Prologue
Late 17th century
Scottish Highlands
“Send for Morna!”
The laird’s words echoed endlessly through the castle, bouncing off the stone walls and corridors along with the sharp cries of his Kenna, his wife.
Kenna was thrashing, screaming, and burning up with a fever so intense that it seemed as though she might be giving birth to the Devil himself and all the fires of hell along with him. Her eyes were bulging and bloodshot and rolling around senselessly like those of a maddened mare. Her face was crimson with agony. The sheets were soaked through with sweat, and the water that broke within her was tinged with blood so dark that it appeared black in the candlelight.
It was a scene so horrid that Laird Malcolm MacLeod could scarcely have imagined it, even in his most foul nightmares.
He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see his brother Seamus. “There is no need to send for Morna,” he assured Malcolm. “Her brand of strange healing has no place in this castle. Besides, she is much too far away to be summoned in time! Kenna’s servants have the knowledge and sense to help her through this.”
Malcolm looked at Kenna’s ladies-in-waiting. They all stood around her helplessly, their faces pale, their eyes wide as saucers, their mouths drawn into tiny O’s of shock. The expressions on their faces were all too clear: They desperately wanted to help her…they simply had no idea how.
True, at least a third of them had given birth at least once, and the rest of them had sisters or cousins who had done likewise. They had more than passing experience with the grim realities of such matters.
But those labors had obviously been mild compared to this one.
Malcolm was a shrewd man. He knew that childbirth could be fatal to the mother, the child, or both, even in the most seemingly normal circumstances. In a catastrophic situation such as this one, he was sure that he would lose both the love of his life and his future heir.
Throughout the years, Malcolm had survived arrows, cuts from swords and daggers, thrusts from pikes, blows from heavy shields, and the breaking of any number of bones in his body. He had miraculously—some might even say stubbornly—persisted, allowing each wound to make him stronger in the face of pain. The layers of scar tissue that crisscrossed his body had made his flesh thicker and tougher by the year.
He had no doubt that witnessing the deaths of his wife and his baby would kill him.
Malcolm grabbed Seamus by the front of his tunic, snarling in his face, “I have seen Morna bring those who were mortally wounded back to life! I have seen her cure a hundred different injuries and maladies, and if there is even one chance in a thousand that she might spare my love and my offspring from death, then I shall see her here at once! Bring her to menow,Seamus!”
Seamus nodded and withdrew, although, from the doubtful expression on his face, he remained convinced that it was a fool’s errand.
Malcolm hoped that Seamus would hurry anyway.
In truth, Malcolm wished that he could go and fetch Morna himself in order to ensure that all haste would be made in bringing her back. Even if he sent his swiftest rider to carry out the errand, he knew that if ill befell his wife and child, he would still spend the rest of his days wondering if he could have covered the distance more quickly himself.
But it was the same reason he knew he couldn’t leave her side either. Because what if she perished while he was away? How could he live with himself, knowing that he hadn’t been there for her during her final moments?
So much of being laird of a clan seemed to involve choosing between two unpleasant options, often with life and death hanging in the balance. Malcolm had never imagined that he would be forced into a similar state when it came to his own family.
Yet alas, that day had arrived.
He knelt and laced Kenna’s fingers in his own, whispering comforting things to her as she screamed, promising that all would be well, that they would weather this storm together and find their bairn alive and healthy on the golden shore beyond it.
Her only response came in the form of more jagged shrieks.
Within the hour, Seamus ran into the room with Morna by his side. Malcolm looked up at them, dumbfounded. Even at the fastest speeds, it should have taken at least twice that long for Seamus to return with her.
There were foolish stories among the washerwomen and little children in the village that Morna was a witch who flew about on a crooked broomstick. Given how long Malcolm had known the woman—and, indeed, how intimate they had once been with each other so many years ago—he knew that she was a kind, brilliant, intuitive healer and not a witch at all.
Even so, given the swiftness of her arrival, he could almost picture her streaking through the night skies.
“I met him halfway,” Morna said in answer to his unasked question. “The poor woman’s wails travel far beyond these walls, and given the date and hour, it was not difficult for me to divine the cause of them. Now please stand aside, my good laird, and allow me to tend to her.”
Her tone was urgent, hard as oak, and so Malcolm stood and gave Morna the room she needed to save the life of the woman he had chosen instead of her.
The birth took two arduous and dreadful days.
During those days, Morna was the leader of the castle, not Malcolm. She barked orders to the MacLeods, demanding herbs, candles, boiled water, strips of cloth, and other things. She whispered encouragements to Kenna, coached her breathing, and kept her forehead cool with compresses. At times, she even sang to her.
