The Drowning Sea

Veronica Wolff

With thanks to my dad

and to Patrick, my first mate and big brother,

for explaining how to sail a ship,

and then sink it.

Bheir an cuan a chuid fliein a-mach.

The sea will claim its own.

One

Isle of Lewis, 1662

Iain leaned down and swung his blade. It landed in the thick slab and a familiar jolt shot up his arm. He twisted the handle, pulling the iron through and out. The peat answered with a dull suck.

He stood. Studied his work. He'd been stacking the bricks in low piles. He wiped his hands down the front of his plaid. The muscles in his shoulders and arms hummed. Using his sleeve, he mopped the sweat from his brow and knew a moment of raw pleasure at the kiss of chill air on hot skin rubbed dry. He pulled a deep breath in and savored the scent of diit and island air in the back of his throat.

There was a scream, and he staitled.

The shriek of an animal stuck in the bog?

Another scream, ripping down to where he stood in the belly of the glen. A woman's scream.

He tossed his peat iron atop the bricks, turned, and ran along dry ground. If there was a woman trapped, he had no choice but to run. The bog drowned folk as quick as the sea.

The sound had come from over the hill, where the muck was thick and wet. Peat looked just like land, until it sucked you in. And then even the bravest of men knew fear. Stuck in the bog, panic seized a mans chest, until the black muck became nothing less than evil itself, oozing from a crack in the eaith, pulling all down to greet the devil.

He crested the hill and spotted her. He galloped down, and speed made his strides clumsy. He skidded to a stop.

The prettiest girl in the world stood knee-deep in the muck. He'd only ever seen her from afar, and only a few times at that. She was even more beautiful up close, so lovely and perfect, pale and blonde, like a creature crafted of innocence and fine cream and sunshine.

He knew an eternity as time stalled and stretched in a single pound of his heart. Iain never dreamed he'd ever be within reach of her. He never would've thought it possible, but seeing her now, suddenly everything seemed possible.

She gave a tug to her dark blue frock and frowned.

Fascinated, he watched her bite at her lip, muttering a curse that should grace no high-born lass's mouth.

He felt a smile crook his lips.

She felt his presence and turned.

Her body froze, but her face lit a thousand different ways. Frustration turned like quicksilver into anger. Shed spied his amusement and didn't much like it.

He schooled his features, trying his best to look grave.

The bonny cream of her cheeks flushed pink. How soft that skin would be.

His smile flickered again at the thought, and this time there was no fighting it. He felt the tug of it spread broad across his cheeks.

Her face seemed to narrow in on itself, and she stared, looking as though shed give him a verbal thrashing if only she knew the right words.

The urge to laugh swelled in his belly. It was a struggle, but he muted it to a low chuckle. "The more you dance about, aye, the more the bog will suck you in."

"I am not dancing." She bit out each word with affronted dignity, as if she were taking wee nibbles from a triangle of toast instead of speaking in anger.

His smile renewed, and with it her ire.

"If you would be a gentleman, and please—"

Iain Gillespie Mac Nab was no fool. He wiped his palms once more on his plaid and, in two long steps, was

by her side, perched on a sliver of dry earth.

She gave an outraged squeal as he scooped her free of the bog and swung her up in his arms.

"Do you know who I am?" she sputtered.

"I do . . ." He gave her a quick bounce to settle her in his arms and laughed at her indignant squawk. "And I don't."

"What do you mean you do and you—Stop that at once!"

"Stop what?" he asked, giving himself two more seconds before shifting his hand from her rump.

"You know very well what I meant."

"Shall I put you down then?" He made as though to drop her into the muck, taking the opportunity to graze his cheek along her hair. She wore it long and loose, a yellow spill down her back, shining bright in the sunlight.

"Oh. bother."

"Carrying you is no bother/" he said grandly, backing away from the bog.

"No, I said oh, bother.' " She squirmed, looking down her legs. "That . . . that bog ate my shoes."

He noticed her feet for the first time. Stockings bunched low at her ankles, and the fabric was soaked black, hanging heavy and long from her toes. They were the tiniest feet hed ever seen on a person full-grown.

"Such wee paws," he exclaimed. Tis a wonder you don't blow over in the wind."

She looked quickly away, biting a smile from her lips, and he decided he'd not release her until he teased a full grin from that mouth.

'There's naught for it." He began strolling calmly across the uneven terrain, headed toward the sea. "Ill simply have to carry you home."

She twisted in his arms, shock widening her eyes. "You cannot carry me all the way home."

"Aye, and I can.

"But I'm heavy," she protested, her pale brow fun owing.

"Och, you^Jre no heavier than a bird. And you cant walk with your feet bare."

"You don't even know where I live."

"Aye, I do at that." He purposely, mischievously, avoided her eyes.

"So you do know who I am."

"I said I do and I don't. All know the laird s daughter." He stared at her then, slowly grazing his eyes over her. "Bonnier than the first heather in bloom, hair spilling like honey down the lovely curve of her back."

His smile feigned innocence, but he risked letting some darker thing flash in his gaze. A darker, wanting thing that stiffened his body against the feel of her soft figure held tight in his arms.

Then why do you say you doivt know me?" Her voice warbled and her cheeks reddened, and it gratified him.

"Aye, well, though all ken the fair and treasured daughter of the MacLeod, few are privy to her given name."

"Oh," she said simply.

"Oh. Your name is Oh, is it?"

"No."

"Ah."

He let the silence hang. Shed be unaccustomed to such chattel with a man, and he could tell it flustered her. He liked being the cause of her discomfort. He prolonged it, hoping to see her cheeks flush pink once more.

He imagined shed flush so if kissed.

For surely the MacLeod s cherished daughter had never been kissed. He smiled at her and winked.

"Cassiopeia," she blurted.

A laugh burst free of his throat. "Cassia-what-a?"

"My name. Its Cassiopeia."

"Now that's not a name to roll easy from the tongue, is it?" He bit his tongue between his teeth and leaned

in close to her.

And there it was, the answering pink flush.

His smile faded as lightheaited delight slid into something that put him on his guard. Sweet, bonny Cassiopeia would break a mans heart some day, he predicted.

"No/" she allowed, with a small smile. "It's not a common name."

He adjusted his arm under her knees, settling her higher along his chest to make the climb uphill.

Whether it was discomfort from the silence or a polite way to call attention from his momentary exeition, she spoke on. "My father. He is a devotee of astronomy.'

Ms that so?^rr

She caught the wary sarcasm in his tone and her eyes narrowed.

"Och, easy, Cassie, love, I'm a peat farmer and son of a peat farmer. I know not of astronomy."

¹¹ Do you sail?⁷

^uAye, better than I can walk."

"And how do you steer?"

"My boat? By the stars . . . and I see where this is leading."

"Good, then you should know that, if you can steer by the stars, you, too, are a student of astronomy."

"I read the stars better than I read words on paper. I've just never known the Latin for them."

"Greek. Cassiopeia is from the Greek."

"Then good, aye? Your father and I will have much to discuss when I come to ask for your hand." He gave her a rakish wink.

Her tone grew instantly wary. "Please don't . . . you'll not . . . please leave my father out of this ..."

For the first time he wondered what had brought the sequestered MacLeod daughter so far afield. "What brought a bonny lass like yourself to the bog? Dropped from the sky like an angel, is it?"

She seemed to fret over his question, but her darling shrug made him decide to press the issue.

"Truly, lass, it's rare Ive seen you outside your family's keep. Trust me," he said, cocking a brow, "I'd

remember."

"I don't know . . ." she stammered.

"Yon don't know." He nodded thoughtfully. "So you are an angel."

^uNo," she replied coyly, fighting a smile. "I just came because . . ."

"Because?" I just wanted to see," she said finally.

"Ah," Iain said with mock gravity. "And have you seen?"

"Aye. Look/" she said suddenly. She pointed his attention into the distance, but not before he spied the blush warming her cheeks.

Her home was on the horizon, a stern, gray tower rising from a high rock at the edge of the sea. As they neared, he felt her bristle. Glancing down at her pretty face, he saw something pinch at her brow.

"Really/" she said, "you cannot carry me the whole way home." Nerves strung her voice tight.

It would be the laird—her father—who d be the cause. The notion made him defiant, and he pulled her more tightly against him. "You re afraid of your father."

"Aye," she replied, and her plainspoken tone took him aback. "As you should be."

He leaned in close to whisper at her ear, ^WI fear no man."

He felt her breath catch, or maybe he imagined it, but an urge claimed him all the same. He took the barest nip of that ear, perfect as a wave-swept top shell on the sand.

"Go to the side then," she said weakly. "If you must." She pointed him to an entrance off a small courtyard and what would be the kitchens.

"Oh, I must," he muttered under his breath.

They readied their destination, and reluctantly he let her go. She was shoiter than he'd realized, her head coming only to his chest, and he fought the urge to pull her back and tuck her close in his arms. "Your home, fair mistress," he said, sweeping a playful bow.

¹¹ You . . ." She froze. Battling a smile from her face, she pointed hesitantly at his cheek. "Oh my."

"Oh your . . . ?" he asked, leaning into her hand. He raised his brows, determined to see that smile in full bloom.

Finally her grin spread. It crinkled the corners of her eyes and set a single, deep dimple on her cheek. Iain thought, until that moment, he'd never truly felt the sun shine upon him.

She rustled in the pocket of her ski its, retrieving a small square handkerchief. Lace trimmed the edges and an elegant blue C was embroidered in the corner. "I'm afraid you have a bit of ... of hog on your face/'

She gave him an apologetic smile as she began to wipe at his face. Her features were still, her eyes determined, as she concentrated on swabbing the peat from his jaw. He savored the touch of her fingers, gentle and cool.

She was so close to him and, for the moment, unaware. He stared openly. She pursed her lips, and he noticed a faint brown freckle gracing the coiner of her mouth.

His chest tightened. He was overwhelmed by the desire to twine his fingers through her hair, to cup her face gently in his hands and pull that fair mouth to his.

There," she said with a pat to his cheek. Her eyes grew quiet. "How . . . how can I thank you?" She struck him as reluctant as he to part, and it made him brave.

"You can kiss me."

"I cannot!" Though her reply was immediate, awareness flushed from her cheeks down to the top of her deliciously plump bosom.

And he knew then that he would kiss her.

He bent to her and whispered, "You're not going to thank me?"

"Of course. I ... I am very grateful.

"Then just a small kiss." He tapped his finger on his cheek. "Just here."

He leaned close, offering his cheek, and she reflexively pecked a prim little kiss. Whether her response had been involuntary or impulsive, he didn't know. But he felt the breeze tickle her hair against his neck, and a great truth flashed to him in that moment: his life would never be the same.

"Now the other side." His voice seemed to him ragged, uncooperative.

"What?"

The other side/" lie told her, turning his face to present his other cheek. That was only half a thank you after all."

She thought about it this time, and he worried he'd gone too far. But she leaned closer. The fresh, sweet smell of her filled his senses, and his heart swelled.

She leaned to buss his cheek, but he turned his face at the last instant, catching her lips in a quick kiss.

She gasped in surprise. And then, remarkably, she simply swatted his arm, smiling her scold. He felt a bursting in his chest.

ⁿOch, bonny Cassie . . /'

And then it was his cheeks he felt grow hot, and she giggled. It was she, suddenly, who had the upper hand. She knew it and laughed. It was such a musical, sweet sound. A sound to fill him.

"But I don't even know your name," she murmured, and he decided hed not rest until he could hear that sweet whispering voice, spoken for only him, every day, for the rest of his days.

"Iain. lam Iain Mac Nab."

"Iain MacNab," she repeated, her eyes locked with his.

His heart wrenched from his chest at the sound of his name on her lips.

"Say you II meet me," he whispered. "Say you'll see me again. Tomorrow. And the day after that."

She blushed and looked away.

"At Callanish. Beneath the standing stones." He took her chin gently, tilted her face up to him. The blush still stained her cheeks, but endless possibility danced in her sky blue eyes. "111 be waiting for you, bonny Cassie. Tomorrow, until forever."

Two

Two

Iain sat down hard at the foot of the tallest stone. Leaning back, lie let the cool granite leach the nervous heat from his body. He'd been pacing and sitting and rising and pacing all morning.

Opening his sporran, he peeked once more at the wee treasure he'd brought Cassie. He'd found the shiny, black seed that morning in the surf and had taken it as an omen.

"Naught but a fools whigmaleerie. ' He gave a small, wistful laugh. "I'm as silly as a tippling fishwife."

No surprise, that. Cassie s beauty would inspire boyish foolishness in the gravest of men. Iain traced her features in his mind. Could her hair truly have been as shiny as he remembered? Her eyes as blight?

Where was she?

He patted his sporran shut and sighed. "What'd you fancy would happen, lad? All, but it would've been nice.' The peat boy and the laird's daughter. Very nice indeed.

And very impossible. Enough lazing,' he grumbled. There wasn't exactly a peat fairy who'd show up to do his work.

He stood and gave a brusque brush to his plaid, and with a last look at the stones, headed back toward the bog.

"lain!"

The shout rang clear across the field. He stilled. Had thoughts of fairies among the standing stones well and truly addled his mind?

"Iain, wait!'

Had she come? He wanted to believe it but couldn't. Slowly he turned.

But there Cassie was. And God save him, she was running. She'd hiked up her skiits and was running to

him as though she were a girl half her age.

He laughed, and she looked abashed, and so lie ran to her, too, shouting, "You're the bonniest sight in all Scotland."

They met halfway, and they stood for a moment in silence. She panted from the exertion, her lips trembling with a shy smile. He thought his own smile might split his face in two.

"You came," he said finally. A burst of joy found his hands taking her by the shoulders. He couldn't believe she stood before him. "You truly came, Cassie."

"I . . ." She looked down, and he saw that she kept her ski its gripped tight in her fists.

She was a bashful wisp of a thing. And she'd come, to see him, despite it.

"My dress." She frowned and brushed at her clothes, still not meeting his eyes. "It isn't my best, you know. It was hard, yesterday, explaining away the stains on my hem. I needed to wear something more . . . sturdy."

Iain finally registered the practical brown linen she wore. "You fash yourself over your . . . your frock there?" He laughed. "Och, lass, don't you know you re the loveliest creature ever to set foot on this isle?"

The thought reminded him of what he held in his sporran. "All, but you must come, Cass. Come bide a wee, beneath the stones." He reached out and gently took her hand.

Her features eased, and her eyes rose to meet his. It knocked the air from his lungs. Cassie s eyes were as blue as he'd remembered. Bluer even. Vivid, like the petals of some otherworldly wildflower.

"Like some lovely fairy you are," he whispered. "Come, Cass. Ive a gift for you."

^UA gift? For me?" She gave him a look of such guileless surprise, lie laughed from the sheer pleasure of it.

"Aye, for you and you alone." He led her to the stones and sat beside her in the heather, pretending to adjust his plaid so as to nestle just a bit closer by her side.

He plucked the seed from his sporran and she gasped.

His eyes leapt back to her face and he studied her, trying to interpret her every aspect, every blink, every breath. "I see you ken what this is."

"Airne Moire/' she marveled. "A Marys bean. My father has one. He had it set in silver." Wide eyes met his. "How did you find it?"

"I came upon it just this morning. I walked the shore, thinking of you, of course/' He winked. "And there it lay, in the sand."

She looked down quickly, blushing. The sight tugged a low, husky laugh from his throat.

He turned her hand over and placed the seed there. It was black and hard, like a rounded stone, and just the right size to nestle perfectly in her palm.

He couldn't help himself. He brushed her exposed wrist, just for a moment, lightly with his thumb. It felt such an intimate thing, stroking along the fine webbing of veins that lined her delicate skin. They led to her heart, a heart he vowed then and there to make his own.

"Some folk believe they come all the way from Africa/" he said, his voice suddenly hoarse. They say a Har y s bean can fIoat for twenty yeais."

"Africa?" She scoffed. "My maid says they're fairy eggs. Uibhean sithean. You should make a charm from it." She tried to hand the seed back to him. ^v Tis very good luck indeed/'

"No," he said, wrapping her fingers around the seed. He hesitated, then kept her hand held in his. Tis your very good luck, Cassie. It's a gift. From me to you."

"But I could never accept such a thing."

"Lass, its truly but a trifle." He squeezed her hand. It was so small and frail in his. His heart clenched—a heart he feared already belonged to her. "If only you knew. Its the least of what Id have you take from me."

Three

Three

Iain waited for her in their usual place. They'd been meeting in secret for weeks, always beneath the Callanish stones. He imagined the towering, gray monoliths were their sentinels, guarding them from prying eyes.

Though lie knew that none would see them. Lewis folk worked, and hard. They didn't trudge across fields in the middle of the day simply to visit the standing stones. None would stumble upon two sweethearts submerged in the late summer heather.

The wind tossed her hair as she approached. It was long and smooth, and the sun caught it, igniting it into rays of light.

"Cassie, my love," he said, laughing and curling her to him to kiss the top of her head. "Could you not wear a bonnet? You sneak from your fathers keep like a wee spy, and yet all of Lewis must see that bonny hair of yours. You re named for a constellation, but Id swear you shine brig liter than any star."

Smiling, she ignored his comment and stood up on tiptoes for a proper kiss. Her lips were cool from her brisk walk, but they soon warmed at the touch of his skin.

She brought her hand to his chest, idly threading her fingers in the folds of his plaid. "I'm late."

"You re here." He leaned down to steal another kiss. She was sweeter than the ripest fruit, and he could kiss her every day for the rest of his days and never get enough. " Tis all that matters."

"But your work/" she protested. "You need to do your work. I hate the thought that you were here waiting, without me, yet you II need to leave just as soon. I wish we had more time."

"I went to the fields early. I'll return late," he said dismissively. "It matters not."

He pulled her into the shelter of the stones. They were tall and grave, casting long shadows along the

heather that grew thick at their feet.

Iain threaded his fingers with hers and rained hungry kisses at her neck and cheek and mouth as lie eased them down. "All that matters is that you're here now."

His knee touched the ground and he froze. There was ever so slight a reserve in the way she kissed him back, and he sensed it at once. "Cassie, love, is there something the matter?"

He pulled away and saw the desolation in her eyes. "Och, I'm a brute/' he said, tenderly smoothing the sleeves of her dress. He guided her down to sit side by side in the heather. "I'm like a lad with his first kiss. I'm sorry, it's just Ive missed you so—"

"lain," she sighed with a smile. "I love your kisses. Its not that, tis . . ."

"What then?" He traced the hair from her face. "What has your lovely eyes in such a muddle?"

"It's my father."

"Youi father," he repeated flatly. He'd known this day would come. Cass had lived a sheltered life. It was only a matter of time before she glimpsed the true heart of the MacLeod.

"My father . . . lies gone too far. I'm afraid, Iain."

Iain had known that the concerns of a daughter anxious of her strict father would someday crystallize into fear. Still, he wasn't prepared for the heartbreak he heard in her sweet voice.

"I know you are," lie said gently. "But can you tell me . . . what happened, Cass?"

"I ... lie .. ." She drew a deep breath in, settling herself. "I'd snuck out into the kale garden, to come to you." A smile ghosted across her face and then was gone. "But the cook was out there. And so I hid. She was talking to the other women. I heard them, heard her tell it . . . My father has a ... a natural child." Shed whispered the last of it. The mother lives in the village. They said she was . . . unwilling."

His face fell. Such a thing would shock dear Cassie. And pain her. She was so sheltered from the world.

And yet lie sensed she longed for more. She yearned for experience, for a life rich witli family and friends. He imagined it was what had drawn her so far from home on the day they first met. She sought more freedom, more knowledge. But he wondered if she were ready for what she'd find.

He didnt know why the MacLeod sequestered her from the world. Iain suspected the man wanted to keep her pure in thought and deed, an unsullied treasure whose ultimate value would be measured, not by a father, but by a laird seeking advantage.

Iain shuddered.

"I know/' he told her quietly.

He suspected the MacLeod had even more bastard children, though Iain wouldn't share that now. Cassie's mother had died giving birth, and the laird wasn't one to moderate his needs. Iain would spare Cassie this one bit of knowledge, this Pandoras box of secrets that'd been kept from her.

"You know? What do you know? What have you heard?"

^uOch, love . . ." He paused. How to say it? He had his suspicions, but there was one child whom he knew without a doubt. ^v ' Tis wee Janet."

"Jan?" Confusion wrinkled her eyes. "Your aunts child? But your uncle—

"Died a full year before she was born."

He was silent then, letting the truth sink in. Letting the picture form in her mind. His Aunt Mornas lone blonde girl in a cottage full of black-haired sons.

"Oh," she said simply.

"Ease your mind, love." He stroked her back lightly. There's naught to fear. But you must never speak of it again. Never speak of it with him."

"I already did. Tis why I'm late." She worried her ski its in her hands. "I had to know what it means. For me." She shut her eyes then, marveling. "A sister . . ."

Some noxious thing spiked through his veins, his body on instant alert. "You mentioned this to the MacLeod?"

Opening her eyes, she nodded wordlessly, and fear for her gripped his chest. The laird had fathered only one legitimate child, his treasured Cassiopeia, whom he jealously concealed from the world. He wouldn't take her sudden knowledge well.

"You must never speak of it with him again. You mustn't think of her as a sister."

"But he's my father, and—"

"He's the laird before he's your father," Iain said sharply. "He wakes in the morning, and it's the MacLeod who dons his plaid. Tis the MacLeod you see at the hearth. Don't be fooled, love. When he makes a decision for you, it's the MacLeod deciding. Not a father."

Iain grew cold, remembering her original words. "What did he do to make you afraid?"

"He raged/" she whispered. ' Twas as though Id never truly seen him. He grabbed me. Shut me in my

loom."

Iain's fists flexed. No man would touch her in anger. Not the MacLeod, not any man, if he could help it.

He registered what must've happened next, and his eyes grew wide with disbelief. "And you snuck out?"

"I did. But I'm afraid of what will happen when I return."

"We must go back at once." His mind raced. Mindlessly, he stroked her hair, thinking of a plan. "Well fetch a cloak to cover this bright, bonny hair. We send you in as you went out, through the kitchen gardens, and pray folk will think they've seen a scullion."

"Not yet," she said quickly, and the plea in her voice took him aback. "My fathers gone to see some lord about his cattle. He wont be home til nightfall. Please, Iain."

It was the sound of his name on her lips that swayed him. "As you wish it, love."

They sat in silence fora while. Cassie lay in the heather, resting her head in his lap. Iain stroked her hair, stroked down her back, willing her nervous heart to calm.

He loved her so. Hed never known such contentment. He didn't want it ever to end. He would make himself worthy of the beautiful girl lying near him in the heather. And then lied take her away, far away from this man whom she feared.

Hed always dreamt of having more, of being more. And now that he'd met Cassie, he'd been working day and night. She said she loved him as he was, but hed not make a formal proposal of marriage until he could stand before the MacLeod and ask for her hand like a proper gentleman.

"There's a parcel of land/" he began tentatively, "near Stoi noway. The earl there fought with my father, for Charles, in the wars. The king rewarded him with lands. Ive been in contact, and he tells me lied let me buy a parcel. I'd be more than merely his tenant. He tells me I could act as his factor, like."

He paused, hesitant. Her breath had stilled. Would she want this life that he imagined for them? Cassie was accustomed to a castle. She was queen of his heart, but in choosing him, her kingdom would be a mere cottage. "I'd build a fine home. Twould be small, but it would do for two. Or more," he added with a wistful smile, "if they were small."

She was silent for a time, and he didn't press her. He simply continued to stroke her hair, memorizing her every curve and shadow as she lay in the heather. What did she think of his plan? Would she see herself in it?

"My father . . ." She hesitated, worry knitting her brow.

"Your father is my concern now, lass. If it kills me, 111 not abide you living in fear of any man." His hand stilled on her back. "I'll work night and day. I'll do whatever it takes to deserve you, to have you. Even if it means I must steal you away in the night."

Slowly she turned. Her head still resting in his lap, she looked up at him, and the adoration in her eyes made his heait soar.

"You ease my soul, Iain Gillespie Mac Nab."

He leaned to kiss her, and she stopped him with a gentle finger to his lips. Gravely, she said, "But you must make me a promise. Here, by the standing stones. Promise me. Whatever happens, promise always to meet me, just here. As long as you live, promise to come to me, just here, come what may."

"I promise you," lie said quickly, earnestly. He took her hand tightly in his. The air around them felt charged, fraught with the intensity, the solemnity of the moment. Even the stones themselves seemed larger, colder, more ominous. "I promise you, Cassie, my only love. As long as I live, I will be here for you. Come what may, you shall call me husband. I swear it."

He looked up at the slabs of granite, hovering like silent monks tall above them. "And may the stones themselves seal my vow."

Four

Four

¹ You're a wee Diana."

"Diana?" Cassie turned her face up to him. Bright and bonny, she was a slip of sunlight nestled on his arm.

Confusion flickered in her eyes, as did something else. Some feminine tiling. The quick jealousy that takes a woman at the mention of another.

"Aye." Iain bent, kissed her yellow hair. "YouYe not the only one versed in myth, my wee Cassiopeia. Diana, the huntress."

She betrayed a flash of relief, then pure pleasure at the comparison.

He slung the brace of rabbit over his shoulder. Rabbit shed trapped herself. He made as if to bend beneath its weight, and Cassie giggled.

Iain had not a care by hei side. Cut peat, cruel lairds, fathers and their bastards. It all slipped away when sweet Cass was near.

The feel of her at his side was irresistible. He pulled her close. Smoothed his free hand along the swell of her hip.

Their secret meetings had continued for months now. Hed memorized her every curve, and yet lie couldn't get enough. Would never get enough.

He kissed her forehead, cool in the late-morn ing breeze. "When will you make me an honest man, dear Cass?" he whispered into her hair. "I'm close, love. By the end of the season, I'll have enough to get our land. Twill be modest. And we wont have help. Just you and me. But it'll be ours, Cass."

He was a patient man. Hed save his money, bide his time. Hed buy their land and build their cottage. And then hed propose properly, on bended knee, as good as any gentleman farmer.

Shed say yes, how could she not? Cassie was his, just as he belonged to her. It was a thing he knew, indelible and forever, like the tides or the rising sun.

His hand ran over something thick and hard in the pocket of her ski its. "What's this, then?"

"Bread." She tilted her chin in ready defiance, as if he'd have a problem with a mere heel of bread.

"Bread? Are you mounting a wee feast?"

^uNo. Yes." She looked away. "Well, if my father isn't going to do right by my sister—"

"Your half sister," he reminded her. "Your fathers by-blow."

Cassie flinched at the term.

A familial nagging fear eclipsed the light in his heart. Shed heard the talk and had sought out his Aunt Horna to see for herself. Shed found a cottage full of hungry souls, and it'd lit a fire beneath her, transformed her. His Cass, the bonny crusader. It was only a matter of time before she mustered courage enough to press her father directly. "Tis a dangerous topic to be caviling on about," he warned.

She feared the MacLeod. As she should. But hers was a daughter's fear. Shed known only the firm hand and quick temper of a father. Cassie didn't truly understand what it was to fear her father the laird, the man. A chief who'd not appreciate being held to task for a child born on the wrong side of the sheets.

"Fine. Half sister," she amended in the saucy way he recognized and, Lord save him, loved so well.

Shed passed her girlhood under lock and key. And yet, in her isolation, shed bloomed like some hothouse flower. Flourishing in unexpected ways. The laird's sheltered daughter had developed all the piss and vinegar of a village scamp.

^uIs this what the rabbit is about?"

"I must bring all I can," she insisted. "There's never enough food on Horna's table, and wee Jan is growing like a weed now. She walks!"

"Aye, they've a habit of that," he said darkly.

"Well, I've not known many children."

Her voice was dispirited, but he had to press his point. He knew his words would sting, but he needed to

make her understand. "You're still so young yourself, in your way. I beg you to have a care. Stealing rabbit from your fathers land — "

"Its not stolen. I'm the daughter of the MacLeod. Everything on the land is mine, or might as well be."

"Aye, that's as it may be, but pilfer enough from your father's territory and someone somewhere will take note. Its a hanging offense, Cassie."

"Don't be ridiculous! My father would never hang me."

"Of course he'd not." He sighed. How to make it clear to her? "But they'll be wanting to blame someone."

She ignored his words, and he shook his head in defeat.

Like a cloud blown clear of the sky, she quickly brightened, and he knew there d be no more talk of such things that day.

And curse him, but already he felt his attention pulled back to the curve of her hip and the swell of her bosom pressed firm at his side.

"Don't you want to know how I did it?"

"Aye," he conceded, eyeing the rabbits. "I have wondered."

"I found the den and set a wee trap."

"A wee trap, eh?" He gave her rump a squeeze. "Just as I set for you in the bog?"

"Iain Mac Nab, you be serious!" She gave a swat to his arm.

"Oh, I'm nothing if not serious." He pulled her closer, leaning down to speak low in her ear. "My trap was years in the making. Set by the fates themselves, generations ago."

He pulled from her, cupped her chin. His tone grew somber as he gazed intently in her eyes. "You see, 'twas the fates themselves who sprinkled heather all along the isle. And the heather turned to dirt, and the dirt to peat. And the peat and I, we both waited. Waiting and watching for the day when the most beautiful, the truest and the sweetest of all women crossed our path. Twas the most mysterious, the most potent of traps, set to snare my one true love."

"And did it?" she asked weakly. "Snare your one true love?"

"Did it? Oli aye, Cassie." He took her shoulders gently in his hands. "Did it indeed."

He studied her, studied this most miraculous of gifts before him. Cassie, so lovely and kind. She was an open book and a riddle both. She who broke and mended his heart every day, a thousand times a day.

"Do you not know it, Cass? How very much I love you?" He kissed her tenderly on her brow. Kissed her hair, her cheeks, her eyes. "For I do love you. More than my life, more than this earth, more than heaven above, you are the beating of my heart and the breath in my lungs."

"As I love you, Iain Mac Nab." Her voice was a sigh on the wind, strained tig lit, as if speaking freely might loose the very soul from her body.

And, in it, he heard eternity.

He didn't know how to contain himself. How to contain this feeling. This love for her. This want. He kissed her then, but tenderly, his lips merely a whisper over hers.

Iain pulled away. Her eyes were still shut, her lips slightly parted. He memorized her face, and he knew the image would be imprinted upon him forever.

Her eyes opened, and meeting his scrutiny, she smiled at once. Cassie gave her head a tilt. "But do you still want to know about the rabbits?"

His laugh was loud and joyful. "Och, Cassie, my love," lie boomed, hugging her close. "Your wee hunting victory is the only thing I want to hear about."

"Well," she began, lowering her voice as though about to spin the tallest of tales. "I found a den. Not far from the keep. It's off the kale garden, and so I can sneak out, none the wiser. Ive been watching it for weeks. Until finally. Finally I made a wee trap. I wove it out of reeds/" she said proudly. "And this morning, sure as eggs, two rabbits scampered out and — "

She was too much. Too sweet, too innocent, too fine.

He dropped the pair of rabbits tied at his shoulder. "And . . ."he said huskily, scooping her up and carrying her from the drove path.

She squealed her surprise and pleasure as he rolled them into a nest of deep bracken. The ferns were

damp and cool, webbing over their heads like curtains of green lace.

^wTwas it a trap like this one? Or was it more like a wee basket you made with your reeds?"

"Aye." Her voice wavered. She licked her lips.

"Aye like a trap, or aye, a basket?" He traced errant wisps of hair from the delicate arch of her brow, stroked them from her forehead. "And I must wonder, perhaps they didn't ken they'd been trapped. Mayhap they thought themselves still in their den."

Her hair spread like a halo around her, exposing her throat, her neck. He leaned down, tasted her, nuzzled her. He whispered in her ear, "And do you ken what wee bunnies like to do in their dens?"

^uEat wee turnips?" Her voice shook, and their laughter was a momentary respite from the tension between them.

"Aye, but what is it that makes them hungry?" He tenderly nipped at her, and their desire raged anew. Her heart pounded against him, and he pressed closer to feel it. That was his heart beating in her chest. "What it is that whets their appetites?"

He felt her legs grow loose, opening to him. She sighed his name, and he had to grip her hips, needing desperately to hold on to something that would anchor him to this earth.

She was unschooled in the ways of the flesh and yet . . . Instinctively, she spread her legs. Instinctively arched her back, offering him her breasts. And lie knew. Cassie was like tinder ready to spark, and God help him, the wildfire would consume them both.

His body grew tight. He was a patient man. But, lie realized, not that patient. She was the bride of his heart. He had to have her as his wife in truth, and soon.

He nibbled at her pale throat. Dipped his head lower. Lower than he'd ever allowed himself to go. He traced kisses along the neckline of her bodice. Her skin was soft and full at his lips. Her moan nearly unmanned him.

He needed to stop but couldn't. He wanted so desperately to pull her gown from her, to take those breasts in his mouth. Hed waited so long to taste her softness. Every renegade brush of bosom along his side or

against his arm, had him fantasizing what it would be to palm her bare flesh. Feel her silken skin under his fingertips.

He slowly kissed her until he reached the center of her bodice. The neckline dipped down, exposing the merest hint of a crease between her breasts.

He could fight it no longer. He traced it with his tongue, echoing the V of her gown. He dipped in and down, between her breasts. The soft give of flesh in his mouth drove him over the edge.

His body raged, hard for her. He knew he should stop. He needed to stop. Before he was no longer able.

And yet, he couldn't bear to. Not yet.

Slowly, he drew his hand from her hip, brought it to her waist. An image flashed to him, a fantasy, the vision of his hand just there, guiding her on a dance floor.

Someday they'd be wed. Someday he'd guide her in their first dance. Someday that would come to pass.

The thought brought him back to himself. He'd not take her in the dirt like an animal. When their time came, hed see her atop fine linens with a down-soft mattress beneath her.

He inhaled sharply. Pulled his head up to meet her gaze. Her eyes were half lidded from pleasure, and he almost let madness take him then. To see her lust echoing his? It was sheer gritted will that kept him in check.

He gave her what he hoped was a light smile, yet he knew the shadow of his wanting was still in his eyes.

He needed to stop, but he had to take just one bit more. Just one kiss, before they rose from the bracken.

Hed ferry her wee trophies to his aunt's table. Hed be carefree and easy, working his fields and saving his coin, patiently waiting until the last anxieties about her father were wiped from her brow.

Hed pretend he didn't long for her day and night, pretend lie was more than half a man without her. He'd let one more day pass without pressing his suit. Too hard.

But first hed kiss her, just once more.

He leaned close, pressed his lips to hers. His heart galloped in his chest, but still, he kept the kiss sweet. Tasted her but lightly.

Cassie twined tender fingers in his hair, and the gesture pricked some sharp emotion. It ached in his throat, filled his heait.

And lie marveled how always with Cassie, each time, every time, each kiss was always better than the last.

Five

Five

"And you're certain your lass survived the day without you?" Gordie's tone was somber, but his eyes glowed with amusement as he rowed their small fishing boat to shore.

^uAye," Niall agreed with his brother. "I didn't know they could even be apart."

"Enough, lads, enough." Iain beamed. He loved his friends' ribbing. He'd have more of it. He'd have the whole world poke fun at him. He was a fool in love, and love wasn't proud. Though I will giant you, a day in your company is a pale substitution for my lovely—"

"Uugh." Niall pretended to be ill over the side of the boat.

^uOch, more of this?" Gordie said. "Best haul her in, Niall, before the sot gets started again."

The young man was stringing up their huge haul of fish. A large haddock slipped from his fingers, dropping into the bucket with a splash. "Why do /always have to haul her in?"

"I'll take her this time, lad," Iain said. He slid into the water, rope in hand, to tug the boat onto the sand. His plaid floated around him, the wool heavy with sea water. "Age before beauty, aye?"

"He is crazy with love," Gordie marveled, and the brothers rolled their eyes.

The chest-high waves bobbed the boat in erratic, staccato movements as Iain pulled her through the surf. When they reached the shallows, his mates leapt out to join him, helping to tug her in the rest of the way.

"A good day, aye?" Niall said, admiring the garlands of haddock and cod.

"What say you, Iain?" Gordie tossed the last of their haul on the shore and sidled up to his friend to help capsize their boat on the sand. "Do you think a creel of herring will dispose the laird to you?"

"I still don't believe the lass is truly willing to marry him," Niall muttered.

'The lass has a name. And, aye," Iain said proudly, "Cass will have me indeed. She gave me a scare,

though." He was silent for a moment, remembering. "Said she told her father she loved me."

Gordie and his brother gasped, standing still where they stood in the sand.

"Aye/' Iain said. Tis true. I thought my heart would fail me when I heard. But damned if the old cad didn't warm to the idea."

The MacLeod?" Niall asked, astounded.

"We are talking about the laird, collect?" Gordie shook his head in astonishment. "Your lass is a determined one."

"That or crazy." Iain shrugged. "Either way, it seems the MacLeod isn't entirely opposed."

"Or he's not yet tried to kill you outright/" Niall muttered.

"She told him your plan, is it?" Gordie dusted the sand from his hands. "About the lands you re eyeing in Stornoway?"

"Aye, I think that mustve been the trick." Iain bent to rake his fingers through the sand. He'd spied a shiny black ridge, and dug it free. A mermaids purse, Cassies favorite.

If! take you away, across the sea. You can be my mermaid , he'd told her once. He couldn't get over the fact that his dream was so close to hand.

A distant shriek ripped down to where they stood. They stilled, rigid, looking up the beach to the grassy hills above. A woman ran to them, shouting and gesturing wildly.

"Morna?" Iain muttered. His aunt?

As she grew closer, her screams became clear. "Run!" she cried.

"What—?" Iain was frozen in place.

She was on the sand now, racing to them, her skiits hiked high at her knees. "You must go! Run! They say you've stolen."

Gordie stiffened, stepping forward to speak for his friend. "What's the meaning of this?" They say he's stolen," she panted, reaching them by the shore. "From the laird."

"Stolen?" Gordie and Niall asked in unison.

"The rabbits," Iain said dully. Though he knew it wasn't rabbit the MacLeod was worried about. "They'll accuse me of stealing the rabbits.¹

Morna's face fell. That meat had graced her table. "Don't fret/' Iain told her quickly. "Surely Cass will speak up for me. Clear my name." He gave a firm nod, certain shed clear it up.

¹ Ca ss . . ." M o in a fa I te i ed. " Ca ss i e ca n 't, Iain."

He stared. The words didn't make sense. "What?"

"She's to be married. To the Lord Morrison. They've taken her already."

His heart stopped. Surely he'd heard wrong.

"That's not true/" he said. "She's marrying me. Cassie is promised to me. There's been a mistake."

His aunt's wordless and pitying look told him there'd been no mistake.

And then Iain did run. He raced up the beach.

He'd stop her. Save her.

"You can't!" Morn a screeched at his back. "She's gone. Protect yourself, boy! The laird wants your neck!"

But lie charged up the beach to face what he would. The mermaid's purse left crushed behind him in the sand.

Six

Six

Are there any who would speak for the peat boy?"

Iain struggled, and the rope cut into his wrists. He was trussed like a beast. A knot of men held him, facing off a crowd of villagers who'd not meet their eyes.

Iain watched his townsfolk. Saw their fear and their pity. All kept silent.

Cassie kept silent.

"Iain Gillespie MacNab has been accused of stealing/" the Laird MacLeod announced.

Iain scowled. This wasn't about any rabbits. If aught had been taken from the MacLeod, it was his daughter.

"The peat boy has stolen from me. Tis a hanging offense. Though, man that I am, I might extend some measure of mercy." The laird's voice was a baritone snail from the side, and Iain twisted his body to see him. The MacLeod was big and burly, with a chest like a barrel, and the yellow of Cassie's hair twined with the white of his years. Measure of meixy. The man disgusted him.

Iain's eyes flashed to Lord Morrison standing by the MacLeod s side. Morrison was older. A man smelling of snuff and foul breath. He was the man who was to wed his Cassie.

Fury swelled in Iains chest until he thought he'd burst from it. "Take me," he shouted suddenly. He'd go to his death willingly, if it would save sweet Cass from this vile arrangement.

Iain looked at her. So terrified and alone. Would she not speak? He could bear the worst of all toituies, if he could only hear her voice once more.

"I beg you," he implored the laird. "Spare your daughter. Take me. Hang me. Do what you will."

Cassie stared at him, her eyes wide with horror. She gave small shakes to her head as though trying to

communicate something. Why would she not just speak? What had they done to her?

Morrison stepped closer to her, wrapped a possessive arm around her.

Rage, frustration, heartbreak ... a tumult of emotions boiled in his veins, hissing from his throat, sounding a single word. "Cassie," he cried, then louder, "Cassie!"

And still she only stared, fear and that mysterious intensity in her eyes. His heart gripped.

"Cassie?" He cursed the crack in his voice, sounding a plea now. "Please, Cass, love. You don't have to do this. He cant make you do this."

"Shut it, boy," the MacLeod snarled. "Will none speak for him?"

Iain knew the others wouldn't speak out. None would raise a voice against the laird. Even if they knew he was in the wrong.

"The peat boy has broken the law, and he will suffer the consequences."

A rustle whispered across the crowd. Iain saw his aunts face. She alone opened her mouth to speak. Iain gave a frantic shake of his head to silence her. His aunt had enough troubles.

Two from her houseful of boys clung at her skirts. She held the youngest, her only girl, in her arms. Yellow hair shone like spun silk on the child's head.

It was the laird's child Morna held, the laird's child laid on her by force. Did the man destroy all he touched? Iain wrenched his head to spew the curses that raged in his chest. "Damn you!" he growled to the MacLeod.

Cassie s father came up behind him. A pair of hot, beefy hands gripped his anus where they were tied at his back. He leaned close, whispering in Iain's ear, "111 mind your Auntie Morna after you're gone, peat boy. She's a willful bird, but if I take her in firm hand, I find she always obeys."

Iain's eyes flicked along the crowd, finding his aunt once more. Terror contorted her features.

His gaze went back to Cassie. His Cassie, still unbearably lovely, even in her grief, weeping in silence like some mourning angel.

The laird spoke again in his ear. "Aye, I'll see Morna submit. Just as Morrison has made my wayward

daughter come to heel."

Some final pait of him shattered, cracked like a glass vial, dumping acid into his veins. Iain gave a tug to his bonds. If it weren't for the rope tying his wrists, the lairds neck would already be snapped.

The MacLeod took Iain's hands, wrenched them. There was a popping and pain exploded white like a burst of sparks. But Iain ignored the pain, struggling wildly now. He felt the bones of his anus strain at their sockets.

He was being torn from his Cassie. His eyes were for only her now. He shouted for her, and again. But still she only stared in silent agony. He saw fear in her gaze, and dread.

She gave another small shake of her head. Was she telling him to move on? That shed moved on? What of their promises, whispered beneath the standing stones? He fought to breathe.

Iain watched in horror as she tucked down, curling herself into Lord Morrison's side. Did she turn away from Iain, from their love? Was she turning instead to this old swine for comfort? Did Cassie forsake Iain already?

Ice lodged in his belly, already roiling with bile, and he felt violently nauseous. Was she choosing riches over peat boy? Or did she simply prefer the weight of an old mans body?

"Cassie, my love." His voice was small then, anguished. A mere sigh on the breeze.

"Did you truly think Id let my only daughter wed a peat boy?" Laird MacLeod gave him a shove. Toward a cait.

Where a cage awaited him. The cage where he'd live, until they stretched his neck at the end of a hangman's rope.

"No!" Cassie screamed, finally. The anguish in her voice hit him all the more savagely for her silence in the moments before. "You promised!"

"Hush, girl," her father spat. "I said I'd keep him alive. I never promised to keep him free."

A cawing sounded over their heads. The invisible net of tension that'd held the crowd spellbound snapped. All looked up, whispered among themselves. The voices grew louder and braver.

'Three gulls/" a woman cried. "Three gulls means death.¹

His aunt shrieked. Shed think it portended his death. She didn't know Iain wished for precisely that. If he died there, then, he'd not have to bear the image of Cassie tinning to the old lord. Not have to bear her betrayal.

"Iain!" The shock of healing his name snapped him from his thoughts. It was Gordons voice. Gordie, his lifelong friend. And though it didn't fill the void in his chest, Iain felt his heart beat once more. "Look sharp!"

Three gulls were an omen, and Gordie took advantage of the distraction. He burst through the line of villagers, a dirk in his hand, his brother Niall close behind. Guns swung from their sides. Iain recognized the old matchlock muskets. They'd belonged to the boys' father.

Their matches were lit. Iain could smell the burning cord. Niall s was tied around his wrist and it swung as he ran. The rope singed a woman as he passed, and she screamed, startled.

The humming of the crowd boiled into loud, confused chatter. People pushed in different directions, beginning to panic.

Iain's eyes went to Cassie. Lord Morrison took her shoulders in hand. Her body canted at an unnatural angle, tucking closer to his chest.

Was she, even now, pulling closer to the old man?

And then Morrison turned her, wrenching her away sharply. There was a flash of silver between them.

Cassie s hands clutched at her chest. Vivid scarlet bloomed along the ice blue of her dress.

"Cassie!" Iain choked on his scream.

Her eyes met his. A thousand tilings flashed there. Love, sorrow, desperation, terror, apology—all conveyed to him in her single glance. And then, like a snuffed candle, those vivid eyes went blank.

Iain felt her go. Her soul, which had been tied tight round his heart, snapped from him. Cassie, inexplicably, was simply gone.

He couldn't make sense of it. He stood, frozen for what felt an unbearable lifetime in the stretch of a lone heartbeat.

And then he saw the blade jutting from her perfect breast. "No!" he howled, watching helpless as she crumpled to the ground.

Grief seized his body and he cried out, arching back hard, like a baying wolf. He knocked back into the laird, and the man stumbled and tripped.

Gordie rushed in, taking the MacLeod's place at Iain's back. Iain felt the cold kiss of a dirk slicing him free of his bonds. Felt a musket shoved into his hands. The wood was cool, and he realized his palms had been sweating and hot.

Two of MacLeods men sprang toward them, slamming into Gordie from the side. His friend caught himself before he fell, spinning into a crouch, his dirk in hand. Gordie was quickly backed up by a knot of villagers.

It seemed not ail had stood with the laird.

The sound of hissing steel drew his eyes. Iain whirled in time to duck the wide swing of the MacLeod's broadsword.

The musket was warm now, in his hands. He guessed Gordie would have it loaded, the match already set for filing. Iain raised it, pointed it at the laird.

The man grew still, his sword poised in the air. "If you think I'll let you live, peat boy, you think wrongly. You stole from me. Cassiopeia was mine to give to Morrison. But she's dead, and so you've stolen from him, too."

lahv^rs response was quick, and his voice had the calm certainty of a man already dead. "Cassie belonged to

no one."

He fired.

The crack sent the already nervous crowd exploding hysterically in all directions. Yet the scene before him remained slow, a sluggish, surreal unfolding of events. The laird's body reverberated from the gunshot. The lead ball to his chest splayed him open, propelling his shoulders back, spinning MacLeod to the dirt. And to hell below.

There was one other man whom he'd see dead that day. Iain scanned the crowd; it was pandemonium.

But Lord Morrison was nowhere in sight. Hed surely run, like the coward he was.

There was a cry, and Iain recognized Gordies brother. The boys voice had not yet changed and its frantic pitch rose above the din. Niall was in trouble.

Iain tossed the musket down. Hed gotten a shot off, and the weapon was no good to him unloaded.

Niall was cornered against the cart. An unarmed man stalked him, circling like a cat ready to pounce. The boy was terrified. He still held his father's musket, and it was near as tall as he. His hands shook as he tried desperately to slide the match into the thin clamp of the gun_r but the cord trembled in his useless fingers.

Ramming the man aside, Iain leapt to Niall s aid. He grabbed the musket and pulled the match from where it was tied about the boys wrist.

Iain shoved the match into the serpentine clamp. But lie saw too late that Niall s trembling hands had spilled black powder over the pan, along the top of the weapon. Too late he saw the shadow of it, smudged black along his hand.

The match caught the powder. There was a strange eternity between the feel of his body catching fire and the thunderous clap of the explosion. Hed covered his eyes, he guessed, for he smelled the acrid smoke before he saw it, a thick gray cloud that enveloped him.

And it burned. White-hot pain. He burned. It seemed his brow melted with it, his hand was paralyzed from it.

"Christ, Niall, what have you done, lad?" Gordie was suddenly by Iain's side, shouting.

Iain felt his friend s hand on his good arm. Felt him pull. The three of them broke free of the mayhem, and they ran.

And they ran to the water, where a small sloop awaited them. Awaited Iain.

A privateer in search of a cabin boy, paid in potatoes and whisky to wait for la ins escape.

But there was no escape, Iain thought, as the boat pushed into the Atlantic. He studied the burnt claw of his right hand, held clenched in a bucket of sea water as if it were a foreign tiling, separate from his body. No, there would be no escaping who hed become.

MacLeod had been wrong. Iain MacNab wasn't a thief. But now lie was a killer.

Seven

Seven

He leaned down.

Would she stop him? Would she let him kiss her?

It would he their first. He would he her first, if she let him.

His heart pounded in his chest. Cassie was so lovely, poised he fore him. Her eyes dung to him, her lips gently parted.

Might she? Would she?

He eased closer. She was soft and warm in his arms. The hreeze drifted across the wide, treeless field, chasing to the Caffanish stones, swirling her scent to him, something like sunshine and sugar and fine things. The experience of her hore into him,

"May I kiss you?" he whispered, and wondered if that truly could ve he en his voice. It sounded ragged, unused.

"A simple kiss? Is that what this is ah out?" She leaned into him, her eyes lit with mischief She reached around his neck, twining her fingers in his hair.

His skin shivered at the sensation. His hody went rigid, frozen with disheiief, with joy,

'■'■Why, Iain Mac Nah, I think I will—"

a # «

"MacNab!"

There was a pounding.

¹¹ Mac Nab! Sir!'

He woke with a stait. Where?

The ship. It bobbed and pitched gently. Timber planks creaked overhead.

He was somewhere in the North Sea.

Twenty years gone by. Cassie dead these twenty long, hopeless years.

There had been pounding, he realized, and scrubbed his hand over his face.

"Aye, I'm coming/" he shouted. His voice was hoarse from sleep, and he put enough snail in it to send whoever the man was away. "Bang once more and it'll be your stones I nail on my door as a knocker."

"Aye, John . . . Mac Nab ... Sir."

John. He scowled and rolled from his bunk. He took a slug of ale from a pewter tankard. It was sour and flat, but it washed the sleep from his throat.

He was John now. Not Iain. He was a man without a country. And so bore the Englishman's version of his name.

Never again would he be Iain. Iain, the name he'd heard so often on his mothers tongue. A proud name. A Highland name.

If Cassie would never again speak it, then never again would he hear it.

He tipped the empty tankard up. Light from the poithole glimmered across the pewter. He tilted the mug until he saw his reflection waver dully on its surface.

His eyes flicked from the reflected shadow along his cheek to the matching scar on his right hand. Both burnt forever black from that powder charge exploded in his face, so many years past.

He would only ever be John now.

Black John MacNab.

Eight

Eight

There was a thump on the timber overhead. The sound of a man dropping from a height. Then another thump, followed by the heavy patter of running.

MacNab pulled himself from his thoughts and heard the shouts he knew would follow.

The schooner. His men would've spotted the schooner again. The one they'd been chasing. But it kept eluding them. Two masts, full-sail to the wind, disappearing like a wraith in the fog.

Her hold was full of goods. A cynical smile curled the corner of his mouth. "Goods" were precisely what he was after.

He quickly rolled into his plaid, knotting it at his shoulder with a leather thong. He refused to wear the traditional sailors slops. Though their billowy leg and cuffed knees enabled a man to climb the rigging with ease, Mac Nab much preferred navigating the deck in his hreacan feife.

And though his clothes were of the Highlands, his colors were not. His was a custom taitart, black and gray, unique to him alone. Colors to match the coal black sheen of his scars and the shadow of a storm-roiled sea.

The shouts intensified, and he flew from his cabin up onto deck. He was greeted by a glorious sight. They'd found that big beauty of a schooner. With a crisply elegant topsail and a greedy belly that'd be full for the taking.

The schooner tacked hard to poit in an effort to escape. Mac Nab saw her name up close, painted red on the stern. Morrison's Pride. A chill beaded his skin.

A memory flashed to him. His Cassie, tucked into the amis of Lord Morrison. He remembered the way she burrowed into him.

Surely the name was mere coincidence . . .

The bigger ship caught the wind and pressed full speed, but their efforts would be hopeless. Though just a one-mast cutter, MacNabs Charon was sleek and fast, bearing twelve guns and forty souls, and she sliced through the water like a shark.

"Ready about!" Mac Nab shouted. He bound across the deck to the wheel. The timber planks were polished to a honeyed sheen, smooth like glass beneath his bare feet.

His first mate stepped aside quickly to let him take over steeling. The wind whipped, and sea water pricked sharp and cold on his face. Mac Nab tasted brine and found he'd a smile on his face.

"Hard a-lee!" he shouted again. He spun the wheel, and the canvas grew slack. Sails flapped madly and the rigging clanged, making a sound like a storm-whipped flag.

The boom swung about, and his crew instinctively ducked. There was a sharp snap, and then a single heartbeat of perfect silence as the wind caught the sails once more.

"Man the guns!" he cried, and men scattered to their stations. Hed get a broadside off, aimed straight for the Morrison's rigging. The trick was to disable the schooner enough to board her, but not so much that shed fetch a lesser purse. "Fire as she bears!"

Soon the rhythmic thumping of the starboard guns shook the deck, six claps of thunder cascading fore to aft, boom, boom, boom. Plumes of gray smoke cleared, revealing the Morrison's foremast splintered but not sheared through.

"Flank! Flank!" Mac Nab ordered, and his Charon came about hard, slamming into the side of the larger ship. The impact resonated up the wheel to his shoulder. He let a grin flash.

The cries of Morrison's crew rose over the din like screeching gulls. They ran about in a mad attempt to rally. Hed take advantage of their disorder and strike fast. End it fast.

"Hoist the grapnels!" he called, and lines flew up and over, their hooks snagging in rigging, in sails, on timber. Hen swung and leapt onto the schooners deck, their violence graceful, their faces ecstatic. Mac Nab gestured to his first mate to take back the wheel, and he followed quick on their heels.

He grabbed a rope and leapt, unsheathing his blade as lie flew, a slow-motion ballet over a sliver of open sea, roiling gray and white beneath him. He landed on the deck, looking for a fight.

A few of his sailors were climbing the rigging, skittering across the ratlines like monkeys, slicing as they went. Thick hanks of rope whistled, plummeting to the ground, and canvas fell at their feet in a thunderous ripple.

The schooner was his for the taking.

"Merey," he ordered. " We give quarter!"

A pirate maybe, but he was no barbarian.

He bounced on the balls of his feet, ready to dive into the melee. A loud bark of a laugh called his attention aft. One of his sailors had just run a man through. He waved his broadsword triumphantly in the air.

But that's not what held MacNab's attention. The man who'd been stabbed was staggering along the deck. Blood seeped through the blue of his thigh-length fitted jacket, and the grisly pattern of it burst and spread like a blooming flower.

Another image flashed to him, the same rich scarlet on blue. In his mind's eye, he saw Cassie's hands gripping at her chest. He remembered the tenor in her eyes, and then worse, the emptiness.

Pain skewered him, and Mac Nab wished it were a sword that'd impaled him, rather than these unbearable memories.

He bared his teeth. He needed to focus on the task at hand. "If there's a devious dog among them," he snarled to his men, "send him by the boards."

His crew clamored a blood lust that Mac Nab pretended not to hear.

He sliced through the waning chaos, eager to blood his sword. But already only a handful of fights remained. Across the deck, knots of men knelt, yielding, accepting HacNabs mercy.

A man stood across the deck, gesturing wildly. He seemed the only one yet to realize the battle was nearing a close. His basket-hi I ted sword gleamed white in the sun. A full-skirted coat and tricorn hat announced him as the captain.

Mac Nab glided to him like a magnet.

His body cast the other man in shadow. The schooner captain turned, and his puffy, red face blanched gray.

Every muscle in MacNabs body seized. His breath stalled in his lungs, and his eyes froze, cold and flat.

"You/" Mac Nab hissed. He gave a violent shake to his head. The moment he'd dreamt of for so long was strangely, finally here. For once, some odd trick of fate had smiled upon him. He would avenge his Cassie.

He swung his blade down hard, and it was sheer luck that Morrison managed a block in time.

"Peat boy." Lord Morrisons eyes widened. The man was old now, and full at the waist. His white hair had loosed from its knot and it haloed cheeks that were pink with effoit. "You're a pirate."

Peat hoy, MacNab scowled. That pait of himself was gone. Long dead. A tidal wave of memories buffeted him. He held his breath. Withstood them. Willed them to wash over and past.

He was Iain the peat boy no more.

"I prefer the term privateer." MacNab spoke with forced nonchalance, delivering a hard, diagonal slash. He decided to toy with the man, enjoying watching his lips pale and cheeks redden from exertion. "So much more "—he swung his sword, aiming for the torso—"dashing, aye?"

Commotion at the foredeck splintered their attention. A mass of young men and boys stumbled from the hold, blinking away the shock of sunlight.

The haul of Morrison's Pride was set free.

It was what MacNab had been after. A load of boys and young men, stolen from Scotland, headed for indentured servitude somewhere in the Caribbean.

It sickened him. He snarled, slamming his sword down in a vicious crosscut.

Morrison parried, and with a shrug, admitted, "I've become a ... gentleman of fortune."

MacNab unleashed with renewed hatred, his strikes growing less playful and more intent. He struggled between the urge to murder and the desire to see justice done.

"These boys . . ." Morrison stopped speaking for a minute, weathering a fresh torrent from MacNabs

sword. "Mere Glasgow urchins. It's better this way. For them. In the In-dies." Each phrase was accompanied by the clang of steel.

"You traffic in slaves." Iain fought the urge to end the man's life with a single, simple sword thrust. But he wanted Morrison afraid, humiliated, demoralized.

"Is this about Cassiopeia?"

Grief sucked the air from MacNab's lungs. It was always about Cassie. Everything was about Cassie. His heart felt like smoldering coal.

Mac Nab reeled, and Morrison took advantage, stepping forward on a thrust. "She proved useless in the end," the older man taunted.

And so the Lord Morrison sealed his fate. His death would be a different sort of justice. Hed stolen Cassie ^Js youth, her joy. Stolen her. Cassie. Dear Cass, gone twenty years, dead by this mans hand.

Mac Nab was done toying with him.

Morrison must have seen the shift, sensed it, because fear seized the mans face, opening his mouth and pinching his eyes. "Oh . . ." he gasped, shuffling a desperate sidestep.

Mac Nab shadowed him, assailing him, thrashing him, his sword relentless. His fury was a palpable thing. It wavered black at the edges of his vision. Their conversation was over.

"lam done." MacNabs blade whined as it whipped through the air. It caught the thick flesh of Morrison s shoulder. This is done."

The lord winced. His eyes flared, like that of a desperate animal. He spoke, frantic words, more cutting than any sword. "She was worthless. I gave her a test ride. She lay like a dead thing beneath me. A cold fish. 'Twas like tupping a haddo—"

MacNabs blade stole the words from his enemy's throat.

Nine

Nine

¹¹1 love you/' he told her, gazing down on her, her head in his lap, Jain combed his fingers through her sm oo til, yellow hair, spread it along the heather iike rays of sunlight. He'd never tire of the soft silk of it in his lingers. "Aw, Cass, love, I could staie at you forever/'

She curled into him. Her delicate hand reached up and wrapped around his thigh. She gave it a squeeze. "I imagine you'd eventually get hungry, aye?"

His laugh was sharp, pleased, Iain let the wanting steal over him. It was a powerful thing, his desire for her, and he kept it at bay, hidden close, iike the blood that pumped just beneath his skin. He let that darker thing sound now in his voice. "There are other ways a man can sate his hunger."

He shifted, adjusting the slightest bit He'd stiffened iike a beast in heat, and he'd not startle her with his relentless, insistent body. That was his secret to keep.

Until they wed.

He traced her face, fighting the urge to meld his hand lower along her body.

"Oh, indeed?" Her voice trembled and her cheeks flushed hot pink.

Such a lovely innocent, his Cassie was. He treasured her. He'd take it slowly, savoring every moment, . .

He opened his eyes. His head was buried in his hand. His other hand lay clenched in his lap.

"But which?" The words came to him through a tunnel, reverberating like the clang of a bell. "Sir?"

"Which did lie say?" Another man had spoken.

"Orkney. Sure as eggs is eggs, 'twill be Strom ness Harbor."

The voices came from a distance. His mind fought them. They'd been discussing their course. Hed put head in hand to think.

It was ships and harbors.

Not courtship, nor heather, nor the sweet, silken feel of Cassie in his arms.

He felt the thin wisp of fabric wadded in his fist. A delicate handkerchief bearing the letter C.

Though it rose from the depths of his soul, the sound he made was slight, like the creak of ships timber. It was anguish.

"Captain had too much whisky last night," a man ventured. The others laughed merrily.

11 _—_ ■ ■—y rr

Sir?

"What?" His voice was a jagged snarl.

He raised his head. There was the ship's mate, two sailors, the cabin boy. All staled, confident in him and waiting for orders.

How long had he been lost in thought? A heartbeat? Two? It had felt like a lifetime.

"Will we be docking off Orkney?" a sailor asked.

Mac Nab could only muster a blank stare.

'The boys, sir. We need to drop the boys," the first mate said. The other sailors called the man Patch, though Mac Nab had never understood why. His mate was neat as a pin, in possession of both eyes, and with nary a stitch out of place. "But Morrisons men, they're blackguards one and all. They'll fetch a tidy bounty. As for the schooner—"

"Aye/' Mac Nab said, remembering. They'd captured the schooner. That prize alone would fetch a lavish sum. Hed installed a skeleton crew, and the two ships were sailing in tandem. His men would be paid well when they pulled into poit. "Aye, to the Orkney Islands. To Strom ness. As for the boys, we'll use a portion of my purse to get them back home to Glasgow."

Mac Nab jammed the handkerchief back where he kept it forever in his sporran. He held his hand before him. Studied it, fisting and opening his fingers. He eyed the patch of tight, grizzled skin, black like charcoal.

He stood and caught his reflection wavering in the glass of the poithole. A matching scar darkened his brow and temple, like the shadow of his memories.

Abruptly, he grabbed a bottle of whisky. The sea rolled and the Charon pitched, and the amber liquid hit the side of his tankard as he poured. It spilled into a small puddle on the table.

Hed avenged Cassie. His life was no longer of use to him. But he had men who depended on him. His eyes went to his first mate. Mac Nab had failed Cassie. But he could make it so that another could build the life that'd been denied him.

"Go above deck/ he ordered Patch. "Set a course for Orkney."

Ten

Ten

"I said, will you have the purse in gold or men?"

The first mate was staring at him, and Mac Nab realized lied been asked a question. He pushed away from the rail, studied the leaden sky and scowled. "Gold/" lie answered, distracted.

"Good on you/" Patch said quickly, nodding. He waited for some response from his captain, then clarified, "Forgetting these slavers, Black John. Good on you. Morrison was a bad man."

"We're all bad men," Mac Nab muttered darkly.

He spun on his heel. A group of sailors were congregated on the focsle. He called to them.

"Aye, sir," they answered in unison, springing to their feet. A silver flask was quickly pocketed. It didn't escape MacNabs notice.

"Lazy dogs," lie growled. "Drink on your own time. Snap to. The winds down. Hoist the yard. Let out the sails." His eyes flicked from the uniform gray of the sky to the limp sheets of canvas overhead. "Unfurl the bloody lot of them. We need to catch the wind or well be dead men pulling into Strom ness Harbor."

"Speak not of dead men," a voice grumbled from behind.

MacNab turned. Sailors were a superstitious lot, and Haddie, the cook, was the worst of them. He was a benign old soit, so named for what felt like the only food he ever prepared. Haddock chowder, haddie pie, smoked haddock . . .

"You II call the reaper himself to the ship," the old man warned again.

MacNab registered his words, but he couldn't muster a care. The reaper himself? His muscles clenched. Twould just bring relief. "Shut it, Haddie. Save your tripe for the mess table." I hear you can buy wind on Orkney," the ships boy said.

"Aye, tis true/' a sailor chimed in. 'I've seen it myself. The wind seller. She sells it, tied in knots upon a thread."

^uOch, lads/ Haddie grumbled. ^v Tis the Lewis witches who are the most powerful of their kind."

"Shut it/ Mac Nab ordered. The only thing that tried his patience more than foolish superstitions was the mention of his home isle. "Shut the devil up, the lot of you."

"Black John/" Haddie hissed, frantically shaking his head. He made a warding sign with his fingers. "Speak not of ... him. You cant call on him, that way."

"What the dev—"

Haddie hissed again. "You say his name, you call him to us. You say his name and seal our fate."

"Superstitions," he grumbled, then was distracted by a ruckus above. A man was tangled in the rigging, his leg stuck through the webbed net of the ratlines. "Bloody hell. Tis the bloody drunken sailor who seals the fate of any ship.

"You"—Mac Nab pointed at a gaping seaman—"up, now. Han the sails. Were losing wind."

The sound of birds cawing carried to them on the still air. All eyes looked up to see three gulls reeling overhead.

"Three gulls." Haddie made the sign of the cross. ' Tis death herself. A sign. Someone will die. I warned you, Black John. You called her to us."

Mac Nabs body stiffened. Three gulls. The memory cut him. He thought back to another day. Another death. "What did you say?" he asked the cook in a dangerously quiet voice.

Haddie stared, terrified. Mac Nab didn't know whether it was the gulls or his own ire that scared the old cook more.

"Damn you and your gulls," MacNab told him. "Damn it all to hell."

Haddie flinched.

"I'll not have the fears of fishwives spread on my boat."

"Youve sealed our fate," Haddie whispered again.

"What did you say?" HacNab grabbed him by the collar. "Answer me." "Black John/" the first mate pleaded. "He's just an old man, aye?"

"Do you all believe such fool ish ness?" Mac Nab pushed the cook away. He eyed his crew, all silent, frozen in place. "The lot of you. Are you all fools?"

MacNab stared, his blood running cold. He flexed his hand and then rubbed it over his sporran. "You have the deck," he snarled to Patch, then turned and stalked below to his cabin.

Eleven

Eleven

She dug her delicate fingers into the neckline of her bodice.

Iain's eyes widened, "Och, lass, whatever are you—''

She pi ticked her handkerchief Horn her corset and began to wipe at some bit of dirt on her hands.

"Ah," Inhaling deeply, he gave a quick clearing shake to his head "You II be the death of me, Cassiopeia MacLeod."

Iain studied the bit of linen she held "Ohh," he said, "I remember this," He took it gently from her lingers. Gave her a broad smile, '''You wiped my face with it. On the first day we met."

"Aye, and I had a time of it getting the stain out/ she snapped saucily, '''Had I known you'd come to me every day smudged with some bit of bog on you, I'd have spared myself the trouble,^rf

"You sassy girl," He grabbed her, growling and nuzzling at her neck.

She laughed, a iighthearted trill that thrilled him,

Cassie held the handkerchief out, "Weil, would you like it?"

"Oh, I'd like it." He cocked a brow, giving a more wicked meaning to his words than what she'd intended,

"Iain!" she gasped with mock outrage. "I meant my handkerchief, I'd like you to have it,"

"You would?"

She gave him a pert little nod. The look in her eyes was that of a cat who'd eaten ail the cream.

''Why ever is that?"

She gave a quiet shrug, "I hate , , , I hate when we part, I'd like to think you had some reminder of me,"

"Cassie, love," He grew serious. "How could you ever think I'd need any reminder? Don't you know I think of you every moment? The sun reminds me of you. The moon in the sky, the wind off the sea. I could roam

far, far ft "0/7 7 here, 'tif the ends of the earth, and stiff Id need no reminder of you.

"

He groaned. Thered been knocking.

"Sir?" The first mate sounded tentative, calling into the cool dim of Black Johns small cabin.

MacNab smoothed the delicate square of linen along his thigh, tracing his finger gingerly along the facJed C. He folded it, and folded it again, returning it to his sporran.

"Aye, come." His voice was tired. He was tired.

"We can't find the wind, sir." Patch stood stiffly before him, respectful, waiting.

His mate wasn't a bad man. An Irishman, MacNab believed. He wondered what unlucky whims of fate had brought him just there. To be the first mate on such a ship, working for such a man. Patch was neat and upright, with a head of smoothly combed black hair and sailors slops that were, though not crisp, kept remarkably clean. His shoulders were pulled back, hands clasped behind, and MacNab noted the bearing of youth—tensile, robust—still writ on the mans bones.

MacNab wished for once to have the walls of formality down. Hed ask the mate what strange chain of events brought him to choose such a hard life. Hed advise him to leave, to take his portion of the Morrison's bounty and build a cottage on a square of land somewhere. Find a wife to fill it with bairns.

His mind went to his own bairns, robbed from him on the day he lost Cassie, wee blond babes who'd never be.

"We canttack, sir," Patch continued.

MacNab snapped back into the moment. He flexed his hand and scrubbed it over his brow and eyes. He could ill afford these daydreams. These musings and memories that plagued him.

He rose from his bench. "How far are we from the coast?" "Close now, and drifting closer/' Patch said. "A current pulls strong, into the firth. The helmsman worries we 11 run aground on the shoals."

The air on deck was utterly still, and with it came an eerie quiet. There was no slapping of water, nor cawing of birds. The sails hung slack in their rigging. He looked to starboard. The sea was a smooth sheet of mercury, like a vast looking glass stretching clear to the horizon, where it seemed simply to curve and fade into a haze of white.

He turned a slow circle, sweeping his eyes across the distance. The schooner that'd been known as Morrison's Pride sailed ahead of them, manned by what crew he could spare. And just beyond her, a ghostly mass wavered above the water. The Isles of Orkney. Their intention was to sail up along the eastern shores, circling around and back down to Strom ness.

Ma c Na b s eyes n a rr owed. " What the devil?"

Leaning against the rail, he extended his spyglass. He couldn't believe what he was seeing. Morrison's stern had just jutted to the right, so sharp and so sudden it was as though the helmsman had spun the wheel, aiming them straight for the rocks.

"Why do they not tack starboard?" Patch asked, aghast.

"They cant," HacNab said simply. "There's no wind to carry them."

"But shell run aground."

"Aye." MacNab's voice was grim. "She'll run aground."

Morrison's Pride began a slow spin, moving lazily in the water, her bow pointing now to larboard, now to starboard, and back again, in a ghastly and languorous dance.

All hands stilled, watelling in horror. They knew it was the Charon's own fate they witnessed.

A great collective breath sucked in, so loud it was as though the wind had picked up once more. But it was simply his men bearing the sight of their prize schooner as she slammed into the rocky coast.

A terrible sound like felled trees carried to them across the still air. Rocks chewed into the Morrison's hull, a great screeching and groaning, followed by the screams of her men. Shed pitched hard but hadn't sank, and Mac Nab was grateful to see the crew scrabbling across the deck like crabs, clambering onto shore.

"We'll never make it," Patch muttered.

Mac Nab turned his [jack on his prize. The crew lied installed on the schooner would live to see another day. He had his own crew to save now.

As though suddenly gripped by a giant hand from the deep, the Charon herself stuttered, tossing men stumbling on their feet. A horrible shuddering scrape thundered in the lifeless air. They'd drifted into one of the shoals.

"We'll never make it," Patch said, louder now.

^uAye. We'll head through."

"Sir?"

Through/" Mac Nab said, turning to face his crew. Some strange charge stirred his blood. He felt alive for the first time in so long. Awakened by the prospect of facing his death. Eager for it? He shoved the thought quickly from his mind.

He needed to save his crew. They'd lost their prize, but he could save his men. "We sail through the Pentland Firth," he told them. "Set a course for Strom ness through the firth."

Blank and frightened eyes met his.

"But, sir," Patch murmured for Mac Nabs ears alone. He'd not dissent before the other crewmen. 'The firth-"

"I ken the stories." The Pentland Filth was a narrow and treacherous channel. Unpredictable tidal swells spun whirlpools and wrenched towering waves from water that moments before might have appeared as smooth and still as polished stone. It was some of the most perilous sailing in the world, and none but a few sailors were mad enough to brave it.

"Step lively now," he shouted. "All hands to the larboard rail. Patch, fetch the topsail."

His mate stared fora moment, bewildered.

¹¹ We rig a sea anchor," HacNab said. "Toss it over the larboard side."

The first mates eyes grew wide. A buzz rose instantly, the still air humming to life. All sailors knew about sea anchors, but few had ever attempted one.

^UA . . . a sea anchor?"

"Aye. The wind may be dead, but the current pulling into the firth is strong. We submerge the topsail. The current catches it . . ."

"And/" Patch finished, his understanding dawning, "you believe it'll pull us from the rocks and shoals. Like a great underwater sail."

"Aye, exactly that."

Patch's brow furrowed. "But even if we can hitch the current, it'll drag straight into the firth."

MacNab flexed his hand. He'd deal with that when it came. "One concern at a time."

He turned to stare over the rail, eyeing the deceptively glassy water. There was stillness at his back where there shouldve been an explosion of activity.

He spun his head, shooting a black gaze at his first mate. "You heard my order. Topsail. Now."

Men scrambled to action, skittering up the rigging like spiders. Patch alone faltered. "We cant do this," the mate said quietly, emboldened by his fear. "I beg you. The Pentland Filth ... it will mean our deaths."

"You'd have us dash up along the rocks instead?" MacNab challenged. ^v Tis a cowardly course. If we wait, and drift, praying like a bunch of pious widows for a breath of air, we are only allowing the fates to decide."

He shaded his eyes, looking toward the narrow channel between the Orkney Islands and the Scottish mainland. "Sailing through the firth is a gamble, but the prize is our lives. I'll not just bob and float like a lame mallard to be pitched onto the shoals."

His gaze went to the sailors clambering back down the rigging, topsail in hand. "And if a course of action means our death, then so be it."

Patch gave him a single, stark nod. MacNab had known lie would. Just as he hoped he was making the rig lit decision and not sending this good man, this veritable stranger, this shipload of strangers, to a watery grave.

The Charon skidded again, and this time the groaning of timber was otherworldly. The boat pitched and heaved, and that great underwater hand was a fist now, punching at the hull, sending her in a sluggish spin,

stein first, toward the rocks.

Sailors scrambled to him at the larboard rail, and MacNab led them, tying off ropes, making a great kite of the topsail.

"Now!" MacNab shouted, and they cast the sea anchor. "Pay her out slowly, now."

The canvas dropped to the water like a dead weight, but its descent below the surface was maddeningly slow. It fluttered like a ghostly swath of kelp, drifting and sinking.

There was a sudden tug, a snapping of ropes, and the sail faded into black. His men shouted their excitement, their feet shuffling across the deck, holding desperately to the ropes as though to the leash of Cerberus himself, as the sea anchor dragged them to the railing.

She caught the current and righted herself, propelled into the Pentland Filth. MacNab caught movement out of the cornei of his eye. A few of the Irish sailors crossed themselves. He saw Patch's hands were clenched fists at his sides.

The real challenge had just begun.

They whipped fast into the channel, and the air, the sky, everything, simply felt . . . different. Charged somehow, and ethereal. Like they'd crossed an invisible threshold, leaving the world they'd known, traversing into some other, stranger place. One of forfeits and penance.

MacNab shook his head hard. Stay sharp.Jheve was no time for these relentless reveries.

He smelled the wind before he felt it. A prick of fresh air in his nostrils. And he gazed into the far distance to where the water seemed to boil, churning the suiface, cutting across the filth like a great ruff of lace.

Tis the muir bhctite/' a voice said from behind him. Haddie had come above deck, and the old man was oddly still at MacNab's side. His superstitious panic had quieted. He sensed it, too, MacNab saw. This eerie passage taking them to someplace other.

"The nurir hhaite," Haddie muttered again. "The drowning sea."

Twelve

Twelve

"Belay the main," Mac Nab ordered. The filth tossed waves like a petulant girl her hair, and he'd batten the Charon down. Something was coming, something greater than any storm. "Lash it to the mast."

He didn't like the strange swath of turbulent sea that cut directly across their path. They had too much momentum; they were cruising straight for it. They had to quit the current.

"Cut the sea anchor/" he called, and he saw panic flicker in his men's eyes. The situation was grave indeed if they were to sacrifice such a valuable swath of canvas. "Cut the lines!''

His men sliced the Charon free of her underwater sail, but it wouldn't be enough. More than simply heading into a channel, it was as though they'd entered a tunnel, one that was subject to different wind, waves, and weather.

A renegade wind smacked them. It keened through the rigging, a sharp blast, come and gone like the shriek of a woman. An eerie silence reigned once more. Tis a demon sea," someone shouted.

"Focus like the men you are/" Mac Nab growled. "Furl the sails." They needed to draw in all the sheets. The wind they'd been lusting for was beginning to nip. If it grew as big as lie feared while the sheets were unfurled, itd snap the mast in two. "Til not risk the mast."

Mac Nab edged forward and clung to the bow. The vein of water continued to roil in the distance, and it mesmerized him. They were closing fast.

Tis the sea witch," Haddie said. The old mans tone was calm and steady, as if he'd glimpsed the future and knew there was no turning back. "She lies yonder, in the depths below, grinding salt for the sea."

As if summoned, the first wave seemed to rise straight up from still water, coming at them from the side.

The ship simply bobbed low at the stern, pitched, and then a great white claw curled up and over, grasping at the rails, pulling the Charon down hard. She hung sideways for one heait-stopping moment, then bobbed sharply back to starboard, sending the men skittering over the deck and snatching desperately at the lines to keep themselves aboard.

"Grab the lifelines," he shouted, doing a quick headcount. Mac Nab was relieved the watch had changed over an hour past. There were only nine hands on deck, plus his mate and Haddie. 'The lines,' he yelled again, and his men scrambled for the rails, holding tight to the weather lines.

And then, inexplicably, they were struck from the opposite side. It was violent, like the sudden slap of a raging mistress, vengeful and giddy with her anger.

And then the water began to boil. The waves dwarfed them and the Charon became merely a child's plaything tossed about. Another wave struck them, and another.

Water swelled up to gorge on Charon's timber, flooding her. Froth swirled along the deck, and for a strange, still moment all was serene and white, as though there'd been a light dusting of snow. And then the froth whirled, receding quickly like a recoiling snake, trying to suck the sailors back into the depths.

Tie off the mainsail!" MacNab shouted to those few men clinging to the yards above. "Belay the sails."

His eyes scanned the mast. It struck him as a pitiful, reedy thing, ready to snap like a piece of rotted wood.

An enormous swell rolled beneath them, and the ship heaved, pointing upward. The horizon spun away, until all they saw was the leaden sky through a haze of mist. She slammed back down.

How long would the Charon last? How long until they crossed this unending swath of turbulence? His eyes scanned the deck. MacNab was tired, his own heart grown cold, but he'd not suffer his men. "Han the lookout!" he ordered. "Where does this end? Tell me where this godforsaken churn ends!"

The ships boy hurtled up the lines to the crow's nest. The men's chaos stilled for a moment, as all stopped to watch him lean forward, squinting and concentrating on the horizon.

"Gurge!" the boy screamed suddenly, pointing frantically in the distance. "A gurge!"

Whirlpool,

"Swilkie, she's called/' Haddie said ominously. The old cook wove the lifeline around his fist, bracing for the worst. 'The swallower."

Mac Nab had no time to contemplate this. He heard gasps and spun, already feeling the growing shadow at his back.

A mountain of water came for them, an enormous wave barreling across the firth, so magnificent it seemed a living thing, a monster risen from the deep. Black, marbled with white, and impermeable as stone. The wave was death incarnate, and it was a thing of beauty.

She brought with her a rumble of sound, like an angered god, and a fierce blast of wind struck them. It was a wind straight from hell, but cold, so cold.

"Hang on," he bellowed uselessly. Noise filled his head—the cries of his men, the groaning of timber, the wailing of the wind in the rig.

And then the wall pummeled them.

They knew an eternity of silence. For a moment they were merely helpless bits of flotsam, weightless and meaningless, and all wondered if this would be their grave. But the wave pulled back with a hiss, leaving them human again, with their human sounds. Sounds of men scurrying, of torn sails flapping—mundanity so utterly out of place from the unearthly majesty of moments before.

Mac Nab surveyed the damage. Miraculously, the mast still stood. But the jib had torn free from the rigging. ltd been the foremost sail, a triangular sweep reaching from the top of the mast to the very tip of the bowsprit. It hung now, in front of the Charon, dangling dangerously close to the waves. If it went under, caught water, the ship would capsize in an instant.

"Cut the jib!" Mac Nab shouted, but Patch was already at the bow, edging his way out along the sharp point of the bowspr it.

And just beyond, the vortex churned, drawing them ever closer. It swirled madly, an eddy crafted of pure darkness, with an angry mouth of white froth waiting to swallow them. It thundered, ravenous.

Patch eased along the knife-edge of the bowsprit. Another wave struck them, and all held their breath as the first mate was submerged in a wall of white.

It receded , and all sighed relief to see him clinging there still. He had a wild-eyed look, hanging desperately from the point of the bow, shrouded in sea spray. Patch's hand patted at his waist, but his dagger was gone, ripped free of its sheath.

The lines were a hideous snarl. Patch shook the curtain of hair from his face and was trying to make sense of them when the next wave struck. It came at them from leeward, and the nose of the Charon dipped dangerously low. The first mate slid. His hands slipped free of the slick wood and the men gasped as he plummeted down to the seething water.

But just before his head hit the waves, the line snapped taut. He swung like a pendulum, swooping over the open sea then back again, perilously close to the hull. Patch hung, upside down, his leg tangled in the rigging.

One of MacNabs crewmen was at the rail in an instant, kicking off his boots, getting ready to inch out onto the bowsprit.

"No," MacNab told him. His eyes went to his first mate. Patch was a good man, deserving of that cottage and wife. MacNab trusted only himself to save him. "Ill do it," he told the sailor. He pulled his knife free. He curled his toes, feeling the solid connection between the Charon's timber and his a I ways-bare feet. 'This is for me to do," he repeated.

Biting his dagger between his teeth, he climbed out. The bowsprit was slick, but Mac Nab clung to it with hands and feet and knees, edging closer to where Patch dangled. He'd have only seconds to save him before they were hit by another wave.

He kept his dagger clamped hard between his teeth. It would be the thing that'd save his ship; he couldn't lose it. The blade dug into the corners of his mouth. The feel of sharp steel on his skin gave him focus.

They'd lost their prize money when they'd lost the schooner. But he could save the men their lives.

MacNab wrapped his legs tightly around the bowsprit, as though clinging to a tree trunk. He snatched the

line from its pendulum swing and wrapped it about his arm and fist. It bore Patch's weight, and it cut into the muscle of MacNab's forearm.

He heaved the line in, and his first mate jostled up, closer to the bowsprit. He heaved again, straining with the weight. Each yard of rope Mac Nab gained, he wound around his arm, until finally Patch was close enough to curl up and grab hold of the bowsprit.

Patch met his eyes, and Mac Nab nodded to the ship, gesturing for him to get back on board. If anything happened to Mac Nab, he knew his first mate would be the Charon's only chance at survival.

He looked away the moment his first mate reached the rail. Angry welts crisscrossed his arm and fist, rope burns, rope slashes. But MacNab didn't feel them.

He knew only the dagger in his teeth and the sail dangling dangerously below. He set to work, clinging with legs and feet, slicing the lines free.

There was a sharp crack, and for a moment, MacNab thought a thunderstorm was to be their next trial. But then he felt the next crack in his hands. He felt the slow creaking of wood as the bowsprit began to fracture beneath him.

^uMacNab!^r Patch shouted.

He looked up. The men gestured madly to him, waving him back on board.

"Well cut the lines from the deck," another shouted.

Sailors were already frantically cutting away at the lines, from the deck, from the mast, trying to free the

jib.

But MacNab knew it wouldn't be enough, the lines were too snarled beneath him.

In his gut, he felt the slow surging of the water, as though the sea herself were drawing in a great breath. Another wave was coming. It would catch the jib, drown them all. His men would never get the lines cut in time. He needed to lean down, severing below the tangled mass.

The bowsprit creaked again, and he saw the fissure crackling up the thin stretch of it. Still, he clung with his legs, hugging the wood. His plaid flapped in the wind, the wet wool slapping hard against his thighs.

He reached below the snarl and sliced line after line, until only one was left. He sensed the wave surging. Felt the pull of the water on the jib. He cut the final line free. There was one last deafening crack.

The Charon heaved back, freed of her weight. The bowsprit snapped. The wave swallowed the jib, the bowsprit, and Mac Nab.

Thirteen

Thirteen

MacNab's body spun, and he felt it as a slow flight through space.

lam lost. The thought crept to him, quiet, unassuming.

He closed his eyes, and the whole of his life came to him, clear, blight, and heartrending.

Gordie, dear Goidie. Where was his friend now? His aunt, Morna. Did she still live?

And Cassie. At the end, there was only Cassie.

The others were mere flickers, stars in the night sky. But Cassie was his sun. Brightness and warmth. He hadn't been alive, not truly, since shed died.

Snippets flashed to him. Her shining, yellow hair. Their first kiss. Her saucy smiles. A promise made beneath the stones.

He spun, and it was as though the sea swilled up to meet him. But it was aggravatingly slow, this death. Still he spun, and still the memories came.

Finally, blessedly, he struck with a hard smack. The waves swallowed him. Water forced its way into his sinuses, down his throat. It was sharp like glass, invading his body.

But the pain was nothing to these final memories that impaled him. He saw her, over and over, and her sweet voice filled his head. His only, his lovely Cassie.

His body spun in the water. He felt a tug at his core. The vortex seized him. Swilkie, the swallower. He spun faster.

Finally,

Rest

And then he spun down into blackness.

"Iain/" someone shouted. "Iain!" It was Gordies voice.

Pain swept him. Would lie never be free of the memories? Did they follow him here, down to hell?

"Shake him/' a voice like his aunts said.

Something yanked at his hair. Iain opened his eyes. His aunts daughter, the little blonde baby Jan, pulling on his hair with chubby, sandy fingers.

He blinked, looked around, dazed. What of the Charon? Had he shipwrecked, landed back on Lewis somehow?

His eyes went back to Jan. "But you . . ." lie stammered. Jan should be over twenty and a woman grown by now, yet here she sat, tugging his hair, a smear of sand clinging to her drooly chin.

Iain dropped his head onto the beach. Hefi He'd landed himself in hell, where he'd be forced to live and relive his painful memories throughout eternity.

"He opened his eyes," Horna said. "Iain, lad, are you alright?"

He lifted his head again. Looked down to his hands in the suif. They were the hands of a young man.

There was mumbling at his back, but he ignored it. He pushed himself up to sitting and flexed his hands before him, marveling. His black scars, gone. His fingers traced his face. It was smooth.

Was it a dream? Was lie in hell? He surely hadn't earned heaven.

"He's not in his right mind," Niall said.

"Acli, our Iain is harder to kill than that, aye?" Gordie laughed, and Iain's eyes went to him.

Gordie was cuffing his brother on the shoulder. Neither of them was a day older than when Iain had fled, so long ago.

"Where am I?" lie asked, bewildered. The boat, lad. We've sunk."

"Are you certain he's alright?" Horna leaned down, plucking Jan from the sand.

"We were on our fishing day, remember?" Niall said.

Thank God lies alright/" his aunt muttered. "And thank the heavens I saw the wave as you lads went out. Ive never seen the like. Twas like the sea witch herself come to sweep you away."

Their fishing day. His eyes scanned Gordie and Niall, studied their clothing, desperate to remember. Was this that day? The day he'd returned to find Cassie promised to another?

How could it be? Was he dead? Was this real?

A thousand thoughts skittered through his mind. Of churning seas, whirlpools, and sea witches, of the laird he'd killed. The image of Cassie s dress stained scarlet with her blood. And clear like the sun through paiting clouds came the memory of a promise made beneath the Callanish Stones.

"We didn't go fishing?" Iain asked, wonderment in his voice.

"No, lad." Gordie and his brother exchanged worried looks. "We left not an hour past."

This was that day. The day they'd fished. The day he'd returned to find Cassie promised to Lord Morrison.

Hope blazed to life in his chest. Perhaps it was a dream, perhaps not. All he knew was that, if less than an hour had passed since they'd left on their fishing boat, there was a chance he could find Cassie, get her. Take her before Morrison had a chance to.

Iain jumped to his feet and ran.

Fourteen

Fourteen

Rocks bit at his feet, the cold air scored his throat, and his plaid was heavy and wet, slapping against his pumping legs.

Iain ignored it all, even ignored the feel of his body, suddenly young and taut and fast.

His only focus was Cassie.

He didn't know what was happening to him. He wondered if his soul weren't wandering in some netherworld, while his body lay drowned on the bottom of the sea.

But he pushed that thought away. He was here now, in his young mans body. And he would do what he should ve done when he was young in truth.

He ran along the coastline, cresting hills, jumping locks, to get to MacLeod s tower. It emerged on the horizon, sitting high on its cliff-top perch, a rocky outcropping jutting into the sea.

The castle loomed grim and gray, but what had once evoked fear now simply spurred him on. He should ve faced the laird in his own domain long ago.

He loped around the back to the kale garden. His heart clenched, anguished at the memories. Cassied had a whole world apart from him, one in which shed sneak through this very garden, doing things like listening in on maids and trapping rabbits. Sneaking out, coming to him.

One of the cooks gave him a startled look, and Iain hushed her. But it reminded him of where he was. He might be in a dream, he might be in heaven or hell. Either way, he imagined stealth would serve him best, until he could puzzle it out.

He ducked into the kitchen and gave his eyes a moment to adjust to the dim light. His heart pounded in his chest as he caught his breath. He'd run hard. He looked down in amazement at his body. Young again.

Dream or no, it felt good to be young again.

He heard a shout. A man's voice loud in argument. Iain crept onto the stairs.

Muted voices came from above. The dining hall? He tip-toed up, running his hand along the cold, dank stone of the spiral staircase as he went.

^uHe stole." It was the laird s voice, speaking with disdain.

"No, father/' a woman entreated. Iain's heart flipped in his chest. Cassie? Could it truly be her? It took all his will not to run up the stairs to her. "Iain didn't steal. It was I—"

"Do not contradict me, girl. If I say the peat boy stole from me, then the peat boy stole from me."

"Will you hang him?" a second man asked.

Iain scowled. Lord Morrison,He knew an instant of veitigo, so strange it was hearing the voice of the man he'd recently killed.

"I'll hang the peat boy—""

"Father!" Cassie screamed. "Its my fault. You cant hang him. We wish to marry. He is my one love, my true love."

Iain's heart soared to hear the words. He had to see her, had to see with his own eyes his Cassie, young again. He snuck higher up the stairs. He couldn't believe she lived. If this indeed was hell, he embraced it. He'd endure the wrath of Lucifer himself for one more moment in her presence.

"What do you know of love, chit? You know naught. Wait "—the laird's voice grew steely—"has he soiled you?"

The room stayed silent.

"Bedded you," he snapped. "Has the boy bedded you?"

^u Of course not!"

"Good," Morrison chimed in. "Because our bargain is off if your girl is no longer a virgin."

"What bargain?' Cassie asked hesitantly.

"You marry Lord Morrison, and I'll not hang your peat boy. That's the only bargain you need concern

yourself with."

¹ So ? " Morrison d e m a n d ed.

There was a shuffling, then Cassie spoke, her voice barely a whisper. "I will."

"Louder, girl."

"111 do your bidding, but you must swear to keep Iain alive. Swear you wont hurt him."

There was a grumbling, and MacLeod snapped, "Calm yourself, Morrison. I've a dungeon with the boy's name on it. Nobody will stand in your way."

"I dont trust you, MacLeod. Our agreement isn't final until I've had a chance to confirm she's a maiden still. Id not buy a horse before putting it through its paces, and III not wed your daught—"

Iain didn't give Lord Morrison a chance to finish. He flew up the rest of the stairs, angling for a fight.

His eyes went straight to her. It was Cassie. The same Cassie of his youth, sweet and lovely, but with a look of fear pinching her brow. He swayed on his feet.

"How can it be?" he whispered. "Is it truly you, lass?¹

"What's the meaning of this?" MacLeod unsheathed the dagger at his waist and stalked to Iain.

^uNo father!" Cassie shrieked.

He tore his gaze from her. They might all be ghosts, or flesh and blood brought back to life, he didn't know. But he did know he needed to act. He'd once chosen a path, and it'd been the wrong one. Was this his chance to change his destiny?

He'd save Cassie. Cassie would be his bride. He'd sworn a vow beneath the Callanish Stones.

A light flickered in his mind. Was it the standing stones that had brought him back? Was his promise more sacred even than magic?

The laird stopped, waiting and staring, a look of bemusement on his face. "What do you propose to do now, peat boy?"

Revulsion curdled his belly. And not because the laird spoke words of disdain for him. To Iain, the man had been dead for decades. But to see him treat his daughter so? Like chattel, or livestock, the MacLeod traded

Cassie to another man.

Iain had killed the laird once, was it his destiny to kill him over and over for all eternity? He faced the MacLeod head-on, realizing with dismay that he was armed with naught but his wet plaid and bare feet. Still, Iain snarled. He flicked his eyes from the laird to Morrison and back again. "I suppose you II not talk this through like men."

Iain nibbed his hands together and flexed his fists. Cassie gasped. He wondered distantly if it was the conspicuous absence of a weapon that had startled her.

He snuck another look at her. He couldn't keep his eyes from her.

Morrison stepped to her side and placed his hands hard on her shoulders. Cassie turned from Iain. She canted her body, tucking herself into the old lord.

Iain's vision wavered. It couldn't be. The image was so like that moment, before, by the cage, when Cassie had turned her body from him. Iain had been trussed, helpless. And helpless he'd watched her die.

And now, here, again she'd turned from him.

He'd been helpless then, but he was a helpless boy no more. Was she seeking comfoit from the old man? Iain stepped toward her. She might not want saving, but damn the girl, he'd save her anyway.

But Cassie shocked him then. She pulled away from the lord, his dagger gripped in her small hand.

Iain reeled. She hadn't betrayed him, that day. Shed been trying to save him. His sweet, maddening Cassie had thought to slay the lord with his own blade.

He laughed. It was a manic laugh, relief and joy and disbelief. And sadness, too, for having ever doubted his Cassie s love.

He'd never make that mistake again.

Iain had the body of his youth, but he'd the experience of an old salt. He felt the laird rush at his back. He smiled. FooL

Iain let the man attack. He was eager for it. He braced, feeling the MacLeod charge from behind.

Another time flashed to him, the MacLeod at his back with Iain trussed like an animal. It had happened so

long ago, and yet, somehow, it appeared that it had never happened. He gave a shake to his head. He'd not contemplate the ways of time and the universe. He had a man to fight.

He felt a rush of air, saw the shadow of the laird's upswept dagger arm. But Iain simply stepped [jack, into the attack. In a single motion, he pivoted, grabbing the MacLeod's outstretched arm, twisting it down, and wrenching it back up again.

A look of shock seized the MacLeod's features. ltd been MacLeods own force that thrust the knife. He toppled, stabbed in the heart by his own blade.

Cassie yelped, struggling. Lord Morrison was peeling her fingers from the hilt of his dagger.

Iain rushed to her. Shed died for him once. Vivid in his mind was a sky blue dress, stained scarlet with her blood. Shed not spill a drop more, so long as he lived.

He pushed between them, and Cassie fell away. Iain grabbed Morrison's throat with one hand, and stilled his blade arm with the other. He'd crush this vermin with his own two hands.

Fury blinded him to all but the man before him. Iain tightened his grip. The small bones of Morrison's wrist crunched, and his dagger dropped to the ground.

The lord clawed at him, gasping for air, his mouth working wordlessly as Iain squeezed his throat, crushing the air from his body.

Words echoed in his head. Worthless, Test ride. She fay like a dead thing. "I killed you once, Morrison. Ill kill you again. And again in hell, if need be."

Cassie was suddenly there, by his side. Iain knew a moment of panic. Then he saw that she'd snatched Morrison's dagger from the floor.

She stood, driving it into his belly, splitting the lord open like a gut fish. "Rot," she snapped. "You'll not ride me, you . . . you ..."

She stared at Morrison with unseeing eyes as he fell to the ground. Finally Cassie broke.

She wept and shivered, and Iain pulled her close. "Hush, sweet Cass."

He shuddered. To hold her once more was a relief so profound, he thought he'd expire from it. A part of

him waited, to wake up or to disappear from this moment like a puff of smoke.

But he didnt. And Cassie remained solid and warm in his arms. He hugged her closer still, kissing her hair, her brow. "Och, Cassie, love. Are you alright?"

She wrapped her arms more tightly around him and wept, and he let her. "Hush, now. You're safe now. You Ye safe with me."

"But!" she gasped suddenly, raising wild, panicked eyes to his. "How will we explain? Morrison, my father . . . You'll be blamed — "

"Hush, lass." He stroked her hair, pulling her back into him. "Nobody will come for me. We 11 tell folk they killed each other. That it was a fight over . . . property." He shook his head, disgusted.

Cassie nodded gravely, turning her head to look at her fathers lifeless body. Her face crumpled, but the tears had stopped.

"I'm sorry," he told her quietly. "I tried ... He came for me, I tried not to kill him, but ..."

"I know," she said simply. She scrubbed the damp from her face and repeated more loudly, "I know, and it's alright."

"But he was your father."

"Aye. And I imagine lied have traded me for a cask of good claret and twenty head of cattle." She looked up at him, raw sincerity in her eyes. "No, Iain. You are the only man I belong to."

"Oc.li, love, you belong to none but yourself." He gave her a broad smile. "I'm not that great a fool to think I could ever own such as you, Cassiopeia. But I will ask you the honor of being my bride." He grasped her hand in his. "Will you, Cass? Will you finally, finally be my wife?"

"Aye," she whispered. "I've merely been waiting for you to ask it."

"As I have been waiting. Waiting quite some time indeed ..."

She smiled back at him then. Tilting her head, she asked, "You do ken, I'm a very wealthy bride?"

Iain laughed, long-buried joy erupting from deep in his soul. "You are all the riches I need, Cassie."

Epilogue

Epilogue

Cassie watched her husband sleep. It was one of her favorite things. She'd always been a restless soul, her mind needing but the barest nudge to set it spinning from dusk till dawn. But not her Iain.

He had only to shut his eyes and think of sleep for it to come. She fully believed it was his hours in the fields that brought sleep with such ease. That and his pure soul.

She rested her head dreamily on the crook of her elbow. Nobody was luckier than she. Her Iain had an honest and joyful heart. And he also happened to be the handsomest man Cassie had ever laid eyes on.

She sensed he had secrets, but those would come, in time. Cassie had kept a couple secrets herself.

She fought the urge to touch him. To trace those muscles so hard-won. In marrying her, he'd inherited quite the bounty, but still he insisted on applying himself physically. He loved walking the hills, surveying their lands.

Not that she paid that any mind. She was the one who benefited, Cassie thought with a smile. Often, shed rub his shoulders and arms at the end of the day, working those thick knots of muscle, impermeable as granite under her fingertips.

She stifled a giggle, remembering the first time she'd done it. The feel of his bare skin in her hands—how shed swooned! She shouldve been ashamed at her reaction to him, mounting her husband as she had, like she were a mare and lie some prized stallion. But the feel of him, his broad and healthy strength . . . She purred a little sound of contentment, remembering.

No longer able to resist, she tentatively reached out to trace the hard silhouette of his upper arm. He may have a gentleman s title now, but lie had the body and the sun-kissed skin of a man. He could go back to peat farming for all she cared. Shed not complain.

It was his looks, after all, that had first attracted her to him_r so many years past. Someday she'd confess her secret to him. Someday admit how she'd eyed him from afar.

She'd first spotted him when she was but a young girl. Even then, he'd stood out from the others. He'd been young still himself, and yet hed already had much of his height. Standing tall over the other boys, with a body made of straight Iinibs and strong edges, Iain was like a prince from a fairy tale.

And his hair. She sighed, relishing the fluttering in her belly. That thick, gorgeous hair, the color of burnished copper. There was a day shed seen him at market, and the sun had caught that hair and set it afire. Shed been desperate to know if his eyes would match. For years, shed wondered if those eyes would be as blue as the sky or brown like the fields. Or even darker still, mysterious like the sea at night.

Shed been such a foolish, lovesick girl. The memory tickled her, contented her. There were so many memories of him, etched in her heait. Playing them in her mind, in these wee hours, it was as though she could relive a story whose happy ending she was assured.

Shed spied him again, a couple years later, and hed grown even taller, and broader, and the sight of those long, straight limbs and that auburn hair had her body thrumming in shocking and unexpected ways.

For so long, in secret, shed wondered who he was. It had become too much, though. How shed begged her ladys maid to find out his name! Iain Mac Nab, shed told her, and Cassie had swooned from the very sound of it. Shed imagined it matched the man: strong, upright, steadfast.

She had seen him again and was desperate for just one glimpse more. It was what had brought her so far afield on that day, the day they first met. Shed snuck out, braved the bogs, and spied on him hard at work. And what a glorious sight hed been.

His broad shoulders flexing with each strike of his peat iron. His plaid, so proud, fluttering in the breeze. His strong and steady legs. She blushed at the memory.

And then she accidentally sank into the bog. Shed been mortified!

But then he appeared, cresting the hill, a smile on his face . . . shed thought her heart would stop.

Hed swept her out, easy as you please, and that thrumming shed felt before was nothing to the melted

Dutter she became in his arms. And finally—finally!—she learned the color of those eyes. Wondrously, amazingly, they matched his hair. His hair and his eyes, the same striking rich auburn. Like gingerbread. They'd warmed for her, their edges crinkling.

Shed been lost then. She was his from that very moment.

Cassie had never met anyone like him. Everyone else seemed so ... ordinary. But Iain was nobler, somehow. Shed known it from the stait. All eyes went to him when he entered a room, as though folk naturally looked to him for guidance. He was special, so good, so courageous.

So very handsome.

And he was hers. She smiled.

His eyes fluttered open, and she stole her hand back fast to her side. Too late, though. Hed spied just what—and who—had woken him.

He smiled his crinkle-eyed smile and Cassie s heart kicked. Would she ever get over this feeling?

"You re up with the birds this morning." He tugged her possessively to him for a kiss that stole her breath. Iain pulled away and chuckled, sensing her reaction to him.

"What has you roused, wife?" he asked, his voice mischievous and hoarse from sleep. He stretched and looked to the window. The sky had lightened to dark gray, but full dawn was still a half hour away. ' Tis too early to get to work." He pulled her on top of him, kissing her shoulders, her neck. "Whatever should we do?"

It became immediately apparent to her that Iain knew exactly what it was he thought they should be doing.

She nestled her body down, just light, over him. He moaned, closing his eyes, jarred by a surge of lust.

She wriggled her hips for good measure, settling her weight fully upon him, loving the sudden control shed won. She gave him a little feline smile of satisfaction, and he gave her a dark and hungry look in return. Hed know exactly what she was doing, and hed not stop her by any means.

"But your mates had said they were off to fish today," she said innocently. "Are you certain you don't have a mind to catch them and go for a sail instead?"

"Och, no, bonny Cassie," he answered quickly, adamantly, laughter in his voice. "Trust me, lass, Ive lost my taste for the sea."

He kissed her hard, growing serious, and rolled her beneath him. Now it was Iains turn to nestle his body just so. He smiled wickedly at Cassie^rs gasp.

"No, my bonny, bonny bride. On land, in sky, in the sea, the only creature I have a mind to catch I hold already in my arms."