For the Highlander's Pleasure. Joanne Rock

came to the feast of gathering.

      Violet shivered her way into a fresh chemise and rich yellow kirtle, the hearth fire in her small sleeping chamber doing naught to ward off the unease that pricked her skin. She’d returned home from her journey to the riverbank to find the keep empty of men save her father. None of his knights sat in the hall with him for fear of being chosen as his champion—or perhaps they were more afraid of being chosen as her mate. Some said her father had allowed her to run wild, and perhaps that was true. She was more apt to be in the woods than the kitchens, testing herbal mixtures or digging in the dirt to ensure the healthiest plants for her remedies.

      Still, marriage to her would mean wealth and lands for her husband. Surely her unconventional ways would be a small inconvenience.

      “Violet?” Inna’s voice came through the chamber door. “Your da is keen to see you in the hall.”

      “Aye,” Violet muttered, nervous at the thought of facing her father when no one had answered his call.

      Digging through the silks and linens of her wardrobe, she searched for a sheer swath to wrap about her hair and neck. The herbs from Morag’s failed potion had left her skin hot and vaguely itchy. She could not bear the thought of any heavy fabric upon it. Her whole body felt oversensitive.

      As she found her lightest silk, Violet peered into a small looking glass mounted inside her wardrobe. By the brightness of her eye and the flushed appearance of her skin, she guessed she might be feverish. Perhaps riding home in wet clothes had not been wise, but she’d been unsettled by her conversation with the Highlander. Curse his arrogance. The stranger had been so certain he would be her father’s champion when he did not even know the path to her keep.

      Wrapping the fragile silk about her hair and neck, she hid some of the evidence of her fevered skin and hurried out of the chamber.

      “How is his mood?” she asked Inna, finding the maid pacing the gallery with a small torch in one hand and a kitten cradled in the other.

      “Bitter and brooding,” the older woman informed her, holding the torch before them like a beacon to illuminate the keep’s treacherous walkways and narrow stairs.

      Inna had been with Violet since Violet’s mother had passed some eight years ago, so she was well versed in reading the moods of the keep’s master. Every resident of Caladan looked to the lord’s cups like a weather vane to see which way his mood blew. After a grievous battle wound to his leg during an old raid by the English, Violet’s father had changed from a celebrated knight to a harsh, withdrawn tyrant.

      “We must divert him quickly,” Violet suggested, resisting the urge to put a hand over her heated skin beneath the neck cloth. The itching had not subsided and, if anything, had only increased. “We must send away the jongleurs and the minstrel she hired. Perhaps they will remain with us a few days until he is in better spirits for entertainment. For tonight, you might play a tune on your lute. He always enjoys your songs.”

      “Ach,” Inna grumbled, snuggling the gray kitten closer as she stepped over a missing stair on their way down to the hall. “You mean my music puts him quickly to sleep.”

      “Then I should say the rest of us enjoy the effect your ballads have upon him.” Violet squared her shoulders as they neared the entrance to the great hall.

      And stopped short as the sound of booming male laughter emanated from the echoing space, bouncing through the rafters. It was not a sound Violet had anticipated on a day when her father had been left to sup alone at his feast of gathering.

      Unless… Dread pooled in her belly.

      Hurrying, Violet stepped over the threshold in time to see her da clap a hand upon the shoulder of the largest man she had ever met. The Highlander she had sent away at the riverbank.

      She stifled a gasp.

      The sight of the warrior lord had an immediate and fierce effect upon her. Tall and broad, the great Scots chieftain loomed above her father’s height. His dull chain mail gleamed bronze in the firelight, dusty from his time on the road. Still, the fine cloth of his garments beneath the mail was apparent. The sleeves of his tunic had been embroidered heavily by a skilled needle, the patterns of exotic beasts and interwoven swords apparent even though the color of the thread was no different than the pale shade of the tunic itself. And though the lower half of the warrior’s body was hidden by a trestle table, Violet spied the hilt of a heavy, Frankish sword at his side, a weapon that would have been prized by any knight.

      Even his aspect appeared fashioned for war. His broad forehead and straight nose formed a strong expression emulated by the shape of most men’s helms. Perhaps his face had been used as a guide for the metalworker’s hands. A few days’ growth of beard hid the specifics of his jawline, but she suspected that, too, was squared and unrelenting. His hair, at least, gave him some appearance of humanity. The dark locks fell to his shoulders without the knotty, matted quality that marked most men’s hair.

      Aye, he was an impressive-looking man if only for the fierceness of him. But even that did not explain the sudden blaze of heat in Violet’s skin, a distinct warming of her flesh from the tingle under her neck cloth to the spreading fire along her breasts and over her belly. Her discomfort was sharp and immediate, leaving her confused and distracted when she needed to focus on this new development.

      “This is my daughter, Violet.” Her father waved her closer. “Daughter, you will want to welcome Finn Mac Néill, our most honored guest.”