Ewen pulled a freshly laundered linen shirt from his wardrobe and dressed himself to fight. A Highland warrior lived to defend his people and his honor, and most men had certain rituals they performed before battle. Some chose the company of women, others relied on prayer. For Ewen, it was methodical preparation—cleaning his weapons to a brilliant sheen, slowly honing steel until his sword and each of his three smaller blades could as easily split the finest hair as eviscerate a grown man.
After lacing his shirt, he wrapped himself in a freshly cleaned swath of tartan, which he tightened at his waist with a brown leather belt and large silver buckle. Ewen then began the elaborate process of arming himself. He spread all of his weaponry onto the bed and systematically checked and double- checked each piece as he donned it. He concealed blades under the cuffs of each of his boots, tucked a dirk at his belt, and, finally, sheathed his prized claymore on his back.
Ewen threw what remained of the wool tartan over his shoulder, fastening it with a silver brooch. He rubbed a bit of imagined tarnish, even though the Celtic hound shone from the polish he had given it the night before. Fingering the pin, Ewen invoked the memory of his father. The laird smiled at his almost superstitious need to wear the token to battle, invested as it was with the near-mythic significance of a father’s last gift to his son.
He would submit to no man. And, as his father’s before him, his men were known as the sons of the hound.
Chapter 2
Scottish Highlands, Present Day
Lily exhaled sharply as she dug her thumb along the muscle in her forearm. She hadn ’t done any drawing in years and she wasn’t about to let a cramp stop her now. Working on her sketches consumed her; already she had spent an entire morning vigorously rubbing and blending pastels in an effort to capture the land around her.
It was a nice change from the night before, which had ended badly. It ’d been a full week since she had arrived at her rented croft and, save for the occasional curious wave from a friendly passerby, her only company had been the shaggy Highland cattle who spent their days grazing on the clumps of verdant green amidst the purple heather and gray rocks of the glen. Lonely for a little fun, she ’d made the drive to Inverness and decided to brave one of the local college hot spots complete with rowdy boys, heavily made-up girls, and a loud band. All in all, she thought it would be a fun place to disappear while checking out what constituted nightlife in the Highlands.
After ten minutes pressed up against the bar hoping one of the bartenders would notice her, she began to regret her decision. Annoyed, she thought she could see why the local girls got so dolled up. How else to get a little service in this joint?
She turned to leave but was stopped by a hulking and very drunk young man. What he lacked in height, the kid made up for in width. With a too-tight black T-shirt stretched over his biceps, he clearly imagined himself a buff physical specimen. Too bad, she thought, he didn’t pay the same attention to his stomach muscles, which were well hidden beneath his considerable beer belly.
“Excuse me, ” Lily whispered, lowering her eyes and trying to dart underneath his outstretched arm.
“Oi, it’s a Yank! ” the kid bellowed. He stank of whisky and vomit. Lily decided it was time to get out of there. By getting to know the locals, she definitely hadn ’t been thinking of drunken college boys. What had she been thinking anyway? She should be back at her serene little cottage, watching a movie, with a sinful midnight snack as her company.
“Yes, um” —Lily gave a half smile in an attempt to brush off his interest and again tried to duck out—“excuse me. ”
“Not sso fast, lassie, ” the boy slurred. “Is it true what they say about Americans?”
Lily tried again to escape, definitely not wanting to know what he was referring to. The band was between sets and the bar suddenly seemed eerily quiet. Lily felt an uneasy electricity in the air—the kind, she thought, that must precede a bar brawl.
“Please let me by. ”
“Aye, please let me by, ” the boy singsonged in a falsetto voice. By that time, a couple of his buddies had sidled up next to him to watch.
She felt her temper rising. While some women might have tried to diffuse the situation, Lily fought with fire, refusing to shrink from anyone, muscle-bound or not.
“Oi, ” Lily mimicked. “Now let me by. ” She walked headlong into his chest to move him aside, but to no avail.
“Look you drunken imbecile, I ’m leaving. ” She knew that this was the wrong way to handle the situation, but it was clear that none of his buddies were interested in cutting short that evening’s entertainment, so she would have to stand up for herself.
She noticed a handful of twentysomething girls huddled at her elbow, looking on sympathetically. A flame-haired girl flashed her a lopsided smile in show of support, and Lily found new reserves of bravado.
“Cretin,” she spat, and tried once again to duck out.
By that time the bar was silent and everyone had their eyes on the American who appeared to be in over her head.
Lily fumed. She had simply wanted a night out, to be left alone, to check out a local band and maybe do a little people watching.
“Come on, luvvie,” the boy mumbled. The smell of his breath was starting to make Lily ill. “Just give us a quick snog, aye?”
She had only meant to slap him, but somehow her fist ended up connecting with his jaw. Some of the college girls got in on the action and, rooting Lily on, tossed their beers in the boy’s face.
Beer sprayed on his friends. Then the girls were doused. Then their dates got involved. And, before Lily knew it, she ’d started an all- out pub fight. She had slipped out a side door to the sound of crashing beer bottles.
Lily had always prided herself on not being one of those timid, shrinking violet types, but inciting a pub brawl was beyond the pale. Studying her sketchpad, she thought with more than a little dread that she would need to return to the bar sometime to apologize to the owner for the ruckus. She tossed the pad aside and, knotting her unruly pale blonde hair into an impromptu braid, marveled anew at the scenery. She had always heard tales from her grandmother about the grandeur of the Highlands, but no words could capture the vastness, at once beautiful and bleak. She looked around, awed by the contrasts. Wind howled and ripped tendrils of her hair loose from her braid, yet the coarse plants that dotted the moors barely moved, hovering low to the ground in an angry tangle with the purple and white of heather and thistle. Mean, scrubby little plants pronouncing to the world, what, this little breeze? Much, she imagined, like the Highlanders themselves. Strong, impermeable, and quick to understate a bad situation.
In the distance there seemed to be another country altogether as birds swooped lazily over one of the Highlands’ innumerable lakes, the water impossibly still. Rugged mountains stood like austere sentinels on the far shore, their jagged silhouettes appearing somewhat softened in reflections on the glassy water. Except for the flickering shadows of gray storm clouds across the surface, the water was dark blue and violet in the morning light, making Lily finally understand why folk imagined lochs could harbor such enormous monsters in their depths.
She slowly gathered her pastels back into their tattered cardboard box and wondered that before coming to Scotland, years had passed since she had done any artwork at all. She had stumbled straight from an art degree, a passion for painting, and aspirations of arts education for underprivileged kids into an eighty-hour-a-week job in Silicon Valley. No art. No kids. And certainly no underprivileged anybody.