Highlander of Iron (Breaking into Highland Hearts #4)

Chapter 1

Warm, steaming mash stretched out before her on the drying rack.

It was a familiar warmth and a familiar scent.

Hannah was fairly sure she’d breathed it in daily, starting from when she was knee-high, toddling after her father through their distillery.

Every inhale drew the scent of peat and damp grain.

The gentleman before her, with a head full of thinning hair but a full beard fit for King David himself, squinted his dark eyes at the mixture.

“Needs more time,” he remarked.

Hannah almost agreed with him out of reflex. She was still used to her father being the authority in the room, even almost a year after the morning when he hadn’t woken. Even knowing that Matthew had worked at his side for many years.

Instead, she reached out, scooped a handful of the barley up as she’d seen the Leon patriarch do countless times, and chose to trust herself as well as the fact that she’d grown up in the distillery.

She inhaled deeply, drawing in the familiar sweet scent and brushing it between her fingers.

She didn’t even need to taste it to know the answer.

“More time, and it’ll be bitter,” she stated. “Send it now.”

The older man paused for just long enough that her back straightened and she felt her jaw clench, ready to argue. But then he smiled enough to crinkle the corners of his eyes.

“Aye, lass.”

The breath she’d gathered to defend her stance left in a soft puff, and she relaxed as he turned.

“Samuel, Thomas! Mash is ready. Hop to.”

The pair of tawny-haired apprentices, one two years older and a good head taller, scampered from their corners of the distillery, and Hannah watched them start scooping the grain into containers to be transferred to the boiling water that waited.

Then she glanced up at the man beside her with accusation in her gaze. “Ye did that on purpose.”

“Aye,” the older man said shamelessly, not turning his attention away from the apprentices as they worked. “Yer faither taught ye well, but it doesnae mean ye’re unwatched and on yer own.”

Her initial instinct was to snap at him for doubting her, and the one she followed through on was to appreciate his quiet challenge being his way of making sure her whiskey was as reliable as her father’s had always been.

She couldn’t afford to lose the reputation afforded to her family’s distillery, not with Violet to care for and the safety of their mother and father no longer an option.

“Matthew, the herb ye mentioned before that helped yer wife,” she said to the man beside her as they watched the boys at work. “What was it called again? Ye said it helped with her dizziness, aye?”

“Angelica.” His response was immediate and confident.

“Eased her stomach, helped her strength. We tried tansy, mint, and even a bit of ginger that we saw brought up from the coast. Angelica is the only thing to have worked. She didnae have much to say for the taste, just that adding honey helps. I’ve about run out by now; it fights the soil here. ”

He let out a sigh.

“The only place I’ve heard it seen lately is the Calder gardens,” he scoffed.

He made to spit, before he remembered where he was standing and thought better of it.

“Like that selfish…” He cleared his throat and thought better of it once again.

“Like the Laird would be bothered to make sure we saw a leaf of it.”

Hannah glanced at the old man, more an uncle than a worker, and chose not to make a fuss about his wording.

When the previous Laird had died, they’d all hoped his successor would be more concerned with their well-being.

Instead, it seemed he’d forgotten they existed even more aggressively somehow.

Now, the illness that had taken her parents seemed to be trying to wrap its cold fingers around her little sister’s throat as well.

Violet was only nineteen summers, but she had become a shell of herself when their parents had died, and nothing Hannah did seemed to help, coddling or stern.

Now, she was fighting an illness that soured her stomach and made it so that food and water would not stay in her belly, and she had grown weaker by the day as a result.

The door to the stillhouse burst open with such ferocity that it bounced off the wall behind it and rattled glass and stoneware jugs so hard Hannah was momentarily concerned she would be mopping whiskey from the floor.

She bit back an oath, eyes flicking from the rows of wobbling crockery to the figure that had entered as though pursued by hounds.

“Hannah!”

The equally young man who burst through in a flurry of dark hair and dark eyes may have been her dearest friend, but Duncan was one broken bottle of whiskey away from finding himself on the business end of her temper.

Before she could do more than open her mouth to scold him, he continued. “It’s Violet.”

He stopped speaking to heave for air, hands clasped to his chest, doubled over and red in the face. He was a strong man, but had never been much for sprinting.

Harsh words died on her tongue, and she swallowed before she gestured with both hands, exasperated. “Out with it!”

Dread settled low in her belly and made the heat of the stillhouse impossible to feel over the chill that spread through her bones. The boys stopped transferring the mash in her periphery, and Matthew placed a hand on her shoulder.

“She fell in the market,” Duncan explained rapidly.

“Dropped clean to the floor, went pale as a spirit.” He gestured quickly toward the cottage visible through the stillhouse door, and then, at the look on the faces of everyone in the room, he hastened to continue.

“She’s unhurt. Home.” He pointed again toward the nearby cottage, panting once again.

Hannah didn’t need him to explain more than that. It wasn’t the first time Violet had fainted, and certainly not the first time she had left the house without warning her, despite her repeated admonishments for precisely that.

“Saints above, when will she learn that I’d go with her if she asks?”

Matthew and Duncan quickly removed themselves from her path, knowing she would trample them if they did otherwise, and she raced across the field that separated the stillhouse from the cottage with her skirts tangling around her ankles and doing their best to see that she stumbled on her way through tall grass.

Even with Duncan’s reassurance that Violet had made it home and hadn’t been harmed during the fall, Hannah still couldn’t help the creeping dread that tightened her throat more each day.

The way her little sister seemed to be fading more and more every time she tried to eat or drink and retched instead, every time fever shook her too-thin frame, and Hannah spent the night sitting beside her with cold cloths refreshed every few minutes and sips of willowbark tea coaxed when possible, even if they rarely stayed down for long.

Hannah burst through the front door and took a moment to draw a sharp breath of relief when she saw Violet sitting at the small table adjacent to the kitchen with a cup of tea in front of her.

Her sister was pale, too pale, her chestnut-brown hair almost identical to Hannah’s, though her blue eyes contrasted with her own green.

Hannah had taken after their father, and Violet favored their mother. Either way, right now her sister was skeletal, and it looked like it took immense effort for her to lift the teacup to her lips.

Violet’s hands shook with the effort of moving the cup to her mouth, and she forced a hollow smile as she turned her head. “Why the fuss?”

“I ken ye didnae just ask me that.”

Violet grimaced.

Hannah threw herself into the chair beside her at the table. “Ye’re going to pretend Duncan didnae fetch me?”

“I told him nae to,” Violet muttered into her cup, before putting it down on the table and letting out a breath that tried to be an annoyed sound and succeeded in sounding exhausted instead. “I only got light in the head. Maybe closed me eyes for a moment.”

That had been happening more and more as she had struggled with what turned her stomach so nastily.

Hannah couldn’t shake the way her mind kept creeping toward her greatest fear: Violet being too weak to fight this off, going the way of their mother and father. She couldn’t contend with the possibility.

“Only,” she echoed, watching her little sister pretend to take another sip of tea. Violet had been refusing it more and more, claiming it was bitter and it upset her stomach.

Hannah’s gaze was drawn to a bottle placed proudly in the middle of the table.

A bottle she’d placed there not two days ago.

Her own mix, a smooth flavor with a touch of flowered heather that produced a honeyed taste that spoke to mead without shouting.

A whiskey she’d been experimenting with since she’d found a cask her father had started to age before he’d died the year prior.

Something she hadn’t tasted anywhere before and knew would draw eyes.

Important eyes. Eyes that might just have access to a specific plant that she hoped would help give her sister some life back in her face.

“I’m going to be out of the house tomorrow.” The decision was made as she spoke the words.

Violet looked up, expression startled, clearly having expected far more lecture and far less leaving her to her own devices. “Aye? To go where?”

“Business.” Hannah smiled at her. “Duncan will check in on ye. See to it that ye try to eat somethin’, hm?”

Violet grimaced at the words, which only made Hannah more certain of her decision. She reached out to rest a hand on her sister’s shoulder and tried not to let the strain show on her face when she felt the fragile bones so close to the skin.

She would not be telling her more. Violet didn’t need to know she’d made the decision to ask for an audience with the most terrifying laird of the Highlands, with naught to offer but a bottle of whiskey she’d spent the better part of a year perfecting to her satisfaction.

Their Laird: Aiden Calder, Laird MacBain.