Chapter One
Kinloch Castle
Scottish Highlands, July 1718
The dream startled her awake mere minutes before the siege began.
Gwendolen MacEwen sat up with a gasp and turned her eyes to the window.It was only a dream,she told herself as she struggled to calm her breathing. Later she would call it a premonition, but for now, she was certain it was just the trickeries of sleep causing this terror in her heart.
Giving up any notion of slumber, she tossed the covers aside, sat up on the edge of the bed, and reached for her robe. She slipped it on for warmth against the predawn chill as she rose to her feet and padded to the window, lured to the leaded glass by a faint glow of light on the horizon.
A new day had begun. At last. She closed her eyes and said a silent prayer that it would bring her brother, Murdoch, home from his travels. The MacEwens needed their chief, and if he did not soon return and claim his birthright, she feared someone else would—for there had been some talk of discontent in the village. She’d heard it from her maid, whose sister was married to the alehouse keeper. And after the dream she’d just had…
The horn blew suddenly in the bailey.
Unaccustomed to hearing such a clamor while the castle still slept, Gwendolen turned from the window.What in God’s name…?
It blew again, a second time. Then a third.
A spark of alarm fired her blood, for she knew the meaning of that signal. It was coming from the rooftop, and it spoke of danger.
Gwendolen rushed to the door, flung it open, and hurried up the tower stairs.
“What’s happening?” she asked the guard, who was pacing back and forth through the early morning chill. She could see his ragged breath upon the air.
He pointed. “Look there, Miss MacEwen!”
She rose up on her toes and leaned out over the battlements, squinting through the dim morning light at the moving shadows in the field. It was an advancing army, approaching quickly from the edge of the forest. Some were on foot, others mounted.
“How many men?” she asked.
“Two hundred, at least,” he replied. “Maybe more.”
She stepped away from the wall and regarded him soberly. “How much time do we have?”
“Five minutes at best.”
She turned and locked eyes with another clansman, who exploded out of the tower staircase with a musket in his hands. He halted, panic-stricken, when he spotted her.
“They came out of nowhere,” he explained. “We’re doomed for sure. Ye should escape, Miss MacEwen, before it’s too late.”
Immediately incensed, Gwendolen strode forward, grabbed two fistfuls of his shirt, and shook him roughly.“Repeat those words again, sir, and I will have your head!”She swung around to face the other clansman. “Go and alert the steward.”
“But—”
“Just do it!”
They had no leader. Her father was dead, and their current laird of war was a drunkard who was not even within the castle walls, for he’d been spending his nights in the village since her father’s passing. Her brother had not yet returned from the Continent. They had only their steward, Gordon MacEwen—who was a brilliant manager of books and numbers, but no warrior.
“Is your weapon loaded?” she asked the flustered clansman. “Do you have enough powder?”
“Aye.”
“Then take aim and defend the gate!”
He hurried into position, while she looked out over the bailey below, where her clansmen were finally assembling in answer to the call. Torches had been lit, but everyone was shouting in confusion, asking too many questions.
“MacEwens, hear me now!” she shouted. “An army is approaching from the east! We will soon be under attack! Arm yourselves and man the battlements!”
