Highland Fairy Tales, #2
by Lecia Cornwall
Publication Date: November 1st 2016
Genres: Historical, Romance
She is his greatest enemy and his only salvation…
BLURB
Malcolm
MacDonald, a lawyer in Edinburgh, unexpectedly inherits his father’s title of
Laird of Dunbronach, forcing him to return to a place he hasn’t seen since he
was a small child. To gain the trust of a wary clan, Malcolm must act upon
their insistence that he cast aside his English betrothed and marry a Highlander.
However,
they have one condition—no lasses of the barbaric clan MacLeod.
When he
finds an unconscious woman in the sea, he brings her back to his clan but not
before doing the one thing that could save her life—hiding her all too telling
MacLeod plaid. When she wakes with no memory of who she is, Malcolm vows to
keep the little he knows about her identity a secret. As new dangers threaten
his clan, the mysterious lass teaches Malcolm some very important lessons about
how to be a Highlander and a laird.
But
secrets never stay secret for long, and when she finds her plaid, her memory
returns and she flees. Malcolm is forced to make a difficult choice to win her
back, facing his darkest fears and his worst enemy for a chance at true love.
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PROLOGUE
Edinburgh 1707
Malcolm MacDonald’s lodgings were cramped
with unexpected visitors.
He knew the three Highlanders felt it too.
They were more used to the wide-open spaces of their MacDonald homeland,
perhaps, where there was naught to contain their big bodies but peaks, sea, and
sky. They looked unhappily around the wee closet Malcolm called home. He
followed their gaze. There was a narrow bed with a small table beside it. His
clothes hung on pegs along the wall and his books were stacked in teetering
piles under the window. Writs, wills, and deeds covered the surface of the
table like a fall of new snow, deep, crisp, and legal.
He could smell the salt that clung to the
damp wool of their plaids, the smoky tang of peat fires, and the whisky on
their breath, though they were neither dirty nor drunk.
It made Malcolm aware of his own smells—the
leather binding of his books, the sharp gall of ink, and the burned oat smell
of his neighbor’s breakfast, seeping through the thin walls. He went to the
narrow window and opened it, letting in a few inches of air. Now the stench of
the city drifted in, gutters, livestock, and cookshops, borne on the sluggish
wind that came from the docks. The Highlanders wrinkled their noses, and
Malcolm resisted the urge to lower the warped sash again.
He stood back and let them see the view
instead. His fifth-floor lodgings looked down upon the Royal Mile. If one
leaned out the window and looked to the left, the Palace of Holyroodhouse stood
golden and grim against the startling green of the hills. If one looked
straight down, there were pigs blocking traffic, and merchants with their wares
spilling out of crowded shop fronts into the street. The fifth floor was a fine, middling place to
live for an unmarried junior lawyer of modest means. Richer folk lived on the
floors below him, and the people who made their homes above Malcolm’s meager
room were ever-so-slightly less respectable than he was. There was a widowed
seamstress upstairs, and a one-eyed poet above her. The poet was nearly as old
as Malcolm’s three visitors, who had introduced themselves as the elders of the
MacDonalds of Dunbronach, his kinsmen.
Dougal MacDonald was bent and bandy legged,
and his green eyes flitted about the room like trapped birds.
William MacDonald was as tall as a tree and
twice as broad. He stood ramrod straight and nodded silently when Dougal
introduced him. He kept his eyes on Malcolm and his hand on the hilt of the
sword belted to his hip.
Fergus MacDonald sat in the only chair, his
hands clasped on his bony knees, his face was a mask of cold disapproval.
Author Info
Lecia Cornwall lives and writes
in Calgary, Canada in the beautiful foothills of the Canadian Rockies, with
five cats, two teenagers, a crazy chocolate lab, and one very patient husband.
She’s hard at work on her next book.
Come visit Lecia at www.leciacornwall.com,
or drop her a line at leciacornwall@shaw.ca.
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