The Highlander's Honorable Savior (Iron Of The Highlands Series) Read online

  The Highlander's Honorable Savior

  Iron Of The Highlands 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 HONORABLE SAVIOR

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue

  Join My VIP Readers’ Club List

  Also By Emilia Ferguson

  Acknowledgement

  If You Have Enjoyed This Book…

  Publisher’s Notes

  Copyright © 2017,2018,2019, 2020 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?

  Click the link below to get started

  *** AMAZON USA ***

  Do you like what you have read?

  I want to hear from you!

  Please do get in touch with me:

  facebook.com/EmiliaFergusonBooks

  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 HONORABLE SAVIOR

  A MEDIEVAL SCOTTISH ROMANCE STORY

  by

  EMILIA FERGUSON

  PROLOGUE

  Scotland, 1296

  When the ship struck the dock at Dunbar, Arthur stared out from the far side of the deck at the gray, fog-wreathed town. He felt like a foreigner, seeing this land for the first time. Yet he was no foreigner. This was his homeland. Scotland.

  Arthur took a deep breath to steady his nerves. He smelled the damp air, the salt and, closer, the fetid stench of the docks – the drains, the fish guts, the offal that the sea birds wheeled and cried over. It was not any offense to him – it was the smell of home. He waited at the plank as the other sailors walked down.

  “Come on, lads,” he muttered under his breath. “You can move faster than that.”

  The sailors one by one, stepped gingerly on land. Their legs wobbly with the sudden firmness of the quay, they staggered along the dock towards the taverns. Finally, there was nobody in front of him and he walked down and stepped lightly onto the shore.

  Home.

  He waited for a moment, expecting some dramatic moment, some fanfare of welcome. Nothing came. Only the bustle and cries of the fisher folk and sailors and, high overhead, the mewing of the gulls.

  “Watch your step!” a sailor bellowed. The nostalgia he felt rapidly dissolved. Arthur looked up and moved out of the way. He walked down the quay, unseeing.

  This was his homeland. He hadn’t been here for almost ten years. He looked around, and felt a shiver of alarm as he noticed something.

  The docks were full of people.

  That, in itself, wasn’t odd. However, the people were. Not just the usual collection of drunk sailors, merchants and fisher folk plying their skill, these were fearful-eyed, gaunt-faced people, huddled under blankets or sailcloth or whatever they had.

  Refugees.

  Arthur heard somebody shout it as he progressed toward the sheds. “Mind out the way, you scum! You might be refugees, but you don’t got no reason to sit about, getting in a man’s way.”

  Arthur stiffened, seeing women and children being moved on from where they huddled under the eaves of a shop. He felt his hand close into a fist and considered introducing the shopkeeper to better manners. However, before he could, the man disappeared indoors again.

  Arthur stared, empty eyed, around the docks, seeing, among the hollow-eyed people, soldiers here and there, men dressed in the plain tunics and chain mail that indicated household guards.

  For war, it seemed, had come to Scotland, and he had known nothing of its beginning.

  Arthur moved blindly over from the docks, head reeling. He fell into a group of soldiers – some from h
is own ship – who were heading towards the bars and inns of town. He stumbled along in their wake, hoping that somebody would have some information to share with him.

  “Hey, Allister?” he greeted a sailor he recognized. “Good to be home, eh?”

  “When I get back, I’m getting drunk,” a sailor informed him, laughing at his own comment as if it were a fine jest. He spoke Lowland Scots, one of the few men of the crew who did so. Arthur turned to look at him.

  “Good for you, Beiste,” he replied softly.

  “You?” his companion asked, jostling him a little so he could join him at the bar.

  “I don’t know.”

  Arthur had no idea what he planned.

  “I’m sure I’ll be drunk the moment we set foot in here,” another sailor, Brendan, told them.

  “If the English haven’t drunk the beer.”

  “English?” Arthur was perplexed. What did they have to do with anything? He recalled the death of the Scottish King, Alexander, and he had heard that a new king had been installed to govern the country, but he had no idea how the English formed a part of aught.

  “Where’ve you been, lad?” Beiste sounded amused.

  “Franconia,” Arthur said levelly.

  Catching Arthur’s firm stare, he shrugged and left, his companion joining him. Arthur was pleased to have his own space back. He lifted the pint that the woman behind the bar passed him and drank, mind mulling over with thoughts. There was war in Scotland? It didn’t seem possible. There had been no murmur of it in his recent home. Yet he could see that people were pinched and tense, the laughter forced and the weight of some terrible anxiety on all of them.

  “Fine lass, eh?” Allister winked his eye. The lass – if she had heard him – pretended not to hear. Allister, at least, seemed irrepressible. Arthur shrugged, looking at the lass.

  “I suppose.”

  “What’s wrong with you, lad?” Beiste asked, sounding annoyed. “Isn’t being back a grand thing?”

  Arthur said nothing, just took a sip of his beer. He watched as Allister and some of his friends tried to convince the barmaid to get to know them better. He looked away, feeling discomforted.

  If the lass does nae want them, then they should leave her alone.

  Arthur was no stranger to lasses, he’d had more than he could count in his time in other lands, but he would never force himself on a woman who didn’t want him. He watched his companions through narrowed eyes until they left her alone. Then he drained his beer. He hadn’t, he realized, had a lass in a long time.

  He wasn’t thinking of settling down.

  He recalled the crossing from France to here. The waves had rolled under a lead-dark sky. The deck lurched and the wind howled. Laden with salt spray, the iced air lifted the hair that rested on Arthur’s neck. He felt his heart lift with the wonder the sea gave him as he recalled it.

  “I’ll miss that.”

  He wasn’t about to settle down in Scotland. It would, he thought, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, take an exceptional lass to make him consider that. He set his mug down and headed outside. The sooner he could get out of this stuffy air and into the countryside, the happier he’d be.

  Meeting On The Docks

  Scotland, 1296

  Bonnie huddled in the shelter of a dark space near the dockside. The fetid smell from the drains reached even here. The sound from the quay reached here, too – the yell and clamor of another ship coming in, another ship filled with coarse, hard men. She had fled here, not knowing where else to hide. In the tavern it had been warm and safe, one of the few times on her desperate flight from her home that she had felt so. Now it was no longer safe.

  Her home had been in a tiny cluster of houses, but its proximity to Stirling – site of a Scottish victory – had meant that the retreating English troops had destroyed it, burning and killing the townsfolk and their property in vengeance more than for gain. She mourned for nobody, her family had died when she was too young to remember, and she’d been boarded with Mrs. Marwell, a pitiless woman who’d hated everyone and whose particular ire and cruelty was reserved for Bonnie.

  She didn’t mourn her family, but she couldn’t forget the horror of what had happened to her – before the coming of the English, and after it. She had run from the soldiers, and now she was running from two dock workers in the tavern. She shut her eyes, sorrow and fear making her weep. Would she never be safe?

  “Shh, you clod pate,” she told herself with annoyance as a tear escaped from one eye.

  It wouldn’t do for her to cry – not when she was hiding. The two men in the tavern who’d watched her would be coming close soon. Her skin crawled as she remembered how they’d stared over at her every few minutes with a flat, assessing gaze until she’d escaped the place.

  “I dinnae ken if they saw me.”

  Bonnie shivered and drew a tattered shawl around her. It was all she still owned.

  As she moved further into the hollow in the walls, she tensed as she heard the sound of running feet.

  She leaned back into the recess by the door. She caught sight of two silhouettes against the dark and froze where she was. No – it couldn’t be them, her brain told her with horror. However, it must be.

  She looked up at where the walls of two houses met, their edges almost touching, leaving all but the narrowest strip of gray, clouded sky. Here there was no way to escape. She watched the men – yes, it was them, because she could see the silhouetted forms, now, in the street across from her – and started to form a plan in her mind to escape.

  For a lass who had been raised in forests, Bonnie found it surprisingly easy to navigate her way around this new environment. She hated it, though. The noise, the stench. The thousands of people all huddled in so close, and the gray of the place.

  Bonnie huddled under her shawl and heard the sound she dreaded. Feet, coming closer.

  She clasped her knees, drawing every part of her into the space beside the doorway. The slight indentation between the door frame and the wood was just big enough to hide a twenty-year old girl, especially one slight and used to hiding.

  I could wish I didn’t have to do this.

  Bonnie would have cried, had she not felt so frightened. Her life had taught her, overly often, that the world was unsafe. The longer she lived, the more it seemed she learned the same lesson, over and over. At twenty, she should have been wed by now. Yet she wasn’t because she’d been outcast from the village in all but fact. A devil’s child, her guardian had called her. Why would anybody want to wed such a person?

  She covered her mouth and nose, stifling the sound of her sharply indrawn breath as she heard a sound of boots, crunching on stone. The noise was almost at her shelter.

  “She’s here. I saw her here,” she heard one of the men say. They were Highlanders, which meant she could understand their dialect. She felt a tear run down her cheek. They were looking for her. It was only a matter of time before they spotted her.

  “Bert, you’re a fool,” the other man swore. “She’s not here.”

  “Dinnae tell me I’m daft!” the first man said. She saw his shadow move, swinging around to face the other man. He had one hand bunched into a clenched fist. She held her breath. If they fought, then she might be offered the one chance she had to get away in the confusion.

  “You aren’t daft. Just stupid.” The other man’s reply filled the alley.

  Bonnie tensed as the unmistakable sound of a blow followed. The shadows grappled. Waiting, she wished they would finish each other off so that she could escape, and she watched them with hope. She looked sideways, seeing a man in shadow – a darker form against the darkness of the alley – striking another form. He struck hard, and the man went down.

  Guessing this was her final chance, Bonnie stood and bolted, heading further into the alley, away from them.

  “It’s her!” one of them exclaimed, interest in the fight momentarily ended.

  “After her!”

  Bon
nie ran. Her shawl was clutched in one hand, her feet slipping on the noxious things that clung to the cobbles. She was running unseeing, the alley too dark to fathom anything further than a foot in front of her.

  “Run, Callum!” one man screamed. “Run!”

  Bonnie felt her foot slip. She fell forward, feeling her hands brace her on a wall. She whirled around, disorientated, and screamed again as a man’s hand clutched her skirt. She wanted to cry, but her fear and horror was too immense for that.

  She heard the man draw a breath, to summon his companion. She twisted around, not sure what she could do – knowing she could not fight one man off, let alone two!

  Just then, someone shouted.

  She frowned, not understanding the words. Lowland Scots made little sense to her. Then, as the two men who flanked her turned around, she heard another word.

  “Stop!”

  Lowland Scots it might have been, but it was a word she understood. She also understood the way the men flanking her suddenly tensed, hands clenching into fists.