Book Blitz: Excerpt + Giveaway - When a Laird Finds a Lass by Lecia Cornwall
When a Laird Finds a Lass by Lecia Cornwall
Highland Fairy Tales
Publication Date: November 1, 2016
Genres: Historical, Romance
She is his greatest enemy and his only salvation…
Malcolm MacDonald, a lawyer in Edinburgh, unexpectedly inherits his father’s title of Laird of Dunbronach, forcing him to return to a place he hasn’t seen since he was a small child. To gain the trust of a wary clan, Malcolm must act upon their insistence that he cast aside his English betrothed and marry a Highlander.
However, they have one condition—no lasses of the barbaric clan MacLeod.
When he finds an unconscious woman in the sea, he brings her back to his clan but not before doing the one thing that could save her life—hiding her all too telling MacLeod plaid. When she wakes with no memory of who she is, Malcolm vows to keep the little he knows about her identity a secret. As new dangers threaten his clan, the mysterious lass teaches Malcolm some very important lessons about how to be a Highlander and a laird.
But secrets never stay secret for long, and when she finds her plaid, her memory returns and she flees. Malcolm is forced to make a difficult choice to win her back, facing his darkest fears and his worst enemy for a chance at true love.
EXCERPT
WHEN A LAIRD FINDS A LASS
PROLOGUE
Edinburgh 1707
Malcolm MacDonald’s lodgings were cramped with unexpected visitors.
He knew the three Highlanders felt it too. They were more used to
the wide-open spaces of their MacDonald homeland, perhaps, where there was
naught to contain their big bodies but peaks, sea, and sky. They looked
unhappily around the wee closet Malcolm called home. He followed their gaze.
There was a narrow bed with a small table beside it. His clothes hung on pegs
along the wall and his books were stacked in teetering piles under the window.
Writs, wills, and deeds covered the surface of the table like a fall of new
snow, deep, crisp, and legal.
He could smell the salt that clung to the damp wool of their plaids,
the smoky tang of peat fires, and the whisky on their breath, though they were
neither dirty nor drunk.
It made Malcolm aware of his own smells—the leather binding of his
books, the sharp gall of ink, and the burned oat smell of his neighbor’s
breakfast, seeping through the thin walls. He went to the narrow window and
opened it, letting in a few inches of air. Now the stench of the city drifted in,
gutters, livestock, and cookshops, borne on the sluggish wind that came from
the docks. The Highlanders wrinkled their noses, and Malcolm resisted the urge
to lower the warped sash again.
He stood back and let them see the view instead. His fifth-floor lodgings
looked down upon the Royal Mile. If one leaned out the window and looked to the
left, the Palace of Holyroodhouse stood golden and grim against the startling
green of the hills. If one looked straight down, there were pigs blocking
traffic, and merchants with their wares spilling out of crowded shop fronts
into the street. The fifth floor was a
fine, middling place to live for an unmarried junior lawyer of modest means.
Richer folk lived on the floors below him, and the people who made their homes
above Malcolm’s meager room were ever-so-slightly less respectable than he was.
There was a widowed seamstress upstairs, and a one-eyed poet above her. The
poet was nearly as old as Malcolm’s three visitors, who had introduced
themselves as the elders of the MacDonalds of Dunbronach, his kinsmen.
Dougal MacDonald was bent and bandy legged, and his green eyes
flitted about the room like trapped birds.
William MacDonald was as tall as a tree and twice as broad. He stood
ramrod straight and nodded silently when Dougal introduced him. He kept his
eyes on Malcolm and his hand on the hilt of the sword belted to his hip.
Fergus MacDonald sat in the only chair, his hands clasped on his
bony knees, his face was a mask of cold disapproval.
“Will you take a drop of sherry?” Malcolm asked his guests, since no
one immediately gave a reason for their visit. He poured out three delicate
glasses of amber liquid, Spanish and expensive, and they squinted and frowned
at it. William quaffed his in a single gulp, then made a face and declared,
“It’s no’ whisky, is it?”
Dougal sipped and pursed his lips, and Fergus set his glass on the
edge of the table, untouched.
“Ye look like yer da, Malcolm Ban,” Dougal said for the second time,
leaning on the gnarled root that served him as a walking stick.
Malcolm folded his arms over his chest and leaned back on the edge
of the table. “So you’ve said. Is he
well?” Malcolm had not seen his father in nearly fifteen years, and to a lad of
nine, Archie MacDonald, the laird of Dunbronach, had been the biggest,
broadest, loudest man he’d ever seen. He’d been in rude health then and
somewhat drunk as he sat in his uncle’s elegant Edinburgh parlor. He’d looked
as out of place there as—well, as these Highlanders looked here.
Malcolm still recalled how Archie’s face had fallen when his mother
introduced him. “Who’s this weedy lad?”
“Malcolm, of course. Your son,” his mother had assured her estranged
husband.
“My son?”
His mother’s eyes had flared. “Ye can see that he is, Archie. He’s
as much a MacDonald as you are. He has your eyes, your height—or he will have.
He’s smart. He’ll make a fine lawyer someday, like his uncle.”
“A lawyer.” Malcolm still remembered how his father’s mouth had
twisted bitterly around the word.
“Like his uncle,” his mother had repeated. “He’s not cut out to be a
Highlander, Archie. Is that why you’ve come?”
His father was silent for a moment. He looked Malcolm over once
again, then turned away with a sigh. “Nay,” he muttered. “Nay, I suppose not.”
He left the tea in the fancy china cup, rose, and departed from his
brother-in-law’s house. He did not returned again. Even when Malcolm’s mother
died he’d not bothered to send condolences. His uncle had taken Malcolm as his
protégé, and he’d almost forgotten he even had kin in the Highlands, at
Dunbronach, a place he barely remembered.
Dougal’s eyes shifted to the worn rug that covered the floor. “Er,
nay, lad, I wouldn’t say yer father’s well. In fact, he’s dead.”
Malcolm’s brows rose. “Dead?”
“Aye, and a good many other folk,” Fergus growled from his chair.
“There was a terrible sickness,” Dougal said. “It carried off
fifty-four MacDonalds.”
“Ye could say we’re half the clan we were,” William put in.
His father was dead. He tried to feel some pity, to picture his
father’s face, but he’d barely known Archie MacDonald. It was like being
informed that a stranger had died and his heirs needed a lawyer. “I see—then
you’ve come for legal advice, I assume. Is there a will that needs executing,
or funds to invest?”
Fergus flashed a sharp look at William, then raised his chin. “Not a
will. More a dying wish.”
“A command,” William said.
“And there are no funds,”
Dougal added.
“Not a penny,” Fergus growled, glaring at Malcolm from under the
tangled thatch of his gray brows.
“I see,” Malcolm said, though he didn’t.
“Do ye?” Fergus asked gruffly. His eyes slid over Malcolm and
flicked away, as if he’d found him as wanting as Archie himself had.
“We should kneel as tradition demands,” William said. He lowered
himself to the floor, his joints creaking. Dougal joined him.
Fergus rose to his feet, but did not kneel. He raised his chin
instead, fixed Malcolm with another dark glare. “It was yer father’s wish that
ye be the next laird of Dunbronach.” He said it through gritted teeth as if it
pained him. “Archie named ye so on his deathbed.”
Laird? The wee sherry glass in Malcolm’s hand fell to the floor and
shattered. The elders of Dunbronach stared at the shards of glass for a moment
in silence, then Dougal spoke.
“Never mind, lad—Laird—you
won’t be needing those wee cups at Dunbronach. We have good sturdy ones carved
of horn.” He took a flask from his sporran, and held it out. “Here.”
Malcolm took it and sipped. He nearly choked. His throat burned, and
something exploded in his belly, sent shock waves through his limbs. “What the
devil is that?”
William rose, slapped him on the back. “Finest Highland whisky,
Laird. Don’t worry, ye’ll grow used to drinking it every day, and it will soon
flow through your veins like liquid honey.”
“Warm and sweet as a lover’s kiss,” Dougal added with a grin.
“But I can’t be the next laird,” Malcolm said. “I have a
brother—half brother—Cormag…”
“Dead,” Fergus said.
“Dead,” Malcolm repeated. He looked around at the faces of the
elders, as weather-beaten, gray, and seamed as the Highlands themselves, as if
they’d been hewn from the very rock of Dunbronach.
He shook his head. He wasn’t one of these men, a Highlander. He had
a life in Edinburgh, a career in his uncle’s law firm, and a fiancée…well,
almost. He was about to make an offer for the hand of the lovely and wealthy
Miss Nancy Martin. Once he was married, his uncle had promised to make him a
partner in the firm. He could not picture Nancy making a life in—or even a visit
to—the Highlands.
Dougal frowned. “Did I see that aright? He shook his head, said
no? I can’t have—to do so would be to
reject his birthright, go against the wishes of his sire and laird—”
“Is there no other
candidate?” Malcolm asked. “A man who was raised at Dunbronach, who knows the
people, the land—”
“No,” William and Dougal said quickly in unison.
“There’s Maccus,” Fergus said.
“Maccus?” Malcolm asked hopefully.
“He’s your third cousin,” Dougal said. “He’s one of the sons of the
chief of the MacDonalds of Sleat—his bastard son. He willna do as laird.”
“Maccus MacDonald is not a
good man, or a kind one. I’ve doubts he’s a man at all—more a bear crossed with
the trunk of a tree and a wolf, but less pleasant. He has a certain dark
reputation. Our women wouldn’t be safe around him,” William said.
“Nor would our sheep,” Dougal added. Fergus frowned at him.
“Och, ye’ve heard all the same stories about Maccus that I have,”
Dougal said.
Fergus clapped his bonnet back onto his head and strode toward the
door. “We’ve done our duty as the laird wanted. He’s said no. We’ll take our
leave.”
The other two didn’t move.
“Can ye no’ be convinced,
lad?” Dougal pleaded.
“But I’m a lawyer—” Malcolm began, but Dougal interrupted with a
grin.
“Ach, is that what’s worrying ye? We can forgive that.”
Malcolm regarded the hope in Dougal’s gray eyes, the determination
in William’s, and the fierce anger in Fergus’s. “You don’t understand. I have a
career, a fiancée. I have—” He paused. He recalled the day he’d sailed away
from Dunbronach as a wee lad, so small he had to hold tight to his mother’s
hand in case he tripped and fell into the water. He remembered the castle, a
gray and forbidding place perched high on a rocky knoll above the sea. There’d
been people on the beach watching them go—no doubt these men were among them,
and his father and half brother too. Someone had been playing a sad tune on the
pipes, and there were seals in the water, regarding him with dark eyes. His
mother had buttoned his coat against the chill wind off the sea, and told him
it was better to forget Dunbronach, that she was a gentleman’s daughter of fine
education and delicate sensibilities. She wasn’t meant to be a Highlander, and
neither was he.
He looked at the elders in their threadbare kilts and scuffed
deerskin boots. They believed they were doing him a great honor. There was
pride in every line of their bodies, despite their age and the long journey
they’d endured.
“We’d best tell him the rest of it, Fergus,” Dougal said.
“If he’s not going to be
laird, it hardly matters,” Fergus replied, still standing by the door, his hand
like an eagle’s talon on the latch.
William folded his arms across his broad chest. “It was the laird’s
dying wish, Fergus.” The glare that passed between them could cut iron.
“There’s a certain duty ye
must fulfill…” Dougal began, then paused. “Did I mention how much ye look like
your father?”
“And all the fine MacDonald lairds before him, all the way back to
the first one, who was also named Malcolm—Malcolm the Bold,” William added.
Dougal puffed out his chest. “I’ll tell him, since I’m the seanchaidh, the keeper of the history of
the MacDonalds of Dunbronach.”
“Do ye believe in magic, Malcolm Ban MacDonald?” Fergus interrupted.
Malcolm smiled slightly. “Of course not.” He watched the light dim
in Dougal’s eyes.
Fergus sniffed. “There, ye see? He’s not the right man to be the
next laird of Dunbronach, even with Archie’s blood in his veins.” He opened the
door, but Dougal used his stick to block his exit.
“Archie’s blood is what makes
him right.” He turned to Malcolm. “D’ye recall the wee island just off shore in
Dunbronach’s bay?” Malcolm remembered a windswept hump of rock surrounded by
fierce currents and worse winds. There was a standing stone on it. He nodded.
“We call it the Sea Maiden’s Isle, Eilean Maighdeann Mhara,” Dougal went on. “The great standing stone
upon it was raised by the king o’ the sea nearly three hundred years ago in
thanks for a kindness done by the first Malcolm MacDonald—the ancestor ye’re
named for.”
“We haven’t time for the whole tale now,” Fergus snapped.
Dougal rolled his eyes. “Well then, to cut a long story to kindling
wood, the maighdeann mhara herself,
the sea king’s youngest daughter, granted Malcolm and his descendants three
wishes. Each wish was to be spoken every hundred years, on Beltane night.”
He picked up Fergus’s abandoned glass of sherry and swallowed the
contents. “A man could get used to the sweetness,” he said to William.
“Get on with it,” Fergus said.
Dougal set the glass down and looked at Malcolm again. “The point is
that Malcolm claimed the first wish when it was granted, and a hundred years
later, his great-grandson claimed the second.”
“And the third?” Malcolm asked, his mind turning to thoughts of
contracts and legal definitions. A promise was a contract, but this was magic.
Surely there was no precedent for challenging an agreement made with a mythical
creature that didn’t exist…
Dougal looked at him without speaking for a long minute, and his
curling white brows rose expectantly.
William had the same look in his eyes. Fergus’s expression remained cold
and flat.
Realization hit Malcolm in the belly. “You want me to come to
Dunbronach and—make a wish, based on a legend?”
Dougal stiffened. “It isn’t a legend, lad. It’s our history, and
yours. It’s why ye were born, your destiny. You are the last of Malcolm the
Bold’s line.” He shut his eyes for a moment. “It’s been a terrible winter for
our kin. The Sickness took our farmers and craftsmen—even our piper. The young
folk who remain are talking of leaving Dunbronach.” He twisted his bonnet in
his hands. “That wish is our only hope—”
“Will ye no’ honor yer
father’s dying wish and come?” William asked gruffly.
Malcolm was tongue-tied. He never thought he’d see Dunbronach again, never mind to rule over his
father’s—his—clan. They clearly needed help, but a magic wish?
He’d read of new farming methods, improved ways to raise sheep,
build mills, weave and sell cloth… The prospect of using his mind and his hands
for that tempted him. And if Malcolm became a man of property and status, with
a fine income from a prosperous, well-run Highland estate, then Major Martin
would have no further reason to deny Malcolm’s suit for his daughter’s hand. He
imagined the admiration in his uncle’s eyes, the prestige a lairdly lawyer
would bring to the firm. He could convince these superstitious men that magic
didn’t exist, that it was science and modern thinking that would lead them
forward, and make them strong.
Not a wish.
Perhaps a short visit was in order. He needn’t stay long. He could
take things in hand and order improvements. How long could that possibly take?
Then he’d hire an overseer to manage things while he returned to Edinburgh.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll come in the summer.” The early days of
February were upon them now. It was not a time when sensible folk
traveled—especially to the cold, windswept Highlands. He’d take time to study
his books, speak to engineers and scientists, meet experts in crop rotation,
animal husbandry, and the wool trade. He’d call on geologists, even, and—
But Dougal frowned, and his brows dropped over his eyes like storm
clouds. “That will be too late. Perhaps I haven’t made myself clear. The wish
must be made on Beltane night—in May.”
“So will ye come or no?” Fergus demanded, still hovering in the open
doorway, ready to leave.
Malcolm looked around the tiny room, at the piles of books and
papers, and considered the problem of leaving Nancy Martin. He thought again of
the day he’d left Dunbronach, of the peaks and skies and the sea.
“I’ll need time to get things
my affairs in order.”
Fergus shut the door and returned to the chair. He crossed his legs
and folded his arms. “Then we’ll wait.”
“There’s no need for that—“ Malcolm began, but William shook his
head.
“We’re your tail, Laird—your
escort. Ye can’t travel anywhere without us. ’Tisn’t decent.”
Dougal filled the remaining sherry glasses with whisky from his
flask and passed them around. “Here’s to Malcolm Ban MacDonald, our new laird.”
He quaffed his drink in a single swallow, poured again, and handed the glass to
Malcolm.
Malcolm sipped the whisky, and felt it burn and sing in his veins.
Or was it the enormity of the decision he’d just made that buzzed through him?
Then the warm glow of the whisky washed over him, softened his doubts and
fears, and made the world bright with possibility.
About Lecia Cornwall
Lecia Cornwall lives and writes in Calgary, Canada in the beautiful foothills of the Canadian Rockies, with five cats, two teenagers, a crazy chocolate lab, and one very patient husband. She’s hard at work on her next book. Come visit Lecia at www.leciacornwall.com, or drop her a line at leciacornwall@shaw.ca.
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