Chapter One

Isle of Mull, Scotland

31 October 1550

"'Tis Samhain," Eagan Macquarie's brother, Drostan, said. "Perhaps ye can find the headless Lady Gwyn to marry." Shrouded in white, the ghost was said to roam the moors on the night of Samhain with her black pig.

Eagan frowned down into his mug of honey mead. The lowering sun cast his shadow across the wooden table set in the meadow above Aros Castle as they celebrated with the Maclean Clan on the Isle of Mull. The familiar discussion about who Eagan should wed began once again, making his stomach twist and his mood blacken.

I'm leaving in the morning. The thought sat on his tongue, ready to stop all the nagging. But if he voiced his plans, the night would erupt into another turmoil as his family ordered him to stay. And he was resolute.

"I still say that Anna's sister, Kat, is bonny and old enough to wed now," Callum, Drostan's twin, said. He clamped his meaty paw down on Eagan's shoulder and moved it back and forth without Eagan resisting. "She's twenty."

Lark, Eagan's sister-by-marriage, tapped her fingernail on the rough table. "Meg Maclean would be the perfect addition to our clan."

Her husband, Adam, who was the oldest of the five brothers and the Macquarie chief, took Lark's hand and kissed it before saying, "Tor won't allow his daughter to wed a Macquarie. At least not until the curse is truly broken."

"Meg marrying Eagan will break the curse," Drostan said, lifting his tankard in salute.

Beck, the second oldest, snorted. "Meg and Eagan are practically sister and brother anyway. No bairns would come from that union."

His family threw names of potential brides about Eagan as if he weren't there. As if he had no say in the matter, a political bride locked away from any decisions regarding her life.

Eliza, Beck's pirate wife, sat with their two-year-old son on her knee. "If he weds Cecilia Maclean, he'll have an instant family." Her knee rose up and down, making Richard giggle, his blond curls dancing about his cherubic face.

Eagan frowned at Eliza, and she grinned back. His ire was licking up inside him like a fire gathering strength. 'Twas good it was Samhain, or he'd leave that minute. His bag was already packed and sitting in Gylin Castle.

"Cecilia's bairn will be a bastard," Rabbie MacDougall, their father's old friend, mumbled.

"Not Eagan's bastard," Adam was quick to add. "So it doesn't matter." He pulled Lark in toward him and squeezed her.

"Tor's niece is coming over from Barra Isle with Mairi and Alec MacNeil this week," Beck said. "I'm talking with Alec about shipping routes, and Eagan can talk to him about his sweet daughter, Brenna."

Bang! Eagan's tight fist hit the table, making all the wooden bowls jump. Some of the spiced nuts and sweet treats bounced out of them, scattering along the wooden planks in a chaotic mix. Eagan stood to his full height. "I'm not marrying anyone."

"Ye must," Rabbie said, his fuzzy gray eyebrows pinching as if they were two caterpillars trying to kiss. "To break the curse."

"The willow tree is full of bright leaves, and Wolf Isle is being repopulated," Eagan said.

Adam crossed his arms over his chest. "Unnaturally green leaves in autumn."

The willow tree that sat in the bailey before Gylin Castle on their isle represented the curse brought down on Wilyam Macquarie and his clan a century ago. Wilyam, the young chief, got a local lass with child, but abandoned her and married another, driving the pregnant lass to hang herself. Her mother, after cutting the bairn from her daughter's still-warm body, had brought the curse down on the Macquaries and their isle, stabbing the bloody knife into the willow tree where it still seemed to bleed today. No one could budge it nor explain the strange life cycle of the tree, but with each Macquarie brother finding love, the tree had healed from the dead willow it had been before. But the knife wound still bled, streaking the trunk with sap that looked like fresh blood.

All eyes rested on Eagan, and he jammed his hands through his chin-length hair. "The curse won't be broken by me marrying just anyone."

"Aye," Callum said. "Love must be involved."

Eagan crossed his arms. "I don't think that exists." He looked at his four brothers, each glancing at their wives with raised brows. "Not for me anyway," Eagan said. "For the four of ye, sure, but I'm independent." From the age of ten, Eagan had decided that he would one day go his own way. "I don't need the same woman warming my bed for the rest of my life."

Beck laughed. "Ye say that like 'tis a bad thing." He wrapped his arms around his wife, Eliza, their son before her.

"Vomit true love poetry and advice all ye want," Eagan said, "but I haven't met a lass interesting enough to make me want to talk to her rather than—"

"Eagan!" Lia, Drostan's wife, and Lark yelled at the same time.

"Little ears," Lark said, nodding to the three children around the table.

"Apologies," Eagan murmured and trudged off into the shadows toward one of the bonfires lit to keep away malevolent spirits.

Children of all sizes, several of them Macquaries, joined hands to dance around the fire. Just looking at them laughing and dancing with hearty health proved his clan had recovered. And Eagan wasn't about to let his happy family force him into wedding some lass to make the bloody willow tree drop its leaves in the fall.

He recognized the slender frame of his elderly Aunt Ida too late. She stood by the bonfire watching the children and turned to see him. "Eagan," she said, nodding, and reached out to grab his arm. The usual creases in her face and her frown seemed smoother. She almost looked happy. She turned back to the children but didn't relinquish his arm. "They make a lot of noise, but they're fun to watch."

The woman, his mother's sister, was old, grumpy, and probably lonely. She isolated herself in his childhood cottage here on Mull. "Happy Samhain," Eagan said.

"I'll set a place for your father…and my sister."

"If ye don't want to, I'm sure Lark will."

Ida flapped her free hand at the notion. "I always do it. Lark can invite the dead to eat once I'm one of them."

The gloaming slowly gave way to night as they stood. Ida's gaze moved up and down him. "You look like a lad who's tired of the world.

He snorted. "I'm tired of my clan and isle and people telling me what to do." He was the bairn of the five brothers and had been told what to do by someone all his life, but now he was a man, larger in stature than all of them, and he'd decided he wanted to be free. He crossed his arms over his chest, bracing his hands in his armpits. "I'm going to journey to the mainland." The idea had taken shape into a solid plan over the last year, as his family's suggestions for brides became more forceful.

"Does Adam know?" she asked.

"He will tomorrow when I tell him." Eagan had supplies and coins to take him to the northern isles, where he could live alone for some time before continuing to wherever his feet took him. "I want to be left alone."

"You were a twin in the womb. You've never been alone."

She repeated what he'd been told his whole life. But Eagan had never felt a connection with a sister who died at birth. From the time he'd convinced himself that monsters didn't hide in the shadows, he'd fought to be by himself, which was nearly impossible in a home with four older brothers who were always tasked with watching out for him.

"You're part of the Macquarie pack of Wolf Isle," Aunt Ida said, and he heard the smile in her voice.

"I'll go as a lone wolf," Eagan said, liking the sound of that. No one telling him he had to wed. No lectures about working with a life partner to make things easier. No reminders that he was now responsible for ending the bloody curse.

"And leave your clan cursed?"

He inhaled long and full. "I'll return someday or maybe I'll marry somewhere else, and ye'll know it when the willow tree behaves like a tree and the dagger just falls out of the trunk one day." The point was he was tired of people telling him what he must do and when he must do it.

Fast footfalls crunched on the broken shells scattered on the path through the village before Aros Castle, and Eagan turned, releasing his aunt's arm. Meg Maclean, the Maclean Chief's daughter, ran toward him, a frantic look on her pale face.

"Meg?" he asked and recognized that Beck was right. Eagan only felt sisterly affection toward the bonny lass catching her breath before him. She would never be his second half, as Beck called his wife, someone who fit against him, making him whole. For fok's sake, Eagan felt whole all by himself even if he was at one time a twin.

Meg tried to catch her breath. "Row me over…to Wolf Isle. My mother and Aunt Grace… They're having trouble with Cecilia's birth." Meg blinked back tears. "I must fetch Grissell to save Cecilia and her bairn."

"Pardon, Aunt Ida." Eagan grabbed Meg's arm, and the two ran toward the dock. Cecilia had always been a prickly thorn, but when she'd found herself pregnant and her beau died before he could wed her, they'd all tried to be kinder toward her. Even Eliza who'd taken great offense of her interest in Beck.

Meg was too frantic for Eagan to stop to tell Adam, so they hurried on. "Grissell may not come. I've never known her to leave Wolf Isle," Eagan said.

"She said she'd help." They stopped by the ferry that his large family had poled over, but Meg pointed to a rowboat. "Take that one."

Out in the slip of water between the isles, Meg's breath finally calmed enough to speak in full sentences. "Grace said Grissell met with her the last time she visited your isle." Meg sat facing him, looking forward as Eagan put his shoulders into rowing them easily through the calm water.

"She said she'd come to Cecilia's birthing?" he asked. "She doesn't even like the woman."

"Grissell said she would help, because Cecilia would need it. 'Twas as if she knew the birth would be troublesome."

As Eagan watched the lights from Mull grow distant, he heard Meg gasp softly. "She's there on the shore. She knows," she whispered, passing the sign of the cross before her.

A glance over his shoulder showed a figure in white standing at the dock next to the lantern Adam left burning. If the circumstances weren't dire, he'd have asked if it was headless Lady Gwyn with her pig. He pulled the small craft up to the floating wooden dock and tied the boat's rope to iron loops in the wood. "'Tis safe," he said and felt the boat rock as Meg clambered out. He followed her up the wooden pier.

"Mistress Grissell, did you know I'd come tonight?" Meg spoke to the hunched form of Grissell, the elderly woman who took in women and children with nowhere else to go. She kept a series of cottages on the south side of the isle. One of her ancestors had cursed the Macquaries and sunk the knife into the willow tree a century ago.

"'Tis a dangerous night for those caught between life and death," Grissell said, her voice strong even if her body seemed weak.

"'Tis Cecilia," Meg said. "The bairn won't come. She needs you."

Grissell stared back while two white cats slid along her white petticoat. "I'm not going across."

"My Aunt Grace said you would give aid." Meg's voice held a note of pleading.

Grissell turned to the trees where a second figure in white walked out. The woman seemed to glide down the slope to the bank. Her petticoat, bodice, and shawl were white, giving her a ghostlike appearance. Meg took a step closer to Eagan. The woman stopped by Grissell, and the crone's gnarled fingers caught the woman's arm. "Tessa will go in my place."

The woman slid the shawl off her hair, revealing dark, wavy tresses that ended somewhere around her waist. Her face was pale in the darkness, standing out like the white of her clothing. She carried a bag. "I have cures and knowledge," she said, and her voice glided evenly like her walk. Graceful and serene. 'Twas almost like a song, and Eagan had the sudden yearning to hear her sing.

"Won't you come, Mistress?" Meg inspected Tessa with obvious unease.

Grissell was already turning away. "Tessa will take the place of me. I've prepared her." A darkly spotted cat, Sia, trotted out from the woods to join the two white ones flitting about the old woman, as she walked toward the woods without looking back.

Tessa stepped easily into the boat and sat, holding the satchel in her lap as Meg climbed in, followed by Eagan.

"I'm Meg Maclean. Thank you for coming to help my friend."

Tessa nodded and looked at Eagan.

"I'm Eagan. How long have ye been on Wolf Isle?" He hadn't heard anything about a beautiful dark-haired woman living with Grissell.

"One year."

Had she been hiding? "And yer name is Tessa?"

"I am Claudette Tempest Ainsworth, but I'm called Tessa."

Her accent was mixed and melodic. It seemed English on the surface but with French undertones.

"Hurry," Meg said, her fingers curled into the lip of her seat. Eagan used his oar to push off and turned them back the way they'd come.

"Ye're English?" Eagan asked, his arms working hard, bringing the familiar burn of training into his shoulders.

"I'm of Wolf Isle," Tessa said, meeting his gaze calmly. The light from Meg's lantern made Tessa's eyelashes seem even longer over her large eyes, eyes turned black in the shadows.

"Then you must know Gaelic," he said in the language.

Staring at him, her lips opened, and a string of French came out. He was only able to catch a few words and one sentence. "Je suis fran?ais."

"Ye're French," he said.

"I'm now Scottish," she said in English, a calm sternness over her smooth features. Her voice held serene conviction, daring him to contradict what she'd thrown out as absolute truth. He felt his mouth relax. If he had that quality, that inner determination, he'd have walked away from Wolf Isle years ago.

Eagan curbed his last stroke through the gently lapping water. The rowboat bumped up to the dock along the edge of Mull. "I'll help ye learn some Scots Gaelic," he said, and a prickle itched along the skin of his back.

Hadn't he just told Aunt Ida he was leaving Wolf Isle after tonight? And yet Claudette Tempest Ainsworth, with her fathomless eyes and gracefully retained strength, threatened to push him off course in the time it took to row across the strait.