CHAPTER ONE
Exactly one year to the day since his sweet lady wife breathed her last, Iain MacLean’s black temper unleashed the disaster his clan had always dreaded. And now that it’d happened, neither the frantic labors of his kinsmen nor the deceptive beauty of the calm night could undo his terrible act.
The damage was too severe.
His family’s private chapel would soon be little more than soot and ash, its much-praised splendor nothing but a memory.
Guilt stabbing him, Iain ran through the smoke-clogged great hall, two hastily filled water buckets clutched in his hands. Acrid smoke swirled everywhere, tainting the air, and the cold darkness in his heart.
The emptiness.
That, and the shouts of his kinsmen as everyone fought to extinguish the flames of what, until a short while ago, had been the finest private chapel in all the Western Isles.
The pride of the MacLeans, destroyed in a heartbeat.
“Mother of the gods, what have I done?” Iain hurled water on the flames licking at the chapel door, then whirled to refill his buckets – but a slight, tuft-haired graybeard barred his path.
“Tsk, tsk. You’d best hope for divine forgiveness, laddie.” Gerbert, Baldoon’s aged steward thrust his bristly chin. “This night’s sacrilege will cast a pall o’er every man, woman, and child who bear the name MacLean.”
“Nae.” Iain stepped aside as two kinsmen raced by with sloshing buckets. “The saints and the old gods are wise enough to know the blame is mine alone.”
“Aye, they’ll be pointing fingers at you.” Gerbert swatted at the tendrils of smoke drifting between them.
“They surely will.” Iain knew it.
He just wished he’d been more careful.
Yet the burdens he carried were over-heavy even for his broad shoulders.
How many men could bear having a beloved wife fall prey to a power-hungry uncle, then go on knowing they couldn’t save her, that she’d met her fate on a tidal rock, bound there by her own tresses, and left to drown?
He carried that weight every hour, each waking and sleeping moment. It was breaking him.
“You went too far this time, laddie.”
“I did that when I agreed to marry Lileas. Had I not, she would be alive.”
“Tut.” Gerbert shook his head. “Her uncle was crazed. He still would’ve had done with her – with everyone he saw as a stumbling block on his way to seizing lairdship.”
“We’ll never know.”
That truth damning him, Iain’s chest grew so tight he could hardly breathe. The image of Lileas cold and still, seaweed tangled in her hair, stirred his rage and anguish with all the fierceness of MacLean males.
“You made your own sorry bed.” Gerbert nodded. “Perhaps if it weren’t so cold and empty, you’d no’ be stomping about wound so tight you fail to see where you’re heading.”
Fail.
Iain winced, the word plunging like a dagger into his heart.
He knew more about defeat than all the men of the Isles and Highlands combined.
Wishing he didn’t, he shut his mind to the darkness and thrust his empty buckets at a serving lad, then grabbed two full pails from another. Leaving Gerbert, he sprinted back to the chapel and tossed water through the door arch. When he returned for more water, the steward was waiting.
“It’s been a year.” Gerbert stepped forward, his hand closing on Iain’s arm. “You’re a fine, healthy lad. You need—”
“I know what I need.”
Peace.