Chapter Three
Morning sunlight painted the village in soft golden hues and wrapped around Alex like a warm blanket as she wound her way through the narrow village paths.
Regrettably, her current mission did not involve smuggling coin or protecting rebel secrets; she was simply making the rounds, checking in on every MacKenzie in the village.
Although she was happy to once again be home among her people, she was already feeling restless.
She thrived on her secret work for the cause.
Still, having been gone from the Highlands for nearly a month, it was her duty as lady of Luthmore Castle to ensure her people’s needs were met, and with her wee brother at her side, she was seeing to that—
Alex stopped and looked around. William was nowhere to be seen.
“Will,” she called back down the lane. Then a red-haired lad of twelve years, pulling a small cart laden with bread, cloth, and other essentials, came barreling around the corner, a broad smile lighting his freckled face.
“Arabel’s wee ones wouldn’t let me leave until I’d given them all shoulder rides,” Will said, arriving breathless at her side. He rubbed one of his shoulders. “Her oldest, Calum, is only three years younger than me. It was not an easy task.”
Alex laughed and resisted the urge to ruffle his hair.
“The Lord will bless ye for the joy ye gave them.” Her heart swelling with pride, she pulled him close in a warm embrace.
Will was not her brother by birth, but she could not have loved him more.
He became her wee brother just weeks after he was born when both his parents had succumbed to illness.
Alex remembered that sorrowful day well.
It was the morning after her seventh birthday.
Her mother, Alana, who regularly suffered from severe coughing spells, had awoken feeling a little short of breath.
Over the course of the morning, the cough settled into her chest and soon she was wheezing and sweating.
Alex’s father, Donnan, carried Alana to their chamber.
Alex followed behind with careful steps, clasping a bowl with the cook’s remedy for her mother’s breathing attacks, a big scoop of mustard powder, mixed with vinegar and honey.
Dipping her head, she smelled the concoction.
The pungent fragrance made her eyes water.
Once inside her parent’s chamber, her father laid her mother down.
Still, she wheezed and sputtered for breath.
“I’ll take that now, Alex,” one of her mother’s maids said. “I’ll make a compress for yer mum’s chest, and she’ll feel better in no time.”
“Come along now, Alex,” her father said, drawing her gaze away from her mother’s suffering.
Donnan scooped her into his arms. His gentle smile soothed her worry.
“She’ll be better soon. Ye’ll see.” Then he glanced back at Alana.
Alex did not miss the fleeting look of concern that pinched his features before he gave her a toss in the air and threw her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
“Come along, my sweet lass. We’ve work to do in the village. ”
The sun had risen high in the sky, and Alex and her father were still making the rounds when the village midwife, Morag, came rushing at them, hollering for her laird.
“Ye must come, Donnan,” she cried. “Thomas and Rhona, the poor lambs, have taken a turn for the worse. ‘Tis grave. There isn’t a moment to lose. I’m on my way to fetch Father John.”
Alex and her father hurried to the cottage of a young couple who had been ill for days.
“We were just here, Da,” Alex whispered, gripping tighter to his hand. “Remember? A few weeks ago, we came to welcome their baby into the clan.”
Brows drawn, her father knelt in front of her. “I remember, pet. Now, listen. Wait out here for me. No matter what happens, do not come inside. Ye ken?”
Her heart suddenly felt heavy in her chest. Despite her tender years, she knew something truly dreadful was happening. She nodded in reply, unable to speak for the knot that had gathered in her throat.
“Good lass,” her father said. Then he pressed a hurried kiss to her forehead the instant before he turned and disappeared inside the cottage.
Within minutes of Donnan’s arrival, Father John hurried down the lane and went into the cottage. He had been there no time at all before stepping back out.
“Father, what’s wrong?” Alex asked.
He looked up as if only just noticing her there. “Ah, my lady, Thomas has left this earthly life. We can only pray for his soul now.”
Alex remembered well when other clansmen arrived to remove Thomas’s shrouded body to the church, followed by a wake of anguished villagers. Not knowing what else to do, she’d followed them.
“Tis such a tragedy. They were so very young.”
“Aye. He died as soon as the laird arrived, as if he’d been waiting for another man to take his place.”
“Little good it will do. Rhona is not long for this world either.”
“And the poor wee bairn. What’s to become of him?”
After a few moments, the mournful procession filled her with fear.
Heart racing, she turned away and darted back to the cottage, longing for the protection of her da’s embrace.
But just before her fingers connected with the slatted wood door, she froze, remembering her promise not to go inside no matter what occurred.
Taking a deep breath, her trembling fingers pushed the door open—only a crack—not enough to see inside, just enough to hear Rhona’s dying pleas and rattled breaths and Donnan’s words of comfort.
“Take my son,” Rhona pleaded. “Make him yers, Donnan. ‘Tis the only way...to save him from the doom that has marked his new life.”
Her father’s warm voice reached Alex’s ears. “Yer son will want for nothing. I promise ye.”
“Nay,” Rhona cried, her voice straining against fatigue and pain. “I ken...ye’ll care for him. I’m asking ye to make him yers—not yer heir...just yer son... Give him yer heart.”
Alex peered around the door then, despite her father’s command to remain outside and away from the tainted air.
Women knelt along one side of the dying lass’s pallet, sobbing, while Donnan knelt on her other side.
Alex watched as her father took Rhona’s trembling hands in his own strong calloused ones.
“I promise ye, I will. Yer son will be invited into my heart and my home. I will love him as if he were my own. He shall grow to valor. He will come to believe in his own worth, and above all, I will teach him kindness—the true mark of any man.”
Peace fell over Rhona’s face, softening away the pain that had marred her youthful beauty.
“Thank ye,” she said in a whisper that barely reached Alex’s ears.
Her father leaned over and pressed a kiss to Rhona’s forehead.
Then he continued to sit with her, cradling her hands in his, whispering soothing words that Alex could not hear, but she could feel the warmth and peace they held.
“Aunt Alana is feeling a little better.”
Alex’s head jerked up. Her cousin, Mary, younger by two years, looked down at her, her little brows drawn together. Mary knelt beside Alex. “What has happened? Everyone is whispering and crying.”
“Thomas died,” Alex said, her voice breaking. “Rhona is going to die, too.”
Tears flooded Mary’s eyes. “But then their new baby won’t have a mum or da, like me.”
Alex swallowed the thick knot in her throat and nodded.
“But who will he live with?” Mary cried. “When my parents died, I came to Luthmore. Where will the baby have to go?”
Alex wrapped her arm around Mary. “I’m not certain, but I think he is going to live with us.”
Long after the sun had set and candles illuminated the small cottage, William’s young mother slipped from their world with the laird of the MacKenzie at her side.
When her body was taken to the kirk to rest beside Thomas, Alex’s father took William from the woman who had been tending him.
He turned to where Alex and Mary sat together, their backs against the side of the cottage.
Tears streaming down his cheeks, Donnan knelt and showed the girls William’s sweet face. “Alex and Mary, this is yer new brother. He is ours now. Take him into yer hearts and love him always.”
Remembering that day never failed to pain Alex’s heart, but the memories also served to inspire her. For it was on that day she realized the kind of man her father was, and now, at nineteen, she was old enough to have learned that not enough men were like Donnan MacKenzie.
To her father, being chieftain was not a right of birth; it was a privilege, a call to serve.
The clansmen and women who looked to him as leader also saw a friend, a parent, someone they could lean on during times that tried the soul.
He also ensured that all levels of leadership within the clan held tightly to the same principles whether steward, captain of the guard, or stable master.
What’s more, binding himself to a woman who embodied these same ideals had been paramount in his selection of a wife, and he had found his match in Alana.
Alex used to strive to be exactly like her mother, but as she grew, she realized that no one could ever be as kind, compassionate, and as refined as Alana.
Unlike her mother, Alex was often rash, sharp-tongued, easily distracted, and incapable of yielding to the demands of convention, especially when there was so much work to be done.
But her mother seldom scolded her for going about barefoot or wearing worn-out tunics.
Kindness mattered most to Alana, a truth she had instilled in Alex.
And before Alana passed away from her illness during her daughter’s thirteenth summer, she had made certain Alex understood that the wellbeing of the people came first.