Prologue

Lochrose Castle, Strathspey, Scotland

April 16, 1746

" Y ou've got a bloody nerve, Robert."

"Aye, I do." Robert Grant, Viscount Lochrose—also known as the Master of Strathburn and lately "Traitor to the Crown"—squinted through the dark spots clustering his field of vision, trying in vain to focus on his sneering half-brother Simon. The hours-old bayonet wound across his shoulder blade throbbed with such thought-stealing intensity, it was all he could do to stay seated upon his trembling, sweating horse. There was no way he would be able to dismount unassisted. He'd end up with his face firmly planted in the gravel of the forecourt of Lochrose Castle. "But for the love of God, Simon…" Robert continued, his voice no more than a hoarse rasp. "Just help me down. I'm…I'm wounded, for Christ's sake."

He barely recalled the moment the English soldier's blade had sliced across his back. The horror of everything else that had taken place only hours before on Drumossie Moor flooded his mind. Made the nausea rise in his gullet anew.

Simon snorted. "You must've had a blow to the head then, or else you would've remembered that Father forbade you to come back." He glanced past Robert, down the gravel drive toward Lochrose's wrought-iron gates. "You've killed them all, haven't you? It was a rout, just like Father said it would be, wasn't it?" His gray gaze, flint-hard with accusation and long-held resentment, returned to Robert. "He will never forgive you for this."

No doubt. Six-and-thirty Clan Grant men, dead. And I was the arrogant young cock who led them all out like lambs to the slaughter.

Robert swallowed down both the bile and bitter self-acrimony burning his throat. "I know," he croaked. "But please…I just need to hide until I can move on…tomorrow. I'll leave, I promise."

Even though he'd flagrantly disobeyed their father and led out the clan at Culloden, Robert prayed that he would be shown a modicum of compassion. That the earl would at least grant his eldest son and heir sanctuary for a single night before he fled Scotland to spend a life in exile in some far-flung place. Robert didn't want to put his family at risk for harboring a fugitive, but he just couldn't go on any farther.

Simon smiled, the sentiment not quite reaching his glittering eyes. "Of course, dear brother. I shall have a room prepared for you. Anything for family." He gripped Robert's forearm with one hand at the same moment he slapped the blood-soaked plaid sticking to his wounded shoulder.

Bastard .

Agonizing, white-hot pain instantly knifed through Robert. Even as black oblivion at last rose to claim him, he didn't fail to notice that Simon was still smiling.

The flickering of a torch in the near pitch-black darkness, the insistent throb of his shoulder, and a cold stone floor beneath him were all that Robert could discern when consciousness eventually returned. All that, and his deep and crushing despair.

Reluctantly cracking open an eye, he grimly absorbed the sight before him. There was to be no mercy for him after all, given that he'd been chained up like a dog in what used to be Lochrose's dungeons, but was now the wine cellar. He had no idea how long he'd been passed out down here, or whether it was day or night. But there was no doubt in his mind that Simon would have already sent for the English dragoons, or at the very least, the local Black Watch regiment by now. It wouldn't be long before he was carted off to be charged with treason.

All thanks to his half-brother.

Unless Father intervened… But at this particular moment, that possibility seemed as unlikely as being granted salvation by the devil himself.

You don't deserve anything, Robert Grant. You should have died on the field like the rest of your Jacobite brothers…

With what felt like a herculean effort, Robert pushed himself to a sitting position, the chain manacled to his left ankle rattling against the unforgiving flagstones, his shoulder screaming in protest. As dizziness and another surge of nausea took hold, he threw out his right arm to catch himself, striking and jarring his elbow. Glass clinked.

Despite his dark mood, his mouth curved into a parody of a grin. Perhaps he could drink himself to death before the soldiers came. He reached for a bottle, pulled out the cork, and took a slug.

Ah whisky , his favorite.

Robert was perhaps halfway through the bottle when the metallic scrape of a key turning in the lock of the cellar door echoed off the grim walls. He looked upward, eyes narrowed against the sudden flare of a lantern. In the doorway, at the top of the stairs, loomed the silhouette of a large man.

"Och weel, it's verra easy to see that ye're definitely yer father's son if ye dinna mind my sayin' so, milord."

MacTaggart . Robert would know the man's voice anywhere. One of his father's most trusted clansmen and a serving Black Watchman, Robert had known the man all his life. Indeed, MacTaggart had taught him to wield his very first sword and shoot his first musket.

Except that might count for nothing right now...

His guts tensed with wariness, Robert watched the burly Highlander descend the stone stairs. He was alone, thank God. No red-coated dragoons or other Watchmen appeared to be lurking in the shadows of the still open doorway. Robert took this as a slightly encouraging sign that he wouldn't be taken away. At least not yet…

He raised the bottle of whisky in a mock toast to his former master-at-arms. "Care to join me in a wee dram, for old time's sake?"

MacTaggart smiled crookedly. "I dinna mind if I do. Only a wee one mind, as I'll need a steady hand to fix yer shoulder." He placed the lantern and a large leather satchel on a nearby wine cask. After rooting around in one of the satchel's pockets for a moment, he turned back to Robert and grinned. In his hand was a wicked looking needle, long and curved. "Mrs. MacMillan has lent me her best roast trussing hook. She says it'll stitch yer shoulder up good as new. Ye're a lucky man."

Robert shrugged and offered the whisky bottle to MacTaggart. "There's no sense in mucking up Mrs. MacMillan's needle for this mere scratch. My head will sit just as well on the executioner's block, nicely trussed shoulder or not."

MacTaggart's craggy brow descended into a deep frown. Squatting down, he mercifully gripped Robert's good shoulder with one of his large, calloused hands and looked him in the eye. "Now we'll have none of that kind of talk, milord. Those bloody Redcoats willna get you. Yer father has instructed me to get ye away from here as fast as I can before dawn. And young Tobias Shaw has offered to go with ye to serve as yer squire. If I can get ye sewn up and out of here in the next hour, ye can both ride for the coast. There'll be a fishing boat ye can slip onto, just past Nairn. Lord Strathburn…well, he says what ye do after that will be up to you. There's coin and new identity papers in that satchel there. How does Robert Burnley sound for a new name? If ye can stand the notion o' pretending to be a Sassenach from now on…"

Robert would pretend to be a walrus if it meant he'd avoid capture and execution. He was glad of the uncertain light cast by the lantern when tears suddenly rose to sting his eyes. Despite everything he'd done, his father had not completely forsaken him. It was more than he deserved.

He took another slug of whisky before pulling off his torn and bloody plaid and shirt to expose the long bayonet slash across the expanse of his back. "I'd prefer herringbone stitch if you don't mind, MacTaggart."