Taming the Wild Highlander 04

Leaning against an ancient oak
on a summer day, the warm breeze catching his plaid and lifting it playfully, Angus MacNeill, at six and ten, quietly watched the daughter of the chief of the Chattan clan. Dressed in a blue léine and plaid brat, Edana Chattan dangled her legs over the edge of a massive rock overhanging a loch near her clan's castle, her reflection caught in the rippling water. She looked…contemplative. Which struck him as odd.

O
ther girls her age were chasing butterflies amongst the heather in full bloom, or giggling in small groups of two or three, most trying to catch one of the lads' attention. Like his cousin's. Or his. Or his brothers', who were all older than him.

The girls
ranged in age from two and ten to his age. Edana Chattan was four and ten. She didn't look lonely,
exactly
. Just dreamy-eyed as if she were happier to be in a world of her own. He couldn't help being curious about her. Not after he'd heard some of the others telling him tales about her curse.

Birds twittered in the heather while the clanking of steel against steel sounded in the background.

His older brother, Malcolm, left the sword practice to stand beside him. "Why dinna you talk to her?" Malcolm's dark brown eyes sparkled with a knowing gleam as he brushed his dark hair out of his eyes.

"
She seems happy by herself." She was so bonny—the sun shining on her dark hair, a reddish cast to the strands making it appear even more fetching. Angus had seen her smiling at her brothers, her father, and her mother, but at no one else, and for some odd reason, he wished her to bestow a smile upon him.

Her smile, when she offered it to her close family, was like sunshine on a cloudy day, engaging,
charming, enough so that when he saw her smile, he smiled, too. Yet when she'd caught him spying on her and smiling at her, she'd quickly lost her own and burrowed into herself again.

"
You know about her, do you no'?" Malcolm asked, as if to warn him to take care around the lass.

Aye, he
'd heard the rumors. The lass was touched by the fae. He shrugged as if it was of no consequence. But it was. He didn't know what she could do, in truth, but some had said she had caused deaths in the past. She would warn of it, and then the person would die.

He wasn
't sure what to believe. Her five brothers were practicing swordsmanship with Angus's older brothers, and he himself had only stopped to take a break. It was hard work training against the older lads.

Malcolm folded his arms an
d studied Edana. "You have watched her for the three days we have been here whenever you have the chance."

Aye, he had.
Waiting for her to do something—to show her fae abilities. To learn if the rumors were true.

"
I havena." Angus couldn't help but sound irritated. He hadn't realized Malcolm had seen him observing the lass.

Ignoring Angus
's professed claim of innocence, Malcolm said, "She has noticed you studying her as well. Go speak to her. Let her know you see her as a friend, not foe."

"
Are you weary of sparring with the other lads?" Angus gave his brother a pointed look, trying to convince him to leave well enough alone.

"
Mark my words, if you dinna speak to her before we leave, you will regret it." Malcolm stalked off to rejoin the practice battle nearby in the grassy glen.

Angus didn
't think his brother was right. The only thing he would regret was if he couldn't learn if she truly was cursed by the fae. He looked back at the rock, but she'd disappeared. His heart beat irregularly, and he glanced quickly around the area for any sight of her, trying to quiet the fear he had that she'd truly just vanished into mist and drifted away.

Then he caught sight of
her. She was vehemently arguing with a group of lads and a lass, her eyes narrowed, her lips pursed, her red-brown hair hanging loose about her shoulders. He thought to stroll over there and settle things between them because he had a cooler head and he was older. But she quickly reacted to their taunts. The next thing he knew, she had slapped the older girl's cheek and struck a lad in the stomach with her fist.

Before anyone could react, she ra
n off like a sure-footed red deer.

And then
he learned she was truly one of the fae.

Eight
years later, Rondover Castle, Clan Chattan

Heart pounding, Edana Chattan woke to the sound of her brother Kayne's urgent plea.
Manacled,
dungeon
, was all she heard, though she felt he'd said more, but she couldn't clearly recall the words he'd spoken. As if she'd been dreaming and upon waking, she couldn't capture the words as they slipped away.

It took her a moment to full
y wake and realize she was at home on her feather mattress, covered with furs and the lovely quilt Kayne had brought back for her after fighting in the Crusades.

She sat up, trying to make sense of what she
'd heard. Her brothers, all five of them, were on their way to see their cousin McEwan. They wouldn't be here at home. She must have heard Kayne's voice in her special way. A plea to rescue him.

W
ere all of her brothers in the same predicament?

Her skin chilled and not just f
rom the coldness in the chamber. She climbed off the bed and shivered. Then she lit a candle. Her maid and companion, Una, was sleeping soundly on her pallet and Edana was careful not to disturb her, not wanting to explain the trouble to her right this very moment.

Edana
quickly found her shoes in the rushes and slipped them on. She lifted her wool brat off the wooden bench sitting near the hearth. After fastening it with her brooch, she headed out of her chamber for her father's. Would he believe just her word without some kind of proof that her brothers were in trouble?

He
just had to.

Her footfalls echoed
softly off the stone walls in the corridor. Her candle cast eerie shadowed lights along the way. When she reached her father's chamber, she knocked.

There was no answer. He was a heavy sleeper
, but she had hoped she could wake him from
this
side of the door—much less dangerous that way. She opened the heavy oak door and it creaked a bit.

She paused, waiting for a response. Nothing.

She peered in. "Da," she said, quietly.

If
her father was disturbed in the middle of the night, he was known to jump out of his bed and grab his sword, fully prepared to attack an enemy—as many times as he'd fought in battles over the years.

She called out a little louder,
"Da."

Still, he didn
't awaken. Her skin pricked with trepidation, she walked toward the bed, her shoes crunching on the rushes.

She looked
around for his sword, then spying it resting on the small table beside the bed, she tried to lift it with one hand, while she still held the candle in the other.

She
'd hoped to move his weapon far from his grasp should he mistakenly think she was an intruder there to attack him before he fully woke. His claymore proved too heavy. She pushed it on the table as far away from the bed as she could without knocking it off on the floor. The hilt scraped the wood a little. She glanced back at the curtained bed, but her father didn't stir. She considered the brown wool fabric cloaking her father from her view, praying he didn't have another sword hidden in his bedding. Worrying her bottom lip, she stiffened, then pulled the curtain aside.

And froze.

He
wasn't
alone.

Shocked and appalled,
Edana couldn't stop her mouth from gaping.

H
is back to her, he was naked, his arms around one of the scullery maids, the covers down about their ankles. Zeneva opened her brown eyes. They widened at first, but then seeing it was only Edana, she smiled maliciously.

Her heart thundering in her ears,
Edana dropped the curtain back in place before her father discovered what she'd seen. Thankfully—as much as she shook—she hadn't dropped the candle, or spilled hot wax on her father. She turned on her heel and hurried out of his bedchamber, upset and angry with him and with Zeneva, but worried about her brothers still.

After what she
'd witnessed, she considered not bothering to tell her father when he woke this morn about what she'd heard. Instead, she could gather a small escort to accompany her to find her brothers and do this strictly on her own.

But she couldn
't do it. She always—well, most always—had done the right thing when she'd grown old enough to know right from wrong.

She would see her father and tell him what she
'd heard Kayne reveal to her. Then she'd decide what to do next. She feared her father would dismiss her concern and not do anything about it. Just as he had rejected her alarms on many other occasions. Did denying the truth make it go away? No, but he would rather ignore her than deal with her strange curse. Or gift.

She returned to her chamber
, removed her brat, and slipped into her green léine, then fastened her brat over that. It was still too early for her to get up for the morn, though some servants were moving about below stairs, but she couldn't sleep any further.

R
ubbing the sleep from her green eyes, Una raised her head from her palette and frowned at Edana. "What time is it? 'Tis no' time for us to rise. Is it?"

"
My brothers have warned me they are in trouble." Edana slipped one of her chemises into a leather pouch.

"
What?" Una asked sharply, jerking aside her covers and untwisting her chemise from around her legs before she jumped up from her pallet. She considered Edana's pouch. "You…you are packing."

Una
's hair was a light brown with no hint of red like Edana's, and she stood taller. Which meant Una didn't have to reach up so high nor did a clansman have to lower his head so far to kiss her. Not that Edana had any experience with that. No lad had wanted to kiss the witch, and when she grew older—though Una had said she was bonny often enough—no man had come close to even attempting to kiss Edana. But she had seen Una kissing one of the guards once.

"
What is wrong?" Una asked, quickly getting dressed.

"
Kayne called out to me and said he was imprisoned in a dungeon. Or at least I fear his words meant that."

Una paused to look at her.
"And Gildas?"

Edana
knew
Una liked her second eldest brother, though she'd denied it often enough. Una was two years younger than Gildas, and she was two years older than Edana. Both of them would be too old for any man to wed if they did not marry soon.