Vowed to Her Highland Warrior (Highlands’ Lost Descendants #3)

Prologue

Alexandra McKenzie had been swinging the training sword since well before dawn, and her shoulders had stopped hurting an hour ago.

That frightened her more than the pain had.

Her chestnut braid had come apart somewhere in the dark and hung heavy and damp against her back.

Both her palms had split open under the grip.

Neither thing had reached her until now.

Setting her feet, she struck the post again, hard enough to jar her teeth in her head.

The old training wing on the north side of the Murray Keep had stood empty since the war council moved into the great hall, and that was exactly why she had chosen it. No one came here to watch her. No one spoke to her here in that low, careful voice the whole castle had used for eight days.

The trouble with a post was that it didn’t fight back. It left her mind free, and her mind only ever went to one place now. A clearing in a Campbell forest. Two men circling each other in the churned grass, both of them bloody, neither giving an inch.

She had been holding on to Splendor. That was all she had done. She hadn’t held a weapon, hadn’t done one useful thing in the world except cling to that horse so her legs wouldn’t fold under her. Then the bushes tore open, Christopher came through them, and out of pure relief she shouted his name.

One word. A friend’s name, flung across a clearing out of pure relief. Rory turned his head to see who she was shouting at, and Ian Campbell put a sword through him before her brother’s chin came back around.

Eight days, and she still couldn’t make it run any other way. What if she had kept her mouth shut? He would have kept his eyes where they belonged. He was quick, quicker than anyone expected of a lad who couldn’t grow a beard yet. He might be alive.

Her eyes burned. The post took it until a long split opened down the grain, and she hit it again; the tears came anyway, hot and useless down a face already wet with sweat.

His cloak was folded in her saddlebag downstairs, and it had been there for eight days, because there was nowhere on this earth to lay it down. They had run. They had left him lying in the grass of a Campbell clearing, and nobody had gone back for him. Her brother had no grave.

A boot scraped on the stone behind her.

She whirled, and the sword came around with her. The point stopped a hand’s breadth from a man’s throat, and only then did her eyes catch up with her arm and tell her whose throat it was.

Arran Kincaid didn’t flinch. Dark-haired, built like the warrior his foster father had made of him—and he stood there with a blade at his neck without lifting a hand to guard himself.

One warm hand closed over her wrist, the other around her elbow, and the point went aside as gently as if she had offered it to him.

The grey light from the arrow slits caught the faint scars on his face, the shadowed marks his childhood illness had left behind. She had known those marks as long as she had known him. Her arm was shaking in his grip, and there was no hiding it, and his blue eyes went to it at once.

“Are ye daft?” she demanded, snatching her arm back and pressing her fist against her thigh to still it. “Sneakin’ up on a lass with a blade in her hand! I could have opened yer throat, and where would we be then?”

“Ye’d have had tae be quicker,” Arran replied. “Ye’ve been down here since the guard changed. Have ye eaten anythin’ at all?”

“Dinnae start with me.”

“I’ll take that for a nay.” He let go of her, though he didn’t step back. “The convoy came through the gates at first light. Thirty men, yer father’s own guard, and a captain who’s been askin’ after ye since he dismounted. They’ve come tae take ye home, Alexandra.”

She turned back to the post. “Then they’ve had a long ride for nothin’.”

“Alexandra—”

“I’ve given ye me answer, and it hasnae changed for bein’ asked again, and it willnae.

” She struck the wood, hard. “Ian Campbell is walkin’ about somewhere this mornin’, breathin’ the same air as me.

The Murrays are the ones he wants most in this world, so the war is comin’ here, tae this keep! Why on earth would I be anywhere else?”

“Because yer mother has lost a son,” Arran replied. “Yer father has lost his heir, and they’ve had eight days of starin’ at an empty chair. They’re askin’ for their daughter now. Ye need tae be with yer own people, and ye need—”

“Dinnae tell me what I need!”

The shout rang off the stone and came back at her from three walls. Heat climbed her throat and into her face; she hated it and could not stop it, and had not meant to let any of it out. Arran only watched her with those steady eyes, which was somehow worse than being shouted at in return.

“Do ye ken what I need?” She was still too loud. “I need tae be where he is. Will ye tell me how sittin’ by me mother’s fire puts me any closer tae him? Am I tae stitch banners, Arran? Am I tae be a good lass and wait for word that he’s taken another one of us?”

“Me lady.”

The man in the archway was Hamish, captain of her father’s guard, who had served the McKenzies since before she was born.

He stood with his helmet under his arm and his knuckles white around the rim of it.

Grey at the temples when she was small enough to ride on his shoulders, he had put her first bow into her hands himself, and this morning he looked older than she had ever seen him.

“I willnae pretend at ye,” he told her. “I loved that lad. I taught him tae sit a horse, and I havenae slept a whole night through since the messenger came.” His jaw worked. “But I’ve me orders from yer father’s own mouth. I’m tae bring ye home.”

“And if I willnae mount?”

“Then I’ll be verra sorry, me lady,” Hamish told her, “and I’ll bring ye home regardless.”

She looked at him for a long moment. That face she had known her whole life, and she knew exactly what it meant when it went flat and kind like that. Nothing behind it would move for her, however loudly she argued.

The training sword went back onto the rack hard enough to make the whole rack clatter.

The courtyard was already full when she came down. Thirty riders sat their horses in a loose double line, breath steaming, the McKenzie colors hanging damp in the cold.

Splendor stood at the head of the column with a stablehand at his bridle. The Kincaids had bred him and gifted him to her father four years ago, and Rory had been given the naming of him and had taken a full week over it. The horse had been her brother’s in every way that counted ever since.

She had ridden him out of that clearing because there had been nothing else to ride.

Someone had rubbed him down and saddled him for her without being asked.

He was tossing his head, impatient to be moving.

She could not make herself walk to him. Her hands had started up again. She folded them into her skirts.

They had all come out to see her go, bare-headed in the cold: Seamus and Flora Murray at the top of their own steps, Arran’s sister Elsie with her husband Rolland beside her, Arran’s brother Christopher a pace behind with Morag’s hand in his.

Flora came down and took both her hands. A small woman, and her grip was iron.

“Ye’ll be angry a good while yet, and ye’ve every right tae be,” she said. “Dinnae let anyone hurry ye out of it. But when the anger isnae enough tae hold ye up, ye’ll write tae me. Will ye promise me that?”

“Aye,” Alexandra managed. “I will.”

Flora’s chin trembled once before she got hold of it. Her hands squeezed once, and she stepped back.

Christopher came forward next, and Alexandra saw what was coming before he opened his mouth. Pale, unshaven, the cut Ian had opened along his cheekbone still an angry red line…

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I ken ye’ve heard it from me already—”

“I have.”

“I’ll say it regardless. I had him out of that castle. I had him on that horse with ye, and I couldnae keep him there, and I’ve thought of nothin’ else since—”

“Christopher.” Reaching up, she held his face between her hands until he stopped.

He was shaking under her palms. “It wasnae yer fault. Ye came through that bush for us. Ye bled for us. There’s one name on this and it’s Ian Campbell, do ye hear me?

If ye say sorry tae me again I’ll take it for an insult. ”

He nodded, his eyes spilling over, and she let him go.

She went down the line of them and said what there was to say. Elsie she hugged hard enough to hurt.

Arran stood at the foot of the steps with his hands loose at his sides, waiting his turn.

She got as far as his name in her own head and stopped there. There was nothing behind it she could survive saying out loud in a courtyard full of people, so she said nothing at all and turned to her horse instead.

She put her hand flat on Splendor’s neck first, the way Rory always had before he mounted, and the horse leaned into it and blew warm air against her sleeve. Her throat closed so hard it hurt. Then she gathered the reins and swung up onto his back before anyone could see her face.

He knew the road home. He had carried her every mile of it once already, with her hands shaking too badly to hold him properly and her brother left behind in the grass.

She let herself look at Arran once. He was already looking at her, the way he had for years without either of them ever saying a word about it, and his face was so open that she had to take her eyes away.

She turned Splendor toward the gates. She didn’t look back. She had spent the only look she had in her.

Arran Kincaid stood on the steps until the last McKenzie rider had passed under the gatehouse, and for a while after that. His chest ached in a way no wound had ever managed.

For six days he had barely slept over the pages Christopher and Morag carried out of Campbell Castle. Muster numbers. Supply roads. Three lairds Ian had already bought. This morning he could not remember why any of it had seemed to matter.

Her face, turned away from him at the last, would not leave him. The same blue eyes as her father; the same way of setting her chin, which he had been helpless against since he was a lad. Both aimed at the ground.

The last time she rode out through that arch she had waved at him.

He had offered a proper retinue and she had told him not to worry, in that way of hers that shuts a subject like a door—and he let her go with far too few men at her back.

She came home on a horse she could not get herself down from.

He had not known what waited on that road; he had known the scouts were overdue, and said so, and let her ride regardless. He would carry that part for the rest of his life.

Older than any of it: a hot afternoon in the McKenzie stables, a boy made to hold out his hand and say the words properly. Keep Alexandra safe. Three words and a boy’s handshake. He had laughed the first time, and been made to say it again until he didn’t.

He had kept that promise badly. He did not intend to keep it badly twice.

He turned around. Elsie stood in the doorway with Christopher just behind her, and neither of them looked remotely surprised.

“Ye’re goin’ after her,” Elsie said.

“As far as McKenzie land. She willnae want me a step past the border, so I’ll take her tae the border.”

“Finn willnae thank ye for it,” Christopher warned. “He’ll have ye put off his land, and nae politely.”

Finn McKenzie was Laird of his clan and Alexandra’s father, and he had never in his life wanted a Kincaid inside his gates.

“Aye. He might not.” Arran shrugged, and felt the movement pull tight across his shoulders. “I’m nae askin’ him for thanks.”

Elsie came down two steps and gripped his arm hard enough to hurt. Her eyes were red-rimmed and furious and entirely dry.

“Then dinnae stop tae argue with the captain about it,” she told him. “Ride wide of the column until she’s had an hour tae be furious, and dinnae let her see ye until she’s ready. Go on, ye great fool. They’re already an hour ahead of ye.”

Nobody tried to stop him. Nobody even asked him what he thought he was doing, which told Arran it had been written on his face since the moment the convoy rode in.

He called for his horse. One of the stablehands brought Valiant out at a trot, a heavy-shouldered bay bred in the Kincaid paddocks, who had never in his life been asked to stand still and had never much liked it when he was.

Arran swung into the saddle and put him at the gate. The road north lay open and empty in the grey morning. Somewhere beyond the first rise there were thirty McKenzie riders and one woman he had no right at all to follow.

She hadn’t been able to say goodbye to him. He found that he didn’t need her to.