Baldoon Castle

The Isle of Doon, One month later…

“A proxy wedding?”

Amicia MacLean shot from her seat at the dais table, her good humor of moments before, forgotten. The pleasure she’d taken at having both her brothers beneath the same roof again for the first time in well over a year, now replaced by wave after wave of stunned disbelief.

“To Magnus MacKinnon?” Her heart so firmly lodged in her throat she could scarce push words past it, she stared at her brother Donall the Bold, proud laird of Clan MacLean and bearer of the most startling news she’d heard in longer than she could remember.

Wondrous news.

And joyous beyond belief. Not that she was about to voice any such admission.

Too great were the disappointments of past assurances of a suitable match. Too numerous the empty promises and hopes of ever having a family - a home - of her own.

A husband to love her.

“You needn’t speak his name as if he’s unworthy, lass.” Clearly mistaking the reason for her wide-eyed astonishment, Donall MacLean raised his hand for quiet when others in the smoke-hazed great hall sought to voice their opinions. “The MacKinnons may be in sore need of your dowry, but Magnus is a valiant and influential knight. You could do worse.”

She could do no better, Amicia’s heart sang, long-cherished images of the bonnie Magnus racing past her mind’s eye, each fleeting memory dazzling her with its sweetness.

Just recalling his dimpled smile and twinkling eyes weakened her knees.

He’d been a strapping lad when she’d last seen him, years before at a game of champions held on the neighboring isle of Islay. He’d won every archery competition, each trial of strength, and turned the heads of all the lasses with his easy charm and fine, quick wit.

Magnus the man would no doubt steal her breath.

Of that, she was certain.

“‘Tis said he is of arresting looks, ardent, and a warrior of great renown,” Donall’s wife, the lady Isolde, chimed in from the head of the high table, her words only confirming what Amicia already suspected.

Her pulse thundering, Amicia studied the faces of her kinfolk. She stood silent for a few long moments, using each one to steel her backbone and make certain nothing but cool aloofness touched her brow.

Could it be true?

Mercy, dared she hope?

If this arrangement, too, proved fruitless, she would die. Wither away inside and plead the gods to have done with her and make her demise swift and painless.

“Has Magnus MacKinnon declared himself?” She looked at Donall, bracing herself against an answer she’d rather not hear. “Is this a true offer, or is this another of your well-meant but doomed-to-failure attempts to see me wed?”

Her other brother, Iain, set down his ale cup and swiped the back of his hand over his mouth. “Sakes, lass, think you Donall or I can do aught about the troubles plaguing our land in recent years? You ken why it’s been difficult to find suitors for you.”

Amicia squared her shoulders. “I am aware of the many reasons we’ve been given for each broken offer,” she said, her gaze on the inky shadows of a deep window embrasure across the hall. “What I wish to hear is whether Magnus MacKinnon himself seeks this union?”

The words proxy wedding and sore need of her dowry jellied her knees.

The silence spreading across the dais end of the great hall answered her. Her belly clenching, she glanced up at the high, vaulted ceiling, blew out a nervous breath.

Faith, the quiet loomed so deafening she could hear every hiss and crackle of the pitch-pine torches lighting the hall, the low-rumbling snores of Donall’s hounds sleeping near the hearth fire. She even caught the wash of the night sea against the rocks far below Baldoon’s curtain walls.

Almost imperceptibly, she shook her head and looked back at her brothers. She wasn’t surprised to detect flickers of guilt flitting across both their handsome faces.

“I mislike being cozened,” she said with all the dignity she could muster. Taking her seat, she helped herself to a sip of finest Gascon wine. “Nor will I allow it. Not so long as I have a single breath in my body.”

“Sakes, lass, dinnae be so stubborn.” Donall eyed her from his laird’s chair, a great oaken monstrosity, its back and arms carved with mythical sea beasts. Torchlight shone on his raven hair, the same blue-black shade as Amicia’s own.

“It is true Magnus knows nothing of the union,” he admitted, holding her gaze. “But he will hear of it upon his arrival on MacKinnons’ Isle. He’s been gone some years, competing in tournaments, as you likely ken. He is expected home within a fortnight – two short weeks. His father is certain he will welcome the match.”

Amicia stifled a most un-ladylike snort.

She did rake her brothers and everyone else at the table with a challenging stare. “Old Laird MacKinnon will be wanting the filled coffers you’ll send along as my dowry. All ken he burns to rebuild the galley fleet they lost to a storm a year or so ago.”

“That is as may be, but he also loves his son and would see him well-matched and at peace,” Donall countered. “I would be glad of the marriage, too. Our late father and Donald MacKinnon were once good friends. Wedding you to Magnus would seal our truce with the MacKinnons once and for all time.”

Amicia’s heart skittered, and a spark of excitement ignited within her breast. She glanced aside, half-afraid all the desperate hope in her entire world must be standing in her eyes. None of the previous betrothal offers had sounded near as solid, as well deliberated, as this one.

None save the relentless endeavors of a chinless apparition of a lordling whose name she’d long forgotten.

She would never forget Magnus MacKinnon’s name.

Truth to tell, it’d been engraved on her heart since girlhood, and sailed through the cold and empty dark of countless lonely nights now that she was a woman.

Pushing aside every warning bit of her good sense, she scrounged deep for the courage she needed to believe. To trust that, like her brothers, she, too, could find happiness.

A purpose in life beyond slinking about her childhood home, useless and pitied.

Welcome, aye, but not truly belonging.

A wildly exhilarating giddiness began spinning inside her, a dangerously seductive sense of rightness. Lifting her chin before she lost her nerve, she sought Donall’s eye. “The old laird believes Magnus will want me?”

She had to know.

“On that I give you my oath,” Donall said without a moment’s hesitation.

Amicia’s heart caught upon the words, her suspicions and wariness falling away as if banished by a gust of the sweetest summer wind.

“Old MacKinnon even sent you his own late wife’s sapphire ring to seal the pact,” Iain spoke up. He dug in the leather purse hanging from his waist belt, then plunked a heavy gold ring on the table. “Battered by ill fortune as the MacKinnons have been in recent times, you’ll ken he wouldn’t have parted with such a fine bauble lest he truly wished to see you wed his son.”

“‘Tis been long in coming, but you needn’t suffer doubts this time.” Iain’s wife, Madeline, gave her a warm smile.

Amicia nodded her thanks, her throat suddenly thick. Hot, too. As were her eyes. Blinking furiously, for she loathed tears and sought to avoid shedding them, she snatched the ring off the table and curled her fingers around its comforting solidness.

Wee and cold against her palm, it meant the whole of the world to her.

“So-o-o, what say you now?” Donall leaned back in his chair, folded his arms.

Tightening her hold on the little piece of shining hope already warming in her hand, Amicia gave voice to the last of her doubt. “Tell me why there must be a proxy wedding if Magnus is expected to arrive on MacKinnons’ Isle within the next fourteen days?”

“Only because he is returning from Dupplin Moor,” Iain answered for his brother. “‘Tis the old laird’s hope that having a bonnie new bride to greet him will sweeten his homecoming.”

“You needn’t worry, lass.” Donall leaned forward to replenish her wine. “I would not give you to MacKinnon did I not believe he will be good to you.”

Amicia curled her hand around her wine cup, met her brother’s gaze. On this, they agreed. She didn’t doubt Magnus MacKinnon would treat her well.

She wanted him to want her.

To love her with the same intensity her brothers loved their wives.

Lifting her cup, she tilted back her head and downed her wine in one great, throat-burning gulp. She looked around the table, half-expecting to see disapproving glances aimed her way. She saw only beloved and expectant faces.

“Well, lass?” Donall reached across the table and nudged her arm. “Will you wed MacKinnon?”

Amicia looked down at the sapphire ring in her palm. It had the same deep blue color as Magnus MacKinnon’s laughing eyes. Dashing a fool trace of moisture from her own, she leveled her most earnest gaze on her brother and prayed to all the gods that her voice wouldn’t crack.

“I will, and gladly,” she said, her heart falling wider open with each word.

If by chance he didn’t want her, she would do everything in her power to make him.

Many days later, on the mist-cloaked Hebridean isle known as the MacKinnons’ own since time beyond mind, Magnus MacKinnon paced the rush-strewn floor of Coldstone Castle’s once-grand laird’s solar, disbelief coursing through him.

Crackling tension, tight as a hundred drawn bow-strings, filled the sparsely furnished chamber and echoed off its pathetically bare walls.

An even worse tension brewed inside Magnus.

His brows snapping together in a fierce scowl, he slid another dark look at his hand-wringing father. “I will not have her, do you hear me?” He seethed, pausing long enough in his pacing to yank shut a crooked-hanging window shutter. “Gads, but I’d forgotten how draughty this pile of stones can be!”

“But, Magnus, she is a fine lass,” his father beseeched him. “Mayhap the fairest in all the Isles.”

Magnus swung back around, and immediately wished he hadn’t because the old man had shuffled nearer to a hanging cresset lamp, and its softly flickering light picked out every line and hollow in his father’s worry-fraught face.

Magnus’s frown deepened.

“I dinnae care how bonnie she is,” he snapped, and meant it.

The devil knew he’d had scarce time for wenching in recent years. And now, since the horrors of Dupplin Moor, he had even less time and inclination for such frivols.

He had other cares.

Setting his jaw, he strode across the room and reached for the latch of another window shutter. This one kept banging against the wall and the noise grated on his nerves.

Truth be told, he was tempted to stand there like a dull-witted fool and fasten and unfasten the shutters the whole wretched night.

Anything to busy himself.

An occupation to help him ignore the sickening sensation that he’d been somehow turned inside out.

That the sun might not rise on the morrow.

His father appeared at his elbow, his watery eyes pleading. “The MacLeans-”

“-Are well-pursed and rightly so,” Magnus finished for him, turning his back on the tall, arch-topped window and its sad excuse for shuttering. “They ken how to hold on to their fortunes.”

“Ach, lad, set aside your pride for once and use your head. Her dowry is needed, aye. I willnae deny it. Welcome, too. But that isn’t the only consideration.” Clucking his tongue in clear dismay, his father set to lighting a brace of tallow candles, his age-spotted hands trembling.

Magnus glanced aside, agitated. He would not be swayed by pity. And ne’er would he take a wife to fatten coffers he’d failed to fill.

Not Amicia MacLean.

Not any lass his stoop-shouldered da cared to parade before him.

And if they all came naked and bouncing their bonnie breasts beneath his nose!

The back of his neck hotter than if someone held a blazing torch against his nape, he strode across the room and snatched the dripping candle from his father’s unsteady fingers.

“Mayhap your father’s idea isn’t such a bad one,” Colin Grant broke in from where he rested on a bench near the hearth, his wounded leg stretched towards the restorative warmth of the low-burning peat fire. “I wouldn’t have minded going home to have my da tell me he’d found a fine and comely lass to be my bride.”

At once, sharp-edged guilt sliced through Magnus, cutting to the bone. Colin, a friend he’d made on the tourney circuit and who’d fought beside him on the blood-drenched banks of the River Earn, didn’t have a home or family to return to.

The Disinheriteds and their Sassunach supporters had burned the Grant’s stronghold to the ground, Colin’s kinfolk with it.

Nothing remained but a pile of soot and ash.

That, and Colin’s unflagging determination to rebuild it as soon as he’d recovered his strength. But even if he could, which Magnus doubted for Colin’s coffers were as empty as his own, Colin’s loved ones were forever lost.

They couldn’t be replaced by all the coin in the land.

“‘Tis glad I am to be home, Da, make no mistake.” Magnus touched the candle’s flame to the remaining unlit wicks, taking care not to spill melting tallow on the table or the floor rushes. “But” – he flashed a look at his father – “I see you’ve gone a bit forgetful in my absence. I do no’ want a wife.”

“Then I’m asking you to reconsider,” his father implored. He tried to clutch Magnus’s sleeve, but Magnus sidestepped him.

“There is naught to think over,” he declared, his voice firm. “I’ll have none of it.”

Resuming his pacing, Magnus tried not to see Colin’s sad gaze following his every angry step.

Nae, Colin’s reproachful gaze.

He also strove not to notice the chamber’s sparseness, tried not to remember how splendidly outfitted it’d been in his youth. He didn’t want to think about how much of its former glory he could have restored had the fortune he’d amassed over the last three years not been stolen from its hiding place while he’d fought a vain battle against the English on Dupplin Moor.

He slid a look at his father as he marched past Colin, and hated to see the old man’s misery. But it couldn’t be helped. With time and hard work, he’d set things right again.

He’d also rebuild his da’s proud fleet of galleys. That he’d do even if he had to work his fingers to the bone. If need be, he’d scrape the very sides and bottom of his strongbox to make it happen.

“You need heirs. I am not well, son.”

His father’s voice brought him to an abrupt stop.

Magnus swore beneath his breath, closed his eyes. “I will take a wife and sire bairns after I’ve regained our fortunes,” he said, thick-voiced. “You have my oath on it.”

“Well you say it, but I fear-”

“You fear what?” Magnus wheeled toward him, found him hovering on the solar’s threshold, his rheumy gaze darting between Magnus and the gloom-chased corridor beyond the solar’s half-open door.

Gloomy and shadow-ridden because the once-great Clan MacKinnon could no longer afford to keep their stronghold’s many passageways adequately illuminated.

A sorry state made all the more glaring by the light, hesitant footfalls nearing from the distance.

His father blanched at the sound. “Oooh, may all the ancients preserve me.” The old man wheezed and pressed a quavering hand against his chest.

Magnus glanced at Colin, but his friend only shrugged. Whipping back to face his father, he was alarmed to note that his da’s face had gone an even starker shade of white.

“What is it?” Magnus frowned. “Are you ill?”

Purest dread, nae, panic, flashed across the old man’s face. “Aye, ‘tis sick I am,” he said, raising his voice as if to overspeak the fast approaching footsteps. “But no’ near so much as I’m about to be.”

Magnus eyed him. Something was amiss and he had a sinking feeling it had to do with his father’s determination to marry him to the MacLean heiress.

Almost certain of it, he folded his arms and fixed the older man with a stare. “Does your illness have aught to do with my refusal to wed the MacLean lass?”

A sharp intake of breath from just beyond the doorway answered him.

A feminine gasp.

And an utterly shocked one.

But not as stunned as Magnus himself when the most gorgeous woman he’d e’er seen stepped out of the corridor’s gloom.

‘Twas her.

Amicia MacLean.

He hadn’t seen her in years, but no one else could be so breathtakingly lovely.

Even as a young lass, the promise of her budding beauty had undone him. Sakes, her presence at an archery contest had once distracted him so thoroughly, his arrow had missed its target by several paces.

Having her near now, here in his father’s threadbare solar at Coldstone, undid him, too. But for wholly different reasons - even if some boldly defiant part of him reeled with the impact of her exquisiteness.

“By all the living powers,” his father found his voice, resumed wringing his hands. “I meant to tell you, son, I swear I did.”

“Tell me what?” Magnus demanded, though deep inside he already knew.

The pallor shock on Amicia MacLean’s face told the tale - as did his mother’s sapphire ring winking at him from the third finger on her left hand.

The lass herself squared her shoulders and lifted her chin.

“Sir, it is so good to see you home, and safe.” She met his stare unblinking and her courage in a moment he knew must be excruciating for her did more to soften his heart toward her than if she’d thrown open her cloak and revealed all her dark and sultry charms.

Stepping forward, she reached for his father’s hand, lacing their fingers. “I suspect your father has not told you that you already have wed me. We were married by proxy a sennight ago,” she said, just as he’d known she would.

Magnus’s jaw dropped all the same.

His heart plummeted to his toes.

Her heart stood in her eyes and seeing it there unsettled him more than any deadly arcing blade he’d ever challenged.

The image of serenity and grace, she’d wield her weapons with even greater skill. That he knew without a shred of doubt.

Worst of all, his damnable honor wouldn’t let him raise his own against her.