Margaret forced her eyes open again. It pained her to see her dear sister so distressed. She wished she could comfort her.
“Now that you’re free of him, you’ve everything to live for,” Alison said with tears streaming down her face. “Do ye hear me, Margaret? You’re free of him!”
Freedom seemed a poor substitute for her lost dreams.
But it was all she had.
CHAPTER 1
Girnigoe Castle, Caithness
TheScottish Highlands
November 1524
The Orkney men sailed right into Sinclair Bay, the brazen bastards, and tossed Finn over the side of the ship within sight of the Sinclair clan stronghold, Girnigoe Castle. Finn broke to the surface gasping and struggled to stand in the heavy surf.
Laughing, the men on the boat tossed the bag containing the head of the Sinclair chieftain into the sea after him. As Finn lunged for it, a wave crashed over his head and slammed him against the rocks on his wounded leg. Still, he managed to catch the bag before it hit the water.
“A' phlàigh oirbh!”Aplague on you!Finn shouted and raised his fist at the Orkney men as they sailed off.
He staggered onto the beach, then sat down to catch his breath and consider his future.
“What would you advise, uncle?” Finn said, turning to the bloodstained bag beside him, which contained the head of his great-uncle on his mother’s side. “Will your son kill the messenger?”
The other warriors who sailed across the strait to retake Orkney were all dead, either slaughtered on land or drowned at sea. Finn had only been spared to deliver the chieftain’s head to his family.
He looked up at the imposing Girnigoe Castle on the cliff above him and considered the wisdom of completing that task. His Sinclair relations were a suspicious and violent lot, even by Highland standards. And George Sinclair, the dead chieftain’s son and heir, was the worst of them.
What the hell.Finn was desperate for a drink, so he picked up the bloody bag and started for the castle. As he climbed up the steep bluff from the beach, dragging his injured leg, he reflected on lost causes—the dead chieftain’s and his own.
The Sinclair chiefs had been the Earls of Orkney until the king of Norway gave the Orkney Islands to Scotland in the marriage contract between his daughter and the Scottish king. As part of that royal exchange, the Sinclairs were forced to trade their rich lands on Orkney for Caithness, a region with vast expanses of infertile moors in the northeast corner of Scotland, a few miles by sea from their former home.
Though this occurred over fifty years ago, the Sinclairs had long memories, and the loss of Orkney still rankled. When the Sinclair chieftain decided to defy the Scottish king and fight to retake Orkney, his pride outweighed his common sense.
The same could be said of Finn.
He winced when a shot of pain ran up his leg like a hot blade, as if he needed a reminder of the consequences of his error in judgment. He had no obligation to fight for the Sinclair chieftain. Though Sinclair blood ran through his veins, it came from his mother’s side.
Nay, he was lured to fight for his Sinclair kin by a foolish desire, a desire he did not even realize he harbored until his mother’s uncle dangled it in front of him: lands of his own if they won the battle.
The guards at the outer gate were surly, as usual. The Sinclairs were wild and ruthless fighters, but sorely lacking in humor. Though Finn was a close kin of their chieftain, his father was a Gordon, which made Finn a Gordon and a member of an enemy clan. Marriages like his parents’, which were intended to ease the tension between the two powerful clans, had only made things worse.
The guards sent word of his arrival ahead and let him pass through the gate into the west barbican. From there he crossed the first drawbridge, passed under the iron portcullis of the second gate, and crossed the courtyard with the guest hall and lodgings.
Finally, he reached the sliding drawbridge. They would take him over a moat to the main part of the castle, which was built atop a long, narrow outcropping of rock that extended into the sea. It contained the tower, additional lodgings, the chapel, bakehouse, and other essential buildings surrounded by a perimeter wall.
Finn paused to take in the sheer cliffs that fell to the sea beneath the wall. If the new Sinclair chieftain decided to make him a prisoner here at Girnigoe Castle, he’d have a hell of a time getting out.
By the time Finn was escorted into the great hall to give his accounting of the battle to the chieftain’s family, he was unsteady on his feet from loss of blood. He was starving as well since his Orkney captors had not seen fit to feed him in the three days since the fighting. Though he was trailing blood, he did not expect the Sinclairs to ask him to sit, and they didn’t.
The Viking blood was strong in these Sinclairs. George and his three sons were all well over six feet and looked like men who preferred to slice their meat with axes and eat it raw. Though George was nearing fifty, he was the most dangerous and least predictable of the family—except perhaps for his daughter.
Barbara, who was George’s eldest at thirty-two, was considered a handsome woman. Like her brothers, she was tall and looked as if she could hold her own in a fight. When their eyes met, Finn had a vivid memory of ten-year-old Barbara watching him with those same cold gray eyes while she strangled his puppy. He had seen many men die in the years since. And yet the memory of that pup’s death when he was a lad of five stuck with him like a burr.
The dead chieftain’s wife, Mary, a petite, gray-haired woman, entered the hall then, and the weight of the bag suddenly felt heavier. She was both the reason he had climbed the hill to the castle to deliver the news instead of walking off and the reason he’d dreaded coming. Mary was a Sutherland, so Finn was somehow related to her as well, and he’d always been fond of her.
Finding her in this family was like finding a kitten in the midst of a wolf pack.
