Highland Crown E-Book

May McGoldrick

• Herausgeber: Book Duo Creative
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Serie: The Royal Highlander Novels
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 417

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

 Scottish pride, persuasion, and passion―this is Highland romance at its breathtaking best. From USA Today bestselling author May McGoldrick comes Highland Crown, the first book in the Royal Highlander series.      Inverness, 1820   Perched on the North Sea with the Highlands at its back, this port town—by turns legendary and mythological—is a place where Highland rebels and English authorities clash in a mortal struggle for survival and dominance. Among the fray is a lovely young widow who possesses rare and special gifts.     WANTED: Isabella Murray Drummond  A rare beauty and trained physician, Isabella has inspired longing and mystery—and fury—in a great many men. Hunted by both the British government and Scottish rebels, she came to the Highlands in search of survival. But a dying ship's captain will steer her fate into even stormier waters. . . and her heart into flames.         FOUND: Cinaed Mackintosh   Cast from his home as a child, Cinaed is a fierce soul whose allegiance is only to himself. . .until Isabella comes along. Now that she's saved his life—and added more risk to her own—there is nothing Cinaed won't do to keep Isabella safe. Soon, the couple's only choice is to seek refuge at Dalmigavie Castle, the Mackintosh family seat, where the scandalous truth of Cinaed's past throws any chance of a bright future with Isabella into complete darkness. What will these two ill-fated lovers have to sacrifice to be together…for eternity?       

Leseprobe

HIGHLAND CROWN

ROYAL HIGHLANDER SERIES

BOOK I

MAY MCGOLDRICK

withJAN COFFEY

Book Duo Creative

Thank you for choosing Highland Crown. In the event that you appreciate this book, please consider sharing the good word(s) by leaving a review, or connect with the authors.

Highland Crown. Copyright © 2022 by Nikoo and James McGoldrick

All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher: Book Duo Creative.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Edition Note

Author’s Note

About the Author

Also by May McGoldrick, Jan Coffey & Nik James

To Ammara Mayya McGoldrick, with love

Prologue

Abbotsford, the Scottish Borders

September 1832

Some say I’m a hero. Some call me a traitor.

My time grows short now. I feel nothing in my right side. My hand lies inert on the bedclothes. The apoplexy has robbed me of any useful employment. I tried, but I cannot hold a pen. Not that it matters. Those exertions are behind me now.

Some will say that I, Sir Walter Scott—author of Waverley and Rob Roy and Red Gauntlet—invented the new Scotland. That I was the unfailing champion of the noble traditions of the past. That I revealed the Scottish identity that all now wear with tartan-emblazoned pride.

What they say is a lie.

My family has brought down my bed and propped me up before the open window of my dining room. In the meadow outside, the yellow of the rock-rose, the scarlet of the campion flower, the pure white of the ox-eyed daisies nearly blind me with their reckless brilliance. The water scratches over the pebbled shore of the Tweed at the end of the field, but instead I hear the haunting voices of hungry, homeless Highlanders, dying by the thousands.

How many have died as the ancient hills continue to be cleared of their tenant farmers in the name of progress? Pushed from their homes, driven to the sea, to the cold hard streets of our cities, to lands far away…if they could survive the journey. All to make way for a few more sheep. All in the quest of a few more shillings.

I did what I believed at the time was right for Scotland. I convinced myself I could not let my country descend into the lawless chaos of bloody revolution, the throat of civility ripped out by the mob. It happened in France. The guillotine’s dread machinery flew out of control, splashing far too much innocent blood into the streets in its ravaging thirst for the guilty. And the cobbled lanes of Paris were not yet dry when a new terror arose in the form of their arrogant tyrant Napoleon. I told myself I could not let that happen here. Not here. Not in my homeland.

But now I see the truth clearly, and the bitter gall of that knowledge rises into my throat. I spent a lifetime creating an image of Scotland that I knew was not real. I closed my eyes to the suffering and the deaths of my own people and instead told stories depicting the grandeur of an imagined Highland past. And as I worked, I held my tongue about the bloody decimation of the clans and their way of life. Men I dined with daily were profiting from the killing, and I said nothing. Worse, I too made money from it with my romantic tales.

Many are those who see me clearly. To them I am Walter Scott—turncoat, bootlicking lackey of the British Crown. They say I sold the independence of Scotland for a shabby box of tawdry and meaningless honors. They say that because of me the Scottish people will never be free again. That I betrayed them for a wee bit of fleeting fame and the price of a few books.

Now, after all these years, I find myself forced to agree. And that is all the more difficult to bear because I lie here with Death stalking the shadows of Abbotsford.

He’s been dogging my faltering steps for some time now.

This fever struck me as we returned from our travels. Rome and Naples, Florence and Venice. Those places had offered no relief. Death was coming for me. London was covered in yellow fog when we arrived, but the rest is a blur. They tell me I lay close to death for weeks. I don’t recall. And then the final journey home. The steady rumbling rhythm of a steamboat remains in my mind, but I remember very little of that. I only know that I am home now.

Two of my hunters have been turned out into the meadow. Fine mounts. The golden sun glistens on their powerful shoulders as they begin to graze. I wish I could be as content, but life has buffeted me about, and the choices I’ve made give me no respite. Nor should they.

My mind returns again and again to the upheaval of 1820, to the ‘Rising.’

We called those men and women radicals when all they wanted were the rights and freedoms of citizens. In the name of equality and fraternity, they cried out for representation. They demanded the vote. Some called for an end to what they saw as the iron fist of Crown rule. They wanted to sever our northern kingdom from England and restore the ancient parliament of Scotland. In my lifetime those men and women were the last chance for Scotland’s independence, and I blinded myself to their cause. And when Westminster made it treason to assemble and protest, they willingly gave their lives. The heroic blood of the Bruce and the Wallace flowed in their veins. I see that now. Too late.

That same year, that same month, as the blood flowed, I returned to Scotland from Westminster bearing my new title. Even now, I feel the weight of the king’s sword on my shoulders. But as I reveled proudly in my accomplishments, the cities across the land were tinderboxes, threatening to explode in a wild conflagration of civil war. The weavers and the other tradesmen in Glasgow and Edinburgh had just brought the country’s affairs to a halt with their strikes. Some of the reformers had courageously marched on the ironworks at Carron to seize weapons.

Scotland teetered on the brink of anarchy. I was afraid. So I took the well-worn path of weak men.

I feel the fever’s heat coming on again. The colors outside my window grow more brilliant. I hear the sound of voices singing an old Scots ballad. Or is it thunder?

My single moment of courage came when I saved a woman who would help change the course of history.

Isabella Murray Drummond. A marvel of this modern age. A doctor, no less, who’d studied at the university in Wurzburg, where her eminent father held a professor’s chair. When he passed away, she married an Edinburgh physician who’d gone to further his studies under the tutelage of her father. He was a widower with a growing daughter. She was a single woman left with a younger sister and a small inheritance. It was a marriage of convenience.

Isabella, who had the loveliness of Venus and the bearing of a queen. She saved me from losing my leg—lame since my childhood—after the carriage accident in Cowgate. Carried to her husband’s house, I was fortunate he was not at home, for she was the very angel of mercy I needed at that moment, and her skill as a physician saved my life.

Some will always think me a traitor. I know now that I have helped in giving away Scotland’s chance for independence…perhaps forever…in return for a peace that was profitable for a few. But if I have one thing in my life that I’ll never regret, it was my action on that woman’s behalf when the time came.

The news spread across the city. Isabella Drummond’s husband was dead, and she was in hiding with her sister and her stepdaughter. The government had declared her an enemy of the Crown, placed a bounty upon her head. Her husband’s rebellious allies wanted her, as well, believing she’d inform on them.

I succeeded in helping the women escape from the city, far to the north where they would board a ship bound for Canada. She would join all those Highlanders who were journeying to a new life. But she would never board any ship. She would never reach the shores of that far-off place.

It was there on the rugged coast of the Highlands that she disappeared…and lived a truer adventure than ever flowed from my pen.

ChapterOne

Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking,

Morn of toil nor night of waking.

― Sir Walter Scott, Lady of the Lake, Canto I, stanza 31

Duff Head, Northeast Highland Coast

June 1820

“Hard times been choking folks around here for a long time, and most of them would sell their own kin if they thought there’s a ha’penny to be made from it.” Jean paused and fixed her eye on her guest. “And one look at ye and they’ll know yer good for more than that.”

A loud pop from the driftwood fire in the old woman’s hearth drew Isabella’s gaze. Sparks rose from the blue and lavender flames, struggling to find their way up the chimney. Wind and rain from the storm hammered fiercely at the shutters and the cottage door.

From what she’d learned on the journey here from John Gordon, Jean’s nephew, the village that huddled around the cove in the shadow of Duff Head consisted of no more than a few dozen families of fishing folk trying to scratch a meager living out of the sea. Desperate. Hungry. Poor. Though she’d always lived her life in the city—Wurzburg, Edinburgh—she’d known many people like them. They didn’t frighten her.

The soldiers pursuing her posed the real danger.

A ha’penny, Isabella mused. She was worth a fortune. These Highlanders knew nothing about the thousand pounds sterling on her head. That was the bounty offered by the government to anyone who could bring her back to Edinburgh alive to face interrogation, trial, and a public execution. But Jean had no knowledge of this. Nor did she know of the lesser amount bandied about by the radicals for her corpse to guarantee her silence. Both sides wanted her dead.

“I’ve lived here my whole life. The sea makes ye hard, and these folks are hard as stone,” the woman continued, perhaps reading a hint of skepticism in Isabella’s face. “They give their loyalty to no one. In the Rising of ’45, they wouldn’t fight for any side. If ye weren’t born here, yer an outsider. To them, even the Bonny Prince was a stranger. And they don’t trust strangers.”

If only her husband Archibald had been a little more like them, Isabella thought. Perhaps he’d still be alive. But it was his nature to take a side. And now she and her sister and his daughter were running for their lives from the same butchers who cut him down in his own surgery as he tried to care for injured men. Men who’d simply stood up as citizens against a line of British Hussars in the streets of Edinburgh.

“Yer a stranger and an unprotected woman traveling in the Highlands. An easy mark, to be sure,” Jean warned. “They’ll figure ye to be carrying at least a shilling or two, and they’ll cut yer throat for it. And then yer carcass’ll go into the sea. Them waters have swallowed up more than a few strangers.”

The older woman’s dire prediction was surely an exaggeration, but the fate that Isabella faced if she fell into the hands of the British was not. Her late husband’s friends, newly released after being held by the authorities, had often been brought to the surgery bearing horrible wounds. Their bodies had been broken. Unspeakable tortures had been inflicted on them. And it mattered naught if they were man or woman.

“Ye keep to the cottage,” Jean ordered, her tone sharp as the needle she stabbed into the mending on her lap. “And if, by chance, anyone sees ye here, ye say nothing, ye hear? Ye look no one in the face, and ye answer no questions. If there’s anything to be said, I’ll do it.”

Outside, the storm continued unabated, and the wind whistled and rattled loose shutters. The stone cottage, poor as it was, provided safety and a thatched roof to keep most of the weather out. The rustic meal they’d shared of stewed fish and bannock cakes warmed and filled her. She was grateful to have it. The journey north through the Highlands had been wet and rough.

“I appreciate you taking me in like this.”

“I took ye in because my nephew asked me to…and gave me enough for yer room and board. But I don’t know what John is up to. Other than yer name, he didn’t say much about who ye are or where ye came from or where yer headed. But he’s a good lad, and he’s all the kin I have left. I trust him.” The hard glare softened with affection. “He says to me all I need to know is that yer a good woman and some vile Lowlanders’ll pay to get their hands on ye. Says I’m to keep ye hidden for maybe three days. He’ll come back for ye.”

Jean’s nephew had gone back to Inverness to book passage for Isabella, her sister, and her stepdaughter on a ship that would carry them across the Atlantic to Halifax. But that meant three days of worrying and waiting before she was reunited with Maisie and Morrigan. Still, she hadn’t let the lawyer tell her where he’d placed the young women in the port town. Isabella was afraid she’d be forced to divulge their whereabouts if she fell into the hands of her British pursuers. She had to keep faith that John would do right by the girls. He’d been charged by Sir Walter to look after them all until they left Scotland.

Isabella’s gaze fixed on Jean’s trembling right hand. She’d noticed it before while the woman was eating, though her hostess tried to hide the infirmity. Now Jean’s needle could not find the target, and she sat back in her chair in frustration as the piece slipped off her lap to the stone floor. Isabella bent over and fetched it, along with the woman’s darning mushroom.

“Let me finish this for you.” Sitting across from her, she studied the threadbare stocking. There was hardly anything left of the heel to work with, but she put the needle to the task. From the corner of her eye, Isabella saw Jean using one hand to try and quiet the other.

The Shaking Palsy. Jean’s shuffling gait, the forward stooping, the occasional wiping of drool from the corner of the lips. And the trembling hand that wouldn’t be controlled confirmed it. A disease with no cure that would become increasingly difficult to manage for a woman of advancing years who lived alone. Especially living in a place as desolate as this lonely outpost. Duff Head was a rocky bluff pushing out into the cold green-grey swells of the sea to the east of Inverness. And Jean’s cottage sat like a hunchbacked sow between two stone-studded hills below the coast road, away from the village. She had no neighbors close by. Isolated as it was, Isabella understood why John suggested this would be a safe hiding place for her.

Her own difficulties aside, it was troubling to think Jean lived alone, out of reach of immediate help if she needed it.

Isabella made another covert survey of the cottage. The iron cooking pot was too heavy and earlier, when she’d struggled to swing it out from over the fire, Isabella had jumped to help her. The threadbare rug on the stone floor certainly presented a hazard as the ailing woman dragged her foot. If she fell and broke an arm or a hip, she could lie there helpless forever. “Does anyone visit you?”

Jean bristled. “If someone comes to the door, I’ll do the explaining. I’ll say yer Mrs. Murray, a friend of a cousin, on yer way down from the Orkneys. Heading to the Borders, ye are. Resting here for a few days. That’s all they need to know.”

Murray was her family name, and she’d lived as Isabella Murray for twenty-eight years until she married Archibald Drummond six years ago and returned to Scotland, to a homeland she hardly knew.

“I only asked out of concern for you.” Isabella looked at the gaps in the shutters where rain-drenched wind was coming through. And the thatched roof was hardly water-tight. A stream was running down one wall and pooling in a dark corner. “I’m sure a cottage like this requires a great deal of upkeep and⁠—”

“I manage. Always have and always will. And I’m not about to hearken to John’s talk of forcing me to live with him.” The cap sitting atop the grey hair bobbed in agreement. “Feet first is how I’ll go. That’s how my sainted husband left our house, and they can take me out the same way.”

Isabella had known very little about John Gordon’s aunt before they got here. Their entire trip north, she’d been more worried about getting Maisie and Morrigan beyond the reach of the men who would surely be chasing them.

“The curate does his duty and looks in on me once a fortnight when he comes through. And the women in the village stop by with a basket now and again.”

The door shook from the force of a gust of wind. Jean followed Isabella’s gaze and frowned.

“If one of them comes calling, remember what I said. No talking. Even a whisper of that Lowland accent’ll give ye away.”

“I’m quite good at following directions. I’ll cause you no trouble.”

The roof of the cottage shook as if in disagreement and showered them with broken bits of thatch.

Trouble. Isabella plied her needle to the stocking. Trouble had been a constant companion to her from the moment Archibald brought them all back to Scotland, to their house on Infirmary Street near the surgical hospital. In Wurzburg—thanks to her father’s tutelage and influence—she was living a quiet and productive life as an accomplished physician and surgeon, well-versed in the science of medicine, privileged among her sex for being allowed to practice in a profession dominated by men.

Archibald Drummond had promised all would be the same in Edinburgh. Neither of them pretended that theirs was a love match. It was a marriage based on respect. It would meet their mutual needs, for her sister and his daughter would be provided for. She could practice medicine in his clinic and lead the same kind of life in Scotland. But he’d only spoken half the truth; he said nothing of his other life.

He was a political idealist, a reformer, and his nationalist consciousness had reawakened the moment he stepped foot on the soil of his homeland. From then on, her husband led two lives. One, as a respected and learned doctor who was sought after by Edinburgh’s elite. And second, as an activist whose evenings were constantly filled with secret meetings and radical efforts to change the repressive direction of the government in London. But that covert life of his, Isabella wanted no part in. She was Scottish by birth, but she’d lived nearly her entire life away of this land. Scottish nationalism and reform were lost on her, for she’d dedicated herself to one passion, medicine.

The collapse of embers in the fireplace tore away a barrier and suddenly she was back in her house in Edinburgh. Back in the midst of the mayhem of that fateful day in April.

It had been a day of strikes. Weavers had ordered a shutdown of the city. Shopkeepers shuttered their windows and doors. Protests has been organized in Glasgow and in smaller towns, as well.

The government’s response was direct and brutal. Troops on foot and horse attacked without warning, riding down and beating protesters in the street. Eighteen were carried back to the clinic in their house with severe injuries after the clashes. They hadn’t enough room for all the patients. Bleeding men lay moaning on the floor, in the hall, on the table in the kitchen. Some were not conscious.

Archibald saw to those wounded lying in the front rooms. Morrigan worked at her father’s elbow. Isabella set the broken leg of a six-year-old boy, an innocent bystander knocked down by the mob trying to disperse and trampled on by the iron-shod hoof of a cavalry steed.

She’d just put him upstairs on her own bed when the sound of shouts and pounding outside drew her to the window. Red-coated militia crowded the street in front of the house.

“Soldiers!” her sister Maisie cried, rushing into the room. “Here. Demanding to be let in!”

Sharp, clawing fingers of fear took her throat in a viselike grip. Isabella was no fool. She knew what was happening on the streets of the city. She was well aware of the identity of some of the wounded they were tending to downstairs at this very moment. She knew the roles these men were playing in the unrest.

“Grab your cloak,” Isabella ordered. “Go down the back steps and wait by the kitchen door while I fetch Morrigan. You two must leave the house.”

As she raced toward the stairs, the sound of the front door splintering as it was battered open was followed by shouts. Her feet barely touched the boards as she flew down the steps.

The front rooms—always a place of order and healing—were a battlefield. Tradesmen and women fought fiercely against the invading soldiers in blue and red jackets. She’d never seen such brawling. More shouting. A gunshot.

Pushing through the chaos, she found her husband sprawled against a wall, blood spreading across his white shirt and waistcoat. He’d been shot in the chest.

“Why?” she screamed at the men who continued to pour into the house. She crouched beside Archibald, pressing both hands to the wound, trying to staunch the flow of blood.

“You can’t help me,” he breathed, pushing her hand away. He looked behind Isabella. “Take her from here. Go. Please.”

Fighting continued all around her, but she worked relentlessly to save her husband’s life. Time stood still, and the air took on a nightmarish hue. Though Morrigan was right beside her, the young woman’s keening cries had a distant, muffled sound. Still, Isabella struggled. But it was too late. Archibald knew. He shuddered, faded, and was gone.

How she was able to get to the back of the house, pulling Morrigan behind her through the bedlam, Isabella could not recall later on. But Maisie was waiting for them in the kitchen, standing before the barred garden door. Before Isabella could pull it open, someone outside began knocking. There was no escape. They were surrounded.

“Don’t forget what I told ye,” Jean’s barked order cut into the memories and jerked Isabella back into the present.

She took a deep breath. The knocking was real. The haunting chaos of Edinburgh dissolved in an instant. Isabella peered through dim firelight at the door.

Jean crooked a finger at her again before pushing to her feet and shuffling toward the entrance.

Isabella’s stomach clenched. Had they found her? The farther they’d traveled away from Edinburgh, the more days that passed, her worry of getting caught only increased. The accusations of her involvement, the news of the bounty on her head, overtook the travelers and raced ahead of them. Eyes of strangers followed her. She feared being taken at every roadside stop. And the suspicion of her husband’s friends that she’d be a liability to them if she were caught only magnified the fear. Long before they’d reached Inverness, word had spread that both sides wanted her.

The door creaked, and the old woman put her shoulder against it to stop the tempest from shoving it open wide. Jean nodded to whoever was outside and stepped out into the storm, pulling the door shut behind her.

Isabella left the sewing on the chair and moved away from the fire. Near the foot of the cot sat her bag. Her faithful and courageous Edinburgh housekeeper had hidden the three women in her son’s dank, airless dwelling in Cooper’s Close in Canongate and delivered her medical instruments a few days after the attack on their house.

The door was the only entrance into the cottage, and Isabella was trapped. Two windows cut through the thick walls. A stiff leather hide hung low on the wall near the fire, and she wondered if it might provide access to a woodshed or an animal pen. She picked up her cloak and bag but stopped.

It was foolish to think about running. Even if she were able to get out that way, where would she go? She didn’t know the country around her. Her sister and stepdaughter were somewhere in Inverness. Their next meeting was to be aboard a sailing ship bound for Halifax. But even that part of their plan was vague. The only thing Isabella had any confidence in was that John was coming after her.

All of their futures lay in the hands of John’s colleague Walter Scott. Sir Walter Scott now. A generous man, he claimed he needed to repay a debt to Isabella, using his own funds and risking his own liberty.

The door pushed open again and Isabella stood still, holding her breath and letting it out only when she saw Jean come back inside alone. The old woman latched the door behind her.

“Someone knows I’m here?”

“They don’t,” Jean said, going back to her place by the fire. “And that’s all the better for ye.”

“What did they want?”

“Nothing that concerns ye.”

The answer didn’t make her feel less anxious. She was caught in a blind alley and recalling what she’d gone through only reinforced the helplessness of her position.

“Is there anything I need to know? Or be worried about?”

“Aye. Plenty.” Jean looked sharply at her. “But no matter what happens, ye gave me yer word ye won’t be leaving this cottage.”

“I shan’t. I have nowhere to go. But what do you mean ‘no matter what happens’? Do you expect trouble?”

“Ye ask too many questions,” she snapped.

“With good reason,” Isabella replied, softening her tone. “I’ve been through a great deal of trouble, and none of it I asked for.”

The old woman paused, keen grey eyes studying Isabella’s face. “This storm is blowing hard from the north. When that happens, we got to be prepared for what the sea gives up. That’s why someone was at my door.”

A shipwreck, she thought. How the villagers lived was none of her business. She put down her bag.

“The sea is a harsh mistress,” Jean continued. “And seafaring folk must ply their trade, no matter the weather. The sea takes, and the sea provides; that’s the way of things. Now ye go to bed.”

ChapterTwo

Come as the winds come, when

Forests are rended,

Come as the waves come, when

Navies are stranded.

— Sir Walter Scott, Pibroch of Donald Dhu

The Highland Crown. His home. His pride and joy. His dearest possession after twenty years at sea. But there was no saving her. His beloved ship was lost.

Stinging, wind-whipped water—chill and sharp as ice—lashed at Cinaed Mackintosh’s face as he squinted through the rain at the mortally wounded brig he’d sailed through a dozen storms as fierce as this one. He lived a good life aboard her. She had the speed to outrun many a ship with far more canvas. She could maneuver in the tightest spots and in the highest winds. She needed it, for they’d operated on both sides of the law. He’d been fortunate indeed in his years as master of this vessel. But his good luck had run out the moment Highland Crown was driven up onto the godforsaken rocks of this Scottish coast.

Cinaed’s eyes burned from the brine. His ship was lying nearly on its side. The masts had been reduced to splinters, and the wind and crashing surf continued to drag the hull over the jagged reef, tearing huge holes in the timbers and threatening to tumble her into the wild green maelstrom of the sea. He peered toward the patches of black shoreline that appeared like momentary rends, opening and quickly closing in the shroud of dark mist enveloping his vessel.

Two longboats bearing his crew had already disappeared into the storm. The booming sounds of rollers crashing in the distance told him reaching shore was no certain feat.

The ship shuddered and groaned as a wall of water struck and washed over everything, briefly submerging Cinaed and his second mate, a former gunner, who clung to a torn ratline. A handful of men, the last of his crew, struggled nearby to keep the third longboat from swamping.

Not even a day ago, they’d been sailing up from Aberdeen to Inverness. When the storm hit, it hit fast and hard.

It pained him to do what needed to be done now. In a secluded inlet east of Inverness, Cinaed was to deliver his cargo, but that plan would never be played out. On the other hand, he couldn’t allow those goods to fall into the hands of just anyone. The political sympathies of the folk living along this coast and across the Highlands was never a certainty, and he didn’t want any of the consequences of discovery to fall on his crew.

“Burn it,” he ordered. “You know what to do.”

His second mate nodded grimly and climbed through the hatch leading into the bowels of the ship.

Not long after he disappeared, another watery surge hammered at the boat. The Highland Crown lifted and then dropped, breaking the keel like a wrestler’s back. Cinaed held tight to the tattered lines. Worry for his man pushed him toward the hatch. The entire vessel moved again as a section of the bow of the brig heaved, broke off, and began to slide off into the sea. Around him, lines snapped and planking exploded like dry kindling. Then, the bow was gone, and only a few casks and crates and splintered timbers remained to mark her passing.

He knew it was only a matter of time before the rest of the ship would follow, spilling its cargo into the churning, grey waves. He didn’t want to lose another man. Reaching the hatch, he called down into the dark recesses of the hold. The fury of the storm obliterated any chance of an answer.

He dove through the hatch, moving swiftly through the lower decks in search of his gunner. Cinaed found him, his leg trapped against a bulkhead by one of the very casks he’d set out to destroy. The mate’s eyes flashed white with terror. He was holding a lantern at arm’s length.

Hanging the light from a beam, Cinaed found a pole and managed to lever him free. Half carrying, half dragging the man, he made his way back to the deck.

“Help him,” he shouted at the sailors when they’d reached the submerged gunwale. Another wave crashed over them, but the ship held steady, for the moment at least. Standing in the froth, he handed the gunner into the longboat. “Cast off and get clear. If she rolls, you won’t have time.”

“Come with us, Captain,” the helmsman shouted through the wind.

The ship moved with the grinding shriek of wood on stone.

“Do as I say.”

He waited until the longboat cast off the lines. What was left of the Highland Crown now joined the tumult of the storm in trying to stop him from reaching his destination. A railing collapsed and tumbled over him, nearly taking him with it into the sea. He climbed over rigging and ducked a spar that swung at his head like a club before he plunged through the hatch.

The lantern swung where they’d left it. With one last look at his cargo, he lit the fuse. With a hiss, the sparks shot toward the kegs, undulating like a fiery serpent. He had no time to consider the loss of all that he’d scratched and fought and bled to build in his life.

The longboat was battling the waves on the leeward side when he reached the open deck. Cinaed leaped into the churning sea. The chill of the water knocked the breath from his lungs. A wave drove him under.

As the sea enfolded him in her arms, the pain of his loss was a dirk driven into his heart. He was not a rich man. He was not born to wealth with a university education or a bought commission or a loving patron ready to cushion his fall. He’d been rejected by the only family he knew. And now the winds of ill-fortune had dashed Cinaed upon a stony shore, ripping from him his home, his life, his future. Beaten back from all he’d gained, his path had been decimated. But was he strong enough to start again?

He turned his gaze up toward the heaving froth of the sea and clawed his way upward. Bursting through, he swam toward the longboat.

Eager hands reached out to help him clamber on board.

“Row, lads,” he ordered, climbing into the stern. “All you’ve got now.”

Behind him, the Highland Crown exploded in a rapid-fire series of blasts, and pieces of the vessel rained down on the longboat. Cinaed stood beside the helmsman and looked back at his precious ship. What was left of the hull on the reef was on fire, and black smoke billowed above her.

A knot formed in his throat as he watched her burn. Then, lifted by the storm surge, the ship washed off the reef and sank from sight. Planks and rigging were all that remained, burning as they tossed on the tumultuous waves.

Cinaed tore his eyes away and turned to the task at hand, getting his men safely to shore. Through the murk and heavy mist, a rocky point appeared, jutting out from some unseen mainland.

“What’s behind us is gone,” he shouted above the wind. “Row hard, men. The shore is near.”

ChapterThree

With head upraised, and look intent,

And eye and ear attentive bent,

And locks flung back, and lips apart,

Like monument of Grecian art,

In listening mood, she seemed to stand,

The guardian Naiad of the strand.

— Sir Walter Scott, Lady of the Lake, Canto I, stanza 17

The loud bang shocked her awake, and Isabella sat bolt upright.

Looking about her, she remained where she was for a few moments and tried to clear away the filmy webs of confusion. She couldn’t quite grasp her surroundings. The place was unfamiliar, and she couldn’t remember how she’d gotten here or why she was here. It was like a dream she could not quite escape.

But was the bang part of her dream?

She blinked and tried to clear her head.

Jean, John Gordon’s aunt. She was here in the Highlands, in the old woman’s cottage. The driftwood fire on the hearth had burned down to embers, casting a flickering glow over the floor and the walls and the humble furnishings.

The door swung hard, driven by a gust of wind, and banged once more against the scarred table by a shuttered window. A briny gust swept in through the open door, spattering the stone floor with rain that glistened like drops of amber.

Fanned by the sweep of salt air, the meager flames leapt up momentarily, and she glanced around the small cottage.

The woman was nowhere to be seen.

A quick series of explosions propelled Isabella to her feet. The blast was close, and she hurriedly yanked on her boots. Throwing on her cloak, she crossed to the door and peered out into the rain. Here on the Highland coast, the night sky retained the dismal grey hue of twilight throughout the summer, never yielding completely to the blackness of more southern climes. Even the storm clouds failed to blot out the dim light. But a second sun was burning brightly on the water. She stepped out onto the hard-packed sand and stared through the windswept rain at the wild scene before her.

Not a half mile from the stony beach, nearly cut off from view by heavy mists, the remains of a burning ship lay on a reef. Flames and smoke rose high in the sky.

Smatterings of villagers lined the black stretch of strand, pointing toward the wreck. A few men stood on a jagged ridge of rock projecting out into the raging surf. The attention of Jean’s neighbors was riveted on the events offshore, but Isabella moved cautiously to a vantage point on the shadowy side of a line of large boulders leading down into the sea. From here she could see and not be discovered.

A thick swirling cloud obscured the reef for a few moments, lifting just as a wave carried the burning vessel off the rocks. Shouts and curses peppered the air as the ship went under. Isabella had no experience with shipwrecks, but she guessed the sinking was a hard blow to the scavengers waiting on shore.

Before long, villagers began to wade out to gather in the few casks and parts of the ship being carried in ahead of the crashing rollers. Working together, they dragged their meager treasure up onto the beach.

Isabella recalled that a visitor had come to Jean’s door earlier. They must have seen the ship hit the reef. They knew this was coming. The sea takes, and the sea provides; that’s the way of things.

Through the mist, she espied a single longboat foundering near the rocky point. It disappeared into a trough, and when it rose again, the boat was riding lower in the water. Wind and waves were buffeting it about.

A shot rang out from the rugged point.

Isabella gasped and took couple of steps forward as a man in the longboat fell backward, tumbling out and disappearing into the surf. From where she was, she could not see who fired the musket, but it was clear to her that the villagers were determined to scavenge what they could. They wanted no survivors to muddy their claim. And they would not brook the existence of any interfering witnesses, either.

Pressing a fist to her stomach, Isabella watched the longboat fight to turn away from the rocks. A moment later, it disappeared into the mists.

Villagers continued to pull wreckage from the water, but she looked on with unseeing eyes. Lost in thought as the rain beat down on her, she considered the absurd naiveté of the life she led. Isabella had devoted her entire existence to healing people. But in the real world, men regularly ended each other’s lives without hesitation or regret. She’d seen it. In Edinburgh, her own husband had died from a bullet fired by some soulless man in uniform. Even as they ran from the house, she’d seen the bodies on the streets, ridden down by the very men who were supposed to protect them. And she’d seen it here. Now.

How long she stood there, she didn’t know. But suddenly she became aware of Jean hurrying toward her from the cottage. The old woman reached her and plucked at Isabella’s cloak.

“I told ye to stay inside,” Jean said fiercely, motioning toward the door. “This is village business. It’s no business of yers. Get back inside afore someone sees ye.”

“Who set the ship on fire?”

“They did, the blasted curs.” She spat at the direction of the water. “They wanted to deny us whatever they were carrying.”

“They shot a man in the boat,” Isabella said, unwilling to forget what she’d seen. “In cold blood.”

“I saw nothing of that. And neither did ye.”

No law. No principle. No compassion. The only thing that mattered was one’s own survival. This is how they lived. And, she guessed, how they’d always lived. This was why John brought her here. Still, it was difficult to witness. But she had to remain silent. Three days, she reminded herself. Three more days and she’d sail away from the Highlands. And the events of this night would fill only one thin chapter in the tragic memoir of her life in Scotland.

“Go in, I say.” Jean peered through a gap in the boulders at the villagers. “Now. Afore someone sees ye. And don’t be talking of shooting. We’ve got no guns in the Highlands.”

Isabella planted her feet when the old woman tried to push her back toward the cottage. A movement at the sea’s edge drew her eye. At the base of one of the boulders that cut off this narrow stretch of stony beach from the long strand leading to the village and Duff Head, a man was dragging himself through the wind-whipped foam. Just above the waterline, he sank onto the beach.

“Someone from the ship!”

Jean gripped Isabella’s arm tightly. “I see no one.”

She shook herself loose of the older woman. “I care nothing about salvaged goods. Your villagers can keep it all. But that man needs help.”

“Wait. Ye can’t.”

For many, being a physician meant following a dignified profession, one that generally garnered respect and modest financial benefits. But to Isabella, it was an obligation and an honor. She always treated her chosen path as a responsibility. It didn’t matter who or what the patient’s circumstances were. Friend or foe, poor or rich, she did the same for all. She’d been given a gift that she was determined to use.

She moved quickly down the stony slope to the water’s edge, and Jean stayed close behind her, grumbling the entire way.

The man’s longish dark hair was matted with seaweed and grit. His face was half-buried in the stones and sand. He was clearly a large man, tall and broad across the shoulders. From the well-made wool jacket and from the quality leather of the boots, she decided he was no ordinary tar. He was either a passenger or an officer from the ship.

Isabella put her back to the gusts of rain and crouched beside him. Putting her fingers on his throat, she felt for a pulse. His skin was clammy and cold.

“God willing, the dog’s dead,” Jean mumbled, hovering over her.

“Your wish might come true. He’s more dead than alive.”

If this was the man who was shot, she imagined there’d be no mercy shown if the villagers found him alive. And his body would never be found. The rising tide was washing up around his boots.

“Help me turn him over.”

“I’ll not help ye with any such thing. And if ye have any sense, ye’ll leave him be and let the sea take him.”

Isabella wiped the salty rain from her face, and pulled his arm, managing on her own to turn him onto his side. A growth of beard covered his face, but his skin was pale as ash, his breathing shallow. Taking hold of his jacket, she rolled him onto his back. Her hand came away red. She pushed his coat open and saw a hole in his black waistcoat an inch or so above the heart. Blood was seeping from the wound.

“I knew it.” She pressed her hand against the wound to stop the bleeding.

“Let him go.”

She pressed harder. The storm and the rage of the sea blended with Jean’s warnings before fading away. Her mind was transported back to their house in Edinburgh. The stranger’s face was Archibald’s. Warm blood oozed through her fingers. All her years of training and she hadn’t been able to save him. His life had just slipped away.

Isabella would not let this man die.

Archibald was her friend, her mentor and her teacher. Just as when her father died, losing him had slapped her down with the cruelty of life’s uncertainties. The responsibility for the lives of her sister and her step-daughter was overwhelming. In a moment she’d been stripped of the ideal life she’d been living. At four and thirty years of age, she had to learn how to survive. She had to run for her life.

“Not much is washing ashore.” Jean’s voice came to her from the gap in the boulders, where she was watching the villagers down the beach. “Folk’ll be coming this way to see if anything drifted this far.”

The blood continued to pulse from the wound.

The old woman shuffled back to Isabella’s side. “Ye have to go in, mistress. Now. They won’t be any too happy with this one.”

“I can’t let him die. Not again. I can’t,” she said, her voice belonging to a stranger.

Isabella reached for a clump of seaweed that washed up beside them. She pressed it into the wound. The bullet was still in him. If she could extract it, sew the wound shut, she could stop the bleeding. It was the only way to save him. Ten years ago, she’d helped her father operate on the bloodied men carted back to Wurzburg from the battle at Leipzig. After a week, they’d still carried Russian musket balls and shrapnel in their festering wounds. The death rate had been dreadful.

The bag containing her surgical instruments was beside the cot. “Help me take him up the hill.”

“This one will never see the inside of my cottage. Just leave him.”

“I’ll drag him up there by myself then.”

Jean tugged at Isabella’s cloak again. “Yer daft, woman. Ye remember nothing of what I said last night, do ye?”

The patch of seaweed was helping staunch the flow of the blood. Isabella looked up at the sandy stretch, trying to decide on how she could get him up the hill.

“Ye listen to me now, mistress⁠—”

“I am not leaving him,” she cut in sternly. “Do you hear? I am not letting him die out here on the beach. Now, you do what you see fit. But if you want to deliver this man up to your friends, then you can just hand me over with him.”

The older woman let go of the cloak and straightened up, staring at her as if she were a creature with two heads.

They both started at the sound of someone calling from the beach beyond the boulders. A man’s voice.

Too soon, Isabella thought. Her bravado was being tested. “I stand by my words.”

“Stay down and don’t move,” Jean hissed. “Mind me now.”

The urgency in the old woman’s voice sank in. Isabella crouched beside the injured man. She kept firm pressure on the seaweed over the wound.

Concealed by the boulder at the edge of the water, she watched Jean climb with surprising agility onto the rocks to head off the villager.

“Oy, Auld Jean. Anything come in along this stretch?”

From where Isabella waited, she could see the man was carrying a stout cudgel.

“Nay, Habbie. Not a thing, curse ‘em,” she wailed. “The dogs blew it up rather than giving us our deserving share. And what purpose does that serve, I’d like to know.”

“If any of them boats land nearby, I’m thinking the lads’ll be taking it out of their hides.”

“Well, that blast was a fine show, to be sure,” she remarked. “What do ye think they had in there to go to such trouble?”

“French gold and Old Boney’s crown, no doubt. Wouldn’t want that lot to fall into the wrong hands.” Habbie laughed. “Though maybe they was carrying a weapon or two.”

Illegal in the Highlands, Isabella thought.

“And maybe keg of powder or two?”

“Ye could be on to something, woman. Wouldn’t be the first smuggler to run too close to the Head.”

Isabella frowned at the man lying motionless in the sand beside her. A smuggler.

The sound of others calling from the beach drew the villager’s attention. “Come for us if anything washes ashore. Don’t be dragging any crates out of the sea by yerself.”

“Of course, ye fool. I’m too auld to be doing anything like that.”

Isabella didn’t know if it was safe yet to let out a breath of relief. The sailor or the smuggler or the passenger or whoever this man was, he remained unconscious. But beneath her palms, she could feel his beating heart. He was not giving up.

She watched Jean make her way back down.

“Thank you,” Isabella said. “Now can you please help me drag him up to the cottage?”

“Best look at him again. The blasted cur looks dead enough to me.”

“He’s not dead. He⁠—”

The words caught in her throat as a hand shot up and long, viselike fingers clutched her windpipe, squeezing hard.

Isabella gasped for air, stunned by the attack. She tried desperately to yank herself free of the deadly grip. She tried to claw at his face but couldn’t reach. Her nails dug into his wrist, but he wouldn’t let go. His eyes were open but unfocused. He was intent on murder, and there was nothing she could do to stop him.