Page 2 of Highlander’s Torn Bride

Would the queen and her loyal clans march north to remind them that the royal horse was always the one to back?

But that had been nearly a year ago. Margaret had started to believe that the punishment had secretly been upon them already, for she wasn’t sure that anything would prove to be worse than the months of fear. The queen had, by doing nothing at all, robbed the Gunns of a year of laughter and peaceful sleep. They had been living in a purgatory, unable to think toward a future when they were not sure what it would look like. In Margaret’s opinion, a worse punishment than the clean finality of death.

“What is it then?” Margaret asked, wishing she had taken a moment to listen to the orator before the now booming reactions of the crowd had drowned out his voice.

“Marriage,” the candlemaker said, eyeing Margaret with more interest. “Lady Isobel to one of the Mackay lads.”

Margaret winced. She had been wrong. There were two things crueler than death.

Marriage was one thing, but marriage to a Mackay, a sworn enemy of her clan, was another thing entirely. The Mackays were always the monsters in the bedtime stories designed to keep children from running too far from home, and there was good reason behind it. Generations of Mackay cattle rustlers and bandits had made those lands perilous for any person with the name Gunn. Not, of course, that the Gunns were alone in their fear, for her clan had returned every slight in kind, stoking the fires of distaste into a raging feud.

“The Lady Isobel,” the candlemaker started, causing Margaret to turn back to face her and the ever so curious curl to her lips, “is your cousin, is she not?”

“Aye,” Margaret said. And, before anything more could be asked, she took a step forward, disappearing into the crowd.

The last lingering pinks and purples of the sunset had only just been overcome by the navy of the night sky when Margaret saw her home off in the distance, the light glowing through the windows serving as a beacon to call her home. Finally seeing the house there, high on the hill, made Margaret quicken her pace.

The house, built of whitewashed stone, was one of the grandest in the countryside surrounding Thurso. Her father had built it for her mother shortly after they eloped, and he had always said that it was his way of earning forgiveness from her grandfather, who had not wished for his highborn daughter to run off and marry a merchant—no matter how wealthy and successful the merchant was.

Margaret rushed up the final steps leading to the house and pressed her hands against the door, taking care to avoid the crisscrossed pattern of studded iron straps set into the wood. With a heave that made her sore shoulders object, Margaret pushed it aside, calling, “I’m home…”

Instantly, a thunder of feet echoed above her. Margaret paused, listening to the little thuds move through the house above her before, finally, two sets of little feet, belonging to two little girls that were as different as storm and sun, came rushing down the staircase before her.

“Margy!” shouted the younger of the two, a six-year-old lass with blonde curls that bounced around her face, as she rushed down the last few stairs before throwing herself at Margaret’s legs. “We have been waiting forever for you.”

“Twas a big job today,” Margaret replied. “Why aren’t you in bed, Laura? Or you, Mariah?”

Margaret looked up at Mariah, the older of her two younger sisters, and winced when she saw the expression on her face. The family had always joked that Mariah and Laura had inherited their personality from their hair: Laura, bright and bubbly, had hair the color of sunshine; Mariah, with unusually bright red hair, had the sort of personality one would expect from an untempered wildfire. Which meant that now, as she stared up at Mariah looking red-faced and angry, Margaret knew the worst was coming.

“Tell Margaret what you did today, Laura,” Mariah said through gritted teeth. “Tis why we stayed up to wait for her.”

Margaret watched Laura take a piece of her hair and twist it around her finger. It was a tell, one she had inherited from their mother. Whatever Laura was about to say, Margaret would have to assume that it was a lie.

“Well, I was trying to help some lost kitten, when—”

“Nah!” came a voice to Margaret’s left. “Start again and say it true.”

Margaret’s eyes drifted over to the woman standing in the doorway. Tall and lean, with flour dusted across her face like freckles, Ann was the picture of a perfectly terrifying Highland housekeeper.

“Well, you see, I was playing in the rocks on the backside of the hill—” Laura started, looking down at the worn floorboards and twisting her toe against one of the knots.

“The ones that we are not allowed to go near!” Mariah interjected, the pitch of her voice high as she attempted to withhold the gust of anger within her.

“Yeah, those ones. Well, I slipped and fell and accidentally tore a hole in my boot,” Laura finished, spitting out the conclusion as quickly as she could.

As if she now had permission to release, Mariah sprung into a tirade about how ferociously Laura ought to be punished. Playing on those rocks had always been a capital offense in this household, owing to the fact that the hill there was steep and the rocks jagged. Her older brother had played there once in his youth, resulting in a gash from shoulder to navel that they had believed to be fatal. He survived, but had never outgrown the stiffness in his arm. Laura escaping the fall with only a ruined boot was nothing short of a miracle.

But, even as fear for her sister’s safety made every nerve in her body tingle, all Margaret could feel was the weight of a few small coins in her pocket. They weren’t enough for new shoes.

“You should lock her in her room for a week so she can learn how to sit still and entertain herself in a more civilized way!” Mariah was shouting when Margaret finally pulled her thoughts out of her pocket.

“Enough! Go to bed, both of you. We will discuss punishments in the morning,” she said.

Laura, seeming to think that Margaret’s response meant she was getting away with it, smiled and went rushing up the stairs, pushing past Mariah, who had a strange look of calm on her face. Margaret caught her sister’s eye and sighed, giving her a little wave of encouragement to speak whatever it was that was still on her mind.

“You ken, if you let me go work with you, we could pay for new boots more easily,” Mariah said.

“No,” Margaret replied, “absolutely not.”