Devil in a Kilt by Sue-Ellen Welfonder
Sneak Peek
Would you like to see what happens to Robbie? Enjoy a sneak peek at his story…
Only for a Knight
After years of warring, Sir Robert MacKenzie is returning home to the Highlands. He’s put the past behind him, the scandal and tragedy that drove him away. Now he wants only peace. But when he reaches clan land, his plans are upended by a damsel in distress. Mariana Mackay is paying a debt for her dying mother when an accident lands her in Robert’s arms. Passion ignites – but Robert must face the past and risk all before he can claim the love of a woman with dark secrets of her own.
“Highly recommended for those who enjoy sexy Scotsmen. A beautiful tale of love.” ~ The Romance Readers Connection
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Only for a Knight
A Clan MacKenzie Romance
The Legacy of the Black Stag
In the mist-shrouded fastnesses of Kintail, a rugged country of sea lochs, wild heather hills, and moorlands on the western coast of Scotland, one man has e’er held sway. Since time beyond mind some might say, Duncan MacKenzie, the famed Black Stag of Kintail, has called this hauntingly beautiful place his own.
His, and the great house of MacKenzie, the most powerful clan in the region.
Truth be told, those who visit Kintail cannot help but be awed by the grandeur and magic of the land, or the tall tales circulated about its legendary chieftain. A deceptive air of tranquility clings to the dark peaks and shadowed glens, a peace made possible only by the Black Stag’s competent rule—and his formidable reputation.
Few are those who would cross him.
And most who have tried are no more.
Yet, of late, during long Highland nights beside the fire, the more bold amongst the tongue-waggers declare that the Black Stag would surrender his lairdship to his only son and heir, Robert MacKenzie. A braw young man whose task would seem tame, inheriting a land so favored, its people already loyal and true.
But all is not as it seems in the soft Highland air and broad, cloud-hung hills of Kintail, its purple moors and empty glens.
For deep within the region’s most remote corner, change and disruption stir like an ancient benediction. A disturbing chant that echoes across the land until even one so mighty as the Black Stag cannot deny its truth.
Or run from the burdens and memories of the past.
Robert, too, must follow the path of fate.
A journey that begins with the last wishes of a frail and dying woman.
Chapter One
Glenelg in the spring, 1344
“Repay Duncan MacKenzie?”
Mariana Mackay stared down at her mother and reached to smooth the threadbare plaid tucked so lovingly about the older woman’s thin body. She hoped she'd misheard the ill woman’s unthinkable request.
After all, her mother had lost much strength in recent days. She’d rasped the words in little more than a whisper.
Straightening, Mariana wiped her palms on her many-times-patched skirts and struggled against the urge to flee. She wanted to yank open the rough-planked door and run from the mean little cottage of sod, heather-thatch, and stone, until she'd put all her cares behind her.
Instead, she drew a deep breath and fixed her gaze on the peat fire beneath a heavy iron cooking pot. Repay Duncan MacKenzie. The very notion ignited her fury, tightening her chest and making it hard to breathe.
She hoped to the gods she’d misheard.
But in case she hadn’t, she squared her shoulders and folded her arms, bracing herself. She couldn’t bear another such appeal without raising her voice and raining a thousand curses on the man whose family had brought such grief to her own.
The truth was Duncan MacKenzie deserved a hundred thousand curses. But any such outburst would plunge her mother into another coughing fit.
“The Black Stag is one of the most heavily-pursed lairds in all the land,” she said at last, trying not to see the feverish glint in her mother’s eyes—the desperate plea hovering there.
But even by the feeble glow of a lone tallow candle, the ravages of impeding death ravaged Marjory Mackay’s once-beautiful face.
And seeing that damage jellied Mariana’s knees and brought out the worst in her.
Her fierce pride and her seething resentment that despite the aid the MacKenzie laird had sent their way over the years, her mother—long-time hearth-mate to the laird’s late half-brother, Kenneth —had been forced to raise her children in a one-room hovel, dirt-floored and divided only by an ox-hide curtain.
“Duncan MacKenzie has trod over you for all your days,” Mariana bit out, using her own booted foot to nudge a loose pebble from the hard-packed earthen floor. “He never acknowledged your bond to his brother nor cared that my father sired two bairns on you—the Black Stag’s own niece and nephew.”
Frowning, she paused to grind the pebble back into the dirt. “He holds lavish feasts in his stout-walled Eilean Creag Castle yet always left you, his own brother’s woman, to scrape the barest living from these hard hills, soothing his conscience by having a milk cow or a jangling pouch of siller delivered to us whenever he recalled our existence.”
“He had his reasons,” Marjory Mackay wheezed from her pallet.
Mariana sniffed. “You do not owe him restitution.” Stepping closer to the pallet, she dabbed at her mother’s brow with a damp cloth. “It is not just unnecessary. It is wrong.”
Marjory closed her eyes and pulled in a ragged breath. “Times were worse than you know, food scarce. Without the MacKenzie’s generosity, you and your brother Kenneth would have had to endure an even harsher, more comfortless life. Think you I can exit this world without repaying the man whose aid kept my bairns from hungering?”
“You are not going to die.” Mariana wrung out the cloth, squeezing it tighter on each word before re-dipping it into a wooden bowl of cool spring water. “I will not allow it.”
“Oh, child…” Marjory reached a delicately-veined hand to circle Mariana’s wrist. “The gods alone decide when a soul is to leave this earth. But I…” A bout of breathlessness stole her words, the flecks of pink-stained spittle she coughed up spearing Mariana’s heart.
“If the gods or their great of ancients have any mercy they shall work their wonders to see you well again,” Mariana vowed, the words coming sharper than she would have wished.
“You must do as I ask and deliver my repayment to the Black Stag. I have a letter for him as well, written when I first sensed my end was near.” Marjory half raised herself from the pallet, her glassy-eyed gaze sliding to the rolled parchment on the table.
“I do not have much longer,” she added, squeezing Mariana’s wrist before letting her hand fall back onto the plaid coverlet, her strength ebbing. “I would know this done.”
Mariana said nothing. She’d seen her mother laboriously scribbling away on the precious piece of parchment—the gods knew where she’d obtained it. Or the ink-horn and quill now resting so innocently beside the curled missive. Such luxuries were scarce and few in this narrow glen where they lived, all but cut off from the outside world.
“Duncan MacKenzie has siller enough of his own, and to spare. He does not need your coin.” Mariana glanced at the rusted, iron-latched strongbox where she knew her mother kept what coin her brother Kenneth sent to them.
Hard-earned monies intended for their mother's use and not to be hoarded unspent. For sure, not to be delivered into the hands of the notorious Black Stag.
Her gall almost choking her, Mariana frowned at her mother’s battered money coffer, resentment flowing through her like a deep and sullen river. Truth was, if her mother had put the monies to good use, refurbishing the thatch of their cottage’s leak-plagued roof or repairing the countless chinks in the stone and sod walls, perhaps then Marjory Mackay’s ailing would not have taken such a ferocious turn for the worse.
As it was, Mariana could only pray for her mother’s recovery—or a peaceful release from her travails. That, and wish the Black Stag of Kintail to the lowest, most wretched of hells.
Bristling, she tried to tamp down her anger. “The MacKenzie has not sent you aid since Kenneth and I are grown. Had the man ever desired repayment, he would have demanded it by now,” she said, amazed by the steadiness of her voice.
She took her gaze from the strongbox. “Yon coin comes from Kenneth—your son. He worked for every siller, and we know that toil hasn’t been easy, or kind. He would be as against this as I am. Duncan MacKenzie is a hard and fierce man. There are reasons he is known as a devil. He is not worthy of restitution.”
Mariana paused to press the cool cloth to her mother's forehead. “Would you hear the truth of it, he lives in fine style. I doubt he would even appreciate your gesture. So why bother?”
A long, shuddering sigh escaped Marjory's parched lips. “Oh, lass. The matter has little to do with the coin—or even if the Black Stag appreciates the message I would have you bring to him.”
“Even so, I beg you to forget such a foolish notion,” Mariana argued, her scuff-toed boot already worrying another pebble imbedded in the well-swept earthen floor.
“It seems I have not raised you to be as far-seeing as I would have wished.” Marjory’s thin fingers clutched at the plaid covering her. “More important than the good man's acceptance or refusal of my offering is that the giving of it shall soothe my mind. While the breath of life is still in me, lass, I plead you to do as I ask.”
“Good man.”Mariana frowned again, her blood chilling with the implicated surrender in the words she was about to say. “Kenneth will be furious.”
“That is as may be, but your brother is not here and we never know when he shall visit. I would have this done now so that—” Marjory broke off to raise herself on an elbow. She fixed a determined stare on Mariana. “So that I may take my leave of this world in peace.”
“Mother, please. I will not take myself off into the heather and leave you here alone…to…lie here unattended.” Mariana couldn’t say the word die. She did drop to her knees beside the pallet. Feeling as if her own life were ending, she stroked a sweat-dampened strand of hair from her mother’s brow. Fine, sunfire-colored hair, bright as Mariana's own. “I cannot do it.”
“You can and you shall, for you are strong,” Marjory argued, reaching to take one of Mariana’s fiery-red braids in her hand. “Let us say farewell now, my dear heart, and give me the closure of your word.”
Mariana bit her lip and shook her head, hot tears spilling free now, each one almost blinding her.
“I ask this of you only so I may know peace,” her mother persisted, letting go of the braid to touch trembly-cold fingers to Mariana’s cheek. “Promise me, lass. I beg you. Swear to me that you will do this—and be on your way by sunrise on the morrow. So that I—”
“Please do not say it again.” Mariana surrendered at last, pushing to her feet, amazed her watery knees could hold her upright. “If this means so much to you, aye, I shall go. I will see to this for you, I promise,” she agreed, the words bitter ash on her tongue.
Swallowing hard, she squared her shoulders and pulled in a long, steadying breath. “I give you my word the deed is as good as done.”
* * *
Later, as darkness settled on the coast of Kintail and the hush of evening began to curl around the walls of Eilean Creag Castle, loch-girted stronghold of Clan MacKenzie, Lady Linnet moved about the keep’s well-appointed solar. She was a comely woman of middle years and the same flame-bright hair as Mariana.
Ill ease prickled her nape. An unpleasant chill, persistent as the inky shadows in those corners of the room not lit by the log fire in the room’s fine stone hearth.
Trying to ignore the sensation, she paused at one of the solar’s tall, arch-topped windows and looked out at the dark-gleaming surface of the loch far below.
Most times, the view from this chamber soothed her. Indeed, she came here often, the beauty of the loch and the great heather hills that stretched beyond never failing to ease any unwelcome thoughts.
Until now.
This night, far deeper cares than usual bore down upon her.
Truth be told, she hardly noticed the lovely world so still and tranquil beyond her windows. Nor did her ears catch much of the wind racing in from the not-too-distant sea to ruffle the loch’s surface and whistle past Eilean Creag’s night-bound ramparts and turrets.
For rather than the wind, she heard the sound of bees.
A multitude of buzzing bees.
The most dread noise she knew—the sound that heralded one of her spells.
Her visions.
As the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, she’d been born with second sight. Some envied her, she knew. Others, at times, were glad for her aid. But she considered ‘her gift’ a curse. She’d been spared such ‘visitations’ in recent years. Now one that seemed determined to appear with a vengeance. And this a night that should have been filled with joy, for word had come that her stepson, Robert, was finally coming home to Eilean Creag.
“Ten long years.” She turned to her husband, Duncan, hoping her voice sounded level. She could not tell for the buzz of the bees was almost deafening.
A nightmarish din that stole her wits and made her vulnerable.
She clasped her hands, an attempt to keep her fingers from trembling. “Do you think he is truly coming? At last?”
Duncan set down his wine cup. “Aye, and he must. He knows his betrothed is on her way here.”
A chill streaked down Linnet’s spine at the word betrothed—a breath-stealing cold that spread clear to her toes.
She shivered, drew her woolen shawl closer about her shoulders. “Is it wise to wed him to Lady Euphemia? The daughter of a man you have often called a scourge upon the heather?”
“She was chosen because she is that lout’s daughter,” he reminded her, coming forward to rest his hands upon her shoulders, kneading them. “A necessary alliance if we are e’er to enjoy true peace in these hills.”
“And if the lad finds her not to his liking?” That, from a tall, scar-faced man lounging in the shadows of a window embrasure. “Would it not be more prudent to let him first return home and resettle himself before fetching the lass to his side?”
“Och, but there speaks the eternal voice of caution.” Duncan aimed a dark look at his English friend and brother-in-law, Sir Marmaduke Strongbow. “Euphemia MacLeod is already on her way. To send her back now would be an intolerable affront.”
“Such insult might prove the lesser evil if Robert finds the maid not to his liking.” Sir Marmaduke crossed his arms, as ever unfazed by the Black Stag’s scowls. Indeed, he leveled a steady gaze of his own at his long-time friend and liege laird. "Perhaps you have acted in haste.”
“Say you?” Duncan's dark brows snapped together. With a huff, he strode back to the table, poured out a fresh measure of the blood-red wine, and downed it in one gulp.
“My son has traipsed about the land these last years, doing as he pleases,” he said, his hot gaze pinning Sir Marmaduke, daring him to say otherwise. “He gave his promise to wed the MacLeod lass before he left. Think you he would risk a feud by refusing to accept her as his bride?”
Ever a paragon of level-headedness, Sir Marmaduke kept his gaze on Duncan. “I am sure he will do his duty. He will honor his word. I only wish he’d have time to adjust.”
“Are ye mad, English?” Duncan’s dark blue eyes blazed. “He’s had ten years to adjust—or sample enough sweetness elsewhere, if you have forgotten. Ten years,” Duncan repeated, leaning toward him. “The MacLeod lass will suit him well enough. She is pleasing to the eye and of sound wits—unlike her oaf of a father.”
Some might argue that Robert suffers such a sire as well,Linnet thought she heard Sir Marmaduke comment. And whether he'd spoken the words or no, her husband gave him a dark oath in response.
Or so she imagined.
She could not hear much of what either man said, for the buzz in her ears had worsened.
Ignoring the men, for she was used to their bickering, she turned her back on them before they could note her discomfiture, the perspiration beading her brow. Determined to remain calm, she stared into the hearth fire, peering intently at the fiery-red flames.
Unfortunately, those flames soon became a tall and shapely maid's cascade of shimmering red-gold tresses. Beautifully-waved hair that reached to the young woman’s hips, each lustrous strand bright as sunfire.
The lass stood proud, her head turned to the side, hiding her features. Even so, happiness glowed all over her. And from someplace deep inside Linnet, a hidden corner far removed from her hard-pounding heart and the sweat trickling cold between her breasts, Linnet knew she was staring at her stepson’s bride.
A truth she would have recognized even if the lass weren’t standing beside the MacKenzies’ famed Marriage Stone, a large blue-tinted stone incised with ancient Celtic runes, a near-perfect hole in its center—the main piece and pride of every MacKenzie wedding ceremony.
The stone was a centuries-old tradition, and the clan’s most sacred treasure.
And that meant the lovely maid with the flame-bright hair could only be Robert’s future wife.
Trembling now, Linnet’s knees almost gave out on her. She struggled to keep standing, reached deep inside herself to maintain her composure even as she willed the lass to turn, to look her way, so she could see the maid’s face.
But such visions cannot be summoned nor steered, Linnet knew. So even as she stared, the image began to waver and fade until the bright tresses were once again nothing more than flames. And the beautiful young woman, and the celebrated Marriage Stone, vanished as if they'd never been.
“Sir…” Linnet began when she could find her voice, forgetting herself in her flustered state and calling her husband by the title he loathed her to use. “Duncan,” she corrected, careful to keep her back to him, feigning calm. “You say the MacLeod lass is fetching. I would know, is she flame-haired? Perchance like me?”
“Nae, she is nothing like you.” Duncan’s answer came swift and, oddly, exactly as she’d feared. “Euphemia MacLeod is dark. A wee snippet of a lass with dark brown hair and eyes. She will make a pleasing bride.”
“A pleasing bride,” Linnet acknowledged, her heart sinking. But not for our Robert.
That last she left unsaid.
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