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Praise for Sophia James:
‘James weaves her spell, captivating readers
with wit and wisdom, and cleverly combining
humour and poignancy with a master’s touch
in this feel-good love story.’
—RT Book Reviews on HIGH SEAS TO HIGH SOCIETY
‘Putting a hero bent on revenge and the “perfect” lady
together is a recipe for conflict. Add the warmth of the
holiday season, delightful children, pride, passion and
a ruthless villain, and you have James’ heartwarming,
fast-paced holiday romance.’
—RT Book Reviews on MISTLETOE MAGIC
‘Award-winning author Sophia James
kicks off proceedings with
CHRISTMAS AT BELHAVEN CASTLE:
a gripping tale of second chances, forbidden attraction
and unexpected passion!’
—Cataromance on Gift-Wrapped Governess anthology
They had broken through and flooded into the castle just as she had sat down for a rest. She had not had the time to gather her gloves or headgear but had been caught in the flight downstairs, where she now fought back against as many of the enemy as she could.
‘Nooo!’
A keening cry of fury rent the air around her, turning the hairs on her arms up into panic as her eyes caught sight of the one she had thought never to see again.
Marc!
Here.
In the mail of King David, sword tipped red.
A traitor and a betrayer. A man who would leave the Keep of Ceann Gronna with secrets in his head, to return a brace of months later and use them against those who had only been kind.
A payment of death for the gift of life. She could smell the sea spray on him as he jostled closer, his eyes cold with the knowledge of retribution and deceit.
SOPHIA JAMES lives in Chelsea Bay on Auckland, New Zealand’s North Shore, with her husband, who is an artist, and three children. She spends her morning teaching adults English at the local Migrant School and writes in the afternoon. Sophia has a degree in English and History from Auckland University, and believes her love of writing was formed reading Georgette Heyer with her twin sister at her grandmother’s house.
Previous novels by the same author:
FALLEN ANGEL
ASHBLANE’S LADY
HIGH SEAS TO HIGH SOCIETY
MASQUERADING MISTRESS
KNIGHT OF GRACE
(published as The Border Lord in North America) MISTLETOE MAGIC (part of Christmas Betrothals) ONE UNASHAMED NIGHT ONE ILLICIT NIGHT CHRISTMAS AT BELHAVEN CASTLE (part of Gift-Wrapped Governess anthology)
Did you know that some of these novels are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk
Lady with
the Devil’s Scar
Sophia James
www.millsandboon.co.uk
MILLS & BOON
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For the Chelsea Bay Book Club … my group of warrior women.
Chapter One
1346—Fife Ness, Scotland
Isobel Dalceann saw the shapes from the beach, beyond the waves, turning in the current, dark against silver. Eight or more of them, lost in the grey swell of stormtide as mist swallowed outline.
‘There,’ she shouted to the two men beside her. ‘Two hundred yards out.’
The Heads yielded an odd wreck of a boat sometimes or the carcase of a sea creature long since dead … but this? Dusk spread from the west, burnishing lead with a blushed quiet pink and changing something that was not known into something that was.
‘People!’ Ian voiced the knowledge first. Not wood or fish or the trunk of a tree that had slipped into the brine somewhere near Dundee before travelling south in the cold currents, but people. People who would drown unless she helped them; she had always been a strong swimmer.
Stripping off brogans and tunic, she removed the dirk held by straps against her ankle and ran.
The water took her breath before she had crossed the first waves, long beaching swells with the chill of the northern climes on their edge; when her hair knotted around her arms, forcing her to tread water, she rebound it tight.
Ten yards away Ian shouted and Angus responded, the next breaker lifting them all and aiding direction. She could hear the beat of blood in her ears as the wash took her under. Counting the seconds to surface, she kicked her feet hard and broke through just short of one of the survivors.
An open cut from elbow to shoulder bone wept red into the sea, swirling in the foam before being lost to the great vastness of the German Ocean. He barely registered her presence as she paddled across, noticing for the first time that another lay beside him.
‘I will take him while you swim in,’ she shouted above the wind as rain started, each drop forming bowls on the surface, tiny pits in a boiling sea.
‘No.’ He held on with the tenacity of one who would not let go, green eyes steeled into resolve; as Isobel looked closer, she saw the man between them was long dead.
‘He’s gone. The sea has taken him.’
Shaking his head, he turned from her, shoulders hunching into grief. The curl of his fingers tightened even as she watched, dimpled white and marred with bruises as he breathed in once and then twice, garnering strength and regrouping will. How often had she done the same herself, the loneliness of everything unbearable?
‘Let me help,’ she called, ‘for the shore is far away.’ Her touch against his shoulder roused him from his own private hell as he gazed at her with all the arrogance of one unused to direction.
Isobel pushed down a stir of unease. Even the few paltry moments that she had been in the ocean had chilled her and she wondered how these people could have survived for so long.
‘H-help the others behind me f-first.’ When he shifted his hand to cradle the head of the man he supported, a thick band of wrought-plaited gold lay at his wrist.
No simple sailor, then, plying the straits between England and Scotland to gain a living. His accent held the softer beat of another more foreign land.
A shout behind made her turn. Isobel saw that Angus panted with cold, his legs treading water with exaggerated hurry as he tried to keep warm. Fear struck deep. Two hundred yards from safety, with the rolling edge of a sea storm coming in from the east. Behind him two men were trying to rise on his bulk in their fight to gain breath.
Lord. The sea claimed its victims without recourse to any fair play or just reserve. Swimming over, she clouted the oldest man hard across the head, breaking his grip and pressing against his throat, pleased as his eyes rolled into white. Then she did the same to the youngest.
‘Que Dieu nous en garde!’ Marc muttered. The woman with the scar from one side of her face to the other was killing those with him one by one and the chill that held him stiff with cold meant he could do nothing about it.
Guy was dead. He had known it all of an hour ago and still his fingers could not open to simply let go.
The water beneath him called, an easy rest and an ending, and the strength that had held him to the task of rescue was suddenly gone. He could not care. It was finished. As his fingers opened and his eyelids rested he felt the warmth that had long since been leached from his body return in a quick and bright light.
Scotland. His father’s land. He had not quite made it.
‘Hold him from behind,’ Isobel instructed Angus. ‘Do not let him turn for he will pull you down in his panic.’
‘I cannae handle the both of them, mind.’ Angus’s words were thrown through the gathering wind.
‘Then choose the youngest.’ Such a choice out here in a sea that was rising held no guilt for Isobel. The fittest would survive and be done with it.
But the green-eyed stranger was gone, too, pulled beneath the sea by lethargy, his red sleeveless surcoat with the bright gold braiding disappeared. She should leave him, of course, should take the advice she had just offered Angus, but a stronger force willed her to action. Diving down through the murky water, she saw him turn towards her, as if he had known she might be there, glances catching through the brine, the white of his skin the colour of death.
One last kick and she reached out to snag cloth before hauling him up into the dusk and air. They surfaced like a log might in a swollen mountain stream, a curtain of foam and salt lashed around them, rain stinging skin.
Thumping his back hard with the heel of her hand, she felt him take a breath, the rise and fall of his chest strong as he coughed, a hacking endless bark that dislodged the water he had swallowed. His hair lay around his face in tousled dark-blond tails, wiped back as he found breath in a hard movement, his lips blue.
Around her the cries of the survivors told another story. One stranger perished here and another there. They floated away with their faces down in the water, swirling as leaves in the current.
She could not save everyone with a changing stormtide on the turn for out. All the will in the world could not alter what happened to those too long in the hands of the sea as the heat of skin cooled and relaxed into death.
But the green-eyed stranger hung on through the breakers, his mouth tilted towards the air, the cold chattering of his teeth like a drum beat as they came closer to landfall. He was using his strength to help her, too; she could feel his legs move against her own until his feet found purchase on the ocean floor.
He was tall, then. Much taller than her husband had been before …
But she did not think of that as she brushed away anger and watched him stand, the sea to his waist now, every second showing more of a man who looked nothing like anyone from around Fife. Menace and danger lingered in the long bones of his body, the fancy surcoat with its plaited braiding belying the man beneath.
‘I can m-manage,’ he said abruptly and turned to watch her two men find the shore, each bringing with them a survivor from the stricken boat.
Three people out of eight, was her anguished thought. Lord God, that it could have been more.
The fierce desolation in his eyes told her that he also counted, though he was swaying with cold, tiredness and injury, the open gash on his arm pulled apart by the sea into a lengthy, grim, dark line on his upper arm. It no longer bled. Isobel wondered whether that was a good sign or a bad one.
‘We are camped in the trees and there is warmth there.’ She did not like the anxiety she could hear in her words, as though it might be important to her that he did live, but he was barely listening as he walked across to his friend and spoke softly in a language she recognised as French. Both turned to the line of bush behind them as if weighing their chances of safety.
‘How is it you are called?’ His voice was stronger now as he switched back to English.
‘Isobel Dalceann. My home lies two days’ walk west along the coast from here.’
She saw how his glance took in her sodden hose, tight about her legs, her ankles full on show. It had been so long since she had worn the garb of a woman that she’d forgotten that those who did not know her might find it odd. Without meaning to she smiled and saw the sting of it in his eyes. Her scar, probably. It always puckered badly over one cheek when she showed emotion.
With the night coming on, however, she had had enough. She had risked her own life and any criticism of what she looked like or dressed like would have to wait till later. There were rabbits skinned and trussed near the fire and a half-a-dozen fish wrapped in leaves beside them. Once they had eaten their fill and found blankets to shelter beneath she could determine just what it was these newcomers sought and how quickly she could be rid of them.
‘Sacrée Vierge.’ Marc could hardly place one foot in front of the other one as he came into the camp under the trees, his head spinning in a way that made balance difficult. Perhaps it was the blood loss or the cold or simply the near-transportation of his soul from this life to the next one, leaving flesh behind. He had seen it before on the battlefields in France, the astonishment of death greater even than the fear of it. The anger in him rose as he refocused on that about him.
It was dark beneath the cover of the canopy of trees and afternoon rain had left a dampness that was all-encompassing.
Simon looked as exhausted as he did. The other survivor’s name he had no notion of, but fancied him to be one of the deckhands on the boat into Edinburgh. The young man shook so much that he needed to be carried between the arms of the two men who had swum out. Marc knew that he would not last long. The woman was ordering everyone around and the knives strapped to her ankle and belt were sharp.
‘Where exactly are we?’ he purposefully asked in French. The blank response confirmed what he had suspected. None spoke the language. He was glad, for it allowed Simon and him privacy to decide what to do.
‘They are all well armed and we are both injured. We will need to wait for our moment.’
Simon nodded. ‘At a guess I would place us somewhere on the Nose of Fife just north from where the Firth enters the coast down into Edinburgh.’ His hand ran across his upper thigh, a bruise seen through the tear in his clothing. His voice sounded rough. ‘What do you imagine they mean to do with—?’
The question was cut off by the sudden intrusion of one of their saviours looming close as the cross at Simon’s neck was ripped away. The ring on his finger was gestured to next.
When he went to protest Marc stopped him. ‘Wait. It is only the trinkets they need, after all; as payment for our lives, I’d deem it fair.’
Stripping his bracelet from his wrist, Marc placed it on the ground. As he did so he looked up and saw the woman watching him, a scowl on her face and anger in her brown eyes. She glanced away as soon as she perceived his notice and continued to tend to the fire and food.
Her hair had escaped its binding and fell in a sheer dark curtain to her waist. In the building flame there were lights of shot red amongst wet ebony and he was surprised by the want that surged inside him as he thought of what it might feel like to touch.
Shaking away such nonsense, he sat on the ground and leaned back against a tree, feeling better with the strong solidness of wood behind him.
‘Where are you from?’
Her voice was hard, the frustration in it unhidden. He noticed she did not ask for names.
‘France.’ He had decided that there were only certain pieces that needed telling. ‘The boat we were on was blown off course and overturned in the storm.’
Her attention was drawn to the other men beside her, their words rising in anger as they squabbled over the jewels. She stopped them with a short command, though the oldest of the pair drew his hands into fists and punched the air, twice.
Intentions!
Staying expressionless, Marc looked back at the woman. Her fingers had crept to the knife at her belt, relaxing as she saw one of her men move off into the forest, though when she gestured to the other to tie them up Marc swore beneath his breath.
He could fight, he supposed, and win, but with an arm that needed some attention and Simon with a leg that was taking him nowhere he thought it better to wait.
The rope was thick and well secured, putting them a good length away from each other. When the man was finished Isobel Dalceann checked the ropes herself. Her flesh was freezing as her arm brushed against her prisoner’s and he thought for the first time that she was good at hiding her feelings.
‘We’ll unfasten you when the food is ready, but at every other time you will be tethered until we decide what to do with you. After dinner I will tend to your arm.’
Her last sentence heartened him. If she meant to kill them, surely she would not waste any time caring for them first? Then the import of what she said sunk in. The gash was deep and the light was bad and the few belongings seen in this provisional camp pointed to the fact that medical care would be at best basic.
‘I can wait.’
His saviour began to laugh and there were deep dimples in both her cheeks. He heard Simon next to him draw in breath and knew that his thoughts were exactly the same as his own.
This warrior queen was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, despite the scar and her garb and the grimace that was her more normal expression. Looking away, he tried to take stock of such thoughts and failed. Beneath his tight hose lust grew. God … the world was falling topsy-turvy and he could stop none of it. Shifting his stance, he bent his knees.
‘Wait for what? Edinburgh is almost a week’s worth of walking from here and by that time your arm …’ She stopped, her teeth worrying her bottom lip. ‘The sea may have cleaned it, of course, but the bindings holding you are well used.’
He frowned, not understanding her reasoning.
‘It is my experience that filth often finishes what a blade begins.’
Riddles. Another thought wormed into his head. Was she one of the silkies that the legends from these parts were full of? He had never seen a woman so easily able to manage the sea before and the colour of her hair was that of the sleek black coats of fur seals often sighted off the coastline.
Lord. The blood loss was making him unhinged and those knowing eyes so full of secrets were directing him to imagine things that would never come to pass.
He looked away and did not speak again.
The stranger would be screaming before the night was out despite the careful diction in his sentences. Isobel was glad for it, glad to imagine the weakness in him as he submitted to a mending that would not be easy.
He unsettled her with his verdant, vivid eyes, his high-priced golden bracelet and his French accent. Ian had wanted to kill him, finish him off and be done with any nuisance or trouble, but the thought of his blood running on the ground as his soul left for the places above or below filled her with a dread she had not felt before. They were probably David’s men, newly returned from France with the fire of the power of the monarch in their bellies, and no mind for the ancient laws.
What would they know of her and of Ceann Gronna?
‘Unmarriageable Isobel’ she was called now; she had heard it from a bard who had come to the keep with a song of the same name.
Swearing soundly, she returned to the food, panic subsiding as the everyday task took her attention; two days’ walk to the keep and another two to Dunfermline where the strangers could be sent by ferry across the Firth towards Edinburgh.
She wished Ian and Angus had not been with her, for she would have to watch them and the foreigners at the same time. Anything of worth had been taken, after all, and now their presence could only be a bother. Isobel doubted the third man would last the night, given his colour, but there was little in truth she could do about any of it.
She hoped that the green-eyed man would speak the French again so she might overlisten and at least know just what his intentions were.
The jewellery might tell her something of them, of course, but she did not wish to ask Angus for a look at the haul just to probe into the mystery of who he was. Nae. Better she never knew and sent him on, out of her life and out of her notice.
The simple silver ring on her own finger tightened as she turned it, a lifetime pledge reduced to just two years, and then a yoke of guilt. Sometimes, like now, she hated who she had become, a scavenger outside the new system of government imposed on the old virtue of possession, leaving no true home in any of it. Even the ground did not speak to her as it used to, whispering promises of the for ever. Once the system of lairdship had ruled this place, the great estates handed down through the generations, like treasured possessions and always nurtured. Until King David had come with his fealty and his barons, taking the land by force and granting it to his own vassals for their allegiance and loyalty.
Now possession was tempered by blood and war and betrayal. Sweat beaded beneath the hair at her nape and if she had been alone she might have lifted the heavy mass away from her skin and simply stood there.
But she was not alone.
She could feel his eyes on her back like a hawk might watch a mouse crossing a field. Waiting.
Had he not said exactly that to his friend as he sat there against the tree, his hose tight in places that made the blood in her face roar.
‘Alisdair.’
The name came beneath breath like a prayer or a plea, invoking what was lost and would never be again. She was glad when Angus reappeared from the forest with a bundle of dry tinder and a good handful of blaeberries.
Chapter Two
The fish and rabbit were tenderly cooked and when the one she called Ian might have given them only a very small portion she had gestured him to ladle out a full plate, with a crust of hard black bread in the juice.
The boatman had eaten nothing, his head lolling on to his chest in a way that was worrying. Marc saw the woman bring an extra blanket and lay him down on it with care. He also saw that she did not bind him again, but left him free. To die in the night without fetters, he supposed. Perhaps there was some folklore from this part of the world that a man should meet his maker unconstrained.
After she had finished with his comfort she came to him, loosening the ties at his wrists and directing him to come to the fire.
There was a flask of whisky waiting and she motioned him to drink. The brooding in her eyes lent him the thought that she had not meant to do this at all and he swallowed as much as he could before she took it back. He was pleased to feel the burn of it down his throat as an edge of calm settled.
He would need it. Already she had lifted her knife.
‘I have to remove the bad skin.’
He had not even answered before she poured whisky across his gash, fire against the hurt and his heart beating as fast as he had ever heard it.
Flames lightened her eyes into living gold and her fingers on the blade were dextrous. He saw she had another scar running from the base of her smallest finger right across the foot of her knuckles to the thumb. He wondered if she had got that at the same time as she had received the one on her face.
‘If you stay still, it will help.’
The message in her words was plain. Move and the agony will be greater. Like a challenge thrown down into the heart of mercy.
He wished he had a piece of leather to bite upon, but she did not offer it and he would not ask.
‘You are experienced in the art of healing?’