‘That’s exactly how I felt.’ They laughed. Then they kissed again, and this time their kiss was more confident. It had the tantalising sweetness of a promise not yet bloomed to full ripeness. Tentative, like all new-born things, and heady, like all things strange and illicit.
The tilt of the boat on the crest of a wave, the scrape of her keel on the first of the rocks that bordered the shore, finally brought them to their senses. They laughed in unison when they realised how far they had travelled without noticing. With the ease of familiarity and long practice, they set about bringing An Rionnag into the castle’s little private jetty where the laird’s own boat, embossed with the Munro coat of arms and with places for sixteen oarsmen, took pride of place. Leaping on to shore, Alasdhair eyed it with a mixture of disdain and trepidation. Dread God, was the Munro motto. He doubted the laird did. Lord Munro bowed to no one. He alone owned his world, his fiefdom and all the people in it. A feudal laird in every sense, even his wife and children were there to do his bidding. Looking up, Alasdhair saw the shadow of a figure at the long windows that overlooked the castle’s gardens.
‘Mother,’ Ailsa said anxiously, following his gaze. ‘I didn’t tell her where I was going.’
‘Do you think she’ll have had plans?’
‘For my birthday?’ Ailsa laughed scornfully. ‘I doubt she’ll even have remembered it’s today.’
‘Do you want me to come in with you?’
‘You’ll only make her worse if she’s in one of her moods.’ The brightness of the day was fading with the sun, that had almost set. Her mother was waiting for her, she could sense her brooding presence. ‘I’d better go to her, get whatever it is out of the way.’
‘Ailsa?’
‘Aye?’
‘Today. It was special.’
Ailsa smiled. ‘Yes it was, Alasdhair, the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me.’
‘And me.’ He wanted to kiss her again. He hated it ending like this, under Lady Munro’s watchful gaze. In the gloaming, they should be nothing but shadows, but Alasdhair wasn’t convinced she couldn’t see in the dark, like some malevolent wildcat. ‘One day,’ he said, satisfying himself with pressing Ailsa’s hand, ‘we’ll be together for always and then every day will be special like today.’
‘One day, and for always,’ she agreed.
It was a promise. A solemn vow they both intended to keep.
Chapter One
Spring 1748
The drums had been beating out their grim message for over a week now. Highlanders had gathered from near and far on this most sombre day for the burial of Lord Munro, Laird of Errin Mhor. In the great hall of Errin Mhor castle, the coffin stood on its bier, draped in a black velvet mort-cloth embroidered in gold thread with the Munro motto, Dread God. It was the same cloth that had adorned the coffin of Lord Munro’s father, and his father before him.
Ailsa Munro leaned precariously out of the tiny window of the small turret room that she had claimed for her own parlour, the better to survey the gathering mourners. Tall as she was, the window was built high into the wall, requiring her to stand on tiptoe. Had any one of the mourners chosen to look up, they’d have caught a charming glimpse of the laird’s daughter, her distinctive golden hair piled precariously high on her head, her vibrant blue eyes alight with interest, looking rather more like a princess from a fairy story waiting to be rescued than a grieving daughter about to join a funeral procession.
The mourners, however, were too intent on passing the time of day with each other and speculating upon the likely changes the laird’s passing would entail, to bother with looking up. Auld enemies and allies alike mingled in the weak spring sunshine. Kith and kin, and a few—a very few—friends. For it took fortitude and a thick skin not to become for ever estranged from such a dour man, as Lord Munro had been. Downstairs, where Ailsa should be by now, the men of highest status loitered, ready to be granted the honour of bearing her father’s colours, his standards, claymore, dirk and targe. Clan chiefs and neighbouring lairds, the cream of the Highland aristocracy, all had come to pay their respects. Even those who had been for the Pretender during the late Rebellion had, with the passing of Lord Munro, a staunch and vociferous supporter of the crown, come to mend fences with his son, Ailsa’s brother Calumn.
The funeral of a laird. Such an occasion as this should be filled with lamentation, but for Ailsa, as for the majority of people present, the day was much more about marking the end of an era and looking to the future than mourning an old man’s passing. In these fast-changing times, with the Jacobite cause defeated, Bonnie Prince Charlie fled for France, and the Government set on turning the law of the land into the weapon that would destroy the rebellious Highland clans, Lord Munro had become an anachronism, an old-fashioned feudal laird intent on keeping with tradition at any cost. He’d retained the loyalty of his people, if not their respect, but he never knew their love.
Ailsa sighed as she closed the window. Her own relationship with her father had been like the Scottish winter, she thought as she made her way, via the back stairs, to her bedchamber—cold and driech with occasional storms, when her own not inconsiderable will clashed with Lord Munro’s consistently unyielding disposition. Fortunately, since the laird had been largely indifferent to his daughter’s existence, and on the whole she had been at pains not to remind him of it, these confrontations had been memorable but infrequent.
Images from that worst confrontation of them all crept into her mind like spectres. Six years had passed, long enough for it to be water under the bridge. Cold, dark and icy water. Ailsa shivered and tried to banish the haunting memories from her mind.
There were enough ghosts at large today already; no need to conjure up any more from the past.
She stuck a few more precautionary pins into her thick golden hair, in what she already knew was a vain effort to prevent it escaping the constraints of its bun. ‘Thrawn old bugger as he was, he was still my sire,’ she said aloud to her reflection. ‘It would be nice if I could come up with one happy memory on the day we bury him.’
But she couldn’t, though it was not for the want of trying. For old Lord Munro had been a long time dying, grimly clinging on to the thread of his existence long after his wife, his children and his doctor had given him up for gone. As in life, so in his exit from it, Lord Munro had been determined not to depart his mortal coil until he was good and ready. ‘So we can’t really be blamed for being more relieved than sad,’ Ailsa said, continuing to speak out loud to herself, a habit developed as a child, when she had invented several friends to keep her company. Being the laird’s daughter, she had not been allowed to mix with the village children. ‘At least he’ll have a grand send off, for this must be the most long-awaited and best-planned funeral there has been in the Highlands for many a year.’
She fixed a pretty gold brooch intricately worked with an ancient Celtic design to her dress, and surveyed her appearance in the long mirror with a critical eye. Almost without exception, everyone acquainted with Lady Munro, an acknowledged beauty, commented on the strong resemblance between mother and daughter, but Ailsa found the comparison wearisome. Frankly, the last thing she wanted to be told was that she was like her mother, but there was no getting away from it. In the last few years her hair had lost its girlish fairness, taking on the same burnished gold shade as her mother and both her brothers. Like herself though, it seemed to have rather too much of a mind of its own, and was never tamed for long. And as to her eyes—yes, they were the same striking colour as her mother’s too, though not, as one swain had claimed, royal purple. They reminded Ailsa more of the purpley-blue colour of a bruise. Her face was a nice oval, and her features on the whole seemed to please people, though in her own opinion her mouth was a little too large. Did that amount to beauty? She didn’t know. What she did know was that unfortunately there was no escaping the mirror’s evidence—she was her mother’s