BONUS PROLOGUE
Scotland, November 1720
Near the coast of the Isle of Skye
The sun was shining when they reached the tiny village of Mallaig not long after noon.
Selene slowed her pony to a walk, blinking against the sudden brightness. It was almost unreal after so many days of relentless grey skies and cold winds, of damp wool and aching limbs, of a road that seemed determined never to end.
The sea lay before them at last, wide and blue and moving restlessly.
There, beside the sea, the air was different. Softer. Laced with salt. Something loosened in her chest as she breathed it in.
Jake MacLeod, the captain of her brother-in-law’s birlinn and her escort those past two weeks, brought their small party to a halt near the edge of the village. They were not far from the shoreline beside a low, sturdy, rough-stone building, toppedwith a weathered thatched roof that had seen better days. That was the only tavern the village could boast.
She dismounted stiffly, her muscles protesting after so many days in the saddle. She walked on unsteady legs to a narrow wooden bench by the wall
After lowering herself onto the seat she stretched her legs, pressing her heels briefly into the earth, reassuring herself it was truly solid. The journey from Edinburgh had been far longer and more arduous than she had imagined when she first agreed to it. The lodgings along the way had been sparse, cold and uncomfortable. The meals at best had been indifferent, at worst… she preferred not to think on it.
She had endured it all because she must – because there was nowhere else for her to go.
For several moments she lost herself in the rhythmic lap of waves against the shore and the raucous cries of gulls wheeling overhead.
Her gaze traveled across the water’s vastness, the deep blue broken only by shifting light and the shadow of distant hills.
The captain, a tall, broad-shouldered Highlander with a fiery thatch of red hair and a beard of the same hue, followed her gaze and lifted a hand.
“There,” he said simply. “What ye see before ye lass, is the Sound of Sleat and the hills beyond are the Isle of Skye.”
Her heart lifted. Skye. The word itself held the promise of her journey’s end.
“Won’t be long now, Lady Selene,” Jake said. “We’ll board tomorrow. With any luck, if the weather holds, we’ll be across the sound and along the coast well before nightfall.”
He gestured toward the wide harbor where two large birlinns rode at anchor, their dark hulls steady despite the water’s gentle motion, their masts etched starkly against the sky.
“Thank you, Captain. I am grateful. I am very much looking forward to seeing my sister again. And her husband.”
“Och,” he agreed. “I daresay. It’s a long road ye’ve traveled.”
Her thoughts drifted back over every mile of it.
Back to green, orderly, Hertfordshire where life moved to predictable rhythms. She had been born Selene Montgomery, daughter of a viscount, raised in a house where servants spoke softly and no one ever needed to explain themselves twice. Her days had been filled with books, measured lessons in deportment, music and language. Civilization, her mother had called it. Refinement.
Edinburgh had been her last taste of comfort. There, at least, she had rested properly, exchanged her travel-worn dress for something cleaner that reminded her who she had been. She had joined the company of Lady Margaret a distant relative to her brother-in-law Laird Halvard MacLeod of Raasay. Margaret was a woman of wit and warmth, whose presence had eased Selene’s nerves and made the city feel less foreign.
She had traveled by coach from Edinburgh to Glasgow, but after passing through that city, the journey had become an endless ordeal. River crossings that chilled her to the bone. Lodgings that offered little beyond a roof and a hearth.
And then the Highlands themselves – magnificent and merciless.
Lakes – that the Scots insisted on calling ‘Lochs’ –stretched alongside the track, bordered by dark forests of Scots pine. Though November had stripped many branches bare, the land retained a stark, austere, beauty. Snow-dusted peaks loomed in the distance, dwarfing everything beneath them, as though daring unwary travelers such as herself to turn back.
“We’re in the Highlands,” Jake had remarked. “Very different affair from what ye’re used tae in England.”
There had been many days when Selene would have given anything to be back on her father’s estate, riding her own mare across familiar fields rather than perched atop a shaggy Highland pony, jolted along rutted tracks the Scots had the audacity to call roads. England was so orderly by comparison. Neat. Contained. This land sprawled, untamed and vast, answering to no one.
She leaned back, the bench cool beneath her palms, and turned her gaze back toward the sea. She had heard so much about the islands in the letters she’d received from her sister Elsie, who had chosen to be with her Highland laird and a life Selene could barely imagine. Soon she would see her again
She closed her eyes briefly.
