Annie knelt on the turf bank of the rectangular vegetable garden, clearing weeds from the neatly planted rows of onions, beets, and peas. A sharp gust of wind tore a wisp of long, dark hair from its pins. She struggled to catch the errant lock for a minute before tucking it once more behind her ear.
With the wind, she felt a prickle of awareness race along her skin—the familiar sensation of being watched—that cast a black shadow over the otherwise sunny day.
He was back.
She clenched her mouth in a tight, angry line, ignoring the sensation—as well as the man who’d provoked it—and went on tending the garden.
A few minutes later, another man’s voice broke through the silence of her thoughts. “Ah, here you are. I wondered where you’d disappeared to.”
Annie could hear the worry in her brother’s voice and tried not to let it anger her. She was in the garden, for goodness’ sake. Surrounded by five-foot-thick stone walls and the dozens of guardsmen who patrolled them. No one could hurt her here.
But reminding herself that Patrick’s distress came from a place of love and helplessness, she tried to control her frustration. “I’m fine, and as you can see, perfectly safe. You need to stop worrying about me. I’m not a glass poppet about to shatter; I’m tougher than I look.”
She wouldn’t let what had happened destroy her, even if at times she wondered if it was already too late. She didn’t know who she was anymore. Or what she wanted. For so many years she’d thought Niall was the measure of her future happiness. But that simple, lovestruck girl whose thoughts centered on a husband and children no longer existed. She didn’t know who had replaced her, just that she was gone.
Her eyes met her brother’s, and the sadness in his gaze made her chest pinch. She knew he was trying to help the only way he knew how, but didn’t he realize that his protectiveness and well-meaning smothering was making it worse? It was making her unable to forget.
If it were possible to forget.
Ithadto be possible. That was the only thing keeping her going. And day by day, little by little, itwasgetting better.
“I know that, and I’m sorry. I just can’t seem to help it. Lizzie said I’m going to drive you both crazy with my ‘cosseting.’” He cursed with disgust. “I don’t know what the hell has happened to me. I’ve gone completely crazed with irrational fears since the baby was born. Do you know I moved the cradle away from the window last night in case a tree blew over in the wind and broke through the glass?”
“You mean the freshly cut-down tree that I had to climb over to get to the garden?”
He muttered a long stream of curses and she laughed, surprised at how good it felt. Of late there had been precious little to laugh about for all of them.
Annie thought the worst thing that could happen to her was having the man she loved break her heart. But the past two years had proved her wrong.
Very wrong.
First had come the disastrous battle between the MacGregors and Colquhouns at Glenfruin where four hundred of her clansmen had lost their lives. But if having her clan decimated in battle wasn’t bad enough, what had come after was infinitely worse. Thanks to some theatrics by the Colquhoun widows, including parading blood-soaked sarks before the notoriously squeamish king, the persecution of the MacGregors and efforts to bring them to “justice” had intensified and taken a vicious turn.
Justice, this time, included the heads of her clansmen. Bounties were given to the bearer of MacGregor heads, entitling the person to their holdings. But it wasn’t just the MacGregors being hunted. It was also their allies. The punishment for harboring the outlawed clan was death and the forfeiture of lands.
There had been nowhere for them to hide.
They’d seen that firsthand when her cousin Alasdair’s men, including her brothers, had called upon an ancient bond of hospitality between the MacGregors and Lamonts to take refuge on the Isle of Bute last summer. Colin Campbell, the Campbell of Auchinbreck at the time, had hunted them down and attacked the Lamont’s Ascog Castle, burning it practically to the ground.
Niall’s father, the Chief of Lamont of Ascog, and his older brother, Malcolm, had both been killed along with forty of their clansmen. Niall and his young brother, Brian, were also thought lost, but they’d managed to escape to Ireland. They’d returned to Scotland a few months later on hearing that Alasdair MacGregor was surrendering after agreeing to the Earl of Argyll’s promise to escort him to England to put his case before King James.
Niall’s sister, Caitrina, had married Jamie Campbell, Colin’s younger brother and one of the most feared men in the Highlands, to seal the bargain. But both Alasdair MacGregor and apparently Jamie Campbell had been tricked by the wily Earl of Argyll, known as “Archibald the Grim.” Alasdair was indeed escorted to England. But as soon as the MacGregor chief stepped down on English soil—technically satisfying the terms of Argyll’s “promise”—he was immediately brought back to Scotland and executed along with eleven of his remaining chieftains and guardsmen, including Annie’s brother Iain.
Annie’s heart squeezed. The brother who had caused so much mischief with Niall now had his head on a pike alongside their cousin’s and uncle’s atop the gate of Holyrood Palace.
Retribution for Argyll’s trick, or “Highland Promise,” as the dastardly deed had become known, had been swift, with the remaining MacGregor clansmen and allies calling for Fire and Sword. The risings that followed had gone on for months and stretched across the Highlands from Rannoch Mor to Glenorchy.
In his rage and bloodlust, her brother Gregor had committed an unforgivable act. He’d ordered the rape of a Campbell woman whom they’d come across in one of their raids. Gregor’s offenses did not end there. He’d attempted to kill Elizabeth Campbell and challenged Patrick’s position as chief after the death of their cousin. Gregor had paid for those sins when he was captured by Jamie Campbell last winter and executed.
She’d lost two brothers in almost as many months.
But she could not mourn Gregor as she did Iain and her other kinsmen. Not after what Gregor had done. Even if she understood where the blackness that had curdled his soul came from. The MacGregors had been treated like dogs for so long, it was hardly a surprise that one had turned rabid.
No, Annie’s inability to forgive her brother came from another, far more personal, place. She did not blame him for what happened to her, but she could not forgive him for doing to another woman what had been done to her either.
Annie had been caught in the crossfire of Gregor’s misdeeds. In retribution for the rape of the Campbell woman, the Laird of Auchinbreck, Colin Campbell, had ordered the rape of a MacGregor “whore” and fifty merks to the person who could bring him a kinswoman of Gregor MacGregor.
She’d been that kinswoman. Annie had been the woman raped when her hiding place in the Braes of Balquhidder had been betrayed by a local farmer whose lands—and crops—had been accidentally burned by Gregor’s men.
