror of his predicament hit her. ‘You faced your brother in battle?’

‘My half-brother, and any number of his kin, who are some part my kinfolk.’

‘I can’t imagine, I can’t even begin to imagine—no wonder it haunts you.’

‘I saw him, or thought I saw him, just before I was wounded. In my dream, that’s when I always wake up.’

‘Is he—did he die?’

‘I thought he was dead. For six long months I thought he was, and our mother was certain of it. But, no, thanks be to God, Rory is alive.’

‘That’s why you understood about Guillaume straight away. I knew you did, I felt it.’

‘When Rory didn’t come home they all assumed he’d died on the battlefield. Of the few of his men who survived, some said he’d been wounded, others that he’d been taken prisoner. You have to understand, a battle like that, it was chaos—and a rout, for the Jacobites were vastly outnumbered.’

‘But when it was over, if your brother had been one of the dead, surely his body would have been identified?’

‘This was no ordinary battle. The Duke of Cumberland, our Commander in Chief, is a vicious man. He wanted to punish the Highlanders for putting him to the inconvenience of having to fight,’ Calumn said bitterly. ‘He’s a brilliant military strategist, but he’s also an arrogant, cruel sadist. After the battle, he ordered that the Jacobites be shown no quarter.’

She hardly dared ask, ‘What does that mean?’

‘Cumberland ordered his men—my men—to—to make sure no one was left alive. He had them murdered, the wounded and dying. Bayoneted. And not just the Jacobites, but their women and some children too, who had come on to the moor to tend to them. All of them were killed. Can you imagine it? As I was lying face down in the bog, clutching my stomach to prevent its contents from spilling out, I heard them. The screams and the cries, the calls for mercy. And I saw them, too, when they finally carried me off on a stretcher, women throwing themselves on top of their men to save them, the look of bloodlust on the faces of the Redcoats, and of disgust on a few. Too few. So you see it was possible, more than possible, that if Rory had been wounded he would have been killed.’

‘But he hadn’t?’

‘No. And though my mother would have it that he had, I refused to believe that. He’s a tall man, as tall as me, and we’ve the same hair, which makes us stand out a bit. On top of that, he’s the laird. His clothes, his belt and his weapons would have proclaimed his status. As soon as I could leave my sick bed, I went to the isle of Heronsay where he has his lands, and I waited.’

‘What happened?’

‘He’d been taken prisoner by the Campbells. Rory is a Macleod, not a Munro. His father died when he was just a bairn, and my mother remarried within six months. Not wanting a Macleod cuckoo in his nest, my own father made her leave Rory on Heronsay. I didn’t even know of his existence until I was ten. Anyway, after Culloden, the Campbells took the opportunity to punish him for an old grudge against a long-dead Macleod relative. Rory escaped from their dungeons and made his way home eventually. He brought a lowlander with him, he’d taken her hostage—so they claim, the two of them. Jessica, her name is, and she’s a very pretty piece. So pretty Rory wouldn’t let her go. They’re married now, it’s a very romantic tale.’

‘And you were there on—what did you call it—Heronsay?—when he arrived?’

‘Aye. I couldn’t believe it. Nor could he, mind, he thought I was dead. ‘Twas quite a touching reunion.’ His tone was light, but she knew by the strength of his grip on her hand that his feelings ran deep.

‘So it was a happy ending, then?’

Calumn shook his head despondently. ‘We’re brothers, but we fought on opposite sides. Rory lost many good men in the Rebellion, and some of the clans who are my neighbours lost many more. I survived because my wounds were tended. Had I been on the other side, I would have been slaughtered where I fell. Do you not see? I have that blood on my hands, the blood of my fellow Highlanders, as if I had carried out Cumberland’s orders myself—as I might have done, had I not been wounded.’

‘I don’t believe you would have. You said you fired into the air,’ Madeleine said fiercely, ‘you would not have done anything so barbaric, under orders or not.’

‘Maybe not, but the habit of obedience is strong.’

‘The habit of knowing what is right and what is wrong is stronger. You would not have done such a thing, Calumn.’ A couple of deep breaths, and she was a little calmer, though anger at the perpetrators of the atrocities, also the source of Calumn’s pain, bubbled furiously inside her. ‘You were not the only Highlander under Cumberland’s command, were you? There were other Scots who fought against the Jacobites.’

‘A good few. ‘Tis the Sassenach press who chose to portray it as the English against the Scots, but the truth is that a deal of the clans were agin’ the Stuarts.’

‘Including the Munroes?’

‘Aye. Though my father’s reasons are more to do with protecting his own rather than protecting the Crown. The Highland lairds were a rule unto themselves and my father wanted it to stay that way. He didn’t want Charlie stirring things up.’ Calumn laughed bitterly. ‘As it turns out, with the English wreaking their revenge for the Rebellion, the old ways are done for anyway. Though we fought on the same side, myself and my father’s men, he does not see it so. I chose my regiment over him, is how he views it. Another grudge he bears against me.’

‘And Rory? Does he still bear a grudge against you?’

‘He says not, but the truth is I haven’t seen him since he returned to Heronsay. I left the Highlands then. Do you see now, Madeleine? I betrayed the army in failing to fight. I betrayed my kin by trying. Maybe I even betrayed my father, who sent me off for a Redcoat in the first place all those years ago—I don’t know. He wanted me to lead the clan, you see, but I chose to lead my own men instead. I tried to do my duty, and in trying I was torn in two. I have not the right to be here. I have not the right to call myself a captain, nor the right to call myself a Highlander, and I have no right to the lands which I’ve always thought one day would be mine. I should not be here. Do you see?’

‘I see now how you have come to think all this. I don’t believe you are right, though,’ Madeleine replied.

Calumn smiled wearily. ‘That’s progress, at any rate.’

‘You should try to sleep now.’ She felt heartsore at the tale he had unfolded, but she felt too that she was beginning to understand him. ‘Thank you for telling me.’ She kissed his cheek. ‘I can’t imagine the horror of what you’ve been through, but I do know, what I already knew, that you’re a very brave and a truly honourable man. I knew it from the moment I met you, and what you have told me tonight has made me quite certain. For if you were not,’ she said, preventing him speaking by putting her fingers over his mouth, ‘if you were not honourable, you would not feel guilt, and you would not have these nightmares. Do you think the real perpetrators of this mess, this Duke of Cumberland and Charles Edward Stuart, do you think they have nightmares? No, I think I can safely bet that they sleep easy in their beds. It is because you are such a good man that you suffer, do you not see that?’

The black creature on his shoulders shifted its weight. Though it still perched there, he could feel it spreading its wings as if it might take flight one day. Calumn’s teeth glinted in the grey light as he smiled. ‘You make a good case, lass. I’ll think on it.’

She laughed. ‘Lasssss. I like the way you say it.’ ‘Coorie in then, lass,’ Calumn said sleepily, pulling her close. ‘We’ve a long day ahead of us.’

When he awoke a few hours later, Madeleine was already up and had caught a trout for their breakfast, having fashioned a line with a hook made from a sharpened hairpin. The appetising smell of it cooking over the fire, with the last of the bannocks toasting beside it, wafted over to him on the morning air. In response to Calumn’s frankly incredulous stare, Madeleine gave her Gallic shrug. ‘I told you, my mother’s family were fishermen. I don’t know about you, but I’m ravenous.’ Calumn needed no second bidding.

As they set out after breakfast on the steeply rising path at the head of Loch Awe which would take them through the next glen, a soft mizzle of fine rain began to fall. The day was overcast, in line with Madeleine’s mood, the sky a uniform leaden grey, the waters of the loch white-crested and choppy.

In the soft light of dawn, as she sat on the edge of the loch with her hand-fashioned fishing hook, Madeleine had looked her future squarely in the eye. She could not marry Guillaume. She knew now, without a doubt, that she did not love him, nor would come to love him in any way other than as a friend. To marry him would be to deprive them both of the potential for happiness in the future, for even if Guillaume did love her, a marriage based on anything less than equal affection would undoubtedly be the road to misery.

Calumn was right. Though the pain her decision would cause squeezed her heart, she knew she must be brave enough to make it. She could not live a lie. She should be grateful to have found out in time that that is what she would be doing. But still, the dread of causing hurt made her flinch from the task, keeping her silent on this, the last leg of their journey.

She pulled her arisaidh over her head, draping its folds to conceal her face. As they rose higher, a patchy mist enveloped them. Above, mountain summits rose out of the grey like the mystical peaks in a fairy tale. Ahead, the forest on the lower slopes of the hills faded as the mist swirled eerily. Not a sound could be heard save the snorting of the horses, the soft clump and scrabble of their hooves on the scree which formed the path, the trickle of a burn somewhere to the right, and the soft plop, plop, plop, of rain drops dripping from the gorse onto the fern and bracken below.

She would tell Calumn, but only once she had seen Guillaume. To Guillaume she owed her first duty, and so he should be first to hear the news. Then Calumn. And then—but here, her mind skittered to a halt. She was afraid. Of the confrontation with her father which must ensue, but afraid, too, to probe further into her feelings. To hope, when most likely it would be in vain. To face this one, final thing, which was perhaps at the root of all. For now, she had enough to worry about.

Moisture dripped from her lashes and from the stray locks of hair which had escaped the cover of her plaid. The landscape, what she could see of it, took on a dreamlike quality, looming up suddenly as a patch of mist cleared, disappearing just as suddenly when the next one formed, so that she very quickly had no sense of time or distance, and would have felt horribly lost if it had not been for Calumn’s reassuring presence just in front of her.

‘Is it often like this?’ she asked, when he paused to wait for her at a fork in the track.

‘Up here, more often than not. It can swoop in on you without warning, like an eagle on its prey and just as dangerous. Are you soaked through?’

‘I don’t mind that. In Brittany it rains and rains and rains in the winter. Not soft like this, more of a deluge.’

‘You get that here, too, and not only in the winter.’

‘It’s stunning, though, isn’t it, even if it does feel as if we’re the only people on earth.’ Altitude had reduced the temperature significantly. When she spoke, her breath formed little puffs of air.

‘We’re actually not far from Castle Rhubodach. If the mist clears, you’ll be able to see it from the top of this next rise.’

Sure enough, when they breasted the hill, emerging out into clearing skies from the narrow glen, they saw it. A tall, stern square building of some three storeys built in grey stone, with a steeply sloping roof and a turret at one corner. Four small lochans surrounded it, acting as a natural defence.

‘They’re called the four sisters,’ Calumn told her. ‘Aileen, Catriona, Johanna and Fiona. Named for ancestors of McAngus, whom legend has it squabbled so much that when they died they were interred, one in each lochan to keep them apart.’

‘I wish I had a sister. Just one would have been nice.’

‘Ailsa, my own sister, is much younger than me. She was a bit of a surprise for my mother, I suspect.’

‘But it must be nice for her to have a daughter.’

‘Sons are what are important to my parents.’

‘Some things are the same the world over, then,’ Madeleine said wryly.

On the flat land by the longest of the sister lochs, Catriona, she could make out signs of cultivation, ploughed fields and some crops, though the fields were much smaller than she was used to at home, more like strips of land forming a small patchwork. The demesne of the castle was marked by a low wall, and a small cluster of cottages was strung out from the gates along the banks of the loch. She could see the moving black dots which were the villagers, almost the first they had come across since leaving Aberfoyle. Smoke wisped lazily into the air from the chimneys of the castle and the roofs of the cottages.

A mournful lowing came to them through the mist, making Madeleine jump.

‘It’s only cattle,’ Calumn told her, pointing down the track.

There were about ten of the beasts ascending the path accompanied by a drover, but they looked like no cattle Madeleine had ever seen, being small, with long shaggy brown coats and extravagant horns. She stared in amazement. ‘They have fur,’ she said, wondering if he was teasing her and they were not cows at all.

‘They need it to get through the winter up here.’ Calumn nodded to the drover, exchanging a few words in Gaelic with him. Madeleine listened to the lilting cadence of their voices, marvelling at the beauty of the conversation, which was like a song. The drover was a small lean man, dwarfed by Calumn’s height and breadth, dressed in the filleadh mòr and filleadh beg, though the wool was threadbare, the colours faded, and he had no jacket. On his head he wore a brown bonnet rather like the beret worn by Breton farmers. Madeleine smiled at him and he doffed his hat, but said not a word to her.

‘You’re expected, apparently,’ Calumn said. ‘Lady Drummond seems able to maintain an effective network of spies, even from the dungeons of Edinburgh Castle.’ As they started the descent to the castle, the horses skittered and slid on the treacherously wet rocks. ‘Angus McAngus is a staunch Jacobite who lost a son at Prestonpans. He and Lord Drummond are old allies.’

She could see the people more clearly now, working the fields, men and women together, the men in plaids, some in trews and shirtsleeves, the women wearing long black skirts and aprons, their heads covered with a kind of handkerchief.

‘A kertch,’ Calumn said in response to her question. ‘It shows they’re married.’

A short distance from the hamlet, Madeleine reined in her horse. There was something wrong with the picture of rustic simplicity, but she could not at first work out what it was. Then she noticed that several of the cottages had no roof, standing open to the weather with their rafters blackened. ‘Look, there’s been a fire.’

In the far field a man was ploughing, sweating as he pushed the blade through the stony soil. ‘Why is he doing that himself?’ she asked Calumn. ‘Have they no mule or horses? And the men, they are all old. Where are the young men?’

Calumn’s face was as stony as the soil which was being planted. ‘Retribution,’ he said bleakly. ‘Another of Cumberland’s ideas. He ordered that Jacobite lands be forfeited or razed to the ground as punishment for the Rebellion. After Culloden he sent the army to rape and pillage their way through the Highlands. Murder and wholesale destruction—done by men I’d served with. This village has obviously been burnt out, see where the thatch on the roofs is new? There are no young men because they’ve all been taken—prisoners for deportation if they were lucky, but many, one in ten I heard, were executed. There will be a generation of Highland women now with no men. A generation of bairns with no fathers.’ ‘I had no idea.’

‘They praised him for it in the newspapers, for subduing the wild Gaels. Cumberland is a hero in the lowlands, but here he’s known as the Butcher, and you can see why. This is his legacy. My legacy, for I was part of it, part of the army which did his bidding.’

‘But you had no part in this.’ The set of his face worried her. He was retreating to a distant land where soon he would be beyond reach. ‘Calumn, you can’t take responsibility for this, any more than you can take responsibility for the Rebellion.’

‘I can’t take responsibility for you any more either.’

‘What do you mean?’

Calumn’s expression was grim and set, like an obelisk. ‘This is where I must say goodbye. You knew that, it’s what we agreed.’

Panic rose in her throat. It was too soon. Too sudden. This was not how she had imagined it. ‘I thought you would come with me. I thought—we have so much—you can’t go now!’ She pulled her horse alongside his to clutch at his sleeve. ‘We’ve come this far together. There are still things between us which need to be said. Please, Calumn.’

‘Come on, Madeleine, you can’t have it all ways,’ Calumn said, made brutal by his determination to leave, his equal determination no longer to interfere. His overwhelming, completely contrary desire to stay, to shake her into submission, to ride off with her over his saddle. To do, and no longer to think. ‘Surely you’re looking forward to what lies ahead? The touching reunion with your sainted Guillaume, the equally touching reconciliation with your dear papa, marriage and happy ever after. What can I possibly add to all that?’

‘It’s not like that. It won’t be like that, you know that. Calumn I—I can’t—please,’ she said desperately, ‘please don’t go. Not yet.’

‘Madeleine, Angus McAngus will not welcome the likes of me into his home, and I don’t blame him.’

Immediately, she was overcome with remorse. ‘I’m sorry. I did not think. I would not expose you to the possibility of—indeed, I am sorry. It was wrong of me to ask.’

That she had taken his cruel jibes on the chin made him feel much worse than if she had cast them up at him. Now her contrition rubbed salt into the self-inflicted wound. He did not want to leave her. Surely facing up to the likes of Angus McAngus was exactly what he had come here to do?

Calumn’s pride, a long-subdued animal, stirred in the depths of its cave. He was a Munro, after all. ‘I’ll come with you,’ he said abruptly. ‘But mind, it is for McAngus to say whether he will take me in or no.’

The immensity of her relief showed plainly on her face. ‘Are you sure? I would not want to make you do anything you don’t want to.’

Calumn laughed. ‘Since when have you ever done that! I’m sure. Come.’

Calumn nudged his horse into a walk. Riding side by side, he and Madeleine went past the half-recovered village, through the wrought-iron gates in which the crest of the McAngus clan was worked, and up to the heavy, studded front door of Castle Rhubodach. It had not seemed to occur to Madeleine that de Guise might be waiting for her behind it. Now it occurred to him, he hoped he was wrong.

Angus McAngus was waiting to greet them—alone. He was another short, lean Gael, with a sparse head of hair which must once have been fiery red, but was now streaked with grey and faded to the colour of autumn leaves. The Scots were obviously a compact race, rather like the Bretons, Madeleine thought. McAngus was dressed in a plaid with a jacket, the material woven in shades of blue. His eyes were a faded blue of the same colour, though they peered at her brightly enough, and his smile, through his straggly beard, was welcoming.

‘Mademoiselle Lafayette, bien venue,’ he said in softly accented French, bowing and taking her hand in his bony one. ‘Lady Drummond sent me word to expect you.’

‘Monsieur McAngus,’ Madeleine replied with a curtsy, ‘it’s an honour, and you speak very good French.’

McAngus chuckled at that. ‘Better French than English, my dear. The auld alliance, as we call the friendship between our two countries, goes back long before the recent Rebellion.’ He turned his attention to Calumn. ‘And who is your escort? You have not the look of a hired guide, if you’ll forgive my plain speaking, sir.’

‘This is …’

‘Calumn Munro of Errin Mhor,’ Calumn interrupted her, bowing formally.

McAngus’s expression broke into a broad smile. ‘Ah! You must be Rory McLeod’s brother. You’re the living spit of your mother, boy, I see that, now I look at you. No mistaking that hair of yours. Aye, I remember now who you are. I’ve no seen you since you were a wee laddie, but I know your brother well. I’ve met that Sassenach wife of his, too. She’s had a bairn, did you know?’

Calumn looked surprised. ‘No, no I didn’t.’

‘A wee lassie, I heard, so you’re an uncle now. Well, come away in the both of you, you must be hungry.’

‘Sir,’ Calumn said, remaining on the doorstep, ‘you must know that I—before I can accept your hospitality, you must know that I served under Cumberland in the late Rebellion.’

He spoke with barely a falter, but Madeleine could see, from the way he held himself, the way he met the laird’s eye not fearlessly but steadily, what the words cost him. He had not apologized; she was glad he had not, for she could not imagine him being abject. She had not seen much evidence of his pride, but it struck her now that pride in his lineage was—or had been—an integral part of him. How it must hurt him to feel it so damaged. She held her breath as she watched McAngus’s smile fade, ready to leap to Calumn’s defence if necessary, though she knew he would not appreciate it, for he was a man who must fight his own battles.

‘I remember now, your father sent you off to be a Redcoat.’

‘A fusilier. I was a captain.’

‘Aye. So, you fought against us, did you? You’re not going to tell me you had a hand in the Butcher’s atrocities afterwards?’

Calumn’s face registered disgust. ‘I was badly wounded in battle. I left the army as soon as I recovered.’

‘No need to get your dander up, you can’t blame me for asking. Where did you see action, lad?’

‘Culloden.’

‘I lost a son at Prestonpans. Andrew, my youngest.’

‘I heard that.’

‘You must have lost a fair few comrades yourself. And now I mind it, that brother of yours, was he not given up for dead, too?’

‘He was.’

McAngus turned to Madeleine. ‘It’s coming back to me now. ‘Twas the talk for miles around when it happened. First they thought this one was killed on the battlefield, then he turned up like the walking dead, and they thought that Rory was done for. Did he tell you, lass, how he kept vigil for his brother?

Saved Heronsay from the Butcher, too, didn’t you, boy?’

‘No, he didn’t think to mention that,’ Madeleine said, looking up at Calumn with awe.

‘Too modest, eh, lad?’

Calumn looked embarrassed, and shrugged dismissively. ‘I see you have not been so lucky,’ he said, indicating the husks of the damaged cottages.

McAngus looked grim. ‘Aye, they were determined to make us pay, one way or the other. The Prince has a lot to answer for, if you ask me. Though I was for him myself, I can’t help but wish now that he’d stayed put in France and saved us all a lot of heartache.’ The old man shook his head sadly.

‘Well,’ McAngus continued after a moment’s silence, ‘it’s all water under the bridge now as far as I’m concerned. What’s important is that we Highlanders stick together, eh? They’re out to destroy us, the English, they’ve been waiting a long time to take away the power of the clans. We did them a favour, rising with the Prince, gave them the opportunity they’ve been waiting for to come up here and wreak havoc. Come away in now, I don’t know what we’re doing still standing here on the doorstep. Fàilte, welcome to you, Calumn Munro, and you, mademoiselle. Come away in.’

He extended his hand, and Calumn took it in a strong two-handed grasp. ‘I’m honoured,’ he said gruffly, ‘truly honoured.’

Looking down, Calumn was dazzled by the smile which lit up Madeleine’s face. He had been aware of her, tense and silent, by his side, as he spoke to McAngus. Her obvious delight in his reception touched his heart. He smiled back unaffectedly. It was a strange feeling, to have one so determinedly in his corner. He liked it. Happiness burst on him like the sun coming out. Though it lasted only until he remembered why he was here. What lay ahead.

The great hall, which took up most of the ground floor of the castle, was a huge vaulted affair, with an immense stone fireplace on one wall in which a small wood fire was burning sluggishly, billowing smoke and emitting only the faintest trace of heat. A curved stone staircase decorated with gargoyles led to the upper storeys, and a small studded door on the right to the turret. The furnishings were all oversized, made of ancient black oak, ornately carved. Shabby rugs were strewn randomly over the uneven stone slabs, and a worn standard hung above the fireplace.

Two deerhounds rose from their place next to the fire to greet the visitors, their long shaggy tails waving in a stately manner, their soft silky snouts snuffling at Madeleine’s hands as she petted them. They were so tall their heads were on a level with her waist. ‘We have dogs like these in Brittany,’ she told McAngus. ‘We use them for hunting.’

‘They’ve the same use here. We’ve a stag hunt planned for tomorrow, so you’ll see them in action then, if you want to join us.’

‘What about de Guise?’ Calumn asked.

The laird was tugging a bell pull at the side of the mantel. ‘He’s expected any day now. No one knows when for sure, he’s a man who likes to keep his own counsel. For very good reasons.’

‘What do you mean?’ Madeleine asked curiously.

‘Well, his behaviour doesn’t exactly endear him to the authorities,’ McAngus said with a chuckle, ‘though it’s made him popular enough with some.’

‘His behaviour? What has Guillaume done?’

‘Do you not know? Lord bless us, lass, I thought Lady Drummond would have tell’t you. He’s a bit of a hero in these parts, your Guillaume. Like Robin Hood in the old English stories—only a mite more bloodthirsty.’

‘Bloodthirsty! Are you sure we’re talking about the same man?’

‘Och aye, it’s not likely there’s two of them. He and a band of Jacobites are out to extract their revenge on the Butcher. Most of the troops are gone now, of course, but while they were here, yon de Guise led them a merry dance, and killed a fair few. Now, they pick on lands belonging to those who were against the Prince. Your father’s lands, Calumn Munro, amongst others. Crops ruined. Houses burned.’

Calumn swore heavily in Gaelic. ‘My mother mentioned it in one of her letters. She knew it was vengeance, my father made no secret of his beliefs, but she made no mention of de Guise. The bastard, does he not realise it is the poor who suffer cold and hunger because of what he does? The likes of my father are not so easily hurt.’

‘Aye, you’re in the right of it there. There’s still some who think de Guise does a necessary job, but there’s more, like myself, who think the time’s come to call a halt.’

Madeleine sat down heavily on a large carved wooden chair, so big that her feet did not touch the ground. She was aghast. ‘I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Guillaume must have changed beyond recognition if he is committing such crimes. Perhaps the fighting has deranged his mind.’

‘Madeleine, he sounds like a dangerous man. You’ll not be going near him without me, do you hear?’ Calumn said in a voice that would brook no argument.

‘Guillaume would never hurt me.’

‘You said yourself, he’s changed.’

‘But—but he can’t have changed that much. Once he sees me …’

‘You’ll not see him alone, am I understood?’

‘I’ve told you before, I don’t take orders from you,’ Madeleine snapped, confusion and weariness making her temper ragged.

‘On the contrary. You will recall that that is exactly what you agreed to when I offered you my escort. You will do as I tell you.’

‘Best that way,’ McAngus intervened hurriedly. ‘I don’t want a pretty wee thing like you coming to any harm while you’re under my roof.’

Madeleine’s smile was wan. ‘You are very kind to be so concerned, but it’s not necessary.’

The timely arrival of a manservant put an end to further dispute. He showed them up the steep stairs to their rooms. Calumn did not seem to notice she had not given her promise.

The bedrooms of the castle were icy cold. Madeleine shivered as she washed in the freezing water poured from a pretty china jug on the nightstand. McAngus had obviously fallen on hard times. Equally obvious to her, from the amount of cobwebs which hung from the rafters to the bed hangings, was that his lady wife was dead, and had not been replaced by any sort of housekeeper.

She leaned out of the leaded window of her room. On the second floor, it had a view out over the glassy water of Loch Catriona to the mountains beyond. That way, directly north through that valley she could see, then directly west from there, was the isle of Heronsay. And near there, another day’s journey, were the lands of Errin Mhor. Calumn’s lands.

Somewhere out there, too, perhaps watching the castle right now, was Guillaume. Since her host’s revelations, it was harder than ever to conjure up the image of him in her mind. He sounded so changed, not at all like the gentle—in fact, she had to admit—rather submissive man she knew. But then war did terrible things to men. Look at the way it had affected Calumn.

Calumn. Every way she turned her mind, it always twisted back to him. He it had been who had upended all her beliefs, all her plans. Until she met him, she had never questioned the simple premise upon which she had built her life—that in making the people she loved happy, she would be happy herself. She knew now that this was not true. Knew, too, that she had never known real happiness, which came from being true to something in herself. Something which Calumn had awakened. Something she could never, ever regret having come to know, no matter what the consequences.

Love.

Love. She was in love with Calumn Munro, and this simple, wonderful, amazing, earth-shattering fact put everything else into the shade. She loved him. At his side, she had learned what happiness was. Through him, she had changed. Become stronger. A person willing to face up to truths, however awful. Or at least, that is what she aspired to.

She turned away from the window to pace nervously up and down the room. Willing to face up to them—yes—but not able to do so with anything less than extreme trepidation. Why did it have to be here, with their reunion imminent and no escaping it, that she finally faced the facts of the matter? Guillaume was a habit. Her love for him was a pale, poor thing compared to the overpowering, overwhelming, fiery creature which was her love for Calumn.

She took another turn around the room. The repercussions were like a quagmire. Guillaume, her father, home, her future—she seemed to have no solid foundations left, and with each question she asked herself, she sank more surely and more deeply into the boggy mess of her own stupid creation. For the one questions of utmost importance, the one which could change everything, was the one of which she was least sure at all. What did Calumn feel for her?

Disconsolately, she flung herself on to the bed. There were times when she hoped. Times when she dreamed. And times when she despaired. Though she felt she knew him at an elemental level, though after last night she felt she understood him, though their bodies had shared the most exquisite of intimacies, still she had no idea if what he felt for her was a passing whim or something more enduring.

That he could make her happy, as she could him, she did not doubt. That he would allow her to? That, she did indeed question. He seemed to think himself undeserving of happiness. There was one thing of which she was completely certain, though. Without him the future would be as dreary and grey as the lowering Highland sky she could glimpse through the dirty window panes.

Courage, Madeleine, she chid herself. First Guillaume. Then she must face Calumn. Proud and honourable, strong and desirable, such a man as he deserved a woman who could at least try to live up to him. She would face him. She would tell him. For it were better to have loved and lost. The old saying was true after all.

Footsteps halted outside in the corridor, and she heard Calumn call her name. Pasting a smile on to her face, she opened the door to find him waiting to take her down to dinner.

He had shaved; his hair was gleaming gold in the dark of the long hallway which was lit only by an oil lamp at the far end. He had discarded his filleadh mòr, but kept his jacket on, the tight fit of it showing off the breadth of his shoulders and chest, the neatness of his waist. Every time she saw him, he took her breath away. Every time she saw him, her heart seemed to expand to accommodate another little bit of love. And then another.

She took his arm, relishing the familiar ripple of sensation as her fingers felt the heat of him through his jacket sleeve. Calumn Munro, who had made Madeleine Lafayette into a new person. Calumn Munro, the man she loved. Would always love. She tripped along the stone flagstones at his side, down the two flights of stairs to where the laird awaited them in the great hall.

Chapter Seven

‘Feasgar math,’ Madeleine greeted her host in the carefully rehearsed phrase she had asked Calumn to teach her.

‘Bonsoir, mademoiselle,’ McAngus said in return, ushering her towards a chair on his right at a dining table which would seat an entire clan.

They were served soup, mutton broth thick with potatoes, barley and neeps, by the gloomy manservant who had earlier shown them to their rooms. Madeleine was beginning to suspect that he did the cooking too. There was more mutton to follow, a roast with fresh peas and an unexpectedly excellent claret. ‘The lifeblood of the auld alliance,’ their host told them with a chuckle. ‘The wine of Bordeaux has been imported to Scotland for many years. Our new English masters would have us drink port, but ach, what do they know about drink!’

Madeleine’s suspicions about the old man’s family were confirmed. ‘My wife Morag died five years ago now, and I’ve never had any daughters,’ McAngus said in answer to her query. ‘The place lacks a woman’s touch these days, I know.’ He dropped the mutton bone on which he had been gnawing to the flagstones, where one of the deerhounds immediately pounced on it. ‘You’ll find Lady Munro keeps a much better house than me when you get to Errin Mhor, eh, Calumn?’ he continued. ‘A right tartar is Calumn’s mother, Christina. I mind her as a wee tearaway, when she was just Teenie, and after too, when she was married on to Finlay MacLeod. She wasn’t more than sixteen, but she could make me tremble in my shoes with just one look. You’re the spit of her, Calumn.’

‘It means I look like her,’ Calumn explained uncomfortably.

‘A beauty, too, his mother. Still is,’ McAngus continued oblivious. ‘Oh, aye, as bonnie a lass as you’ve ever seen. I’d have asked for her hand myself if I’d thought she’d have me, but I had not the wealth of Finlay McLeod to tempt her, and by the time she was widowed, I’d wed my Morag, and Christina McLeod as was had set her sights even higher. Lord Munro is one of the wealthiest men in the Highlands, you know. That son of his here, he’s quite a catch,’ he said to Madeleine in a stage whisper, nodding in Calumn’s direction.

She blushed at the blatant hint, but could think of nothing to say. Fortunately, no response seemed to be required of her. ‘She’ll be glad to see you, your mother,’ McAngus said to Calumn, getting into his stride as he topped up his glass once more from the silver-mounted claret jug. Wine, it would appear, was one of the few things with which his castle was well stocked. ‘I heard your father’s been taken bad again, the pernicious old bugger. I mentioned your lands had been attacked, did I? Aye, Lady Munro’s hired a factor now, but it’s not the same, is it? You’ll be wanting to take things in hand yourself, for if you don’t mind my saying, your father’s not long for this world. Though which world he’s headed for, that’s the question, eh?’ McAngus wheezed alarmingly at his own joke. ‘Are you calling on your brother first? If you do, you’ll give him my best, won’t you? I won’t make the ceilidh, these old bones aren’t fit for dancing.’ He turned towards Madeleine again. ‘‘Tis traditional to have a ceilidh for a bairn, once the mother’s been churched. You’ll have a rare old time, for it’ll be a grand affair, celebrating the first born of the Laird of Heronsay, even if it is a wee lassie.’

‘I don’t think—that is, I …’

‘And what about you, lass, what will you be doing with this fine fellow here, once you’ve done whate’er your business is with de Guise? You’re only a wee thing, but you’ve a look that would keep a wilder man than Calumn Munro tied to your apron strings. He’ll no wander far if he has you waiting at home for him,’ the old man said with a leer which was comical in its blatancy.

McAngus’s accent was becoming thicker, as the wine, which he was consuming at an alarming rate, took effect. Madeleine looked helplessly for an explanation to Calumn, but he merely shrugged, obviously enjoying her discomfort.

‘A wedding on Errin Mhor, that’d set things to right, my boy. Think on’t, but not too long mind, your faither’s hanging by a fine thread,’ McAngus advised owlishly. He raised his glass once more.

‘We are not—Calumn and I are not—you are mistaken, Mr McAngus,’ Madeleine said, finally realising the meaning the laird had put upon her relationship with Calumn. ‘Calumn—Mister Munro is merely very kindly acting as my escort here.’

‘Here’s to you both,’ McAngus said, ignoring her intervention completely. He drained the glass in one long swallow, smacked his lips together and got to his feet, refusing Calumn’s offer to help him upstairs. ‘I’ll see myself up,’ he said shakily, snapping his fingers at the deerhounds, which got reluctantly to their feet. They made a ragged procession up the stairs, the laird swaying precariously and humming softly to himself, the two shaggy dogs herding him upwards, nosing him gently into action when he paused, for all the world as if he were a sheep.

Madeleine chuckled. ‘What an odd man. I think he must be lonely. I thought he was nice.’

‘A likeable rogue. He certainly took a fancy to you.’

‘Do you think he allows those great big smelly dogs into his bed?’

‘Maybe they remind him of his wife,’ Calumn said wickedly.

‘That’s a terrible thing to say. At least they’ll keep him warm though. This castle is freezing.’

‘I could keep you warm tonight.’

She struggled, her conscience warring with her desires. But she wanted to be able to look Guillaume in the eye. She had already been unfaithful in thought and in deed; it mattered to her that she had stopped short of the final act. ‘Not tonight, Calumn.’

His lips thinned. ‘If not tonight, then when? No, don’t answer that question, for I have changed my mind. I have no desire to make love to a woman who gives herself to me knowing full well she is promised to another. Tomorrow or the next day, your outlaw betrothed will come to find you. I will not take another man’s property and that is what you are.’

‘No!’

‘No, you don’t like to hear the cold-blooded truth, do you, Madeleine? Any more than you like to admit you are wrong.’

‘That is so unfair!’ The whirlwind of emotions which had beset her over the last twenty-four hours took a sudden and violent toll on her temper. ‘From the moment we met you have been unrelenting in your campaign to separate me from Guillaume. I use the word campaign deliberately, you understand, for it has been one planned attack after another. You think I don’t know that our—our intimacies have been your weapons of choice? You forget, you warned me yourself that you would prove you could make me want you. That is all it was to you, though, a game. You had nothing to lose. But I—I have everything. Have you even thought about that, Calumn?’

‘You will lose a husband you don’t love. That sounds more like a profit to me.’

‘It is much more than that. You and I, we have very different experiences of the world. For you, doing the right thing has eaten away at everything you believed in. Doing your duty by those you love and respect has forced you into conflict with those closest to you, including your own brother. It’s not the same for me. In fact, until now, it’s been the very opposite. It’s not just that I’ll be making Guillaume unhappy, he will be shamed. Everyone knows of our betrothal, the whole country. It is not just a bit of paper signed by our parents when we were children, it is a fact of our lives. My father will be devastated. All his hopes and dreams lost. Our home lost, when he dies, for it will go to a distant cousin if I do not have a son. Don’t you see, all my life I’ve believed, really believed, that in doing my duty I would be fulfilled. If that is gone, it is like taking a part of me away.’

She stopped for breath, staring off into the distance in an effort to clear her thoughts enough, to make him see. To make him understand. ‘You have always seen it in such black-and-white terms. I don’t love Guillaume, therefore I should not do what I have promised publicly to do. It’s not black and white. There are a multitude of shades of grey.’

‘You don’t love Guillaume! Finally, you admit it.’

‘Yes,’ she admitted, exhausted by her outburst. ‘I admit it, I don’t love him. You see, you were right all along.’

‘You’re not going to marry him?’

‘No,’ she said sadly, ‘you were right about that, too. It would be very wrong of me. No matter how painful in the short term, I know that. But it does not mean that I look forward to telling him with anything less than dread.’

Calumn sat down abruptly on a seat at the head of the table. ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’

‘Because I’ve been running away from the truth. Because I’ve only just got it straight in my own head. Because I wanted to tell Guillaume first, with as clear a conscience as I can.’

‘Which is why you will not share my bed.’

‘Yes.’ She smiled wanly. ‘You have taught me many lessons, and one of them is honour. I’m not very good at it, but I’m trying my best.’

‘I think you are doing remarkably well,’ Calumn said, stretching out his hand to her, ‘in the face of such temptation.’

She had to smile at that, allowing him to pull her into the lee of his body, and to hold her there, stroking her hair, rubbing the nape of her neck. ‘I think I have mentioned before that you have a very high opinion of yourself.’

‘I have a very high opinion of you, too. You’re right, I hadn’t thought of it in such terms. You are being very brave.’

‘I don’t feel very brave. I just want it over.’

‘And what then?’

She was tempted to throw the question back at him, but the time did not feel right. ‘I’ll think about that later. After.’

‘After. Perhaps you’re right.’ Calumn got to his feet and fetched the best of the candles, burning in their pewter holders, from the table. ‘Go to bed. Get some sleep.’ He led her up the stairs. Kissed her cheek at the door to her room.

In his own damp and unwelcoming chamber, Calumn opened the window wide and gazed out. An owl hooted. He sniffed the soft sweet air. In Edinburgh, the seasons melded one into another so that the change was easy to miss, but it was not so up here, where summer burst on to the senses like a fanfare. He had forgotten.

No, he had not really forgotten. Boiling up mussels in a bucket on the beach at low tide. Endless fishing trips in his boat, the An Sulaire. Learning how to wield the claymore under the tutelage of his father’s champion, Hamish Sinclair, a man with a beard so red it looked like he had set fire to it. The sound of the sea shushing on the shore from his bedroom window, lulling him to sleep every night. Calumn gazed sightlessly out at the black waters of the loch and remembered.

Though Lady Munro’s letters had kept him informed of the state of his father’s health and the bad heart the land had fallen into, it had not seemed real until the old laird referred to them in such blunt terms, assuming—naturally enough—that Calumn was on his way to Errin Mhor to take up the reins. Only a few days ago, such an idea was unthinkable. But now?

Now hope, that long-absent visitor, peered through the door of his mind and took a step over the threshold. Errin Mhor sang her siren call to him, and Calumn knew the time had come.

And Madeleine? He had won his point with her, but it occurred to him only now that she had not said how. It mattered, he realised, it mattered that it was her need for him which had persuaded her, not some lack in de Guise.

He must have her. Could think of very little else but having her. He was not ready to let her go. Let her face de Guise first. And then—thinking about the delights in store, Calumn fell asleep.

Madeleine awoke the next morning depressed by the task which lay ahead of her, but determined to see it through. She wished she knew when Guillaume would arrive, for now she had steeled herself, she would much rather it were sooner than later.

Watery sunlight filtered in through the dusty panes of the window, showing a new-washed sky and mountain peaks cloaked with mist. Outside she could hear voices, men calling to each other in Gaelic. The hunt. She had forgotten. She washed and dressed, crept out along the corridor and down the first flight of stairs, pausing on the landing of the first floor to look down at the great hall.

It was a hive of activity. The long table was laden with tankards, bread and cheese, and a side of meat—no doubt the ubiquitous mutton. The men were all dressed in plaids of different colours: blood reds, bottle greens, dull gold and royal blue. Some wore trews instead of the filleadh beg. Most had beards. The few women present busied themselves with the food, pouring beer into pewter tankards, slicing bread, laughing together, their words lilting like a melody. They were dressed as Madeleine was herself, in skirts with arisaidhs, though all wore the kertch. McAngus’s deerhounds had also found companions. There were eight or nine of the dogs lolloping through the great hall, tearing out on to the forecourt where she could see the horses tethered, then tearing back in again, barking wildly.

Calumn come through the front door, talking earnestly with another man about the same age as himself, dressed in a plaid of dull gold. The two men paused on the threshold, clasped each other’s hands, and then the other man joined the throng at the fire. Calumn stood alone for a few moments, his height dwarfing all the others, his hair like a beacon in the hazy light.

He looked up and saw her watching him. He beckoned her down, but as he did so another man called his name. ‘Calumn,’ he said, waving him over. ‘‘Tis Calumn Munro,’ he said to his companions, ‘Rory McLeod’s brother.’

‘The Redcoat.’

The words rang out loud and clear in the hall, spoken in English by a dark-haired man dressed in the red and green which proclaimed him a Cameron. Silence fell. All eyes turned towards Calumn. His smile hardened, but his step did not falter. He walked firmly over to the Cameron, holding his gaze. ‘That’s right,’ he said, ‘Captain Calumn Munro, late of the fusiliers. At your service, sir.’

Madeleine watched with bated breath, cursing her lack of Gaelic, for the men had resorted to their native language. She became aware of a presence at her side and looking round saw it was Angus McAngus.

‘Yon’s Donald Cameron,’ he whispered. ‘The Camerons were staunch Jacobites. Wheesht now, and I’ll tell ye what he’s saying.’

Calumn was standing in front of Donald Cameron, his face grim as granite. ‘Is there something you wish to say to me?’ The challenge in his voice was obvious to Madeleine, even without McAngus’s translation.

‘I’ve nothing to say to the likes of you,’ Donald Cameron replied. ‘You’re a traitor.’

A hiss escaped the onlookers, like the sound of damp wood thrown on a fire. Various men murmured unhappily. Calumn took a hasty step forwards. With enormous difficulty Madeleine suppressed her instinctive cry of disgust at the accusation. The word, the very word which Calumn used to lacerate himself, stuck like a knife into her heart. She felt McAngus’s grip on her shoulder. Realising he was afraid she would interfere, she gave him a quick reassuring shake of the head.

‘I was a Redcoat long before the Pretender set foot on Scottish soil,’ Calumn said through gritted teeth. ‘What would you have me do when they ordered me to fight, turn my back on them? Disobey orders? Well, I didn’t.’ There was a proud tilt to his head. ‘I did my duty, though it cost me dear. One of your claymores damn near killed me at Culloden. I’ll have the scar on my belly as a reminder for the rest of my life.’ He shook his head sorrowfully. ‘As if I need reminding. As if any of us need reminding.’

The rawness of his emotion was obvious to all. A good few of the other men growled agreement to his sentiments, and some moved towards him, ranging themselves by his side.

‘Easy for you to say,’ Donald Cameron said viciously. ‘The Butcher hasn’t laid waste to your lands.’

‘And he wouldn’t have been near yours either, if you had not risen in aid of the Stuarts,’ Calumn said furiously. ‘Where is your Bonnie Prince now, eh? Do you think he cares what’s happened to any of us in his wake?’ His fists were clenched tight, two flags of colour on his cheekbones signalling his rage.

‘Steady now,’ one of Calumn’s supporters said, placing a hand on his shoulder. ‘We’ve had enough feuding to last us a lifetime.’

Calumn shook himself free, but the words had an effect. ‘You’re right,’ he said tightly, ‘we’ve lost enough—’ looking pointedly at Cameron ‘—all of us.’

There was an expectant hush as Cameron stared without moving at Calumn’s extended hand. Madeleine barely noticed that McAngus had left her to join the men. Slowly, reluctantly, Cameron shook Calumn’s hand. A sigh of relief went up. McAngus raised his tankard. ‘Here’s to forgiving and forgetting,’ he said. ‘Slange var.’

‘Slange var,’ the subdued response echoed through the hall. Someone pressed a tankard into Calumn’s hand. Very quickly he was surrounded. Madeleine heard the words, Rory Macleod, uttered several times. Obviously Calumn’s brother was a well-respected man. She watched as his countenance resumed its normal colour. She saw from the way his shoulders relaxed how tense he had been. She continued to watch from her vantage point as the men talked animatedly, laughing and exchanging stories, though she had no idea what they were saying. She realised she had just witnessed an extraordinary event. Calumn had come home. Though it was what she knew was right for him, she felt as if she were watching him sail away while she was left alone on a distant shore. Though of course soon, very soon, it would be she who would be sailing away to a far-off land.

Eventually, she descended the stairs and made her own way to his side. ‘I was watching, McAngus told me most of what was being said. I thought you did well not to hit that man. I was—I was proud of you. And you must be relieved.’

‘It’s a start, but it will be a long road.’

‘And does it lead to Errin Mhor?’

He smiled enigmatically. ‘In the end, all roads lead to Errin Mhor—surely you know that much by now. Right now, I’ve other things on my mind. Like our business with de Guise.’

So he was still determined to accompany her. She wasn’t really surprised. It would be easier to move one of the Highland mountains than to change Calumn Munro’s mind. ‘It’s not our business, it’s my business, and it would be much better if I saw him alone,’ she said tiredly.

‘He’s not the man he was, Madeleine. He’s dangerous. I’m much more concerned about him hurting you, than the other way around. You’ll mind what I said, you’re on no account to see him alone, do you hear me?’

‘I hear you,’ she replied, crossing her fingers behind her back.

‘Mind you pay attention, then,’ he said astutely. ‘Now come and be introduced to the rest of the party.’ Taking her hand, he pulled her towards the crowd of men and women and horses milling in the courtyard of the castle.

‘Madainn mhath,’ Madeleine murmured shyly, pleased when her badly pronounced good morning was greeted with smiles and even a few friendly bonjours. ‘They know I’m French,’ she said wonderingly to Calumn as he threw her on to her horse and adjusted her bridle.

‘They know all about you. Word travels fast up here.’

A horn sounded to announce the beginning of the hunt and they rode out from the castle to the edge of the forest. The deerhounds stood alert at the head of the group of hunters, their aristocratic noses sniffing the air. Bits jangled. Horses snorted and pawed the ground, anxious to be underway. One of the hounds froze, his sensitive nose quivering, his tail stiff, a forepaw lifted, so that his whole body seemed to point in the direction of the forest at the other side of the loch. McAngus called out something, a rallying cry of some sort. And then they were off.

The dogs led them straight into the forest which covered the gently sloping land on the western edges of Loch Catriona, at the juncture with her sister lochan, Johanna. Close up, it could be seen that the two expanses of water were actually linked by a small burn. The ground was soft underfoot, the surface covered in needles dropped from the pine trees which formed a dark canopy over their heads. The air was heavy, all sound muffled. There was a fretwork of little paths criss-crossing the forest, and a huge number of little burns and ditches too, the rocks beside them covered in dark green moss and lichen. Clumps of fern, shorter and a brighter, fresher green than that which grew in the open, provided the only other ground cover. The gnarled branches of ancient oak trees reached out like gouty fingers to clutch at the riders as they passed. Silvery birch and mystical rowan, the witch’s tree, grew along the edges of the larger burns.

Despite the density of the tree trunks and the many rabbit holes which made it madness to proceed at anything other than a slow trot on horseback, the majority of the hunting party forged ahead, anxious to keep up with the dogs. Madeleine lingered at the rear, enjoying the pleasant resiny smell of the pine and the quality of the light filtering down through the trees which reminded her of the forests at home. Stopping by a tiny waterfall, she spotted the tell-tale signs of a dam built by a beaver. So much here was familiar, she felt almost as if she were at home. Even as she drew the comparison, an enormous bird flapped out suddenly, making her horse start. Its green breast feathers seemed to shine like burnished metal, and it had a tail which spread out like a fan. She had never seen anything like it.

‘A capercaillie, a male,’ Calumn said. He had ridden back to find her. ‘See how he flaunts his feathers to try to impress you. They’ve picked up the scent of the stag; if we don’t hurry up we’ll be left behind.’

He brought his horse close enough to hers so that his bare knee brushed against her skirts. He leaned over, holding his own reins in one hand, placing his other on her saddle to balance himself. Then he kissed her. A tiny, tender flutter of a kiss. Soft and warm, over before she had time to respond, but still enough to have her pulses leaping in response.

‘Come on,’ he said, slapping the rump of her horse, ‘we don’t want to miss the excitement.’

As they caught up with the rest of the party she saw the stag leaping balletically over the heather just a few yards ahead, with the dogs in hot pursuit. He was a magnificent creature with a fine set of antlers, like the one she had seen that morning a few days ago.

The antlers were a sign of his virility as well as his maturity, for he used them to fend off younger challengers to his herd, maintaining his supremacy and protecting his young. And his females. He rested for a moment, his slender legs having created some distance between himself and the dogs, looking frantically around him for a means of escape. Madeleine whispered a secret prayer for his safety. It seemed wrong to hunt such a beautiful creature, as much the proud laird of his own domain as she could see Calumn would be of Errin Mhor.

The dogs bayed. The stag leapt forwards on its muscular haunches, soaring elegantly, effortlessly, over an uprooted tree, as if he were flying. The hunters followed, shouting, blowing the horns, calling out instructions to the dogs. On they all rode in the wake of the deer, out of the forest into the lower slopes of the hills, through fern and bracken, leaping over ditches, along the sandy shallows of a river bed. Madeleine could smell the damp of wool from the Highlanders’ plaids. The earthy smell of fresh-churned grass and fern. The sharp odour of sweat from the horses.

On and on they went, for what seemed like hours, with the stag finally slowing, his flanks heaving with effort, obviously blown. Dogs barked excitedly. The cries from the hunters took on a higher pitch as the stag was cornered in the shadow of a large rock. The poor creature was foaming at the mouth, his eyes blank with terror.

Though Madeleine had taken part in many boar hunts at home, for some reason this event seemed manifestly unfair. So many people, so many dogs and horses, all pitted against this one lone, regal creature. She could not bear to watch the end. It would be like viewing the execution of a king, seeing the brown eyes glaze, the mighty body topple. No, she could not bear it.

They were on the edges of Loch Fiona, on the far side from Castle Rhubodach. If she kept to the shore, she could get back without returning through the forest. Decision made, she turned her horse around and headed off.

About halfway to the castle she experienced the prickly feeling of being watched. Reining her horse to a halt, Madeleine peered around her, but could see no one. To her left was the gloom of the forest, seemingly impenetrable at this point due to a jumble of fallen trees. On her right was Loch Fiona, tapering into Loch Aileen. Behind her—no one. Yet the feeling persisted. Goosebumps raised on the back of her neck. Her hands on the reins were clammy.

She continued slowly, telling herself that she was being foolish. It was an animal, without a doubt. Another deer, perhaps. Her sharp ears heard a rustle coming from the forest. She stopped her horse again and, carefully scanning the foliage, caught a glimpse of a pair of eyes. Not deer. Definitely human. She called out, ‘Who is there?’, in English. She was frightened, though she told herself she had no cause to be. Probably another member of the hunt who had lost their way. Her horse pawed at the ground. All her instincts told her to flee. She gathered the reins to do so. Too late.

A man appeared directly in front of her. He held a pistol in his hand and it was pointing straight at her. Another man emerged from the cover of the forest brandishing the lethal long thin knife she knew from Calumn was known as a dirk. He put the tip of it to her breast. ‘Get down,’ he growled in English.

She did not hesitate to obey. One look was sufficient to tell her that both men meant business, for they had an air of desperation about them. Clad in trews and leather waistcoats, their faces were tanned and fierce under their beards. She assumed they were after her horse. Snagging her foot in the stirrup as she dismounted, she was caught in a vicious clamp against the body of the man holding the dirk. She was shaking, and meeting her attacker’s eyes flooded with another type of fear, for he had a lascivious look to him as his filthy hand clamped around her waist. She knew she should not show her fright, but it was there in her voice when she said, struggling, ‘Get your hands off me.’

To her astonishment he did, laughing crudely. His companion grabbed the reins of her horse. She thought with relief that it was over, that they would be on their way, was already trying to calculate how long it would take her to walk back to the castle, when the man spoke again.

‘You’re the Frenchie.’

She was taken aback, then remembered what Calumn had said earlier, that there were no secrets in the Highlands, so she simply nodded.

‘Come in search of Guillaume de Guise.’

She nodded again.

‘We’re to take you to him.’

Her jaw dropped in astonishment. What on earth was Guillaume doing associating with such men? ‘‘You! I don’t believe you. Where is Guillaume? Why has he not come for me himself?’

The man looked at her contemptuously. ‘Think he’s daft, do ye? He’s a price on his head—we were to make sure this wasn’t a trap.’

‘A price on his head! Do you mean he’s an outlaw? Non, non, non. You must have the wrong man.’

‘Do ye want to see him or not?’

She looked longingly back behind her, but the path along the lochside was empty. Calumn was too caught up in the hunt to have noticed her leaving. He had been adamant that she not meet Guillaume alone. She had thought him over-cautious, but looking at the two henchmen who had been sent for her, she thought now that he had been right to worry. But surely Guillaume would not harm her? No matter how much he had changed, he could not have changed that much.

The man with the pistol gave an impatient exclamation and said something to his comrade in Gaelic. He nodded his agreement and picked up the reins of her horse, encouraging her with the blade of his dirk in the small of her back to walk into the forest. She had no choice but to obey. Gathering up the remnants of her courage, Madeleine did as she was bid.

Once under cover of the trees, the men bound her wrists and threw her back on to the saddle of her horse. They untied their own horses, which had been waiting sedately in a small clearing, and mounted, one in front leading Madeleine, the other following behind. They took a path which led steeply uphill into the depths of the forest where sunlight did not penetrate, making their way with the assurance of long familiarity.

The forest became less dense as they gained height. A small clearing appeared, with what looked like a large cave at the far side. A camp fire smoked at the mouth of the cave, with a large cauldron suspended over it on a complicated arrangement of sticks. Scattered possessions—saddle bags, some clothing, tin plates and cups stacked by the fire—betrayed the presence of other members of the group, who were obviously out foraging—or carrying out their evil business. For now, the camp seemed deserted.

Madeleine’s escorts brought the little procession to a halt and dismounted, tethering the animals to a tree. She was pulled from the saddle and stood shakily on her feet. ‘Untie me,’ she said, looking around her warily. The men made no move to do so, one busying himself with the horses, the other heading towards a makeshift shelter formed from canvas and branches, whistling softly.

‘Guillaume,’ Madeleine called. ‘Guillaume, c’est moi, c’est Madeleine.’

The man with the dirk sat down under the canvas and began whittling on a piece of wood. Trying to keep a lid on her rising panic, Madeleine took a step towards the cave. ‘Guillaume?’

A tall figure emerged from the gloom. ‘Well? What do you want?’ he growled, speaking French with the guttural accent of the south-west.

‘Who are you?’ Madeleine countered. Though he was obviously French, tall and dark-haired, there the resemblance to Guillaume ended. Dressed in trews and a cambric shirt with a short woollen jacket, this man was older, perhaps thirty, his face etched with lines which told of a hard life. Under black brows which almost met over his nose, his eyes were cold.

‘I am Guillaume de Guise,’ he said.

‘Non. You are not Guillaume. Where is he, what have you done with him?’

‘I am Guillaume de Guise,’ the man repeated threateningly. He smelled of sweat and whisky. ‘Who are you, and what do you want?’

Madeleine cowered back, tugging on the leather which bound her wrists. ‘I am Madeleine Lafayette, as you would know if you really were Guillaume,’ she said, glaring at him. ‘Where is he?’

‘If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stop asking me that,’ he hissed, putting a hand around her throat.

‘Why did you bring me here, if you are not Guillaume?’ She was trying desperately not to betray her fear.

The Frenchman’s grip tightened around her throat. ‘I was told you had news for me, something to my advantage. What is it?’

‘News for Guillaume.’ Madeleine struggled to free herself from his grip. ‘For the real Guillaume.’

‘What news?’

‘It’s none of your business. Where is Guillaume? I want to talk to Guillaume.’ Her voice rose several octaves. The two henchmen abandoned all pretence of going about their own business and watched with interest as their leader struggled to control the Frenchwoman who had turned into something resembling a wildcat. Madeleine bit, kicked and squirmed like an eel to free herself. Though her hands were still bound, she managed to rake her nails down her captor’s cheeks, making him drop his hold and yelp in pain. Blood dripped from the scratches. The henchmen grinned. Panting, Madeleine edged backwards, thinking only of escape. If she could outrun them, lose herself in the forest …

She glanced at the man who claimed to be Guillaume. He was busy wiping the blood from his face. The other two were watching her, but they were both seated, giving her a slight advantage. It had to be now. Taking a deep breath, she ran as fast as she could to the edge of the clearing, throwing herself into the forest, regardless of the branches whipping at her face and tearing her clothes, holding her bound hands out in front of her like a blind woman, concentrating on keeping her balance, on putting some distance between herself and her captors.

She got only a few yards before one of them grabbed her. They dragged her back to the camp and threw her on to the ground. Opening her eyes, the first thing she saw was the wicked glint of the long broadsword blade. It was resting on her stomach. ‘Now, mademoiselle, perhaps you are ready to speak,’ the Frenchman said. There was an equally wicked glint to his smile.

Angus McAngus insisted that the honour of bleeding the stag went to Calumn. Though it was not a task he relished, he knew it would be an insult to refuse, and executed it as mercifully as he could, taking his dirk swiftly and cleanly to the animal’s throat. A rousing cheer went up from the rest of the hunters, and the men set about tying the carcase up to take back to the castle. There would be roast venison tonight, a welcome change from mutton.

Wiping the blood from his hands, Calumn noticed Madeleine’s absence and guessed she had not wished to witness the stag’s death. She must have taken the path back along the lochside but, scanning it anxiously from a vantage point on top of a crag, he could not see her. In an instant he was on full alert. De Guise.

Shouting an apology to his host, Calumn mounted his tired horse and headed off down the mountainside, his keen eyes on the lookout for signs of an ambush. Forcing himself to go slowly lest he miss anything, he retraced Madeleine’s steps, picking up the prints of her horseshoes in the soft mud on the edges of the path. His caution was rewarded. Three horses, and a broken branch leading into the forest. They had not expected to be followed and had made no attempt to cover their tracks. Stealthily, all his faculties on full alert, he followed the trail until he saw the clearing in the distance.

Three men. And Madeleine, with a claymore pointing at her belly. The discipline of a trained soldier and the fighting instincts of a Highland warrior both took hold of him. Calumn tethered his horse well out of sight and sound of the camp. His dirk, still bloody from the stag, was in his belt. The wicked blade had been cut down from one of his father’s own claymores, the hilt chased with ornate Celtic symbols copied by the Munro clan blacksmith from an ancient parchment kept at Errin Mhor Castle. He drew it from its leather sheath and felt for his sgian dubh, the secret dagger he kept strapped under his jacket. Thus armed, he crept soundlessly through the undergrowth. When he was within hearing distance he forced himself to pause, safe behind the shelter of a birch, surveying the scene before him.

Madeleine was lying on the ground, her hands bound, her hair and clothing in wild disarray. For a heart-stopping second he thought she had been ravished, but closer scrutiny reassured him. She had obviously put up a fight. Fierce pride heated his blood. He should have known she would not give in easily.

The man who must be de Guise stood over her, wielding the broadsword. He looked more mature than Calumn had expected. Battle-hardened. That would account for it. All soldiers grew up quickly in the heat of combat. He had the look of a man who had been living wild for some time, with his hair long and unkempt, though he was surprisingly clean shaven. A mean look about the mouth marked him out as a man to be taken seriously.

The other two Calumn dismissed as lightweights. Scrawny, shabbily dressed, they had a gaunt, hungry look about them, as of scavengers after an unsuccessful night’s hunting. They were watching the tableau as if it were an entertainment, quite evidently unaware that their intervention would be necessary.

All the better.

‘Well, what’s it to be,’ de Guise was saying, ‘what is this news that I’m told will be to my advantage?’

Calumn cursed, tightening his grip on his dirk as he saw the terror in Madeleine’s eyes. Finding out that he was responsible for pillaging Errin Mhor had given him a legitimate grudge against de Guise. Now, he despised him with all his heart. A cold rage enveloped him. Death was almost too good for this man.

Chapter Eight

Calumn leapt forwards from his hiding place with a blood-curdling cry, startling de Guise into raising his claymore, but Calumn was already upon him, a fearsome flurry of plaid and brawn and muscle, rushing at the Frenchman, breaking his sword arm with one brutal kick, causing the claymore to clatter to the earth seconds before its owner, with a howl of agony, followed it. On his knees, clutching his damaged limb, de Guise screamed at his men to come to his aid, but it was too late. Calumn stood behind him, his dirk at the man’s throat, so close that a trickle of blood ran down the blade, and already Madeleine had scrabbled to her feet, kicking the claymore out of reach.

‘Get over here,’ Calumn called to her, manoeuvring himself so that the other two men were within his sight, with de Guise in front of him and Madeleine safe behind him. She held her wrists towards him so that he could cut her ties and, needing no encouragement, she picked up the heavy broadsword, using both her hands to hold it at waist level where it wavered, more threatening to the watching men in the hands of her amateur grip than if it were held by a champion.

‘Good girl.’ Calumn eyed the two henchmen, his eyes slits of dark, his mouth thinned into a cruel line. ‘One move from either of you and he’s dead, am I understood?’

The men nodded. ‘Cowards,’ de Guise snarled, but Calumn pressed the dirk tighter into his throat. The trickle of blood thickened.

‘What’s the game, de Guise?’

‘Calumn, it’s not Guillaume,’ Madeleine said, taking a step forwards.

‘Stay behind me,’ he snapped, keeping his eyes on the henchmen, one of whom had a dirk. ‘Keep the claymore up. If either of them move, you lift it as high as you can and slice it down on them.’

‘Like this,’ Madeleine said, demonstrating.

He could see from the reaction of the watching men that she had managed something effectively threatening, and chuckled bloodthirstily. ‘Good. Now,’ he said, returning his attention to the man he held pinioned, ‘who the hell are you?’

‘Guillaume de Guise,’ the man replied, though all conviction was gone from his voice.

‘That is not Guillaume,’ Madeleine spat, ‘he’s an impostor.’

‘One last chance,’ Calumn said, ‘who are you?’

‘Droissard,’ the man muttered.

‘Speak up, laddie, your men will want to hear what you’ve got to say.’

‘My name is Marc Droissard,’ the man replied through gritted teeth.

‘You see,’ Madeleine cried triumphantly to the men who had brought her here, ‘I told you it wasn’t Guillaume.’

They looked astounded. ‘What’s going on? Who are ye? Why did you tell us your name was de Guise?’

‘Well, are you going to answer that?’ Though he was fairly certain that they were safe from attack, Calumn still retained his grip, for even with a broken limb, he knew that a rat in a trap was at its most dangerous. ‘Speak up man, I’m losing patience.’

‘I fought with de Guise. We were in the Écossais Royeaux together.’

‘You were friends,’ Madeleine asked in disbelief, ‘comrades?’

Droissard laughed. ‘Comrades, yes. Friends, hardly. He was out of my league. I was a humble tanner before I took up soldiering. I’m good enough to die for the likes of him and his precious Prince, but nothing more.’

‘Yes, and I bet you’ve fought for a few different sides in your time, eh,’ Calumn said. ‘I recognise your type—you’ve got mercenary written all over you.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘I was a soldier myself. Let me guess, you joined the French army, but they threw you out for some crime or other—or perhaps you deserted. But you like killing and you like to get paid for it. And now you’ve got a price on your head and you can’t go home. Am I right?’

Droissard struggled, cursing, but Calumn pulled his head back, gripping his hair by the roots so hard that he yelped. ‘So, you’ve taken de Guise’s name to avoid the guillotine, eh? Where is he?’

‘Dead.’

‘No!’ The claymore dropped from Madeleine’s grasp.

‘When?’ Calumn looked anxiously over his shoulder. She had turned ghostly white. Though he had suspected as much, from the very moment Madeleine told him this was not Guillaume, he would have spared her the pain of finding out in this brutal way.

Droissard had obviously decided to co-operate. ‘Culloden. I saw him fall. A musket wound to the head. I knew he had no family, I thought no one would care. When I heard that she was looking for him, I couldn’t resist. They told me she had something for me, something to my advantage. Money, I thought.’

‘Aye, you thought to take it and then to kill her, didn’t you?’

‘No, no,’ Droissard protested. ‘I’d have released her.’

‘Let her go to tell the whole country that the man who called himself de Guise was an impostor! Don’t lie to me. You had a claymore aimed at her belly. I know exactly what that does to a body.’

Droissard was shaking now, all pretence of bravado gone. ‘What are you going to do with me? I’ve done you no harm. My men will be back soon, but if you let me go I’ll make sure you and the girl get safe passage back to the castle. I’ll—’

‘You and your men are responsible for attacking my lands,’ Calumn hissed. ‘Munro lands.’

‘So you’re a turncoat then, I should have known it,’ Droissard threw at him.

‘I was loyal to my troops and to the army I was part of,’ Calumn replied furiously. ‘But you wouldn’t know about that, would you? No, you fight for whoever pays you most. Do they know that, these men of yours? Do they know you’re as much a Jacobite as Cumberland is? You’re in this for the takings and naught more. Do you think they’ll rush to your defence when I tell them that?’ He wanted to slit the man’s throat, to drive his dirk into the man’s evil heart, to tear out the heart while it was still beating, to flay him, to.

‘Dead?’ Madeleine was standing by his side, her voice a mere thread. ‘Calumn, ask him, is he certain?’

Pity and tenderness washed over him, draining away the bloodlust. ‘Madeleine, de Guise took a bullet to the head, there can be no mistake.’ No point in reminding her that even had de Guise survived the battle, he would have been slaughtered in the aftermath. ‘Go and fetch your horse, and bring one other over. Go on, do as you’re told. You two, make yourself scarce if you value your hide.’ The two men needed no further persuasion and ran off into the forest.

‘Are you’re going to kill him?’ Madeleine asked apprehensively.

‘Killing’s too good for him.’ ‘Then what?’

‘He’s coming with us. There are representatives from most of the clans at Castle Rhubodach. They can decide.’

She smiled bravely. ‘Rough justice. More than he deserves.’

‘Aye. It sticks in my craw, but I’ve enough blood on my hands.’

With Droissard bound by the wrists and nursing his broken arm, the journey back to Castle Rhubodach was made in sombre silence. In contrast, the great hall, when they entered, was alive with laughter. McAngus’s claret was flowing freely. The appetising aroma of venison filled the air, the spit on which it was turning watched by a pack of drooling hounds. When the trio were spotted, they were greeted raucously, amusement which turned to concern and then anger as Calumn quickly explained what had passed. Calls for retribution mingled with fainter cries for leniency. An impromptu clan tribunal was assembled.

Prejudiced as he was against Droissard, Calumn declined to take part, instead ushering Madeleine upstairs to her chamber, where he managed to coax the fire into life and even conjured up some hot water for her to wash in. She was shivering, her face ashen, seemingly beyond words. He should be furious with her for disobeying him, but her punishment already far exceeded her crime.

Madeleine’s shivers had turned to shaking. She was fumbling with the lacing on her boots. He stooped to help her, then undid the belt and brooch which held her arisaidh in place and sat her gently down on the bed. Taking a washcloth, he cleaned the worst of the dirt from her face and hands, murmuring soothing nothings in his own language. Her hair was a tangled mess. He pulled the last of the pins from it, and, taking her brush, combed it rhythmically, gently, using long soothing strokes until it hung sleekly down her back. He unlaced the sleeves from her waistcoat, took off her stockings, rubbed her cold feet between his hands to warm them, massaging life into each of her little toes, doing the same to her hands. ‘You should try to get some sleep. I’ll get you a toddy, it’ll help.’

‘What’s a toddy?’

‘It’s a hot drink. Whisky, cloves, honey and hot water. It’ll soothe you.’

‘No.’ She gazed at him, as far from him as if she were on the other side of the ocean. ‘No. I don’t want anything. I just need to be alone.’

‘I don’t think that’s such a good idea.’ She hadn’t cried. Not one tear. That couldn’t be healthy.

‘No!’ She jumped up from the bed, clasping her hands together so tightly the skin strained at her knuckles. ‘Please, Calumn, just—I need to be on my own. Please.’

As a soldier he was used to dealing with the shock of the bereaved, but he had not seen a reaction as extreme as this before. He had come to believe she did not really care for de Guise. Obviously he had been wrong. The realisation was unexpectedly painful. ‘I’ll come back later, see how you are.’

‘Tomorrow.’ She opened the door. ‘Come and see me in the morning. Goodnight, Calumn.’

He waited in the hallway, ears straining for sounds of grief. But there was only silence.

Inside the room, Madeleine slumped to the floor in front of the flickering fire, hugging her arms tight around herself, for if she let go she would surely shatter. Guillaume was dead. Since last night, hearing McAngus’s story of the renegades, she had half-expected this. The man McAngus described was not the Guillaume she knew. But to have it confirmed was a shock. A horrible shock, made worse by her being so certain that he was alive.

But worse, far worse, was the shock of discovering her own wickedness. For just a few moments, when the news of Guillaume’s death was confirmed by Droissard, she had been relieved. Shamefully but unmistakably relieved.

‘They’ve decided to let him go, I’m afraid, laddie,’ Angus McAngus told Calumn. ‘At the end of the day, he fought for Charlie and that swung the balance in his favour.’

‘He was a mercenary.’

McAngus smiled wearily. ‘So were half the Jacobite army, though I doubt they were actually paid. Don’t take it to heart, Calumn. You did the right thing bringing him back here—that deed will stand you in good stead, I promise you. Your father would not have had the courage to show the man mercy.’

‘Courage! I should have slit his throat when I had the chance.’

‘Nay, you don’t mean that. You did the right thing.’

‘He would have killed Madeleine.’

‘But he didn’t, did he? You were there for her. As it should be. Don’t let that one get away. In fact, what are you doing here? Should you not be up there comforting her? Take her up some of this venison and a cup of good French claret. I always find the world’s a better-looking place myself, with a few cups of good French claret inside me.’

Calumn smiled, amused despite himself, but he shook his head. ‘She wants to be left alone.’

‘And here was me thinking you were an experienced ladies’ man! Did you not know that when a woman says she wants to be left alone, she means the very opposite? Wait till I tell them this one.’ With that, McAngus slapped Calumn on the back and went over to join the others at the head of the long table, where the haunch of venison was rapidly diminishing. A hearty burst of laughter followed Calumn up the stairs. McAngus had obviously shared the joke.

On the landing, he stood looking out over the grounds of the castle through a rather beautiful, if also rather dirty, stained-glass window. It was raining steadily now. The clansmen’s decision left him strangely untouched. He wondered if Droissard had already been released. Hard to remember that only a few hours ago he had been intent on murdering the man.

You were there for her. True enough—this time. This time, he’d played the part of Madeleine’s champion, a part he’d come to think of as his own, but it was not his for much longer. She would be going home soon. She had no reason to stay. Who would be her champion then? He didn’t want to think about that.

Voices wafted up from the great hall. The sound of a fiddle being tuned. Soon they would be singing, and to the repertoire of the old songs would be added the new ones about their Bonnie Prince which would establish the undeserving Pretender as a legend. Calumn turned away from the rain-drenched window and headed up to the second floor. Nothing wrong with another legend, he supposed. Best way to heal a hurt. Right now, he had another hurt to deal with.

When there was no reply to his soft tap on her door, Calumn opened it carefully, assuming Madeleine was asleep. She was wide awake, hunched on the floor in front of the dying embers of the fire. She did not stir when he approached, looking at him through huge, unseeing eyes filled with something which tore at his heart.

‘I came to see how you are,’ he said, feeling helpless in the face of such dumb grief.

No answer. And still no trace of tears, either. He hunkered down beside her. She had her arms wrapped tight around her body, as if she were trying to stop herself from falling apart. Her bare feet were like ice. ‘You’re freezing. You should be in bed.’ Still no response. ‘Madeleine, you’re going to catch your death.’ He scooped her up into his arms. She was as light as a feather. Her hair was soft against his chin. She released the tight hold she had on herself only to clutch at him instead, her fingers on his jacket gripping like claws. A violent shiver racked her body. When he tried to release her onto the bed, she wouldn’t let go.

‘Stay with me.’ Her voice was a thread.

‘I’m not going anywhere.’

Quickly, he took off the rest of her outer clothing, careful not to alarm her, undressing her as tenderly as he would a child. Then he divested himself of all but his shirt, and, rolling back the covers of the bed, wrapped her tight against his chest, tucking the sheet up around her chin, warming her feet with his own, chafing her hands between his to make the blood flow, murmuring gentle nothings to soothe her.

Madeleine lay curled up against him shaking, then shivering, then finally still. She nuzzled her face into his chest, feeling the soft fuzz of his hair on her cheek in the opening of his shirt. Safe. Like an animal in its burrow. Safe and warm. And home.

A hot tear rolled down her cheek. Its path scorched her skin, for it was a bitter tear. The tear of the wicked. Another followed, then another. She pressed her lips tight together, she closed her throat, she held her breath, but there was no stopping them. Tears poured down her cold cheeks, dripped down her chin and on to Calumn’s chest, soaking his shirt. Sobs racked her body. Her fingers clutched at his desperately, as if he could anchor her, as if she were being wrested from him by a storm, as if she would be washed up, broken and lifeless, as surely she deserved to be. And still the tears flowed, softer now, filled with sadness. Finally, tears of grief.

When she was empty, her grip slackened. She became aware of Calumn holding her, stroking her head, her hair, her shoulders. Of his voice in her ear telling her to hush, that she was safe, that he would keep her safe. Of the way her body was nestled against his, chest to chest, thigh to thigh, held tight but unthreateningly. She sniffed. Rubbed her damp cheeks on his shirt. It was wet through. ‘Sorry,’ she whispered, her throat raw, her voice husky.

She felt, rather than heard, him laugh, a deep rumble in his chest. ‘A pleasure,’ he said, making her smile weakly in the darkness.

More stroking of her hair. Her tense muscles began to relax. She was warm now. She did not deserve to be warm when Guillaume was cold. Cold and dead. She struggled to sit up.

Calumn pulled her effortlessly back against him. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

‘I don’t deserve this.’

‘I know it’s difficult to accept, especially when you were so sure, but—’

‘No, that’s not what I meant. I don’t deserve this. You. Me, lying here like this, feeling warm and—and safe.’

‘Madeleine, what you’re feeling is perfectly natural. It’s normal to feel guilty to be alive when someone dear to you dies, I promise you. What you must remember is that Guillaume was a free man. He chose to fight, he chose to take the risk, as every soldier does who goes into battle. He died fighting for something he believed in. His choice. You’ve no need to be feeling guilty.’

She struggled to sit up. ‘You don’t understand, Calumn, I’ve every reason to feel guilty. I’m a wicked, wicked person.’

She was wringing her hands together, her breath coming short and fast, the rapid rise and fall of her breasts clear under the thin material of her sark. To his shame, Calumn felt himself stirring and quickly averted his eyes. ‘It’s been a shock, that’s all. Of course you’re upset, but you’ve no need to feel guilty. Nor to think yourself wicked, simply because you’re alive and Guillaume is not.’

‘You don’t understand! That’s not why I feel guilty. It’s because—it’s because—when I found out that Guillaume was dead I was relieved.’ She waited for the disgust to show on his face, but he simply returned her gaze. ‘It meant I didn’t have to face him. Now do you see what I mean? I wished him dead.’

Instead of pushing her away, Calumn pulled her back against him. ‘There’s a world of difference between being relieved that you don’t have to face something, and actually wishing it. You didn’t wish him dead, but he is dead, and now you don’t have to face something you were dreading. That doesn’t make you wicked. It makes you human.’

Madeleine shifted in the bed, turning to meet his gaze in the flickering light of the lamp, the fire having died out long ago. ‘You don’t hate me?’

‘I could never hate you. Come, it’s been a hell of a day. Do you think you could sleep?’

She nodded wearily. ‘Will you stay with me, just for a little while? Just to hold me? Please.’

‘You’re asking a lot. It would be a first, you know.’

‘I’m sorry I—’

‘It was a joke, Madeleine—the first bit, anyway. The second bit was true.’ He pulled her against him so that her head rested on his shoulder and tucked the blankets up around her.

‘Calumn?’ Her voice was the faintest whisper.

‘What, lass?’

‘You saved my life today, I’ll never forget that. Thank you. And thank you for being here now.’

‘Hush.’ He cradled her in his arms until the rhythmical sound of her breathing told him she was asleep. Exhausted, he, too, soon fell fast asleep.

Madeleine awoke with her heart pounding, completely disorientated. It was still dark. Outside the rain had stopped, leaving a clear sky dotted with stars. The moon was almost full, shining high in the sky. She was hot. She tried to push the blankets down and found they were anchored to her by a muscular arm. Calumn. Then she remembered.

The guilt which had rocked her off balance seemed to have dissipated. Calumn had a way of putting the world in perspective for her. He sighed in his sleep and Madeleine wriggled closer, spooning her body into the nook of his. The movement revealed his state of undress. He had only his shirt on—how could she not have noticed that last night? She wriggled closer, relishing the feel of her contours against his.

Over the past few days, the building blocks of her life had tumbled into disarray and must now be rebuilt in a different shape. Nothing felt real any more. Nothing, except the man lying beside her. This warm, alive, solid man, who had rescued her, taken her under his wing, and now saved her life. The jolting reality hit her like a blow to the stomach. If Calumn had not arrived when he did this afternoon, she would almost certainly be as dead as Guillaume. He had been quite fearless. Only now, thinking back on the event, did she realise how incredibly brave he had been. Three to one. Exactly as it had been the first night they met, only much more dangerous.

Wanting surged through her like a tearing hunger. She felt cavernously empty, cravingly needy. As if she were a husk which needed to be filled. Made into flesh and blood. Made to feel. Made alive again. She was thirsty for life. And here beside her was the perfect person, the only person, capable of slaking that thirst. Something primal bubbled through her veins. She needed him. She needed him now, especially now that there were no more barriers.

She eased herself carefully from Calumn’s loose embrace, lifting her sark over her head. Naked, she turned around to face him. The rough hairs of his bare legs against hers. Skin. And heat.

Was he awake? His eyelids were closed. His lips slightly parted. She smoothed his hair back from his forehead. Kissed the tiny scar on his brow. Now the cleft on his chin, feeling the rasp of his bristles on her tongue. Still he did not stir.

She pressed closer, putting an arm around him, feeling, under the shirt, the indentation of his waist, the rise of his buttock, to the scar on his belly. She traced the curve of it down to its ending, her fingers brushing the rougher hair there, her breath coming quicker as the feel of him sent arousing messages back, through her fingertips, into her blood, heating her all over. Wake up, Calumn.

She felt the weight of his erection on her thigh. She allowed her fingertips to flutter near, nearer, caressing the tip of him, adjusting her body so that she could feel more of him. Wriggling again. Nearer. Breathing quickening. Closer.

‘Madeleine, what are you doing?’

‘You need to ask?’

‘This is not a good idea.’

‘Yes, it is. I think it is.’

‘Well, I don’t.’

‘Part of you does.’

Her fingers fluttered over that part of him again. A sharp intake of breath. His hand clenched on her thigh. ‘You’re naked.’

‘Yes.’

‘This is definitely not a good idea,’ he said, struggling to sound convincing.

‘Calumn, it’s what I want. There’s no reason, now, for us not to.’ She pressed a feverish kiss to his chest. She kissed his throat, where a pulse beat fast against her lips.

His hands smoothed their way over her skin, her arms, the line from her shoulder down to her waist, on to her thigh. She lifted her head to look at him, saw indecision and desire writ equally large in his heavy-lidded eyes.

‘It wouldn’t be right,’ he said raggedly, meeting her gaze.

‘You’re wrong. It’s the one thing that feels exactly right.’

Calumn groaned. The temptation was unbearable. He prayed for the strength to match his resolve. ‘It’s just your grief talking. You’ve had a traumatic day, your emotions are all over the place.’

‘It doesn’t feel like grief,’ Madeleine said, a little desperately. Despite the ample evidence of his arousal, she could see he had made up his mind, and she knew that once he had, it would be as easy to change it as it was to breach the walls of Edinburgh Castle. ‘I’m not confused. I want you, Calumn, I can see you want me.’

His expression set. ‘No,’ he said, and now the word held a world of conviction. He wrenched himself free of her. ‘No.’

He retrieved her sark, pulled it over her, keeping his hands strictly, strictly to the business of fastening it at the neck, refusing to allow his mind to dwell on the vision of her gloriously naked. Parts of him persisted in clinging to that image. He forced himself to ignore the urges of those parts too, though it cost him dear. ‘You’re in no frame of mind to know what you want, Madeleine. I’m not going to let you do anything that you’ll regret in the morning.’

‘I wouldn’t regret it.’

‘You won’t have to.’ He pushed back the bedcovers and got to his feet. ‘When we make love, it will be because you want me, and for that reason alone. I’m going now. Try to get some rest.’ Hastily pulling on his plaid and gathering up the rest of his clothing before he changed his mind, Calumn fled.

Madeleine shivered violently, all traces of desire gone so completely that she wondered where they had come from in the first place. She curled up under the sheet into a tight ball. Hot tears leaked from her eyes. Calumn’s abrupt departure left her feeling lonelier than she had ever felt in her life.

When we make love, it will be because you want me, and for that reason alone. He had said when, not if. One word, but it brought immense comfort. She clung to it. Held it close like a talisman. She dreamt of being shipwrecked. Of drowning, only to be tossed up in a strange land. Like Viola, she thought, waking the next morning with a start. If only, like Viola, her own journey could end in lovers meeting.

She found Calumn sitting alone in the great hall, the other houseguests clearly still busy sleeping off the effects of the previous night’s carousing. He looked preoccupied, jumping to his feet when she greeted him, obviously unaware until that moment of her approach. ‘Madeleine. I hope you managed some sleep.’

‘A little. What about you?’ she asked politely, unable to quite meet his eyes.

‘The same. I’m afraid I can only offer you cold meats and leftovers for breakfast. Everyone is still abed, including the servants—what few there are of them.’

‘I’m not really hungry.’

He gestured for her to sit opposite him. ‘You need to eat something, you had no dinner. Here, I’ve made up a plate for you.’

She took her place reluctantly. ‘Thank you.’ She picked up a knife, looked at the food in front of her, felt a wave of nausea, and replaced the knife on the table. ‘Calumn, about last night … I don’t know what came over me, I think maybe I’m losing my mind. I should never have …’

He reached across the table to take her hands in his. ‘You have no need to apologise. For what it’s worth I think you’re doing a remarkable job of preserving your sanity, given the circumstances. Any other woman would have succumbed to strong hysterics at the very least, by now.’

Her smile was tentative. ‘At least I’ve not subjected you to that.’

Calumn pressed her hand reassuringly. ‘You’ve been through enough trauma in the last few days to last you a lifetime. You’ve made your way on your own to a foreign country. You’ve travelled for days through an alien wilderness, been abducted and near enough killed, and, to top it all, you’ve just found out that the man you were to marry is dead. What you felt last night was a desperate need for solace. There’s no shame in that, it’s a perfectly natural and very human reaction.’

‘Thank you.’ Unwilling to allow him to see how much his words had touched her, she strove for a lighter tone. ‘You’re being so very nice about it, you must think me a poor soul indeed.’

‘I think you’re a very brave soul, and I am simply telling you the truth.’ He eyed her with concern. There were dark circles under her eyes. She looked wan, her skin had lost its translucence. ‘It’s a bonny day outside,’ he said bracingly, ‘we should head off as soon as possible, make the most of it.’

Her heart plummeted. Nausea churned in her stomach. The smell of food was making her ill. She pushed her plate to the side. ‘Head off? Yes, yes, of course, I suppose I should be thinking about my journey home.’ Home. The image the word evoked was like a painting, rather than a real place.

‘You’re not going home, not yet. I am, and you’re coming with me—as far as Heronsay anyway.’

‘What? What did you say?’

Calumn grinned. ‘We’re going to Heronsay, to visit Rory. It’s high time I cleared the air with my brother.’

She looked at him speechlessly, then a smile spread across her face like the sun rising, and she clapped her hands together with delight. ‘That’s wonderful news. I’m so happy for you. And I know that it’s what will make you happy.’

Her unaffected response touched his heart. Not one word of “I told you so.” She was happy because he was happy, despite all her own cares. A rare creature. It felt good to have her on his side.

‘And Errin Mhor?’

Calumn laughed. ‘You’re quite a taskmaster. Yes, all roads lead to Errin Mhor, I told you that. But I don’t think you heard me right. I’m taking you with me, to Heronsay.’

‘Taking me with you,’ she repeated stupidly.

‘To Heronsay.’ He reached over to take her hand. ‘We have unfinished business, you and I.’

Now her heart began to pound. When we make love, not if. She remembered her dream and wondered if it was a portent. She wanted to go with him. No matter what the future held, no matter what the consequences, she wanted to go with him. For not to do so would be to regret for ever what might have been.

‘Madeleine?’

She smiled, a slow curling smile she had learned from him, had learned he liked. ‘Yes. I’d like that very much.’

‘If—when you are ready to return to France, it will be a much simpler matter from there. Rory will be able to arrange a passage for you on one of the boats which ply their trade down the west coast to the channel ports.’

Her smile faltered. He made her no promises, but she had already decided to take her chances. She would not fail for want of trying. ‘Yes, that makes sense. Thank you.’ Despite the looming unknown of her future, and the knowledge of poor Guillaume’s death, she felt a lightness of spirit which was a prelude to a new kind of happiness. She was in love and was taking her fate into her own hands. How far she had come from the woman who had landed at the port of Leith, content to entrust her future happiness to others.

She took a deep breath. ‘Calumn, last night—it wasn’t just about solace.’

She had taken him by surprise, but she could tell from the way he smiled that it was a pleasant one.

His eyes smouldered with promise. ‘Next time, it won’t be about solace at all. Next time, it will be about you and I and nothing else.’

She blushed furiously, a heat which spread rapidly through her body, making her breathless.

Satisfied, for now, Calumn laughed huskily. ‘Eat. I want to be away from here. I have not Castle Rhubodach in mind as an appropriate setting, you can be sure of that.’

Madeleine picked up her fork and took a little of the mutton, unable to face the venison. ‘Will I like Rory?’ she asked in an effort to direct her thoughts to a less distracting channel.

‘He’s very like me.’

‘Ah, then I’ll be bound to like him.’

‘And if he has an ounce of judgement, he will like you! Now, eat your breakfast, the sooner we set off the better.’ Calumn picked up his own knife and addressed himself to his plate with a renewed appetite.

‘I’ll be sorry to see you both go, we haven’t had this much excitement for months,’ Angus McAngus said with a whimsical smile when Calumn sought him out to announce their departure. McAngus was looking distinctly the worse for wear, his hair and beard so dishevelled he resembled a walking gorse bush. ‘You seem uncommon happy this morning, young Munro, if you don’t mind me saying. The prospect of going home, I expect.’

‘Why else?’

McAngus fixed him with a gimlet eye and winked extravagantly. ‘Why else, indeed? God speed to you, Calumn Munro, and to your lovely companion. Remember what they say, a misty morning may become a clear day. Now, you’ll forgive my rudeness, but I won’t see you out. I must go in search of a hair of the dog that bit me.’

‘Quite a large hair, I suppose,’ Calumn suggested with a smile.

The old laird shrugged and tilted his head to the side. ‘Indeed. But then it was, after all, an uncommonly big dog.’

The approach to Heronsay was marked by a series of little villages, no more than clusters of cottages—crofts, Calumn called them—surrounded by a patchwork of fields planted mostly with potatoes, oats and barley. There were plenty of sheep roaming free on the hillsides, looking like puffs of cotton stitched on to the heather, but very few cattle. Though the villages were pretty, whitewashed and thatch-roofed, Madeleine thought the people seemed rather dour. A few smiled at Calumn, but none met Madeleine’s eyes, nor returned her smiles.

‘They’re wary of strangers, especially after what’s happened,’ Calumn explained.

‘I thought McAngus said that you’d protected Rory’s lands. I can’t see any signs of damage.’

‘My influence didn’t extend to those of his neighbours. You have to remember, we’re a very close-knit community. Everyone here will have kin who’ve lost something—or someone. What happened in the aftermath of Culloden up here—I can’t describe it, Madeleine, it was beyond words.’

‘But you saved all of this—’ she made a sweeping gesture ‘—you kept all these people safe.’

‘A small enough reparation.’

‘I’ll wager your brother doesn’t think that.’

Calumn shrugged. ‘We’ll find out soon enough. Heronsay is not far now. I hope it lives up to your expectations.’

And I hope it lives up to yours, Madeleine thought with some trepidation.

It was late afternoon. Clouds scudded across the paling sky. They had been travelling due west towards the sun for some miles now, following the level track as it wended its way from village to village. The scent of the sea grew stronger with every step their tired mounts took. Madeleine was excited, nervous, and anxious that Calumn’s new-found confidence might be deflated in the face of a tepid welcome.

They rounded a bend and suddenly there it was. Heronsay. Of one accord they brought their horses to a halt. A cluster of fishermen’s cottages, surprisingly like those her mother’s family had occupied, perched so close to the sea that they looked as if they would float away at high tide. A gently shelving beach covered in white-and-grey pebbles. A small fleet of fishing boats bobbing a few yards offshore, sleeker in line than the galleon-shaped Breton ones.

‘That’s Heronsay there, the island across the sound—though all the land hereabouts is Rory’s, too,’ Calumn said, pointing across the narrow stretch of water which separated his brother’s home from the mainland. ‘You can just see his standard flying above the turret of the castle.’

‘Will he be expecting you, then?’

‘It wouldn’t surprise me—and expecting us, not just me. I told you, news travels like wildfire.’

The island was almost flat and very green, a verdant contrast to the mainland. Heronsay Castle was built along the same lines as Castle Rhubodach, though it had two towers, and even from here Madeleine could tell it was well maintained. All around, in fact, the land, the villages, the boats and the island, spoke of care, attention, and wealth. ‘How does it feel, being back here?’

‘The last time, Rory had just escaped from the Campbell dungeons. I told you how he brought Jessica with him. They were married as soon as he could get the banns read, but I didn’t stay.’

‘He’ll be pleased to see you now, then?’

Calumn’s grin was only a little rigid. ‘Only one way to find out.’

They made their way to the inn at the far end of the village, where the landlord greeted Calumn like an old friend and stabled the horses. As Calumn had predicted, they were expected. A boat, flying Rory’s standard, was crossing the sound. The man at the helm, with his mane of gold hair, was unmistakably the laird himself.

Madeleine felt sick with nerves. She clutched compulsively at Calumn’s hand, glancing first to him, then to the boat, then up at Calumn again.

‘Stop that, you’re making me nervous,’ he said, without taking his eyes off the figure in the boat, which had reached the shallows now.

Rory Macleod leapt lithely into the water, pulling the sturdy wooden craft on to the beach with effortless ease. He stood on the pebbles, scanning the village, the expression on his face impossible to read, obscured by the dazzle of light from the sun setting directly behind him. He looked to be about the same height and build as Calumn. Together, they would make a fine-looking pair.

Rory was dressed in trews, a shirt and waistcoat. Clean shaven. Now he had seen them and was waving. A grin split his tanned face. Madeleine tugged her hand free of Calumn’s. ‘Go on, I’ll wait here.’ He seemed rooted to the spot. She gave him a little push. ‘Go on.’

Calumn walked down to the beach. Rory gave a whoop of welcome which reverberated across the water. He enveloped his brother in a bear hug. Madeleine’s knees gave way in relief. She slumped in an undignified heap on to the ground, her eyes wet with tears.

Chapter Nine

‘So this is your French companion, then.’

Madeleine looked up to find two exemplary specimens of Highland manhood standing over her, two pairs of eyes, one set brown, the other blue, staring at her from two extremely handsome faces. Rory Macleod was as good looking as she had expected, but not nearly as attractive, in her eyes, as his brother. The aforementioned brother reached for her hand and pulled her easily to her feet. ‘Madeleine, this is Rory.’

‘Enchanté, mademoiselle,’ Rory said, bowing gracefully over her hand in just exactly the same way as Calumn had the first night they had met.

Madeleine curtsied daintily. ‘The pleasure is all mine, monsieur. I’ve heard so much about you.’

Rory laughed, clapping Calumn’s shoulders. ‘All bad, if you’ve heard it from this one.’

‘Au contraire, all good, I promise.’

Rory grinned, but looked unconvinced. ‘I can’t believe you’re here,’ he said, turning back to his brother, ‘I’ve so much to tell you. Do you know I’m a father? A wee girl. Christina.’

Calumn raised an eyebrow. ‘Named for our mother? You kept to the tradition then.’

‘Aye. But we call her Kirsty.’

‘It must have been a worry to you, her arriving so early.’

‘Early?’ Rory frowned. ‘Not at all, she was a full nine months. Whatever gave you that idea?’

‘The fact you’d only been married seven,’ Calumn said, laughing delightedly at his brother’s sheepish look. ‘Congratulations. Is Jessica well?’

‘Blooming,’ Rory said tenderly. ‘I’m a lucky man. I look at her sometimes, and I can’t quite believe she’s still here. She’s a lowlander,’ he explained to Madeleine, ‘had never been north of Glasgow when I met her.’

‘Kidnapped her, you mean,’ Calumn interjected. ‘She was on her way to visit her cousin in Inverary and Rory here took her captive.’

‘You’re joking?’

Rory laughed. ‘Not a whit of it. I tied her up and galloped off with her. She started off my hostage and ended up my wife. I married her out of hand too, for her parents disowned her. You’d think she was living on the moon, rather than a few days’ ride from Glasgow.’

‘How romantic,’ Madeleine said, her eyes shining.

Rory laughed again. ‘Don’t be saying that in his hearing, you’ll give him ideas,’ he said, nodding at his brother, ‘and that one doesn’t need any encouragement.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Madeleine said mischievously, fairly entranced by the idea of Calumn carrying her off as his captive.

She was rewarded with one of his slow smiles, was basking in it, so she did not notice the startled expression on Rory’s face as he looked first from his brother to the pretty little maid at his side.

‘Come on then, into the boat with both of you.’ Rory ushered them down to the shore. He couldn’t wait to see what Jessica would make of this!

Calumn helped Madeleine on board, and the brothers pulled the little craft out into deeper water, working together with the instinctive harmony of two people who have carried out the same task in just this way most of their lives. ‘The last time I sat in a boat with a woman was that very day you brought Jessica here,’ he mused as he unravelled the sail, leaving Rory to take the tiller.

‘We’ve missed you.’ Rory’s voice was gruff. ‘You’ve been away long enough.’

‘Aye, well, we’ll see,’ Calumn said, his own voice equally gruff.

‘No, I mean it. We’ve missed you. I’m glad—really glad—you’re home.’

Calumn sat down on the narrow bench beside Madeleine and put his arm around her. Though the day had been warm, there was a cooling wind blowing across the sound. Perhaps it was this which made his eyes water? She snuggled close to him, nestling her head on to his shoulder. Or perhaps not.

They landed as the sun set behind Heronsay, a spectacular sight, streaking gold and crimson across the horizon. Jessica Macleod was waiting to greet them at the jetty. Her husband enveloped her in a hug, sweeping her off her feet and kissing her hungrily, as if they had been parted for weeks. She was a slight thing, more curvaceous since her pregnancy, with ebony black hair dressed high on her head and a classically beautiful face. The plain green gown she wore was well cut, and she had overall an air of elegance which made her look as exotic here on this Scottish island as a hothouse flower.

‘Put me down, Rory, we have guests,’ she said, laughing up into her husband’s face. But it was obvious she was as in thrall to him as he was to her. The intimate look they exchanged was a secret promise.

After the introductions had been made, Calumn and Madeleine followed the Macleods up the path from the beach to Heronsay Castle. Madeleine watched the couple in front feeling both dowdy and envious.

She jumped, as Calumn slipped his arm around her shoulder. ‘Married life obviously suits Rory,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t believe it, but before he met Jessica, he was a worse man than me for the ladies.’

‘You’re right, I don’t believe it,’ Madeleine replied. ‘They certainly do look very happy, though. They’re obviously made for each other, and they obviously know it. And now they have a baby, too. How lucky they are.’

‘You like bairns?’

Madeleine smiled wistfully, imagining a whole brood of children, each with Calumn’s blue eyes and golden hair. ‘Lots—it comes of being an only child.’ Her smile faded. ‘What about you? Isn’t it funny, I’ve never asked you.’

He imagined them, a little row of miniature Madeleines. It was a painfully pretty picture. ‘I’ve never thought about it,’ he said dismissively. He closed his mind to the bewitching image of his daughters, wondering why doing so hurt, as if he had killed them.

Conversation over dinner was wide ranging, mainly concerned with the changes in the Highlands which had taken place since the end of the Rebellion, with Rory lamenting the ban on the plaid, due to be implemented in a few weeks’ time, and extolling the worth of the new black-faced sheep which were being introduced by some of the more modern landlords. Jessica left the table early to nurse her child, bidding Calumn and Madeleine a graceful goodnight before directing a meaningful look at her husband.

Toying with her wine glass, Madeleine stifled a yawn. The food had been excellent, beef served with a red wine sauce and not a turnip in sight. The castle, too, was beautifully appointed, unexpectedly homely compared to Castle Rhubodach, and warm, for the glazing was all in good order. On top of everything else, Jessica was obviously an excellent housekeeper.

From the expression on Rory’s face every time his gaze fell on his lovely wife, it was clear that her talents were not confined to domestic duties. Lucky Jessica.

Madeleine drained her glass and pushed her seat back from the table. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go to bed. It’s been a long day, and you must have lots of things to talk about.’ When Calumn and Rory made to rise, she shook her head. ‘Please, there’s no need to get up on my account.’ She dropped a curtsy and swept out of the room without giving either of them a chance to object.

There was a large copper jug of warm water waiting for her in her bedchamber. Fresh flowers sat on the escritoire at the window. There was a warming pan between sheets smelling of heather and sunshine. The pillows were soft, the mattress firm. Even as she snuggled gratefully down, wearing the clean nightdress Jessica had thoughtfully draped at the end of the bed, trying to stay awake just in case Calumn decided to pay her a visit, the home comforts of Heronsay Castle conspired against her. Madeleine fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

Downstairs, Rory poured a measure of whisky into two heavy crystal glasses. ‘Pure malt, fifteen years old, you’ll not taste a finer dram.’

Calumn rolled the smoky spirit on his tongue ‘You’re right. It’s grand.’

Silence reigned. Rory sipped his malt and waited patiently. His relief at seeing Calumn looking almost his old self again was palpable. Throughout Calumn’s long months of self-imposed exile in Edinburgh, the temptation to hunt him out and drag him home had been overwhelming. It had been Jessica who had convinced him to wait. ‘He needs time for his wounds to heal,’ she had told him.

Rory smiled to himself as he remembered his reply. ‘It’s been six months since he was near disembowelled, he’s fine.’

‘Not those wounds,’ his wise wee wife had said, laughing. And it looked as though she had been right. It went against the grain, but he had left Calumn to it, and now here he was, looking—healed.

He decided it was time to break the silence, for it looked as if Calumn never would, and much as he wanted to talk things over, Rory had a wife who had informed him earlier that day with a promising smile that she had fully recovered from the birth of their daughter. ‘You seem well,’ he said to his brother. ‘You had a peaky look about you the last time I saw you.’

‘Hardly surprising. A claymore’s a vicious weapon.’

So much for tact. Rory decided not to waste any more time. ‘Aye, but it was more than that, wasn’t it? We didn’t get a chance to talk properly. I told you at the time that all I cared about was seeing you alive and well, but you didn’t believe me, did you?’

Calumn shrugged awkwardly. Though he knew this discussion was the reason he had come to Heronsay, he and his brother had always been men of few words. He detected his sister-in-law’s influence on Rory. He thought of Madeleine’s influence on himself. He could almost hear her now, urging him to speak up.

Calumn sat back in his chair, the better to see his brother’s face by the light of the large candelabra on the table. ‘Aye, you’re in the right of it, I didn’t believe you. I know you meant it when you said it, but I thought when you’d had time to reflect—well, at the very least that you’d hate me for choosing the wrong side.’

‘But you didn’t choose, did you? If you’d had a choice, you might not have followed the Prince, but I know fine and well you wouldn’t have fought against him—against me—of your own accord.’ Rory ran his hand through his heavy fall of hair, a gesture which Madeleine would have recognised instantly. ‘Do you not think I’ve been in a frenzy of worry about you, lad? You might be twenty-six years old and every bit as big and brawny as I am myself, but you’re my wee brother, and you always will be. There were times when Jessica had to hold me back with her bare hands, I was so set on heading off to Edinburgh to find you.’

Calumn grinned. ‘Bare hands? All Jessica has to do is look at you sideways and you fall at her feet.’

‘You know what I mean. Why has it taken you so long to come home?’

Go on! Once again, he could hear Madeleine’s voice in his head. Calumn started talking. Slowly and hesitantly at first. Then the words began to flow in a torrent, rushing and tumbling as the dam broke and he finally unburdened himself.

The candles were guttering when he finished talking, though the level on the whisky decanter had not dropped at all. As he talked and Rory listened, explained, contradicted and reassured, his brother’s words echoed Madeleine’s so precisely that Calumn wondered fleetingly if she had somehow managed to counsel him before dinner. Foolish thought. More like his brother had been counselled by his wife. But though the words might be in part Jessica’s, there was no doubting the sincerity of them. Calumn felt the black weight of the past finally lift itself free from his shoulders.

‘And what of Errin Mhor?’ Rory asked, never one to shirk the difficult questions. ‘Our mother has been on at me for months now to fetch you back, as she puts it. Her urging me to do so was one of the things that kept me here. I knew it was probably best to do the opposite of anything she demanded.’

‘You’re not wrong there. So she’s been here, then? Has she seen her grandchild?’

Rory’s face darkened. ‘No. I’ve had a surfeit of letters from her, though. No point in expecting her to change now. And your father is in a bad way, I hear. Not just from our mother, I’ve had it from Ailsa, too.’

‘Ailsa! I haven’t seen her in six years. Things must have changed a bit if she’s allowed to visit you.’

‘All Ailsa’s doing. She’s as stubborn as a mule, puts you in the shade. She’s grown into quite a lass, she has all the lads at her feet and takes great pleasure in trampling on them. You’ll see her tomorrow, she’s coming for Kirsty’s ceilidh. You haven’t answered my question. Are you going to Errin Mhor?’

‘Yes. Yes, I am,’ Calumn said decisively. Not just because it was the right thing, he realised, but because he wanted to.

‘Good. I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear you say that. Your father’s dying, but if you’re thinking he’s as feeble in mind as he is in body, you’re wrong. He’s perfectly capable of holding his own. You’ll have to be ready to take the reins off him in the teeth of that. I tell you now, if you do, your tenants will greet you with open arms. That factor our mother has employed is not up to the job, and to be honest, Calumn, your land’s in very bad heart. Your tenants are starting to leave—for America, some of them. It wouldn’t surprise me if the old man was neglecting them deliberately.’

‘To ruin my inheritance, you mean? Or to force me to do his bidding and come home?’

‘Aye, I know it sounds fanciful, but it’s the sort of thing the thrawn old bastard would do. He won’t ever admit it, but he needs you. Enough of Lord Munro—tell me more about this Madeleine of yours. She’s a bonny wee thing.’

‘Bonny! She’s a sight more than that.’

‘Aye, well, I prefer dark-haired women myself.’

‘Just one dark-haired woman, I hope,’ Calumn said with a grin.

‘Oh, there’s no need to worry on that score,’ Rory replied with a wider grin. ‘As I said earlier, marriage suits me. You should try it.’

‘Me!’

‘Don’t tell me you haven’t thought of it,’ Rory said in surprise. ‘You’re head over heels in love with that wee lassie. I know a man in love when I see one—from looking in the mirror, you understand. You’re a changed man, Calumn, you look—dare I say it—happy.’

‘Relieved, more like. I’ve been a long time in coming back here.’

Rory shook his head. ‘It’s not just that. I reckon it’s got more to do with the presence of that wee green-eyed lass. And just in case you haven’t noticed, she’s every bit as besotted with you as you are with her.’ Rory got to his feet, snuffing the last of the candles before lighting two lamps with a taper lit from the embers of the fire. ‘I’m off to bed, where my lovely wife will be waiting for me. Hopefully, she’ll not have fallen asleep.’

Calumn pushed back his chair. ‘You should have said.’

Rory handed him one of the lamps. ‘I was under strict instructions not to come upstairs until you and I had cleared the air. And one of the many wonderful things about marriage is that there’s no hurry. We have the rest of our lives together.’

‘I used to think that was the worst thing about marriage.’

Rory clapped his hand to Calumn’s shoulder. ‘Used to?’ He left the room, laughing softly to himself.

All hands were required for the preparations for the ceilidh, which began early the next day, leaving no room for privacy. Madeleine was eager to help and Jessica was only too happy to accept. ‘Bless you, would you come and give me a hand with the flowers? We don’t have a lot to work with, I’m afraid,’ she said, leading the way down a flight of steep stone steps to the stillroom.

Once they had agreed on the containers for the arrangements and the overall colour scheme, the two women set about their work in comfortable accord. ‘Rory’s taken Calumn over to the mainland to look at sheep, would you believe?’ Jessica said, frowning over the centre piece for the dinner table. ‘He’s obsessed with this new breed, something about the quality of the wool, but I have to confess when he talks to me about it I stop listening. I’m hoping he’ll take the trading side of it up with my father, though. He’s a merchant, based in Glasgow. It might help mend a few bridges if they can do business together.’

‘I take it your parents still aren’t reconciled to your marriage, then,’ Madeleine asked. ‘Don’t you mind?’

Jessica shrugged. ‘Not as much as Rory does. I mind it more for Kirsty, missing out on both her grandmothers, since Lady Munro will have nothing to do with her either. It’s their loss, is how I think of it.’ She was silent for a few minutes, weaving heather into a long garland for the great hall. ‘No, that’s not quite true. Of course I mind. I miss my sisters, and I don’t like being at odds with my parents, but—well, in a way it’s simple. I can get by without my family, but I couldn’t live without Rory. My parents will come round in the end, I’m sure. They seem to think I’m living in some sort of Highland hovel, they’ve no idea what a wealthy man my husband is—and I haven’t told them. I want them to approve of us for our own sakes—maybe for their granddaughter’s sake.’

‘Kirsty’s adorable. I’ve never held such a new baby before.’

‘Wait ‘til you have one of your own to hold. It’s the most—I can’t describe it, it really is like a miracle. You should have seen Rory, the first time he held her.’ Jessica blinked back a tear. ‘You wait.’

‘Oh, I don’t think …’

Jessica smiled. ‘I’ve seen the way you look at Calumn. I look at his brother in the exact same way.’ She placed a last rose in the ornate silver epergne she had been filling. ‘There, we’re done here. And if I’m not mistaken, that’s the men back, too. Just in time.’

As the hour of the ceilidh approached, Calumn had ample opportunity to observe the changes in his brother which marriage had brought about. Marriage did not just suit Rory, it had improved him beyond measure. Gone were his flashes of temper, his impatience, even his indifference to matters domestic. Here he was offering his wife advice on the placement of an arrangement of roses. Calumn watched with amusement as Rory moved the cut-glass vase from the oak chest and placed it instead on a small teak cabinet in an alcove. Jessica clapped her hands in admiration. Rory selected a bloom from the vase and presented it to her with a flourish. Jessica reached up to kiss him. Not a peck on the check. A proper kiss. Completely unnoticed, Calumn slipped from the room.

Madeleine was standing on the landing, directing the set up of tables in the great hall. She saw him watching and smiled fleetingly before returning to her task, frowning down at the paper she held in her hand—Jessica’s plan, presumably—and then waving and pointing at her helpers below. Her lack of Gaelic was confusing matters. When she got into a flap, as she had now, she lapsed into French, which confused matters more.

One of the wonderful things about marriage is that there’s no hurry. Calumn was climbing the stairs to go to her assistance, but his brother’s words made him stop in his tracks. Rory was right. He had always seen marriage as a sort of life sentence before, but Rory’s marriage was obviously a very positive thing. Rory was certainly transformed by it, and blissfully happy too, a happiness that went deep to the bone.

Madeleine was leaning precariously over the banister flapping her arms about and shouting, à gauche, à gauche, à gauche. She looked like a baby grouse trying to fly, and even more endearing. Calumn wrested Jessica’s plan from her and repeated the instructions in Gaelic.

Madeleine made him laugh. She told him uncomfortable truths. She never let him get away with anything, yet he never doubted that she was on his side. He liked the way she looked at him. She knew him, in a way that no one else did, and he liked her knowing, for he trusted her with the knowledge. He liked the way her body fitted so perfectly into his, too, as if it were a space made specially for her to fit. And as for the way he desired her—the way she desired him—he had never felt anything like it.

Did she make him happy? He looked at her, the frown of concentration on her face, the slight pursing of her infinitely kissable lips, the entrancing line of her spine, curving out to the roundness of her bottom. Yes. She did. And it felt right. Was it really as simple as that? How ironic that he, who had spent most of their acquaintance preaching to Madeleine about the nature of love, should have omitted to ask himself the very question he had forced upon her numerous times.

‘Calumn, what is it?’

He jumped. ‘What?’

‘You were staring at me.’

‘Just thinking.’ Mechanically, he continued to help her with the directing of operations, but he felt dazed and dazzled, aware that she was casting covert glances at him, unable to stop himself from looking at her, as if he was seeing her for the first time.

Forcing himself to imagine life without her, the future, which had begun to seem so appealing, took on a bleaker hue. Without her, he knew for certain that he would be unhappy. Not even Errin Mhor would compensate for her absence. Maybe it really was that simple.

‘Is that the last one?’

Calumn hastily consulted the plan. ‘The last one. Yes, I think so.’ He knew he was staring again, but he could not help it. Why had she agreed so readily to come here to Heronsay with him? Had she, too, discovered happiness?

A distant baby’s wail came from upstairs, followed by another, louder and more determined one. The door to the dining room burst open and Jessica appeared. ‘Kirsty’s due a feed,’ she explained, rushing past them, seemingly oblivious of the fact that the fastenings of her robe were undone at the neck. A single pink rose petal clung to the white skin of her breast.

‘What can she have been doing?’ Madeleine asked.

‘I think her husband was showing her some flower-arranging techniques,’ Calumn replied with a grin.

Madeleine’s mouth formed a round oh of surprise. A delightful blush pinked her cheeks, the same colour as the rose petal. He could not resist her. He kissed her full on her infinitely kissable mouth. A fleeting kiss, in full view of the servants, and of Rory, too, who had emerged from the dining room looking even more dishevelled than his wife. The merest touch of his lips to hers, but it had the strangest effect, for as he kissed her, Calumn could have sworn he heard his heart speak to him. It was the merest whisper, but the words were clear, none the less.

When Madeleine came downstairs that evening, having soaked luxuriously in a large bath brought up to her room before dressing in a clean shift and her Breton blue dress, Heronsay Castle had been transformed. Garlands of heather were draped around the banister leading down to the great hall, which was blooming with flowers, and where Jessica was holding court with baby Kirsty in her arms. Mother and daughter were both in white, the child’s robe of satin and lace intricately embroidered, Jessica’s dress a simpler but no less effective creation with only a long length of Macleod plaid worn as a sash to provide contrast. Madeleine felt dowdy in comparison. She had never been one to give much thought to her appearance or her clothes, but she wished she had a dress more suited to the occasion.

Gifts for Kirsty were laid out on a large table—spoons carved from wood and bone, silver rattles and pewter quaichs, the traditional Scottish drinking cup. Skirting the edge of the crowd, Madeleine made her way out into the gardens, feeling unaccountably shy and out of place in what was, after all, a family celebration. She chided herself for being so feeble—they were just people, after all—but her usual confidence seemed to have deserted her.

On the lawn in front of the castle long rows of trestle tables covered in snowy white cloths were laid out, decorated with wild flowers and heather. A steady stream of people were making their way up the path from the jetty, where Madeleine could see at least four boats ploughing back and forth across the sound. Men pushing carts laden with food and drink. A rowdy group with fiddles and bagpipes. Rory’s tenants in their Sunday best, children bubbling with excitement, women bobbing nervous curtsies and apologising for the excited screaming of their bairns. Dour men looking uncomfortable, sweating in their heavy formal jackets under the warm evening sun. Well-dressed neighbours and their wives in a colourful assortment of beautifully woven plaids.

Rory was standing in the doorway, greeting his guests. Madeleine noticed he knew the name not just of every one of his tenants, but of their wives and children, too. He had a way of putting people at their ease, of knowing just the right thing to say to make the dour men laugh, the nervous ladies blush. As she watched, admiring his finesse, Calumn joined him. The two men were in traditional dress, though their plaids were different colours. Calumn’s belt and buckle had been polished. The pin he wore to hold his filleadh mòr in place gleamed. His mane of hair had been washed and brushed into submission, and he was clean shaven. The light tan he had acquired over the last few days seemed to make the lines of his face more defined. The more subtle changes that had taken place in him since coming here were evident in his stance, in the pride he so obviously took in wearing his clan plaid, in the confidence with which he joined Rory in greeting each guest.

‘It’s almost unfair, how handsome they are together, isn’t it? I feel like I can’t compete.’

Madeleine jumped, for she had not heard Jessica approach. ‘You have nothing to worry about, you look stunning. You make me feel so plain.’

‘Plain, with that hair and those eyes of yours—don’t be ridiculous. Oh, look, there’s Ailsa.’

‘Where—oh!’

‘I know, there’s no mistaking who her brothers are. Though apparently she’s the image of her mother.’

The tall young woman with a mass of golden hair and eyes the same blue as Calumn’s had spotted her brothers. With a very unlady-like screech, she threw herself at Calumn, wrapping her arms around his neck. ‘Is it really you? I can’t believe it.’

Calumn was looking at his sister in astonishment. ‘Ailsa? My God, you’ve turned out bonny. The last time I saw you, you were just a wee lassie.’

‘Well, that’s not my fault.’ Catching a warning look from Rory, she smiled apologetically. ‘You’re here now, that’s the main thing. I have a thousand things to tell you and a whole load of messages from our mother. What’s this I hear about you having a mysterious French beauty in tow? Where’s Jessica?’ she asked, turning to Rory. ‘More importantly, where’s my niece?’

Rory looked over his shoulder. ‘Kirsty’s in there. Poor wee soul, she’s being passed about like a parcel but she’s being as good as gold and not making a sound. Jessica was with her, but—’

‘There. With Madeleine,’ Calumn said, waving at the two women, who came forward arm in arm. ‘Madeleine, come and meet my sister Ailsa.’

‘Mon dieu, you are exactly like the portrait of your mother,’ Madeleine blurted out.

‘So everyone says. What portrait?’

‘The one on the wall in the house in Edinburgh.’

‘You’ve been there,’ Ailsa exclaimed. ‘How—?’

‘Ailsa, come with me and see Kirsty,’ Jessica intervened hastily. ‘She’s needing changing. You can catch up with your brothers later, when they’re finished greeting everyone.’

‘There’s no need to pull at me.’ Laughing, Ailsa followed Jessica. ‘I’m more than happy to keep you company. You can tell me what’s going on between my brother and Mademoiselle Lafayette. She looks exactly like the picture of a fairy in a book I had when I was wee.’

Jessica giggled. ‘Everyone looks like a fairy to you, you’re so tall. But I know what you mean, she has a fey look about her. She doesn’t seem to have any idea how pretty she is, though.’

‘My brother does, he can hardly take his eyes off her.’

‘I know, it’s so romantic, only Rory says that—oh, wait and I’ll get Kirsty, then I’ll tell you the whole story.’

When the two women came downstairs again, it was time to eat. A chosen few were seated in the formal dining room, but most sat at the trestle tables in the great hall and on the front lawn. Toasts were made to Kirsty, who was brought back down from the nursery for the occasion, and Rory spoke proudly on behalf of his daughter. Beside him, Jessica dabbed at her eyes with a wisp of lace.

Once the tables had been cleared, the scraping of fiddles being tuned signalled the start of the dancing. Rory led Jessica forwards to the head of the first set, amid much applause and cheering. He nodded to the fiddlers and the first notes of the opening dance were struck. Soon the floor was thronged with graceful couples executing the complicated steps to the lilting, haunting music.

Madeleine watched the dancers enviously. She had been placed on the opposite side of the table from Calumn at dinner, and was exhausted with trying to maintain her part in a rather stilted conversation with two Highland lairds who, though they spoke both English and French, were interested only in the subject of a new breed of sheep Rory had brought to Heronsay as an experiment. The fascinating topic of wool yield, fleece oil content and texture signally failed to enthral her. Eventually she gave up the attempt to feign interest, sat back in her seat and allowed the men to continue their discussion without her assistance.

She saw Calumn deep in conversation with a group of men over in the corner of the great hall. She was thrilled at the warmth of the welcome he had been extended. Not a single snub had she seen, and though some were reserved, most men had greeted him like a long-lost friend. It had been immensely satisfying to watch.

A piper had joined the fiddlers. The bagpipes he played looked uncommonly like the Breton version—though the sound was quite different. A reel was called, with sets of six couples birling wildly around in circles, then breaking apart and progressing round the room. People were beginning to relax. Jackets had been discarded, neckcloths loosened. The next dance was even more raucous than the last. Standing in the front doorway, Madeleine watched as the men and women threw themselves into it with gusto, jigging and clapping, one minute executing the most intricate of steps, the next jumping high into the air, or whirling their partner around so fast their faces were a blur. She noticed several pairs had taken a tumble. She noticed, too, that some did not rejoin the dance, but disappeared off into the night giggling, wrapped in each other’s arms. Obviously a blind eye was being turned for the occasion. Madeleine wondered if there would be a little crop of babies in nine months’ time and how many would be named Christina in tribute to Kirsty.

‘Would you care to dance, mademoiselle?’

Calumn stood before her, looking magnificent. She smiled up at him. Even in this well-dressed throng of handsome Highlanders, he was, for her, the only man in the room. As if by magic, the fiddlers struck up a slower tune. ‘I don’t know the steps,’ she said hesitantly, looking at the sets which were already forming.

‘We’ll make up our own.’

He did not lead her on to the floor though, but out, over the lawn and round the corner of the turret, where Jessica had made a start on setting out more formal gardens. The strains of the music and the noise of the ceilidh were fainter here. Roses perfumed the air. Stars hung low, glowing softly in the ink-black night sky. Calumn pulled her into his arms, making no attempt at all to dance, simply holding her, nuzzling his face into her hair and swaying gently in time to the music. ‘I’ve hardly seen you.’

‘You’ve been busy. Everyone wants to talk to you. It’s nice.’

‘Not as nice as this. I’ve been thinking about this for hours.’

‘Dancing?’

‘No. Just being on my own with you.’

His tone was unexpectedly serious. He pulled her closer to him. ‘You feel so lovely,’ he said, smoothing his hand down the line of her spine, nestling her head on his chest. ‘Perfect.’

He smelled so delightful. Of sun and fresh linen and soap and Calumn. He sounded strange, though. Not flirting. As if he meant it. He had been looking at her oddly all day. As if he didn’t know who she was.

The music had come to an end, but he showed no signs of releasing her. If anything, he held her closer. She tightened her own hold on him, slipping her hands under his jacket, feeling the warmth of his back through the silk of his waistcoat.

‘Have you missed me?’

How was she to take that? ‘Well, I’ve been busy with Jessica and everything,’ she prevaricated. Looking up, she saw that her light-hearted reply had hurt him. ‘Of course I’ve missed you,’ she said simply.

‘Madeleine …’

A couple came arm in arm around the corner, bumping into Madeleine in their haste to find their own dark haven. Calumn turned on them with a growl, the young man bent almost double apologising while his more brazen companion eyed Calumn with blatant interest.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ Calumn said, grabbing Madeleine’s hand.

‘Where? We can’t leave the ceilidh, it’s rude.’

‘I’ve done my bit being polite, I want to be on my own with you.’

She found nothing to argue with in this sentiment, since it exactly matched her own, so she tripped after him, clinging to his arm as he loped through the gardens, out the back of the castle, and unerringly through a gate, down a little path which wended its way down to a secluded cove at the bottom of a steep set of steps.

The sand curved white and perfect down to the sea. The beach was sheltered by the high dune on which the steps had been set. Stars gleamed so bright in the summer sky that they looked as if they were hung closer to earth than anywhere Madeleine had ever seen before. The moon was full. The sea shushed, waves rippling gently on to the hard sand and ebbing, rippling and ebbing.

‘It’s magical,’ Madeleine said, her voice hushed.

‘Magical,’ Calumn echoed. He was nervous. It mattered so much. Nothing had ever mattered so much. ‘You’re so beautiful,’ he said, turning her towards him, running his hands down her arms, just brushing the sides of her breasts, wanting to mould her to him and never to let her further from his side than this. ‘I love you so much.’

Chapter Ten

She was imagining it. She must be imagining it. ‘What did you say? Calumn, what did you say?’

‘I love you, Madeleine.’ He gazed at her, frowning, as if he could not quite believe what he had said. Then his frown cleared. His mouth softened. A tender smile suffused his face. ‘It really is that simple. I love you.’

She felt as if his heart was speaking to her through his eyes. He had never looked at her like that before. She never wanted him to look at her in any other way. She gazed at him in wonderment. ‘You love me.’

‘Yes, I do. And if you don’t say that you love me back very soon, I think I’m going to expire. I feel as if I’m waiting for the executioner’s axe.’

She threw her arms around his neck. ‘I love you, I love you, I love you. I love you, Calumn Munro, I love you so much.’ Happiness made her feel as if she were taking flight, like a flock of seagulls from a windswept Breton beach. Swooping, soaring, gliding happiness such as she had never known. ‘Say it again. I want to hear it again.’

Laughing, Calumn swept her into his arms, pressing her tight against him. ‘I love you.’ His kisses were hungry. He was greedy for her, needy for her, his hands feverish. ‘I love you,’ he said again, whispering it huskily as he pressed his face into her neck, breathing in the scent of her, filling his lungs with her sweetness, for it was the essence he needed to live. ‘I love you.’

Madeleine shivered under his touch. Felt her skin blossoming and blooming. Different. He sounded different. It felt different. She reached her hands under his jacket, running her hands up his back. ‘I love you,’ she whispered, dizzy with the delight of saying the words. ‘And I’m in love with you, too, and I see now that you were right, it is quite a different thing.’

‘A very different thing. I’m going to show you how different. Let me make love to you now. Make love, real love, not just give you pleasure—though there will be that too, I hope,’ he added with a wicked smile.

She pulled his face towards hers, feeling the clean line of his jaw, the silky soft of his hair. ‘Please,’ she said simply.

His lips were gentle, as if he was afraid she would bruise. The sweet taste of him. The breath of him.

The smell of him. She wanted it all, all of him. His kisses supped and licked, his hands stroked and caressed, trailing heat and lighting sparks. He was murmuring to her now, kissing her eyelids, her brow, her cheek, her ear, soft words she could not understand, though they poured over her like honey.

Calumn laid her down on the sand, covering her body with his, cupping his hands on either side of her face as if she were clay to be formed into whatever shape he desired. Warmth flooded her like sunlight, its rays emanating out and up, melting her into pliancy.

He disrobed her slowly, almost reverently, his lips pressing little patterns of kisses on her flesh as he bared it. When he removed her stockings he kissed the tender flesh in the crease behind her knees, the delicate bone of her ankle, her instep. Unlacing her bodice, he traced the line of her shoulder to where it joined her arm, licking into that tender crease too, then the nook of her elbow, the pulse on her wrists, each one of her fingers. Removing her petticoats allowed him to run his palms along the outline of her body through her shift, from the curve of her breasts down to the indentation of her waist, the swoop of her hips.

She was being unwrapped, layer by sensitised layer. She was quivering with desire. He was watching her in that way he had, which made her feel as if she was bared to the bones for him. Her body was his vessel.

Calumn relished everything about her. The way her lids grew heavy when he touched her here. Like this. Or here, like this. The way her pulses jolted into life with each stroke, each kiss. The way her flesh cleaved to him. He watched each flicker of response with the gravest attention, learning her, as if she were the first woman he had ever studied. For that is how it felt. The first. And the only.

He lifted her shift over her head and she was naked, her skin gleaming like moonlight. ‘So beautiful,’ he sighed, kneeling before her, watching, looking, drinking her in. ‘So very, very lovely.’ His voice trembled with emotion. His hands were not quite steady. He was her first. He felt as if she were his. He undressed himself hastily, wrenching his clothes from him as if they were burning.

Calumn tugged his shirt over his head. Madeleine watched the flexing and rolling of his muscles, feeling the flexing and clenching of her own in response. Naked, he rendered her breathless. So broad, so lean, so deeply, perfectly, wonderfully male. Never had she felt so intrinsically feminine.

She reached up to touch the curve of his scar, running a fingertip along the ridged outline, placing her palm flat on his belly, feeling the heat of his skin beneath her. Her palm. His scar. Intimate. Sensual.

Calumn took her hand in his and kissed the palm where it had touched his flesh. When she looked at him like that he thought he would die for wanting her. The need to plunge into the sweetness of her was painful. He wanted to worship her, but he wanted to possess her too. He was shaking. Aching. Sweat glistened on his brow. On the small of his back. ‘Gràdh, mo chrìdh,’ he whispered into the soft flesh of her belly. ‘Gràdh, mo chrìdh,’ he whispered again, into the white skin at the top of her thigh. He could feel her hands on his hair, clutching at him. He could wait no longer to taste her. Parting her thighs, he kissed her and lost himself in the delight of it.

The shocking, unbelievable, unimaginably sensual touch of his mouth on her most intimate self almost sent her immediately over the edge. She clung desperately, but it was a tenuous, delightfully tenuous, grip. Licking and kissing so different, so similar, so wildly exciting. His tongue circling and then plunging into her, then out, then back up to circle and lick. She was jolted to another plane of emotion, tugged high with him to another galaxy of passion. Too-stretched. A strumming, thrumming vibration emanating out from where he touched, reaching out to every part of her body, so that she was pulsing with it, and every pulse like a wave that she must catch. Riding it, but knowing, that soon, soon, she would let go and it would break over her and she would crash.

A surge of something hot and wet shot through her. His grip on her thighs held her firmly, tilting her so that there, there, there, exactly there, his tongue touched and lingered and held, and a wave rolled over her so high she thought she was drowning and she heard moaning and perhaps it was her, and she clutched at him. At his hair, his shoulders, thrusting her body unashamedly at him as her climax shook and eased and shook and ebbed and she was left floundering and spent, like a starfish on the beach.

She heard someone calling his name, over and over, the sound hoarse and guttural, and it must be her voice, but it sounded so strange and so far away. He held her until the waves ebbed, kissing her thighs, kissing her stomach, kissing her breasts, covering her with kisses, heating her again, unbelievably stirring her, so that just when she thought it was receding it started again like the turning of the tide. A new feeling. Or the next stage of the old one. She did not care.

Need, primal need, urgent and irresistible, made her cling and clutch and drag at him, pulling him up towards her. Her mouth hot on his, his hot on hers, and even while they kissed she could hear that moaning of his name, begging and pleading, because though she had thought herself spent, now she knew she was not. Not an ending, but the beginning of the end. She wrapped her legs around him. She heard him moan. Heard him say her name.

He was fanning the flames of her fire. He kissed her greedily and heat leapt high inside her. His tongue thrust and his lips sucked and pulled as if he would devour her. He rolled her nipples between his fingers, making her arch in ecstasy, so exquisite were the shards of sensation. Like glass melting. Hungrier kisses. Her own hands roaming over him, his shoulders, his back, his buttocks, his thighs, her palms and fingers caressing and sculpting.

His expression was clenched with passion. A dark flush slashed across his cheekbones. His hands held her by the waist. She felt the tip of him nudge between her thighs. She felt him enter her slowly, saw the stress of the slow movement on his face, saw the pains he was taking not to hurt her.

She breathed. Tried to breathe. He eased into her slowly, gently, pushing just a little harder when he met the resistance that was the end of her maidenhood, waiting, breathing, then pushing on until she sheathed him and he held her still, tilted her so that she could feel all of him inside her, deep inside her. She saw from the heaving of his chest, the opening out of his ribcage, the glaze of his eyes, what the control cost him, and his being so caring made her open out to accommodate him more.

He was breathing hard, as if he had been running for days. Sweat dripped from his brow. Sheathed tight inside her, he wanted to stay there for ever. He did not want to move. He needed to move. She was watching him, eyes dark and slumberous, hands clinging.

‘Madeleine, are you all right?’ he asked, and she gave a strange little laugh, for she felt as if she could never be more all right. The tiniest tilt of her hips, and he felt himself swell inside her. He leaned down to kiss her, his tongue thrusting slowly into her mouth in such a delicious echo of how he had pushed into her that she moaned and felt it again, that swelling. Of her. Of him.

Calumn moved, withdrawing slowly, pushing back into her, relishing the feel of her unfolding and holding against his shaft. Again, struggling to control himself as her heat urged him onwards to plunge harder and faster, as her hips arched up when he thrust, as she moaned with pleasure when he moved inside her. She was like a new world, one he had been created to explore, one made for him, so perfectly did they fit together, so hot and wet and unbearably, wonderfully taut was she around him. He pushed harder with each plunge, tugged her body closer. The soft clutch of her calves and ankles around his waist. The drum of her heels on his buttocks as he pushed again, withdrew and plunged. Plunging again, he felt the ripples of her climax reviving around him. The delight, the too-painful delight. A new urgency.

It happened, all at once. His thrust, his hoarse cry, his hands around her like a vice, the pouring into her, the hotness and pulsing of it, her echoing pulse, her own clutching, clinging, surging, clamouring. He poured into her, and she fell too, with a soft moan of submission, clamped so tight to him it was as if they were melded, and she knew that this was the final shape she was to take. Not sated, but fulfilled. One body formed from two. One skin. No edges. No borders. Just one.

He felt raw. Stripped, his old skin sloughed away. Reborn. Tenderness overwhelmed him. He had never held anyone so precious. It was terrifying and earth-shattering and wonderful and just—just so right. Calumn gathered Madeleine to him, cradling her against his chest, as if he could lock her there, safe against his heart, for ever. This was how it was supposed to be. Nothing could ever be so important. His world shifted on its axis and realigned itself.

Madeleine opened her eyes, looking up at him dreamily, still caught in the floating, sparkling aftermath of their love-making. He looked so different. She kissed him softly, a kiss stripped clean of everything save love. ‘I didn’t know. I never thought it would be like this.’

Calumn’s smile twined its way around her heart.

‘Neither did I.’

The next morning, the family gathered for breakfast, which was served in a small room at the back of the castle with a view out to sea. Helping himself to a substantial platter of food from the sideboard, Calumn looked up to find Madeleine’s eyes upon him. A warm glow suffused him as he remembered last night, a glow which amazingly quickly manifested itself in the beginnings of arousal. He smiled over at her. A blush tinged her cheeks with colour. Obviously their minds were in exactly the same place. As he took his seat beside her, he pressed a swift kiss to the nape of her neck, his lips so attuned to her that he felt the tiny shiver of her response.

He would take Madeleine for a sail. He had not yet proposed. They would land on one of the little islets out west. He would do it there. Then later, much later, they would share their news with his family. Under the pretext of shaking out his napkin, he stroked Madeleine’s thigh under the table. He looked up to find his sister-in-law watching him rather too knowingly.

Jessica arched a delicate brow, nodding at his breakfast. ‘Goodness, Calumn, you must be hungry.’ She was nibbling on a thin slice of bread and butter. Despite several attempts, she had failed signally to make good on her promise to Rory to learn to like porridge for her breakfast.

All eyes were now on Calumn’s plate, which was piled high with kippers, eggs, bannocks and bacon. ‘Must be the Highland air, gives a man a healthy appetite,’ he mumbled.

‘Or maybe it was all the dancing you got up to last night,’ Rory suggested with a twinkle.

‘Dancing! I did not see Calumn dancing,’ Ailsa said. ‘In fact, I hardly saw him at all.’

Jessica cast her husband a reproving look. ‘You were that busy encouraging that poor Cameron laddy to make sheep’s eyes at you for most of the night, I’m surprised you noticed anything at all,’ Rory said hastily.

‘He knows it was just a bit of fun,’ Ailsa said, with a careless shrug, exactly like Calumn’s. She turned her attention to Madeleine, furiously concentrating on her breakfast. Ailsa watched, fascinated, as she removed each of the feathery little bones from her fish, laying them out carefully on the side of her plate before taking a first tentative bite. ‘It’s just smoked herring,’ she told her encouragingly. ‘Most people eat the bones. Surely you must have herring in—where is it you come from, exactly?’

‘Brittany.’

‘Oh, yes, that’s in the north of France, isn’t it? I don’t know if you realise it, but there are quite a few of your countrymen still in the Highlands. They were all pardoned after the Rebellion, and some settled here. We’ve one from Normandy who married a local girl, the daughter of one of your tenants, Calumn, and my friend Isla was telling me of another at Inverlochan. I’m sure he is from Brittany.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Madeleine said vaguely. ‘I like this fish—what is it you call it?’

‘It’s a kipper,’ Jessica told her, pouring herself another cup of tea.

‘Anyway, he’s apparently lost his memory, all he remembers is his first name,’ Ailsa said.

‘Who?’

‘Keep up, Rory, the young Frenchman I was telling Madeleine about. He was wounded in the head. Lucky to be alive by all accounts; for a long time they thought he wouldn’t make it.’

‘Where was he injured?’ Rory asked.

‘Culloden.’

‘Likely he was part of the Royal Scots, then,’ Rory said. ‘They were on our—’

‘Culloden,’ Madeleine interrupted, dropping her fork.

Calumn looked up. ‘Madeleine, you can’t think …’

‘But she said he was wounded in the head,’ Madeleine said to him, ‘you did say that, didn’t you, Ailsa?’

Ailsa looked confused by the sudden interest. ‘Yes. He was shot, Isla said.’

‘Who’s Isla?’

‘Isla Morrison. Calumn, you must remember her, she’s Iain Morrison’s daughter, who owns the lands at Inverlochan. I keep forgetting how long you’ve been away. Well, ‘twas her brother Hamish who brought this Frenchman back after he was wounded and no one claimed him. He has one of the Morrison’s crofts now.’

‘Who cares about the Morrisons! What does this Frenchman look like? How old is he? What colour is his hair?’ Madeleine threw the questions at Ailsa in a flurry.

‘Goodness, give me a minute. Isla said he’s young, maybe twenty-four or five. Dark and handsome, she says, though what she means by handsome I’m not sure. Much as I love her, Isla’s the type you’d call homely, rather than bonny.’

‘His name, you said he remembered his name,’ Madeleine reminded her impatiently.

‘Give me a minute, it’ll come to me.’

‘For God’s sake, Ailsa, think. It’s important,’ Calumn snapped. Beside him, Madeleine’s face was drained of colour. She was lacing and unlacing her fingers in her lap, something she always did when she was nervous. Her eyes were fixed upon Ailsa, wide and blank, like an animal caught in a trap. He reached for her hand. Icy cold. ‘Droissard seemed very sure that de Guise was dead,’ he reminded her gently. ‘Men like that don’t make mistakes.’ He did not want de Guise to be alive. Did not want him to rise from the grave like a Lazarus. ‘It’s likely a coincidence,’ he said to Madeleine. ‘You must not pin your hopes on it.’

Pin her hopes on it! Did he think she wanted Guillaume to be alive? God help her, she did not. Though she could not wish him dead either. She should be happy for him. Yet all she felt was a sick dread. Selfish, sick dread! ‘Calumn, I—’

‘Guillaume,’ Ailsa announced suddenly. ‘Guillaume, that was it!’ She beamed triumphantly. ‘I knew I’d remember. Is it him? How amazing.’

Madeleine nodded. Her mouth was dry. She was incapable of speech. Guillaume was alive. Just when her world had settled so beautifully into its new orbit, the ghost of her past had risen up to confront her with her sins. She looked around the table, becoming vaguely aware that all eyes were upon her: Jessica’s looking kind and concerned, Ailsa’s eager expression fading into one of bafflement, Rory frowning heavily.

And Calumn, looking at her with his face set, his eyes dark and distant. Her fingers clutched at his. Her rock. She did not want to slip anchor, but she felt the tug, the pull of the past like a rip tide, strong enough to make her wonder whether she should. Whether after all, she had the right to sacrifice others upon the altar of her own happiness.

Her head whirled. The urge to flee was irresistible. She got to her feet so hastily her chair fell back on to the wooden floor with a clatter. She was at the door when he caught her, strong fingers on her arm, his solid bulk looming over her. He pulled her out of the room, shut the door fast behind them. ‘Where are you going?’

‘I don’t know. Away. I don’t know. I can’t think.’ Tears started in her eyes. She was trembling.

‘Running away, Madeleine?’

‘Yes,’ she said frantically, struggling to release herself from his grip, ‘yes, I am.’

‘No.’ He did not raise his voice, but it felt as if he had. ‘No,’ he said again, quieter, but even more implacable, ‘you’re not running away. I won’t let you. We’ve both done enough of that.’

‘What do you mean?’ A churning in her stomach. Legs so wobbly it felt as if the bones had been removed.

‘Truths must be faced, no matter how unpalatable, you know that. Devils must be confronted. There can be no room for doubts. I love you. I know you love me, but we both need to know that it’s enough. It’s been a long road we’ve travelled together, we’re different people from the ones who started out. I don’t want us to be haunted by the past, yours or mine. I don’t want to win you by default. I don’t want second-best.’

‘You could never be second-best,’ Madeleine said brokenly, overwhelmed by his resolution in the face of the calamity which was threatening to dash their hard-won future to pieces. Awed and humbled by the strength of his love for her. ‘I love you.’

‘Then prove it,’ he said gently. ‘I’ll take you to him. Go and fetch your arisaidh.’

He watched her make her way slowly towards the stairs. Then, heart sore but set on his course, he returned to the breakfast room to inform his relatives of their imminent departure for Inverlochan.

Madeleine sat in silence as Calumn steered the little boat out into the sound. When the wind caught the sails, he pulled in the oars and took his seat at the tiller. The breeze caught his hair, whipping it over his face. He stared out over the strait at the shoreline, effortlessly holding their path, his expression as distant as the mountains on the horizon. Solid. Unshakeable. Sure.

Would that she had his certainty. She loved him. Every time she looked at him, her love rushed over her like a wave. She could not imagine life without him. Her love did not waver for a second, but she was terrified that her resolution would. Faced with telling Guillaume that she could not marry him, knowing that by doing so she was cutting the ground from beneath his feet, would she hold strong? She could only pray that it would be the case. Calumn had handed her his heart. She did not want to let him down. Would die, rather than let him down. But still, was terrified that let him down is what she would do.

The pebbled shore of the mainland drew near. Calumn pulled in the sail and beached the boat, heaving the craft high on to the shale before reaching to help her out. She waited in the morning sunshine, watching a woman mending a lobster creel, as Calumn went to the inn to have their horses readied. He threw her into the saddle. She managed a tentative smile. The one he returned did not reach his eyes. Her heart beat slow and sluggish in her breast. Like the drum which preceded a tumbrel on its way to the gallows.

They rode to Inverlochan village in silence. Calumn had no difficulty in finding the croft that one of the villagers directed them to. It sat on its own at the northern crossroads, a well-kept thatched building, with smoke rising from a hole in the middle of the roof. A few hens scratched contentedly on a freshly dug strip of land which had been prepared for planting kale. A peat stack piled up against the side of the croft gave off a loamy smell.

Beside him, Madeleine’s face was as white as her sark. Desperate thoughts of killing de Guise, of pushing ahead of her into the cottage and throttling the life out of him, rushed through his fevered brain. But his own words gave him strength. He would not be second-best, no matter how much pain it caused him. He could not choose for her. De Guise was one dragon his lovely maid must slay for herself. Or not.

Lifting her down from the saddle, he held her close, pressing her tight against him, as if to imprint for ever the shape of her against him. ‘Whatever you choose, I will stand by you.’ Even as he said the words, he doubted his ability to keep such a pledge. She was his. Pray God it would not become necessary to prove it.

Madeleine clutched at him, her hands tugging at his shirt, his plaid, pulling him close and closer. Gently, he detached himself. ‘Ready?’

She nodded. Calumn knocked on the door, but there was no answer, so he pushed it open. The room was dark, the tiny unglazed window letting in little light. A pot was suspended over the fire, from which arose the smell of barley broth. A rough-slatted partition separated the living quarters from those of the animals. The place was empty of both man and beast. Back outside, the sunlight blinded him. ‘We’ll try the fields round the back. The fire’s lit, so he can’t have gone far.’

They rounded the corner of the croft, where more narrow strips of crops grew in orderly lines. A hen house. A cow in an open barn. A burn feeding a tiny pond. And beside the pond, a man, bending over with a bucket. He straightened when he saw his visitors, shading his eyes, putting the full bucket carefully down on the ground before walking slowly over to greet them.

He was a tall man, with the gaunt frame of a long-term invalid. Pale blue eyes, rather deep set under dark brows. Dark brown hair, growing raggedly round a livid scar which ran from the top of his skull to his ear, giving him a distinctive appearance. For all that, Calumn could see that he was good-looking, with an amiable countenance and a shy smile. Young, no more than three- or four-and-twenty, the fretwork of tiny lines around his eyes and mouth evidence of trauma rather than passing years. He was dressed simply in the trews, shirt and jacket of a crofter. The boots on his rather large feet were held together with leather thongs. His toe could be seen peeping through the left one. But his hands, though roughened, were those of a nobleman, long-fingered, shapely and surprisingly well cared for.

Madeleine’s fierce grip on his hand was becoming painful. He had no need to ask if this was de Guise. ‘Guillaume,’ she said, her voice coming out in a croak.

‘Yes?’ Guillaume de Guise looked from Madeleine to Calumn with a puzzled expression. ‘Can I help you?’ He spoke Gaelic with a French accent.

‘Guillaume, c’est moi. C’est Madeleine. Tu me connais?’ Madeleine looked up anxiously into his face. ‘Don’t you remember me? It’s Maddie,’ she said, continuing to speak to him in French.

‘Maddie?’ Guillaume stared at her. He shook his head, closing his eyes as if in pain. He stared at her again. ‘Maddie?’

He clutched his head and swayed on his feet. Instinctively, Madeleine reached out to support him, staggering as he slumped against her, his eyes clouding. His knees buckled, and Calumn caught him just before he slumped to the ground. ‘Take his other arm,’ he ordered Madeleine. ‘Help me get him inside.’

Half-carrying, half-dragging him, they made it to the croft with Guillaume between them, white as a sheet, barely able to hold himself upright, collapsing weakly into a chair. Madeleine poured some water from a jug into a wooden cup and handed it to him.