Chapter Two

"Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames."

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, 1207–1273, Persian poet & philosopher

Walter Macdonald grabbed Sara's arm in a bruising hold. He sniffed with his red nose and screwed up his whiskered face in a grimace.

"Ye smell of smoke, Seraphina," he said, using her full name, which she hated. "And wet dog." His gaze moved to her neckline. "Keep yer dress up else someone will see yer mark. Can't have the MacLeod calling off."

Sara tugged on the neckline near her shoulder, making sure to hide the red swath of skin that curved to her back. The mark had been part of her since birth, never fading. Her Aunt Morag said she'd seen it once on a girl's face, and no amount of poultices nor prayers made it disappear. Sara was grateful her mark ran under her clothing, but what would her husband think of it?

The swath of red across her skin was ugly, and she was ugly because of it. Her father had been reticent about marrying her off, saying that her husband would refuse once he saw her devil's mark. Apparently, Walter Macdonald didn't care what the MacLeods thought of her blemish. She felt her cheeks warm. Hopefully, her groom would look past her ugliness to her usefulness.

Sara glanced over her shoulder but couldn't see the beach. Could the man be her bridegroom, Jamie MacLeod? He'd said it was his beach, and Dunvegan sat over the rise to the south. He was handsome and had the chiseled body of a warrior. Her cheeks warmed remembering the taut muscles of his arse and legs as he walked away from her to retrieve his plaid.

"What are ye doing wandering so close to Dunvegan?" her father demanded. "And the fires?"

"I came to see where I'll live," she said. "I didn't know they were burning fields today." She tried to snatch her arm back, but her father held so tightly that she quickly gave up. "If you leave black and blue marks on me, Father, the MacLeods will say you beat me. 'Twill be talked about all across Skye before midsummer."

Walter released her arm, and she rubbed it as she walked slightly behind him, his familiar stuttering gait making it easy for her to keep up. They traversed the narrow cut through the high grasses covering the edge of moorland.

"Who was the man with the hound?" Walter asked. "He could have taken ye, used ye. Then ye'd be no good to marry."

"He didn't seem a threat, Father." And he might be her bridegroom. She thought of him racing in to save his dog, and the flutter of heat that had pooled in her abdomen as he stared at her intently. Lord, please let him be my groom.

"If a man's got a cod, he's a threat," her father said. He threw his hand out wide. "This is MacLeod territory, and they are all tricksters and raiders who plunder and steal."

"And yet you are having me marry one," she said, unable to keep the words in. She'd been hearing all her life how all the other clans on the Isle of Skye were worse than Lucifer. How the only way to gain peace was to rule the whole isle.

"Yer husband can do what he likes to ye," Walter said.

Heat prickled up in Sara's cheeks at the horrible notion. "He was saving his dog from the sea." A man who risked his life for something weaker than himself must have a good heart.

"Ye stink from it." Her father grunted. "Stay close to your aunt's cottage, Seraphina. Your wedding is on the morrow, and ye'll do nothing to jeopardize it."

"You think this wedding will bring peace between our clans?" she asked. Her father had longed for conquest against the clans on Skye, especially Clan MacLeod. When Chief Alasdair MacLeod, his old nemesis, had died the previous winter from the sweating sickness, Sara thought her father would attack the MacLeods, not negotiate a wedding.

He stopped and turned to her, holding a finger before her face, his brows raised like two gray clouds floating above his eyes. "I've never found a way into their damn castle, surrounded by water. Ye'll be inside and able to find the Fairy Flag. With the flag we will control the clans. Hell, we could take over England if we wished."

Her father believed in the magic of the banner called the Fairy Flag, which was kept in Dunvegan Castle under the watchful guard of Clan MacLeod. Legend said it had been given to the MacLeods when their ancestor married a fairy. It was to be unfurled to guarantee the owner of the flag victory no matter how outnumbered they were. But only three times, and Alasdair MacLeod had unfurled it, for the second time, against her father in 1520. Walter was lucky to get out of that battle alive when the tide turned against the Macdonalds.

"I almost had the damn flag in my fingers ten years ago," Walter said and shook his head as if brushing off the annoying memory.

He trudged along a path that went around a spongy moorland leading to the small woods, bright green with ferns. "Nothing can interfere with the wedding, Seraphina. I need ye in that castle. Eyes and ears." He pointed to his narrowed eyes and his ears, which seemed to grow hairier each passing year.

"You want me to steal the fairy flag?" she asked, stumbling over a rock. "I can't possibly—"

"In time," he said, waving off her concern. "In time, when our clans are together, we will march as one under the flag."

Her shoulders stiffened. She'd spent her whole life learning to read her father's gestures and tone. He'd told her brother, Kenan, that he brokered the union for peace. Was he truly trying to put her inside Dunvegan to steal the flag?

"And a lass should be loyal to her father," he retorted, dragging her along. "No matter what that entails."

Should she warn her new husband of her father's possible treachery? She thought of the man on the curving white shoreline. It could be him. Her husband. A man to whom she'd show all of herself. Her heart fluttered with a mix of worry and anticipation.

The man's skin had been tanned and without pockmarks, but his scars across his back were puckered as if he'd been flayed with a whip. So his skin wasn't perfect, either. Perhaps he was embarrassed over the proof of brutality against him. Maybe it would help him understand how she felt about her own marks.

Sara followed her father along the forest path, but she didn't see the bluebells or daisies. She only saw the golden brown of the handsome man's eyes, like rich amber. Had she heard anything about Jamie MacLeod's eyes? No. Disappointment tugged on the hope that had flared inside.

After an hour and a half of her father's slow pace through a small forest and across a moor, Sara spotted the one-story cottage up ahead. Her Aunt Morag stood on the stoop before the open door.

"Come inside," she called. Five crows stood on a tight line strung between two poles stuck upright in Morag's side yard. They fluttered their wings and cawed. Six more watched from the roof of her small barn. Sara could see why some people swore Aunt Morag was a witch. The long white and silver braid she wore down her back and the otherworldly greenness of her eyes only added to the witchy look about her. She was also clever, brash, and liked to stare at people until they looked away. 'Twas a wonder she hadn't yet been accused.

Walter flapped a hand at the glossy black birds. "Bloody hell, Morag. Yer minions? Devil birds?"

Morag shrugged. "They keep the pixies away." She tipped her head side to side. "And other troublemakers."

Walter snorted with rare good humor. "Hanging them dead will do the same."

"Dead, they can't pluck your eyes out, Walter," she said, staring at him without expression.

He shuffled his feet in the pebbly earth and gave Sara a small shove toward her aunt. "Found Seraphina with a man on the beach."

The older woman's flat gaze slid to Sara.

"He was saving his dog in the surf, and I sought to help," Sara said with rapid words and a wave to her damp skirts.

Morag's face softened the smallest amount. The woman had been her mother's twin sister, but they were as different as the two colors on a chess board. Where Elspet had been calm and prone to smiling, Morag was known for her tempers. She'd remained unmarried after her first husband died under mysterious circumstances decades ago. Some whispered that she'd poisoned him after he beat her. She'd refused to take another husband after putting the first in the ground, but it was rumored she had trysts.

Witch or not, Sara loved her aunt.

As a child, Sara often accompanied her mother on visits to her sister. She'd flit around in the garden, collect daisies on the moor beyond, or play with her stitched doll by the hearth. Her mother and Morag would speak and laugh for hours while they made tinctures and syrups for curing illnesses and injuries.

After Elspet died, Morag had taken on the role of mother, teaching Sara and her younger sister, Eliza, about domestic duties when they visited. Once, Morag had sat them down to explain the workings of their female bodies, including the parts that elicited pleasure. Eliza had stared wide-eyed. Sara had blushed profusely but found the advice very enlightening. The way Morag explained that a woman could take control of her own pleasure took away any shame Sara had felt about touching herself when she was alone. Their mild mother would never have taught them pleasure was something for which to strive.

Elspet had encompassed all the meek virtues of a lady, whereas her sister, Morag, had been the wild one. Sara often thought that she was more like her aunt than her mother, and luckily nothing like her father.

Only her younger brother, Gilbert, had taken after their father's conniving, arrogant ways. Gilbert tried to imitate his callousness and was already challenging Kenan to be the next Macdonald chief.

"Make sure Seraphina is fresh as a bluebell on the morrow," Walter said, nodding to Morag. "Gilbert and I will be along to retrieve ye for the church."

Sara frowned. "Not Kenan?"

"Kenan doesn't have the stomach for it," Walter said and then met her gaze. "I've sent him back to Dunscaith to make certain no Mackinnon is trying to take advantage of my absence. He can embroider pillows with Eliza if there's no trouble."

"Doesn't have the stomach?" What did that mean? Kenan had regained his strength quickly upon his return from England. Her brother was clever, brave, and deadly with a sword. He trained all the Macdonald warriors.

"Neither Kenan nor Eliza will attend my wedding?" she asked.

Walter flapped his hand. "The lad can't stand to see ye wed off. He's even softer since his return. And Eliza"—her father glared—"doesn't belong here."

Guilt tugged at Sara's middle to mingle with the constant concern for her sister. And Father calling Kenan soft was like calling Sara perfect. Kenan had survived the battle of Solway Moss and journeyed back up into Scotland until he was recalled to stand as a pledge in place of their father.

Aunt Morag tugged her inside her cottage, closing the door on her father. "Come, child. We'll get ye a warm bath, a hot meal, and a shot of whisky."

"Whisky?" Sara asked, studying the sly smile on her aunt's lips.

"Aye." Morag cupped Sara's cheek and smiled, nodding as she stared into her niece's eyes. "'Tis time I told you about how a man should treat a lass on their wedding night. If your bridegroom doesn't know, you can tell him what to do."

Sara stood motionless. "I thought I would lie on my back so he couldn't see the flame across my skin." She spoke with a flippant undertone to hide the familiar pangs of worry. Her groom didn't know of the ugliness hidden by her clothes. Her father surely wouldn't have revealed the red mark that had darkened instead of lightening as she grew. Once she was wed, her groom could do nothing about it.

Morag's lips pinched. "I have a new salve to try on it." She squeezed Sara's hand, because they both knew it wouldn't work.