Page 2 of Only a Highlander Will Do

“Are these men MacLeods?” one of the younger men before them asked Orrick.

He nodded once more. “They are my brothers.”

With solemn faces, Tormod and the two other men lowered their swords and returned them to their scabbards. “We’d heard the new laird had come home weeks ago.” The oldest amongst them turned an angry gaze on Alastair. “We’d hoped yer return would mean a time of prosperity fer us, nae destruction and death.”

“What happened here today is a tragedy,” Alastair said, his voice hard. “I am so very sorry for the loss of all those who died this day. What happened here will never happen under my watch again, I promise you.”

The older man’s face squeezed as if in pain. “Yer pretty words will nae bring any of them back tae us.”

Alastair touched the man’s arm in a gesture of caring. “Justice will come in time. Right now, we must bury the dead. Those who still live will be provided with any medical attention that is necessary, and a means to move forward with their lives.”

The man’s eyes narrowed. “And what of revenge?”

“Revenge has never resurrected the dead, and it will never solve the problem.”

“Then what do ye suggest?” the eldest villager asked.

Alastair’s eyes narrowed. “That we take care of this current crisis before we start another. As your laird and protector I will see this never happens to the MacLeod clan or anyone associated with it again.”

The old man’s bravado vanished, his face paled, and he took a step back as if he suddenly remembered who he challenged. “As ye will, m’laird.”

The tension in Alastair’s stance relaxed, but not for Tormod. As the cries of the villagers mixed with the pop and sizzle of the burning structures, Tormod’s right hand tightened against his thigh. There would be revenge for the MacLeod clan and soon, if he had anything to say about the matter. And since Alastair, the appointed heir, had put Tormod in charge of the defences of the castle and her people, he had quite a lot to say about what happened next.

He could wait until they helped those in the village find shelter at Dunvegan Castle, but once that task was complete, nothing would stop him from seeking revenge upon the MacDonalds, as the MacLeods had done for centuries.

Chapter One

Ulster Castle, Scotland

Sunday, October 24th, 1742

Fiona Fraser sat on a stone bench that was simply several rocks piled together of similar sizes to create a perch, tending the garden her father forbad her from growing. All her life she’d had a love affair with all growing things—whether weeds or cultivated flowers. They were all beautiful to her.

Young ladies of breeding do not sully their hands with soil. You have servants to attend you. Let them grow whatever you like, but stay out of the dirt.

It was just one of his many rules followed by the typical chastisement her father foisted upon his only child. Why couldn’t she have been born a son? Then she could do whatever she wanted, and her father would have been a happier man. Instead, he worried, night and day, about every little thing. It was the reason Fiona sought out her private refuge. To escape her father’s anxiety for even a short while.

Fiona tipped her face up to greet the morning sunshine and smiled. The warmth of the sun and the secretive whispers of the breeze through the stalks of the wild flowers at her feet brought a sense of tranquillity. Here in her wild and untamed garden, the days were long and lazy, and the nights painted with starlight, fragrant with the scent of wild roses and heather.

Since she was alone and had every intention of remaining so for the foreseeable future, Fiona reached up and tugged at the wide ivory combs that kept her hair in a restrictive knot at the nape of her neck. She shook the thick red cascade free and ran her fingers through the curls. Free and unrestrained. That was how she wished she could live her life, but her father had other plans for his daughter.

Fiona felt her smile lessen as she stood and walked back into the centre of her garden, kneeling once more amongst the wild flowers. With her spade in hand, she rid the soil of the grass growing near a clump of wild radish, and nurtured the long vines of common vetch to climb on a small trellis she’d built herself from scraps of wood and twine that had been discarded around the crumbling castle where she and her father lived.

They had no funds with which to renew the ramshackle ruin of Ulster Castle, nor had their ancestors. They were the only branch of the Fraser clan remaining on the Isle of Skye and had no great wealth or warriors to protect them. It was only their tentative alliance with the MacDonald clan that kept them from being taken over by their neighbouring clans—the Nicolsons and the MacLeods.

Even if their situation wasn’t ideal, Fiona tried her best to make the castle liveable by keeping the furnishings in good condition, the draperies repaired, and the tapestries from being eaten by moths with carefully placed sachets of dried herbs and wild flowers. And despite her father’s rules and worry, the few servants they had were devoted to her and kept her company. Even so, there was always an emptiness inside her. She longed for a friend to share her own thoughts and feelings. Fiona shook away the thought. She had no time for such trivial things. There was very little time in her day left for friendship after taking care of Ulster Castle and her little garden.

Ulster Castle meant everything to her, even though it would never truly be hers. Once she married it would become the eventual property of her husband. Yet she never let that irritating fact dampen her love of each and every reddish-brown stone. She knew the history of Ulster Castle as well as she knew her own. The castle was first a fortified site that was developed into the early origins of the castle in the thirteenth century, complete with a moat that had been filled in a century ago and the curtain walls removed once cannons made the defences obsolete. The stones from the walls had been used by the ninth laird to build the small dower house where she, her father, and their three servants lived.

Fiona gathered stems of wood sage and sheep’s sorrel to create a bouquet she would take back to her home. She’d been gone over an hour, and soon her father would come looking for her—though she doubted he would ever look for her in the ruins of the shell keep that was right next door. Without a roof, the castle ruin was the perfect place for her to grow her flowers. They got enough rainfall through the open ceiling, and without shutters in place the wind could still tempt them to grow strong, but here amongst the confines of the castle walls meant the sheep could not graze upon them as they searched for new sources of food to fatten their bellies.

Before she left, she had one final task to accomplish. She knelt before a patch of purple-, white-, and yellow-headed wild pansies and plucked several along with their stems. She carefully wove them into a small wreath, then sitting back on her heels, she smiled down at her handiwork. Twisting to her left, she set the wreath inside a ring of mushrooms that had sprung up overnight.

Every time she visited her garden she made a gift for the fairies. Mrs Bagley, their cook and Fiona’s nanny while growing up, had told her stories all her life about fairies—about their kindness, mischievousness, and villainy.

Fiona preferred to believe fairies were not evil, but good. Thoughts of their world entertained her when she was lonely, and even though she had never seen a fairy herself, she believed in their existence with her whole heart. She saw their existence in every blossom of her flowers. In the way the moss grew on the northern side of trees, grounding her in her location. She felt their presence in the softness of the rain as it fell to the earth.

She did not need to see them to believe in them. Returning her thoughts to the present, Fiona nestled the ring of flowers atop the mushrooms, then reached for a little bell she kept in her basket. A tiny tinkling sound came from the decoration as she set it in the centre of the flower ring. She hoped the fairies would like the shiny bell and the cheerful sound it produced.