Prologue
Dunscaith Castle, Isle of Skye, 1599
The ground shook with the heavy pounding of hooves as the score of warriors approached Dunscaith Castle. Their leader, Roderick MacLeod, Chief of MacLeod, urged his mount ahead, surging across the rocky crags at breakneck speed. He had to reach her before…
Just then a great roar rose above the thunder of the horses, and with it hope shattered. Rory cursed, knowing that the jubilant cries of the crowd could mean only one thing: The warning had come too late.
Refusing to accept what he already knew, Rory pushed the mighty destrier harder, climbing faster up the steep pathway. Finally, horse and rider crested the hill, at last giving vision to the cruel spectacle orchestrated by Rory’s most despised enemy.
Not a furlong below them, Rory’s sister sat atop a horse, slowly winding her way through a crowd of jeering villagers. She looked so tiny, so painfully alone among the madding crowd. Her hair, a thick, glorious halo of riotous curls, shone like white gold in the mid summer sun. But neither the magnificence of her hair nor the remnants of her once fey beauty could distract the villagers from the conspicuous black patch that covered one eye.
Even from afar, Rory could see Margaret’s pain. The rigid line of her spine, the nearly imperceptible shaking of her hands as she clenched the reins of her maimed horse, the slight flinch as the taunts pelted her pride like stones.
He could make out only snippets of their hateful words. “Face…hideous…one-eyed…mark of the devil…”
Rory pressed on, though the damage had already been done.
None but the MacDonald of Sleat could be capable of sending her away with such a monstrous procession. Sleat had gone to great lengths to shame his sister, mocking her misfortune with outrageous cruelty. For Margaret, who’d badly injured an eye in a horrible riding accident only a few months after arriving at Dunscaith, sat atop a one-eyed horse. A horse that was led by a one-eyed man and followed by a one-eyed dog.
It wasn’t enough that Sleat had decided to repudiate the handfast and send Margaret back to her kinsmen. He did so in a manner designed for one purpose only—to strike right at the heart of the MacLeod pride in a way that could only demand retribution.
Damn Sleat, the devil’s spawn, for dragging an innocent woman into a feud among men.
Rory’s heart wrenched as a small tear slid down Margaret’s pale cheek from behind the black patch. She wobbled, as if searching for strength. When she found none, her chin slumped forward to her chest.
Blood pounded in Rory’s ears, rage finally quieting the cruel voices of the MacDonald clansmen. A piercing battle cry tore from his lungs as he raised his claymore to rally his clansmen. “Hold fast!” he roared the clan’s motto. “To a MacLeod!”
Sleat would regret what he’d done. The MacLeods would be avenged.
Chapter 1
That mighty stronghold of the west
In lonely grandeur reigns supreme;
A monument of feudal power,
And fitting haven for a king.
—M. C. MACLEOD
Loch Dunvegan, Isle of Skye, July 1601
Isabel MacDonald had never thought of herself as lacking in courage, but over the past few days she’d begun to reconsider. The long hours of travel, with little to do but think, had tested her mettle. What had seemed in Edinburgh a well-conceived plan to help her clan, now, as they neared their final destination in the farthest outreaches of Scotland, felt more like a virgin being led to the sacrifice. An analogy, she feared, that was disturbingly close to the truth.
Huddled among her MacDonald clansmen on the smallbirlinn,Isabel felt strangely alone. Like her, the other occupants of the boat remained both watchful and silent as they approached their enemy’s keep. Only the droning sound of the oars, plunging into the black depths beneath them, pierced the eerie quiet. Somewhere ahead of her in the loch beyond lay Castle Dunvegan, the impregnable stronghold of Clan MacLeod.
An icy wind swept over the loch, sending a chill deep into her bones.Eilean a Cheo,she recalled the Erse name for Skye. The “Isle of Mist”—what a prodigious understatement. Cursing her inappropriate traveling attire, Isabel wrapped her fur-trimmed cloak—the only warm garment she was wearing—tighter across her body in a futile attempt to warm herself. But her garments provided such scant protection from the elements, she might as well have been sitting here in a sark.
Given her perilous task, the foul weather seemed somehow fitting.
Isabel had been promised in handfast to the powerful MacLeod chief. Ostensibly, the handfast was a union brokered by the king to end two long and bitter years of feuding between the MacLeods and the MacDonalds. In reality, it was a ruse to gain her access to their enemy’s keep and, if all went according to plan, his heart.
No wedding would follow this handfast. When Isabel found what she came for, she would repudiate the handfast and return to her life at court as lady-in-waiting to Queen Anne as if nothing had happened, secure in the knowledge that she had helped her clan.
Assuming, of course, she wasn’t discovered.
In retrospect, passing the days by thinking of the different ways a spy could be punished probably had not been the most efficient use of her time.
