The Scot's Quest - Keira Montclair

Prologue

Highlands, not far from Grant land

He’d loved her more than any other woman in his life and she was gone.

Madeline Grant had been the perfect woman—beautiful, sweet, loving, loyal, everything a man could want in a wife. But she’d met Alexander Grant first, and they’d married and made a life together, raising five bairns of their own and one adopted child.

But it could have ended so differently. She could have left to be with him.

He would never forget the first time they met.

Racing across the cobblestones for one of the festivals, he’d fallen down and skinned his knees. His mother and father had been far behind him, but that had proven his salvation. A yellow-haired angel had picked him up, brushed the dirt away, and said, “Dry your eyes, laddie. I’ll fix you up so it will pain you no more.”

Maddie had taken him inside, dressed his wounds, and planted a soft kiss on each of his knees before she handed him back over to his mother. Ever since then, his eyes had followed her wherever she went. The mistress had stolen his heart.

As he grew from a laddie into a man, his interest in her changed. It became a kind of obsession. But the taller he grew, the less Maddie spoke to him. Still, he found every excuse he could to see her, to talk to her. Why, he’d even brushed down Alex Grant’s horse whenever the chief returned from battle. Why? Because Madeline always came to offer the beast an apple.

She’d cooed and stroked that horse so much he’d needed to turn away to hide his arousal, but it had always been worth the risk.

Until that fateful day.

The darkest day of his life.

He was a man by then, with a broad, muscular body. And although she no longer sought him out or smiled at him, he had told himself it was because she was trying to avoid her own changing feelings. If he approached her now, she was sure to accept him, if only as a lover. The difference in their ages wouldn’t matter.

So he’d approached her in the stables.

She had politely rejected him and suggested he leave Grant land.

The prospect of being away from her had nearly killed him, but he’d feared retaliation from the powerful laird. So he’d packed his things and left.

In the long, lonely years that had followed, he’d only had the chance to set his gaze upon the love of his life but once a year, for the chief had allowed him to visit his parents every Christmas. But they’d died years ago, taking his excuse with them, and now she was gone, too.

The ache in his heart was too large—it had only grown bigger for every year she was gone—and he’d finally made a decision.

After all these years.

After all these decades.

He was going to make Alexander Grant pay for cheating him out of the woman who should have belonged to him. He wasn’t quite sure how he’d accomplish it, but he’d do it through the man’s bairns and his grandbairns.

And if he lost his life over it, so be it.

Chapter One

Autumn, 1307, MacLintock Castle

Dyna Grant stopped her horse, handing off her game to the guards who’d ridden with her and waving them ahead. Meanwhile, she reached for her bow, ready to shoot one or both men before they caught sight of her. Two sheriffs stood arguing with her grandsire, Alexander Grant, the mighty swordsman who had now lived beyond seven decades. True, her grandfather wasn’t alone—her cousins Alasdair and Els stood with him—but she was in a better position to put arrows in the sheriffs’ arses if they dared to touch Grandsire.

She approached slowly, ignoring the slight breeze, the rustle of the leaves falling from the trees, the sweet smell of the recent rainfall. Normally, she would bask in the small pleasures of her ride, but not this morn.

The sheriffs might not be threatening her grandfather, yet, but the fine tic in his jaw, something she saw even from ten horse lengths away, told her their reason for traveling to MacLintock Castle would upset everything and everyone. As she got closer, she realized she knew one of the men. He’d helped Dyna and her cousins in the past, proving himself to be true to the Scots and Robert the Bruce. The other? She’d astutely doubt every word he said until he proved his value.

“Grandsire, has something happened?” she shouted, her nearly white plait bouncing across her shoulders as she approached the group.

Her grandfather