The Highlander’s Trust_Blood of Duncliffe Series_A Medieval Scottish Romance Story
The Highlander’s Trust
Blood of Duncliffe Series (A Medieval Scottish Romance Story)
Emilia Ferguson
Table of Contents
Copyright
A Personal Note From Emilia Ferguson
Dedication
About The Author
THE HIGHLANDER’S TRUST
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
EPILOGUE
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Acknowledgement
If You Have Enjoyed This Book…
Publisher’s Notes
Copyright © 2017,2018 by EMILIA FERGUSON
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to real or dead people, places, or events are not intentional and are the result of coincidence. The characters, places, and events are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the author/publisher. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Cover designed by Ms Melody Simmons. Author has the copyrights to this cover.
A PERSONAL NOTE
FROM EMILIA FERGUSON
To My Dearest Lovely Readers,
There is something picturesque and dramatic about the Scottish Highlands. Not only the landscape, which is mysterious, with its own special wildness and drama. It is the people themselves.
Scottish people are the original untamed spirits: proud, wild, forthright, in touch with their inner selves. The Medieval period in Scotland is a fascinating one for contrasts: half the country was steeped in Medieval culture - knights, ladies, housecarls and maids - and the other half was a maelstrom of wild clans people; fighting, living and loving straight from the heart.
If the two halves - the wild and the courtly - meet up, what will happen? And how will these proud women and untamed men react when brought together by social expectations, requirements and ambitions?
Read on to find out the answers!
Thank you very much for your strong support to my writing journey!
With Hugs, Kisses and Love…
~ Emilia
DEDICATION
Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be man's last romance.
Oscar Wilde
This Story Is Specially Dedicated To You, My Dearest Reader!
It is with gratefulness and gratitude that I am writing to you this personal dedication.
Thank you once again for giving me this opportunity to share with you my creative side.
I hope you will enjoy reading this story as much I have enjoyed writing it!
It is with such great support from you that we authors continue to write, presenting you with great stories.
Have you checked out my other western historical romance books series?
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Emilia Ferguson is the pen name of an author who writes historical romance with her husband.
When she is not writing her Medieval Historical Scottish Romance pieces, she enjoys taking long walks with her husband and kids at the nearby beaches.
It was these long walks where she got inspirations and ideas for her stories. She credits her wonderfully supportive husband John, her great cover designer Ms Melody Simmons and her advance review reviewers for helping her to fine-tune her writing skills and allowing her creativity to explode.
~ Emilia
THE HIGHLANDER’S TRUST
A MEDIEVAL SCOTTISH ROMANCE STORY
by
EMILIA FERGUSON
PROLOGUE
Duncliffe Manor
Near Edinburgh
1739
Something rustled behind the tree. Arabella tensed. She knew it was dangerous out here. Thoughts of what could happen to her flashed through her mind and she froze in place, her heart thumping like a bellows, pale cheeks flushed.
The country was, more or less, at war. She was an earl's daughter – an earl known to support the Jacobites. Even if she wasn't, she was a young woman alone in woods that housed enemies, thieves and plain ordinary vagabonds. She could die, and no one would even know she was dead. She could go missing and no one would know she was gone.
I am a fool. I should never have come out here alone.
It had seemed so innocent – a trip into the margin of the woods round Duncliffe Manor, to collect some thyme for Francine's sore eyes. It could cost her life.
Now another twig rustled. She had no doubt about it anymore. There was something in those bushes. Or someone.
Absolute terror ran in her blood. What could she do? The list of options ran through her head, almost empty. All she could do was to stand still and hope nobody noticed her.
She stood still, counting to ten and then took a step back. Then another.
That was when whatever it was stepped round behind her.
She felt a hand on her shoulder and something cold touched her neck.
She would have screamed except that she was about to faint.
The hand met the place where her red hair touched the collar of her dress. She could feel the blade of a knife pressing to her skin.
“Please,” she whispered. “Please.” She closed her eyes.
She heard someone gasp. Suddenly, someone moved to stand in front of her. She stared.
The man was tall, with black hair. His eyes were blue, the color of the sky at sunset. He held her gaze. He looked, if anything, as astonished as she. He was also handsome. A thin, fine-boned face, a well-molded mouth, a face with big, dreamer's eyes.
“Please,” he said in Lowland Scots. “No screaming?”
She felt the ludicrous element of that request. She wanted to suddenly laugh. She knew that if she did she might go hysterical.
“Fine,” she managed to articulate. “No screaming. Just go.”
He stepped away. The knife went into his belt. She sighed.
“Good,” she said. Her legs almost collapsed under her with relief.
It was only when she'd said it that she realized she's switched to Lowland Scots herself. At home, she spoke Gaelic, though she also had been tutored in English and French. A nasty thought struck her.
“You speak English?” she asked, switching to that language.
The man went white. He nodded.
She covered her mouth with her hand.
She was right.
The man was an Englishman, possibly a soldier.
She considered him. He was dressed simply in doublet and hose, a plain linen shirt. However, that didn't mean he wasn't a soldier. Or a spy.
“Go,” she whispered.
“You won't tell?” he said back. Gray-faced with tension, his eyes wide with pleas, the man was clearly terrified. Rightfully so. If her father or even her brother found him here, they'd kill him.
Arabella nodded. “You spared me. I shall spare you. Just go.”
She didn't know where the words had come from, but it felt right. Like a promise. It was fair.
She saw the man stumble, his legs going weak with relief. She knew the feeling. A moment earlier, she had felt it herself.
As she watched, he stepped backward. He took one step, then another. Then he turned round and ran. She let out a long sigh once he was finally away.
“Whew.”
She walked slowly back to the edge of the woods, feeling dizzy and disoriented. She couldn't quite believe she had done that. She had let the man go. What had she been thinking of?
She walked back to Duncliffe, looking up at its familiar gray walls with a shudder. It was her home, but, in her own special way, she had just become a traitor.
She had a duty to her family, to the Jacobite cause, to tell them what she had seen.
As she looked back toward the forest, she realized that there was no way she could fulfill that duty. She recalled the terrified look on that gaunt, handsome face, the terror in those bright blue eyes. There was no way she could be the instrument of that man's death – and if her family found him, if they gave him to the guards, it would be a slow death for him. She would not do that.
She owed her heart a greater duty, and that was silence. As well as compassion.
She went slowly inside and up the long, wooden stairway to her bedchamber. There, she sat down heavily with her long oval face buried in her hands. She had made her choice and nothing would change it. Her choice was silence and fulfillment of his trust.
She knew that she would never forget that moment, or the strange man with the pale eyes and that hesitant, halting smile.
A SURPRISING INVITATION
“Blast this rain,” Richard Osborne, son of the baron of Ensfield, swore. He looked down to where his man walked beside his horse.
“Quite, sir,” his valet, Bromley, nodded.
Richard looked into the trees, shuddering. The close encounter in the woods still unnerved him. What had he been thinking? He could have died. If it had been a soldier he'd caught, he could be dead now. Not that anyone would miss him, he thought sourly. His own father had seemed all too happy when he finally left the hall and headed north with the militia.
“Almost back?” he asked Bromley.
“About two miles more, sir. Not long now.” He seemed a little surprised, as if Richard's need to get out of the rain was somehow overstated.
“Mm,” Richard nodded. “Just can't bear this wretched weather.”
“Indeed, sir.” Bromley nodded.
Richard sighed. It wasn't the need to get out of the rain that spurred his sense of urgency – or not only that. It was the need to put as many miles between that wretched wood and himself as possible, in as short a time as possible.
I must have been seeing things.
The possibility had occurred to him – seemed more likely – that the figure he'd seen had been conjured from a fevered brain. That was, he reckoned, all the more reason to get out of the weather. Why would a beautiful woman like her have been in the woods, alone? On such a cold day, too? Why would she have spoken English, for Perdition's sake? It made no sense.
No, I must have the fever.
That made it all the more immediate, his need to get out of the cold. Out of here, and into a nice warm room with something to help sweat out the illness. He shivered. If he had it, probably the rest of the men were getting it too. That would be just terrific. The King's Own Scottish Borderers, reduced to pale wraiths unable to keep control of their bowels, never mind the borders. In the rising unrest in the country – the unrest Richard was here to repress – he really could do without that.
“You feeling ill, Bromley?” he asked.
“Ill, sir?” Bromley frowned.
“Yes,” Richard sighed. “That way you feel when you're not quite well, you know?”
He grinned as Bromley scowled at him. They both laughed. Unlike many of the officers in the Borderers, Richard was very close to his manservant, who rode with him on the marches. As a private with the army, Bromley was also incredibly useful. A loyal, steadfast soldier in the regiment of which Richard was lieutenant.
A fine regiment, too. However, if we're all going to be sick, we're not going to do any good. I should get back, see the camp doctor, and go to bed.
He tightened his grip on his horse with his ankles and headed off more quickly.
“Wait a mo', guv,” his manservant – a Londoner – yelled out. “I can't walk as fast as that.”
“Fine.”
They proceeded more slowly back to the barracks.
When he reached his billet, he quickly changed out of his wet clothes. The shirt clung to his back, and he peeled it off well-formed muscles, shivering as he felt the cold air on his skin. The mirror against the wall showed him toned muscles, a narrow waist and wide shoulders. Not too bad, he thought, smiling, for a fellow who'd spent the last few weeks creeping about in the bushes.
Gathering intelligence, they called it.
“I've likely lost more dratted intelligence, getting cold and wet and fevered, than I've gained,” he sighed. “And now it seems like I'm seeing things too. Well, can't be helped.”
He poured a finger of brandy in a glass then stuck his head out the door.
“Bromley?”
“Yes, guv?”
“Get your wretched self out of the cold and come and have a drink to warm you.”
“Oh! Splendid, sir,” he grinned. Richard rolled his eyes as the man's crinkled, well-humored face appeared in the doorway, eyes creased in a smile.
“And get those wet things off, Bromley. If we all die of a fever we'll do no good for anything.”
“Fever, sir?” Bromley asked, as if the very idea of being sick were dangerously unheard of to him.
Richard sighed. “Yes. The thing you get when you sit about in wet clothes after getting caught in the rain. You heard of that?”
Bromley laughed. “I never got it, sir,” he said. “But I've heard o' it. If you insist, I'll do summat about it.”
“I do insist,” Richard said thinly. “I'm staying by the fire until I've warmed through. I suggest you do the same. And if I start raving, please call Dr. Marsden.”
“Yes, sir,” his man nodded. “One question, sir?”
“Yes?”
“How would I know if you's raving?” he grinned. “Never can tell.”
Richard closed his eyes. “Bromley, I should have you shot for intransigence. Luckily, my humor hasn't been corroded that far. Now, get out and get warm before I have you court-marshaled.”
“Yes, sir.”
Richard noticed that the man was still grinning when he left.
He sat down by the fire, staring searchingly into the flames. Who was that woman? He shook his head, trying to forget her.
She wouldn't get dislodged from his thoughts, though.
With that long, curling red hair, her pale skin and those big brown eyes, she had captured his soul from the first glance.
And not just
my soul.
His body ached with longing and he tried – fairly pointlessly – to forget the feel of her pale skin under his hand when he'd touched her neck, the wild scent of her tresses.
He felt his loins ache and gritted his teeth, not wanting to fall prey to the longing he felt. He had tried to avoid using camp followers, and not only because of his father's muttered plans to marry him off when he got back. It was something he preferred not to partake of – the sorry sale of bodies for dignity, an exchange almost always dispassionate and detached; hurting both sides. Those two words were the last thing that came to his mind now – detached or dispassionate. Now, remembering the way she'd looked up at him, the sweet curves of her hips, waist and bust, the way her red lips parted as she stared at him, making a little moue of surprise that he'd ached to kiss. He felt attached and passionate, both. Enchanted.
Drat. Now I'm pining for hallucinations. Time for help.
He tipped back the brandy, made a face and stuck his head out into the rain.