CLAIMED BY A HIGHLANDER (THE DOUGLAS LEGACY Book 2) (46 page)
Read CLAIMED BY A HIGHLANDER (THE DOUGLAS LEGACY Book 2) Online
Authors: Margaret Mallory
Tags: #General Fiction
“Ye can’t protect her now,” Hector taunted him over the wind and rain. “I want ye to know as I drive my blade into your heart that I’ll have your wife begging for death before I finish with her.”
Rory did not wait for his enemy to strike first. He grabbed a heavy stick from the ground and ran straight at Hector. As he crashed into him, Rory blocked Hector’s blade with the stick. They fell to the ground and rolled across the flat rock. Hector tried to stab Rory in the throat, but Rory caught Hector’s wrist and fought to take the blade from him.
From the corner of his eye, Rory saw Sybil crawling toward them. Her face was bloody with scratches, but she had a blade in her hand and that determined look in her eyes.
Jesu
, she was going to get herself killed trying to save him if he didn’t kill Hector first.
Rory was distracted for barely a moment. It would not have been enough time for any other warrior to gain an advantage on him, but it was long enough for Hector. Rory was slammed onto his back. At the last second, he caught Hector’s arm with the dirk just inches above his chest.
“I should have been chieftain! I should have had Agnes! I should have had that Grant lass!” Hector said, putting his weight behind the blade as he tried to drive it into Rory’s heart. “First your father took everything I wanted, and then you did.”
Rory’s arms shook with the effort of keeping the blade from piercing his chest. He could not hold Hector off him much longer. But this was a fight he could not lose. His clan needed him.
Sybil needed him.
As he and Hector struggled against each other, Rory felt the edge of the rock ledge beneath his shoulder.
“You’ve been a curse on this clan since the day ye were born,” Rory said through clenched teeth. “Today it ends.”
Rory gritted his teeth and with one final surge of strength, he turned and pushed, sending Hector over the falls.
Hector’s scream was swallowed by the wind.
When Sybil collapsed beside him, Rory rolled away from the edge and enfolded his beloved in his arms. They lay together, not caring that the rain was beating down on them.
“When I realized Hector had taken you,” he said cupping her lovely, dirt-smudged face with his hand, “I was so afraid I’d lost you.”
“I knew you’d come. Ye always do,” she said. “And it would take more than Hector MacKenzie to pry me away from you.”
Rory smiled at his brave and clever wife. With Sybil at his side, he knew he could protect his people and become the chieftain his clan needed him to be. They were both free of the past now.
And he held his future in his arms.
EPILOGUE
November 1524
Eilean Donan was stunning with snow dusting the mountaintops and a rare winter sun shimmering on the lochs surrounding the castle. When the gates were opened wide to admit the MacKenzie chieftain and his family, Sybil exchanged a smile with Rory. How things had changed since the first time he brought her here.
The Macrae guard who had warned Rory to escape that day stood at the front of the household gathered in the courtyard to welcome them. He now served as constable of the castle for Rory.
Kenneth hopped down from his horse and held out his arms for his baby sister. “Let me take wee Agnes while Da helps you down.”
Kenneth was more like his father every day. Sybil wondered if her daughter would ever know how lucky she was to have an older brother who would always look out for her.
They planned to stay through Yuletide and expected a large gathering. Malcolm, Grizel and their enormous extended family would join them, as well as Catriona and her husband. Once Rory saw how happy his sister was and that Munro was utterly devoted to her, the two men had formed a close friendship. In fact, they had been appointed as the crown’s joint lieutenants of Western Ross responsible for containing the threat from the MacDonalds. Though the MacDonalds were relatively quiet at the moment, Rory and the Munro were here to ensure that they remained that way.
Before going up to their chamber, she and Rory stopped in the castle’s small chapel to say a prayer at Brian’s tomb. Rory had finally made peace with his brother’s death after Lovat used his connections to have Brian’s head returned from Edinburgh. In the end, Rory and his sister and brother decided to bury Brian here in the beauty of Eilean Donan, where he had spent much of his life.
A short time later, Sybil and Rory were settling into the laird’s chamber when a maidservant appeared at the door.
“A priest left this for Lady Sybil a few days ago,” the woman said and handed a letter to Rory, as Sybil was holding the baby.
Alex was able on occasion to have letters from her Douglas family in the Lowlands carried in secret by priests, but this was the first one she had received in months. Sybil kissed Agnes, who had fallen asleep, and laid her in the cradle beside the bed.
“It’s from your sister Alison,” Rory said and held it out to her.
Though Rory could read fairly well now—he’d asked her to teach him—he knew Sybil would want to hold her sister’s letter in her hands and read the familiar script herself. She tore it open and began reading.
“She and David have yet another babe!” she said.
Alison’s letter was filled with amusing stories about the children and fairly glowed each time she mentioned her husband David. The feared Beast of Wedderburn was a doting husband and father. Sybil read the next part aloud.
Our brothers and uncle have returned. Archie has the backing of his brother-in-law, the English king, and his titles and properties have been restored. Archie, of course, assumed his wife would follow his and her brother’s command to welcome him back, but when he approached Stirling Castle, the queen had the cannons fired on him. That was amusing, but I fear he has learned nothing from his last fall.
“She closes by asking for our prayers for Margaret.”
Sybil wiped away a tear. When the men of their family fled, Sybil thought she was the one in greatest danger. As things turned out, she found love and happiness beyond her hopes, and it was dear Margaret who had suffered most.
“With your brother on the rise again,” Rory said, “it may soon be safe for ye to visit your family.”
“My family is here,” she said, resting her palm against his check. “I hope one day my sisters and cousin Lizzie can visit us, but I’ll not travel to the Lowlands and risk my brother dragging us into his conflicts.”
“This time, Archie may very well end up ruling Scotland in his stepson’s name,” Rory said. “Ye don’t mind missing all that?”
“The only good the men of my family ever did for me was gamble me away to a wild Highland warrior.”
Rory laughed and pulled her into his arms. “The luckiest day of my life was when I claimed a bride that wasn’t mine.”
Sybil looked up at the man she loved and trusted with all her heart. She knew that no matter what lay ahead, Rory would always be at her side.
“Close the door,” she whispered, “and claim me again, Highlander.”
THE END
HISTORICAL NOTE
Archibald Douglas, who first appeared in my earlier series, THE RETURN OF THE HIGHLANDERS, is a real historical figure. His marriage to Margaret Tudor soon after the death of her husband, James IV of Scotland, made the handsome young Douglas chieftain stepfather to Scotland’s two-year-old king. This put him in a position to vie for control of the crown, which everyone except the queen realized was his goal in marrying her. For many years, Archibald alternately rose and fell from power, and the Douglas family fortunes rose and fell with him.
Archie, his brother and his uncle were forced to flee Scotland more than once, but in my research I found no mention of their sisters, wives or mothers escaping with them. Information on the Douglas women is sparse, but I did learn that Archie’s sisters were called in for questioning during one of his exiles, and his stepson, James V, eventually burned one of the Douglas sisters at the stake, though there was no evidence she was complicit in Archie’s schemes.
After I discovered how the men of their family had put them in danger and left, I decided to write this series and give the Douglas lasses happy endings with loyal men.
Sybil Douglas is a wholly fictional character, but her sisters Alison (Captured by a Laird), Margaret (Kidnapped by a Rogue) and Janet, as well as her brother George and her uncles mentioned in this book were real. As a fiction writer, I adjusted facts and filled in the personalities of these and other historical characters to suit the needs of my story.
Turning to the MacKenzie side, I should note first that clan history of five hundred years ago is based on oral tradition and mixed with legend. That said, I changed my hero’s first name to Rory, but he is based on John of Killin, one of the great chieftains of Clan MacKenzie. John (Rory) was a cunning and capable leader who significantly expanded the MacKenzie's territory and influence. In real life, he married the daughter of the Grant chieftain, and their son Kenneth became the next chieftain. I, however, had to get rid of his Grant wife to make room for Sybil.
The conflict between John of Killin and his uncle Hector Roy of Gairloch probably took place ten to twenty years earlier than in this book. By some accounts, John’s older half-brother was murdered by Buchanan. John of Killin was still a minor when that happened, and his uncle Hector served as his tutor (guardian) and usurped his estates, claiming John was illegitimate.
In the traditional account of the fire at Fairburn, John of Killin sailed from Gairloch and pretended to leave for Ireland before sneaking back with his thirty trusted men to burn his uncle’s house. At some point, the king’s council took John of Killin’s side in the dispute and ordered Hector to relinquish the rents and possession of Eilean Donan Castle to his nephew.
John of Killin lived to be an old man and ruled his clan for half a century. His siblings included the Priest of Avoch, who was married, and a sister who was the wife of the Munro chieftain of Foulis.
I drew the story of the marriage between John of Killin’s father and his mother, Agnes Fraser, from traditional accounts. Their “irregular” marriage was supposedly validated and their children legitimized by the pope. The Well of the Heads incident is based on a tale of an ambush of Munros by MacKenzies that was even deadlier than the one I wrote here.
I found Rogi Falls on a map of the area and just used the name for the falls in my book, but most of the other places in this book are real. I was lucky to travel across the traditional MacKenzie lands and visit many of the places where I set scenes, including Eilean Donan Castle, Beauly Priory, Castle Leod, and Fortrose Cathedral. The area is stunningly beautiful, and the medieval buildings, many of which are in ruins, are amazing.
Big Duncan of the Axe was at least a legend, and James Hamilton of Finnart was a power-player in his time who had perhaps ten illegitimate children. Margaret Douglas’s husband was James William Douglas, the 7th Baron of Drumlanrig. You can find out what he did to Margaret in order to save himself in the next book,
Kidnapped by a Rogue
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BOOKLIST
THE DOUGLAS LEGACY
Kidnapped by a Rogue (coming)
THE RETURN OF THE HIGHLANDERS
