“Watchers of the threshold, Watchers of the gate, open hell and seal Chattan’s fate.
“When a Chattan male falls in love, strike his heart with fire from Above.
“Crush his heart, destroy his line;
“Only then will justice be mine.”
Fenella threw her staff down upon her daughter’s funeral pyre. The flames now consumed Rose. Fenella could feel their heat, smell her daughter’s scent—and she threw herself off the rock, following her staff to where it lay upon Rose’s breast. She grabbed her daughter’s burning body and clung fast.
Together they left this world.
Six months to the date after his wedding, Charles Chattan died. His heart stopped. He was sitting at his table, accepting congratulations from his dinner guests over the news his wife was breeding, when he fell facedown onto his plate.
The news of his death shocked many. He was so young. A vital, handsome man with so much to live for. Had he not recently declared to many of his friends that he’d fallen in love with his newwife? How could God cut short his life, especially when he was so happy?
The only clue to his being unwell was that he had complained of a burning sensation in his left arm. It had been uncomfortable but his physician could find nothing wrong with him.
However, Chattan’s marriage was not in vain. Seven months after his death, his wife bore a son to carry on the Chattan name ... a son who also bore a curse.
And so it continued. They tried to stop the curse. Generation after generation attempted to break the witch’s spell, and did not succeed.
Such was the power of Fenella.
Prologue
Camber Hall
Glenfinnan, Scotland
November 15, 1814
What had started as a gentle mist was turning into sheets of rain when they least needed it.
Portia Maclean charged up the attic stairs in a race against the leaks in the roof.
“Cold, drafty, leaky house,” she muttered, stomping on each step in her frustration. There were two buckets up there that were probably full from the rain the day before. She had been hoping she could put off the chore of emptying them. Now she was on a race against Nature.
The attic was not her favorite place. It smelled of must and was full of wooden boxes, crates, trunks and old furniture from what seemed to be centuries of previous tenants.
Portia could not stand the smell of dirt and decay and she hated cobwebs. She always held her breath when she came up here and prayed she never saw any of the spiders she knew had to be lurking in the rafters. Spiders that watched her, waiting for an opportunity tojumpdown upon her.
A shiver went through her at the thought, or at imagining any of the other multiple-legged creatures that lurked with those spiders.
The first bucket was close to the staircase and was, as she had suspected, almost full. She pushed the bridge of her wire spectacles up her nose, waved away a wet cobweb dangling from the ceiling, and picked up the bucket handle with both hands. She lugged it to the small window overlooking the front drive. Humidity had swollen the wood—again—so she had to give the sash a few pounds of her fist for it to open.
She poured the water out, returned the bucket to its place and went in search of the other in the far corner where the attic was darkest, even in the afternoon.
Anxious to finish this unpleasant task so she could return to the fire in the kitchen, Portia wound her way around the accumulated boxes, trunks, tables and crates toward the steady drip ofwater dropping into the bucket. Here was where the roof leak was the worst.
Portia found the bucket and made quick work of emptying it, closing the window when she was done. She was hurrying to place the bucket back under the leak when a streak of white blazed across her path.
She stumbled backward in surprise, reaching out for the first available surface to catch her balance, and ended up tipping a precarious stack of junk down onto her. She fell to the floor in a crash of wood and billows of dust.
Coughing, Portia needed a moment to grasp what had happened to her and to be certain she was all right. The noise of her fall had been so loud, she was surprised her mother and her sister hadn’t heard and come to check on her.
Instead, all was quiet save for the rain on the roof. Her younger sister, Minnie, was probably down in the kitchen, and their mother ... well, Lady Maclean might be in the bedroom almost directly below where Portia was now, but rarely stirred herself for anyone.
Portia wiggled her toes and her fingers. Nothing was broken. She was all right ... but what had that flash of white been? She was a practical woman and not given to flights of fancy, well,other than her very reasonable distaste of bugs. If she saw something, then there was something. But before she could investigate, she needed to dig herself out of this mess.
