Claimed by the Highlander

260 Pages·2011·1.1 MB·English

by  Julianne MacLean

He was banished, and in his absence all was lost. But soon, his time will
come. The sleeping lion will wake, and when he does, the MacEwens will
hear his roar.
—The Oracle, March 3, 1718
The Western Isles of Scotland
Contents

Title Page
Epigraph

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
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one

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Chapter One

Kinloch Castle
Scottish Highlands, July 1718

The dream startled her awake mere minutes before the siege began.
Gwendolen MacEwen sat up with a gasp and turned her eyes to the window.
It was only a dream, she told herself as she struggled to calm her breathing.
Later she would call it a premonition, but for now, she was certain it was just the
trickeries of sleep causing this terror in her heart.
Giving up any notion of slumber, she tossed the covers aside, sat up on the
edge of the bed, and reached for her robe. She slipped it on for warmth against
the predawn chill as she rose to her feet and padded to the window, lured to the
leaded glass by a faint glow of light on the horizon.
A new day had begun. At last. She closed her eyes and said a silent prayer
that it would bring her brother, Murdoch, home from his travels. The MacEwens
needed their chief, and if he did not soon return and claim his birthright, she
feared someone else would—for there had been some talk of discontent in the
village. She’d heard it from her maid, whose sister was married to the alehouse
keeper. And after the dream she’d just had …
The horn blew suddenly in the bailey.
Unaccustomed to hearing such a clamor while the castle still slept,
Gwendolen turned from the window. What in God’s name…?
It blew again, a second time. Then a third.
A spark of alarm fired her blood, for she knew the meaning of that signal. It
was coming from the rooftop, and it spoke of danger.
Gwendolen rushed to the door, flung it open, and hurried up the tower stairs.
“What’s happening?” she asked the guard, who was pacing back and forth
through the early morning chill. She could see his ragged breath upon the air.
He pointed. “Look there, Miss MacEwen!”
She rose up on her toes and leaned out over the battlements, squinting
through the dim morning light at the moving shadows in the field. It was an
advancing army, approaching quickly from the edge of the forest. Some were on
foot, others mounted.
“How many men?” she asked.
“Two hundred, at least,” he replied. “Maybe more.”
She stepped away from the wall and regarded him soberly. “How much time
do we have?”
“Five minutes at best.”
She turned and locked eyes with another clansman, who exploded out of the
tower staircase with a musket in his hands. He halted, panic-stricken, when he
spotted her.
“They came out of nowhere,” he explained. “We’re doomed for sure. Ye
should escape, Miss MacEwen, before it’s too late.”
Immediately incensed, Gwendolen strode forward, grabbed two fistfuls of
his shirt, and shook him roughly. “Repeat those words again, sir, and I will have
your head!” She swung around to face the other clansman. “Go and alert the
steward.”
“But—”
“Just do it!”
They had no leader. Her father was dead, and their current laird of war was a
drunkard who was not even within the castle walls, for he’d been spending his
nights in the village since her father’s passing. Her brother had not yet returned
from the Continent. They had only their steward, Gordon MacEwen—who was a
brilliant manager of books and numbers, but no warrior.
“Is your weapon loaded?” she asked the flustered clansman. “Do you have
enough powder?”
“Aye.”
“Then take aim and defend the gate!”
He hurried into position, while she looked out over the bailey below, where
her clansmen were finally assembling in answer to the call. Torches had been lit,
but everyone was shouting in confusion, asking too many questions.
“MacEwens, hear me now!” she shouted. “An army is approaching from the
east! We will soon be under attack! Arm yourselves and man the battlements!”
Only in the hush of that moment, as all eyes turned toward her, did she
realize that she was still wearing her dressing gown.
“You there!” She pointed at a boy. “Arm yourself with a sword! Assemble
all the women and children. Take them to the chapel, bar the doors, and stay
with them until the battle is ended.”
The boy nodded bravely and dashed off to the armory.
“They are MacDonalds!” a guard shouted from the opposite corner tower. It
was Douglas MacEwen, a good friend and able swordsman.
Gwendolen gathered her shift in her hands and ran to meet him. “Are you
certain?”
“Aye, look there.” He pointed across the field, now shimmering with mist
and morning dew. “They carry the banner of Angus the Lion.”
Gwendolen had heard tales of Angus MacDonald, forsaken son of the fallen
MacDonald chief, who had once been Laird of Kinloch. He had been a Jacobite
traitor, however, which was why the King granted her father Letters of Fire and
Sword, which had awarded him the right to take the castle in service to the
Crown.
There were whispers that Angus was the infamous Butcher of the Highlands
—a renegade Jacobite who hacked entire English armies to pieces with his
legendary death axe.
Others said he was nothing but a treacherous villain, who was banished to
the north by his own father for some secret, unspeakable crime.
Either way, he was reputed to be a fierce and ruthless warrior, faster and
more ferocious than a phantom beast on the battlefield. Some even said he was
invincible.
This much was true at least: he was an expert swordsman, who showed no
mercy to warriors and women alike.
“What in God’s name is that?” She leaned forward and squinted, as a terrible
sense of foreboding poured through her.
Douglas strained to see clearly through the mist, then his face went pale.
“It’s a catapult, and their horses are pulling a battering ram.”
She could hear the heavy, muted thunder of their approach, and her heart
turned over in her chest.
“You are in charge here until I return,” she told him. “You must defend the
gate, Douglas. At all costs.”
He nodded silently. She patted him on the arm with encouragement, then
hurried back to the tower stairs. Seconds later, she was pushing through the door
to her bedchamber. Her maid was waiting uneasily by the bed.
Gwendolen spoke without flinching. “We are under attack,” she said. “There
isn’t much time. You must help gather the women and children, go straight to
the chapel, and stay there until it is over.”
“Aye, Miss McEwen!” The maid hastened from the room.
Closing the door behind her, Gwendolen quickly tore off her robe and
dropped it, without a care, onto the braided rug. She hurried to the wardrobe to
find clothes.
Just then, a sudden, violent pounding began at her door, as if an animal were
bucking up against it.
“Gwendolen! Gwendolen! Are you awake?”
She halted in her tracks. Oh, if only she were asleep, and this was still the
dream, playing tricks on her mind. But the sound of alarm in her mother’s voice
quashed that possibility. She hurried to answer the door.
“Come inside, Mother. We are under attack.”
“Are you certain?” Onora looked as if she had already taken the time to dress
for the event. Her long curly hair was combed into a hasty but elegant twist, and
she was wearing a crisp new gown of blue and white silk. “I heard the horn, but
thought surely it must be a false alarm.”
“It isn’t.” Gwendolen returned to the wardrobe and pulled a skirt on over her
shift. “The MacDonalds are storming the gates as we speak. There isn’t much
time. They have brought a catapult and battering ram.”
Onora swept into the room and shut the door behind her. “How utterly
medieval!”
“Indeed. They are led by Angus the Lion.” Glancing briefly at her mother
with concern, Gwendolen hunted around for her shoes.
“Angus the Lion? Forsaken son of the MacDonald chief? Oh, God help us
all. If he is triumphant, you and I will be doomed.”
“Do not speak those words in my presence, Mother,” Gwendolen replied.
“They are not yet inside the castle walls. We can still keep them at bay.”
This was, after all, the mighty and formidable Kinloch Castle. Its walls were
six feet thick and sixty feet high. Only a bird could reach the towers and
battlements. They were surrounded by water, protected by a drawbridge and an
iron portcullis. How could the MacDonalds possibly overtake such a stronghold?
She longed suddenly for her brother Murdoch. Why wasn’t he here? He
should have come home the moment he learned of their father’s death. Why had
he stayed away so long, and left them here without a leader?
Her mother began to pace. “I always told your father he should have
banished each and every member of that Jacobite clan when he claimed this
castle for the MacEwens, but would he listen? No. He insisted on mercy and
compassion, and look where it got us.”
Gwendolen pulled on her stays and her mother tied the laces. “I disagree.
The MacDonalds who chose to remain here under Father’s protection have been
peaceful and loyal to us for two years. They adored Father. This cannot be their
doing.”
“But have you not heard the ugly rumors in the village? The complaints
about the rents, and that silly debacle over the beehive?”
“Aye,” Gwendolen replied, tying her hair back off her shoulders with a
simple leather cord. “But it is only a small number who feel that way, and only
because we have no chief to settle disputes. I am certain that when Murdoch
returns, all will be well. Besides, those who chose to remain never supported the
Jacobite cause to begin with. They do not want to participate in another
rebellion. Kinloch is a Hanoverian house now.”
She got down on her knees and reached under the bed for the trunk. It
scraped across the floor as she pulled it out.
“No, I suppose it is not their doing,” Onora said. “They are farmers and
peasants. This is the vengeance of the warriors who would not take an oath of
allegiance to your father when he proclaimed himself laird two years ago. That is
what we are facing now. We should have known they would return to take back
what was theirs.”
Gwendolen opened the trunk and withdrew a small saber, then rose to her
feet and belted it around her waist. “Kinloch is not theirs now,” she reminded her
mother. “It belongs to the MacEwens by order of the King. Anyone who claims