Traitor or Temptress. Helen Dickson

      Available from Harlequin^®Historical and HELEN DICKSON

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      Contents

      Prologue

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Prologue

      Far up in a green glen to the north-west of Loch Lomond the mighty solid limestone rocks rise perpendicular and saw toothed on either side of the burn that tumbles with great velocity to the loch below, throwing foam and spray high into the air. Hidden by a rocky shelf is a low and narrow opening giving access to a small cave, a cave the natives of the area call the giant’s cave. Many centuries ago, so legend has it, a voracious giant had dwelt in the dark chamber, where he could guard the entrance to the glen through which marauding bands of Fingalians would come from the north to rob and burn the villages of Kinlochalen and Drumgow, along the north and south banks of Loch Alen.

      It is said that an old woman who lived in Kinlochalen long ago and had the reputation of a witch, under constant threat of raids from the wild northern highlanders, had used all her powers of sorcery to install the giant in the cave. The creature would roar and breathe forth wrath at thieves who came to enrich themselves at the expense of the people of the villages, and, too afraid to confront and defy this dreadful giant, they would tremble and go home again.

      The giant was never seen, but the fear of him lay on all the country round about. It was said that on the night the old witch died, a mighty wind had risen and blown the giant off the rock, toppling him into the burn below, and the rushing water had carried him off to the deeper waters of the loch. But his spirit still resided in the glen.

      It was no more than was expected for highland clans to fight among themselves and steal each other’s cattle and sheep, and there was no giant to deter the hundred or so raiders who came with stealth under cover of darkness on a night in the autumn of 1691, to plunder the sweet fertile lands around the loch. But the people of Kinlochalen and Drumgow had been warned and took the initiative, and were prepared to hit the hostile raiders before they themselves were set upon.

      Looking mighty fearsome and swinging their claymore swords and yelling their battle slogans, they chased the raiders back up the glen to the bleak, flat moor above, a no man’s land, where unfriendly desolation had been successfully fashioned by Mother Nature. The encounter, fought between men gigantic of mould and mighty of strength amidst labyrinths of peat bogs and stagnant pools and squelching morasses, was brief yet bloody, and when the men of Kinlochalen and Drumgow had slain those who had stayed to fight, they took off over the moor in pursuit of those who ran.

      On the south side of Loch Alen, which was five miles long and stretched from east to west, stood Drumgow Castle, jutting out into the loch with all the assurance of long association. This sixteenth-century tower house and its entire demesne belonged to the Laird of Drumgow, Edgar McBryde. Here his eleven-year-old daughter Lorne lived with her two older brothers, James and Robert.

      When Lorne learned of the night’s happenings she left the castle. Thin wisps of mist still clung to the surface of the water as she rowed, with unwavering tenacity, the half-mile across the loch to Kinlochalen, which spread along the north shore.

      Meeting up with her friends, Duncan and Rory Galbraith, talking excitedly about the events of the night, the three of them left the village, where women and children huddled in doorways, waiting anxiously for their menfolk to return. Several already had, some wounded, bringing with them detailed accounts of fierce combat up on the moor. Ascending the steep road up the glen, young Rory was unable to keep up with his garrulous older brother’s long stride and Lorne’s agile steps.

      ‘Keep up,’ Duncan told his brother crossly, having just told Lorne that his older brothers’ parting words had been that they would hunt the thieves down, and when they were caught they would string them up and leave their carcasses to rot and the birds to peck out their eyes.

      ‘My legs are tired,’ Rory complained sullenly, hating Duncan’s tale of blood and gore.

      Lorne paused and, looking back, smiled at him. Rory was a quiet boy with a gentle, sensitive nature, unlike Duncan, who was imperious and strutted about Kinlochalen as though he owned it. He constantly bullied Rory, which drew severe reproach from Lorne. She was fond of Rory and always ready to defend him with a smile and a kind word, which earned her his unquestioning devotion.

      ‘We won’t go all the way up to the moor, Rory. I have no wish to see where our fathers and brothers have played out their foolish charades either. We’ll sit on the rocks halfway up and wait for them to come back.’

      ‘No, we won’t,’ Duncan objected stubbornly. ‘I want to see where the fighting took place.’

      ‘I’ll go if you want me to,’ Rory said bravely, but his eyes fell and he clenched his small jaw tightly to keep it from trembling.

      ‘You go if you must, Duncan,’ Lorne retorted. ‘Rory and I will sit and wait by the burn.’

      Torn