Amanda Scott (42 page)

Petrel oil did provide a lucrative income for the Islesmen from the time of Angus Og, the father of MacDonald of the Isles. At first, Norse poachers collected oil only in the Orkneys. Angus decided to collect it on other isles, too, and export it, but it was his son who ultimately sought the help of the Hanseatic League and others for its transport. Under MacDonald, with the Isles united at last, business boomed, and the number of petrels diminished accordingly, although not for long, since petrels produce their chicks, called fulmars, in abundance.

Since Hector the Ferocious was the progenitor of the Maclaines of Lochbuie, some readers may wonder why I’ve spelled his name as “Maclean” in this book. The reason is that the change in spelling, according to the present Chief of the Maclaines of Lochbuie, did not come about until after 1746. Until then, the two branches were simply Macleans of Duart and Lochbuie.

I should also repeat two points I made at the end of
Highland Princess,
to clarify them for readers who have not yet read that story. The first is that in the fourteenth century, only one Mac Donald (sic) existed, and he was Lord of the Isles. Mac Donald was not yet a surname but a title, meaning
the
son of Donald, and so there could be only one at a time. Eventually, the name evolved into the various spellings used today. I used the modern spelling, MacDonald, to avoid both reader and proofreader confusion.

The second point I’ll repeat is for those readers who have visited the nearly treeless Western Isles of Scotland and who may be wondering about all the forests in
Lord of the Isles
. Until the sixteenth century, the Isles boasted more than forty thousand acres of trees that later vanished through Britain’s unfortunate habit of denuding forests to provide fuel and building materials, while doing little until the present day to replenish them.

For readers interested in learning more about Maclean-Maclaine history, the best of many sources I have found is
Warriors & Priests
by Nicholas Maclean-Bristol (Tuckwell, 1995). For those interested in Macleod history, I’d recommend
The MacLeods: The History of a Clan
(Edinburgh, 1981); and
The Macleods of Dunvegan
(Clan MacLeod Society, 1927). Numerous online sources also exist.

For those who want to know more about the Lords of the Isles, I suggest the following sources:
House of Islay
by Donald Grumach (Argyll, 1967);
The Clan Donald
by Reverend A. MacDonald (Inverness, 1896);
History of the Macdonalds and Lords of the Isles
(with genealogies) by Alexander Mackenzie (Inverness, 1881);
The Lords of the Isles
by Raymond Campbell Paterson (Edinburgh, 2001); and
The Islesman
by Nigel Tranter (London, 2003, Frances May Baker).

If you enjoyed
Lord of the Isles,
please watch for
Prince of Danger,
coming from Warner Books in November 2005.

Sincerely,

http://home.att.net/~amandascott/

About the Author

AMANDA SCOTT
, best-selling author and winner of the Romance Writers of America’s RITA/Golden Medallion and
Romantic Times
’s awards for Best Regency Author and Best Sensual Regency, began writing on a dare from her husband. She has sold every manuscript she has written. She sold her first novel,
The Fugitive Heiress
—written on a battered Smith-Corona—in 1980. Since then, she has sold many more, but since the second one, she has used a word processor. More than twenty-five of her books are set in the English Regency period (1810-20), others are set in fifteenth-century England and sixteenth- and eighteenth-century Scotland. Three are contemporary romances.

Amanda is a fourth-generation Californian who was born and raised in Salinas and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in history from Mills College in Oakland. She did graduate work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, specializing in British history, before obtaining her master’s in History from San Jose State University. She is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. After graduate school, she taught for the Salinas City School District for three years before marrying her husband, who was then a captain in the Air Force. They lived in Honolulu for a year, then in Nebraska for seven years, where their son was born. Amanda now lives with her husband and son in northern California.

More Amanda Scott!

Please turn this page for a preview of

Prince of Danger

AVAILABLE IN MASS MARKET NOVEMBER 2005.

Prologue

West Loch, Tarbert, Scotland, October 1307

F
ingers of a thick Scottish night mist crept in from the sea, shrouding the dark forests and glens of Knapdale and Kintyre in ragged cloaks of gray and veiling the stars and the slender crescent of moon overhead, as four ships, barely visible, passed one by one through the passageway into Loch Tarbert. Although their sails had been furled for lack of wind to fill them, the ships moved silently on the inflowing tide, like hulking black ghosts.

The small watcher on the hillside, having successfully escaped the confines of his bedchamber to breathe the damp air of freedom, began to fear that if the mist rose much higher off the loch, he would not find his bedchamber again that night. The consequences of that might be severe, but freedom from authority, even for an hour, was worth the risk, especially with ghost ships for entertainment.

Curious to learn how such large galleys could move so silently without wind to drive them or any splashing of oars, he moved quietly down the hill, nearer to the shore. General visibility was even worse near the water, but he could still perceive the moving black shapes through the mist.

Now, faintly, came the occasional splash of an oar, although not the heavy, rhythmic splat and splash one associated with galleys as their great banks of oars flashed in and out of the water to the beat of a helmsman’s ringing gong. Nor did these ships’ gliding progress resemble that of such greyhounds of the sea.

A moment later, the curtain of mist parted slightly, and he saw that the one directly in front of him followed a smaller longboat, the oars of which made little sound as they dipped carefully in and out of the water. And if the mist was not distorting other sounds he now heard, a second such longboat moved between him and the bulk of that ship. Smaller boats were towing the galleys into the loch.

The child frowned. Should he run and warn someone? Had the men-at-arms that usually guarded the passageway all fallen asleep? He could not imagine such a thing happening, not when the penalty for such dereliction was a hangman’s noose and a speedily dug grave. But perhaps witches had cast a spell over the guards.

He would face punishment if he told anyone, because his father would surely find out then that he had disobeyed him. But curiosity rather than fear of punishment drove him to decide to follow the boats farther up the loch. Even longboats required up to thirty oarsmen, and galleys held many more, possibly men-at-arms, too. He should acquire more information, if he could, before he told.

As he paused moments later after scrambling around a boulder in his path, a rattling of stones behind him nearly stopped his breathing. Standing absolutely still, he fought to calm his pounding heart as his ears strained to hear more.

Another rattle, a scraping sound as if someone had slipped, and a small, hastily suppressed cry brought a sigh of irritation when he recognized the voice.

He waited grimly where he was to block the way as the follower scrambled around the boulder. The result was a startled, louder cry when they met.

“Shut your mug or by the Rood, I’ll shut it for ye,” he hissed.

“Ye scairt me near t’ death!”

“I’ll do worse than that if ye dinna hush up. D’ye no see them ships?”

“Aye, o’ course. Who are they?”

“I dinna ken,” he muttered. “But if any man wi’ them sees us or hears us, they’ll likely murder us so we canna tell anyone else.”

“Faith, why should they, when our own da’s wi’ them?”

The lad frowned. “He is?”

“Aye, for I near ran into him when I followed ye through the hall. I had t’ hide whilst he rousted out some o’ the men t’ go wi’ him t’ meet the strangers.”

“We’ll ha’ to get back quick then,” he decided, suppressing disappointment. “Someone will catch us sure if we don’t, and our da will skelp us sure for this. I warrant we’ll learn all about them ships come morning, anyhow.”

But the next morning, when the sun shone brightly again on the loch, the ships were gone. Not a ripple remained to bear witness of their passage.

Chapter 1

Macleod land in Glenelg, Scotland, Summer 1378

N
ineteen-year-old Lady Isobel Macleod, having escaped the confines of Castle Chalamine and her father’s harping criticism, rode her pony bareback and with abandon over the hill and down the track toward Glen Shiel. The day was gloriously fine with a warm salty breeze blowing in from the sea. Wildflowers bloomed in huge, colorful splashes, and not another human being was in sight.

Glen Shiel was not the lonely isle of her dreams, with the solitary tower she had often told her sisters she intended to remove to just as soon as she found the means to do so, but it would do for an hour or two. She had only one more sennight to go before she could return to the Isle of Mull and Castle Lochbuie, which had been her home for the past seven years. She missed the Laird of Lochbuie and his wife, her sister Cristina, and she missed their bairns and her cats, as well.

Chalamine, although it had been the home of her childhood, no longer felt homelike with only three of her seven sisters still living there. Adela was rapidly turning into an old maid, burdened with the responsibility of managing the household, while Sidony and Sorcha were fairly champing at the bit to find husbands and marry so they, too, could leave. Isobel intended never to marry.

At least her father had given up insisting that each sister wait until her elder ones had done so. That superstition had died with her sister Mariota seven years before, along with Murdoch Macleod’s dreams of a grand future for them all.

Putting Mariota firmly out of her mind, Isobel considered her options for the next hour or two. She could ride on to Loch Duich or back toward Loch Shiel, or she could stay off the worn tracks and look for someplace new.

As she pondered the possibilities, movement on the hillside opposite her caught her eye. Thanks to the steepness of Glen Shiel, the distance was not great, and she easily discerned two horsemen. Just then, they seemed to disappear into the shrubbery, and she realized they must have followed some track or other than she had not known was there.

Curious now, she touched her pony lightly with her whip to urge it to a faster pace. At the bottom of the hill, she forded the merry burn that tumbled through the glen toward Loch Duich and made her way up the other hillside. She was no longer certain she would be able to find the exact place the two had vanished, but that did not really matter. She had a purpose of sorts now, more than just an escape.

A few moments later, she came to a thick grove of trees that she remembered having seen just to the right of the men, and discovered that a merry stream wove its bubbling way downhill through the trees. Riding into the shady woods, she drew rein and listened. She did not want to meet anyone, and it had occurred to her that the two men, having vanished nearby, might reappear at any moment.

She felt no fear, because anyone in the neighborhood would know her, and she had only to tell any stranger that she was Macleod’s daughter. The other clans in the vicinity were friendly ones.

Hearing no sound above the water’s bubbling other than the usual forest tweets and chatters, she urged her mount on and soon found the track she had been seeking. It was no wonder that she had not come upon it before, because it began at a narrow cleft between two boulders and looked as if it might lead into a crevice rather than into another glen. But the passage widened soon afterward, and shortly after that she came upon a grassy clearing surrounded by more woods against a near backdrop of steep granite walls and peaks.

Finding no sign of the two riders she had followed, she rode across the clearing to see if the glen continued much farther. Entering the woodland, she savored its utter silence until a man’s scream suddenly shattered it.

The scream seemed to come from only a short distance ahead of her and was not repeated, so although she urged her pony at once toward the sound, she did so with care, listening for any other sound that might tell her what had occurred.

The darkness in the woods lessened, and when she saw sunlight ahead and heard male voices, one in particular talking calmly but sternly, as if there had been no sound to disturb the peace, she drew rein. She could not make out their words.

“Doubtless we should leave,” she murmured to the pony. “Whatever is going on is no business of ours, I’m sure, but curiosity has always been my besetting sin, and I suppose it always will be.” With that, she slipped off the horse, landed lightly on the soft ground, and looped the reins over a tree branch.

Patting the pony’s nose, she said, “No noise now. I’m depending on you.”

Knowing she could not depend on the horse, and recalling the many times she had been punished for eavesdropping, she sent a prayer aloft that no one would catch her this time, and moved swiftly but quietly through the trees toward the voices, carrying only her riding whip.

She stopped behind a large chestnut tree near the edge of the woods and peeked cautiously into the clearing ahead, then gaped at the sight she beheld.

Six men had gathered around a seventh, who hung by his tautly stretched arms, tied to branches of two great oak trees. He was dark-haired and wore only breeks and boots. His muscular back and arms were bare, and blood oozed from two stripes across his broad shoulders. As she realized what she was witnessing, one of the six raised a heavy whip and said loudly, “You’ll tell us eventually, Sinclair. It might as well be now whilst you can still talk clearly.”