“I didnae think I could stomach onythin’,” he said in wonder, attempting a smile.
“A wee bit broth dis wonders,” Leana assured him. “The poppy milk is foul, but it will dae ye good.” She smiled as he sipped it and almost spat it out again. “Go tae sleep.” She settled him down comfortably on his unhurt shoulder, then waited while his eyelids drooped and he drifted back to sleep again.
Leana knew she should go back out to begin scything hay again, but she was dropping with fatigue, and when she sat down to rest for a moment she fell into slumber at once.
Joe looked at her fondly. Sometimes, as now, he felt so incapable of meeting her needs that he thought he might be better off dead, but he knew that she wanted to care for him, and was proud to be doing so, but she worked so hard that she had no time to do all the things a normal girl of her age should. She was so like her mother: the same red hair, the same slim, almost boyish build, and the same beaming dimpled smile.
She slept from early twilight till the first hour of darkness, but woke up when Jamie groaned in pain again, just as a mother would wake up for a hungry baby. He was thrashing about on the bed, obviously in pain, and it was all she could do to keep him still while she administered more poppy milk. She was careful not to give him too much since it was easy to become dependent on it, but if he were constantly in pain he would lose the will to live. Therefore, she reasoned that giving him a tiny dose was the lesser of two evils.
Joe had gone to bed a few hours earlier and she thought about the big dappled gray destrier that was standing in the barn eating its way through pounds of precious oats. It must have come from a noble house—perhaps the Laird of Dubhgnall Brae? Leana had heard of the Laird’s fearsome reputation. It was said that he had decapitated three English soldiers with one sweep of the biggest claymore anyone had ever seen. This was probably a gross exaggeration, of course, but it made for a good tale around the fireside on a cold winter night.
Leana checked on her patient once more, but he was resting peacefully in his drugged slumber, and she decided to retire for what was left of the night herself. Tomorrow would be an even harder day.
2
Laird Fraser Andrew Dubhgnall was a formidable man. He was six feet two, with corn-blond hair, and the deepest, darkest brown eyes anyone had ever seen. The contrast was stunning, and those eyes gave the impression of being able to see right into one’s soul.
He ran his estate with the utmost discipline, as befitted a man who had spent two years in the service of his country. He was tall, with a straight military bearing, and was apparently scared of nothing. It was said that he had killed over twenty Englishmen and wounded dozens more in a fierce rampage fueled by utter hatred of his enemies. All Scots had contempt for their English foes, but his hatred was visceral, stemming from the brutal killing of his parents by English soldiers while they were out for their usual morning ride.
Fraser had loved his father deeply, but adored his mother, and his rage would spark the bitterness he held in his heart for years to come. Before they died, his parents had arranged his marriage to a beautiful young woman called Ishbel Anderson, and they had wed when he was only twenty-one years old and she was sixteen. They immediately had a daughter, whom they called Abigail, but sadly Ishbel died tragically four years later, from whooping cough, and although Abigail caught it, she survived.
It was Fraser’s custom to call a meeting of his castle guard every morning to go over the events of the day before and plan the day ahead. Usually it was a routine event that lasted only a short while, because there was very little that ever disturbed the smooth running of the castle, but today was different.
News had just come to Fraser Dubhgnall’s ears about the loss of his horse, Annie. Annie was precious to him because he had helped to deliver her and had brought her up himself, and for that reason he had given her his mother’s name; she was his most treasured possession. He almost thought of her as part of him, and when he heard that the groom he had trusted to take her to have new shoes fitted had lost her outside the tavern, he was incandescent with rage.
The groom was one of his most trusted employees, and Fraser did not trust easily. However, that day the man had been led astray by an old friend he had not seen for years and ended up in a drunken stupor. Needless to say, he had found himself rather smartly installed in the new and much less comfortable accommodation of the dungeon.
So now everyone who even looked at Fraser the wrong way was a target for his fury, and as he came striding into the courtyard early the next morning the guardsmen readied themselves for an explosion of rage. The Laird was short-tempered at the best of times, but his horse was the next best thing to his child—in fact, some of them thought he loved Annie more than his own daughter.
Fraser stood in front of his men and raked the whole line of them with an expression of utter disgust.
“Will whoever was pursuing the man who stole my horse yesterday please step forward?” he asked, his voice deceptively calm.
Six men stepped forward, all of them looking anywhere but at Fraser.
“How did this happen?” he demanded. “Annie is not a swift horse, but your mounts are all light and fast. By what stroke of utter stupidity did you manage to lose him? You first!” He pointed to a man at the end of the line.
The guard swallowed nervously. “The thief disappeared, M’Laird,” he replied, then shrugged. “We think he went intae the forest at the tap o’ the brae but we couldnae find him when we reached it.”
“Did you try?” Fraser asked the second man. “At all?”
“We did, M’Laird!” he replied indignantly. “Bit he wis naewhere tae be seen!”
Fraser went along the whole line, receiving the same story from everyone. He asked for a description of the thief, but no one could give him a good one, since they had only seen him from behind.
“He had fair hair, M’Laird,” one of his soldiers said. “A bit like yer ain.”
There was an ominous pause, and then came the blast.
“You are all useless!” Fraser roared. “I might as well have sent Abigail’s pet cat out instead of you!” He walked along the row searching their faces, but none of the men would meet his eyes. “Look at me!” His voice was even louder than before, and his dark eyes burned with anger. For a moment, he seemed about to strike some of them, then calmed down with visible effort. “I should dismiss you all, but I am a fair man, and I am going to give you one more chance to redeem yourselves. The six of you will go over every inch of my land and find my horse. If you do not find her within a week, you will all be out of work. Do you understand?”
“Aye, M’Laird,” they said sheepishly, nodding.
Fraser marched away, still seething, and the guards, mumbling their anger, went to mount their horses.
Upstairs in her bedroom, which overlooked the courtyard, Abigail Dubhgnall watched as her father single-handedly put the fear of God into the guardsmen. She knew that he had the power of the lairdship behind him, but he was a force in his own right due to his large stature and intimidating presence, and Abi was terrified of him, in spite of the fact that he had never laid a hand on her.
Abigail was thirteen years old, and just about to blossom into womanhood.
