Taming The Lion

“He was lying. What fool would blow up his whole tower to stop us from getting it?”

“A desperate one.” Last month, Thomas Boyd had died a horrible death rather than surrender Kennecraig to Hakon. “And the Boyds will be even more cautious now their laird’s gone.” Hakon was certain they blamed him, even though he had gone to considerable lengths to make Thomas’s murder look accidental so as to not rouse their suspicions. “Damn, I wish Guthrie had controlled himself. Thomas was worth more alive than dead.”

“Yer lad’s got his grandsire’s taste for killing, that’s sure,” Seamus said with a hint of awe.

“Killing Thomas was damned inconvenient. With him as a hostage, we’d have gotten inside Kennecraig shck as ye please.”

“Aye, but we’ll win. They’ve got a lass leading them now.”

Hakon grunted. Catlyn of Kennecraig might be only a lass, but she had thus far proved to be no weak-willed miss. When Hakon had ridden over to offer sympathy and protection for her now leaderless clan, the little witch had stood atop her walls and denounced him as a murderer. She had loudly rejected Guthrie as a potential husband, though how she had chanced to hear about the maid he had carved up in Doune Town, was a mystery. She had ended her tirade by threatening to blow up the stills Hakon coveted if he tried to attack the keep.

“Damn.” Hakon spit on the floor. “Who’d think a Fergusson could be kept at bay by a lass and a clan of distillers.”

“Our time will come. Ye’ll think of something. Some plan.”

“Aye, but what? Catlyn Boyd’ll not let a Fergusson within a mile of her gates. And I do mean to have those stills.” Just thinking of the piles of gold they’d bring made his palms itch.

The door to the tavern opened, and a group of men spilled in, bringing fresh damp air and cheery laughter.

Hakon’s lip curled. They were just the sort he despised. Young, handsome and well dressed. Sprigs off some noble bough, wearing their arrogance as naturally as their velvets and silks.

“Dod!” Seamus exclaimed.

“What is it?”

“I recognized one of them. The tall one with the black hair and the pretty face.”

Hakon picked him out of the jovial crowd. Taller than the rest, with impossibly broad shoulders, his glossy black hair swept back from a face too perfect to be believed. Apparently the maids thought so, too, for they fell all over themselves making the man and his companions welcome. “Who is he?”

“Ross Lion Sutherland.”

“Hunter Carmichael’s nephew?” Hakon hissed.

“Aye. Young Ross is not a man ye’d forget I saw him from a distance at Keastwicke when I went to claim yer da’s body.”

Hakon stiffened, hatred curdling low in his belly. Hunter had not killed Aedh Fergusson, but he had led the retaliatory raid that had ended in Aedh’s death. And the Warden had been a thorn in Clan Fergusson’s side from the day he’d taken the post. Righteous bastard, always ranting on about peace on the Borders. Thanks to his patrols, it became nigh impossible for a man to conduct a successful raid or lift a head of cattle. Why, Hunter and his ilk had practically starved the Fergussons to death.

Through narrowed eyes, Hakon watched as a trio of chattering maids led the newcomers to a table at the far side of the room. His hatred congealed as he studied Ross Sutherland’s handsome, laughing face. There he sat like a bloody king, ordering food and drink, patting the maids on the cheek and pressing coins into their palms.

“It would be a pleasure to bring that lordling down,” Hakon murmured.

“Want I should kill him?” Seamus fingered his dirk.

Hakon shook his head slowly. Unlike his father and his son, Hakon had never found death a satisfactory form of punishment. Death was too final. But if someone who had wronged you could be made to suffer...

Ah, that was the best form of revenge.

“Well, he’s got a way with the lassies, that’s sure.” Seamus grinned wistfully. “There’s not a one of them wouldn’t sell her soul to end up in his bed tonight. Providing he stays sober enough to satisfy her. Looks like he’s taken a fancy to our whiskey and is trying to buy—”

“Master Robert.” Brann bustled up, his face alight with greed. “Lord Ross would like to buy a keg. A whole keg. He and his men have been coming in here for a week, and he always pays in coin. If we can fix a price...”

“I am sure we can.” Hakon looked at Ross and nodded.

Lord Ross wore the easy smile and slightly bored expression of a man well used to getting whatever he wanted. A man who likely indulged in the usual vices: women, drink, gaming.

Vices were something Hakon understood, and used.

Excitement stirred in Hakon’s blood, and an idea began to take shape in his fertile mind. A plan that would use Ross Sutherland’s looks to good advantage and make him suffer into the bargain. “Donald, fetch the rest of the kegs.”

“Donald?” Seamus blinked, the recalled that he was Donald Dunbar while they were in Stirling. “Oh, aye.” He scurried out of the tavern, grinning like a fool.

Hakon had a plan! And it was bound to succeed, because Hakon was a deucedly clever bastard. Ask anyone who had ever run afoul of one of Hakon’s schemes.

Chapter One

Kennecraig Keep, Scotland

August 17, 1407

Thunder rumbled across the broad-shouldered Grampian Mountains and down the narrow cleft that was Fmglas Glen. As it collided with the walls of the keep set on the lip of the glen, the low, ominous roll accented the drama unfolding in the chamber beneath the keep.

The tasting of the uisge beatha.

The water of life.

The life’s blood of Clan Boyd.

Clad in a gown of virgin white wool, her honey-colored hair falling free to her waist, Catlyn Boyd stepped into the high-ceilinged room. This was the moment she had trained for nearly all her life. Her palms were slick from nerves, but the anticipation she should have felt was clouded by sorrow.

“Papa,” she whispered. “You were taken from us too soon.” Sweet Mary, how she missed him, the patience with which he’d answered her hundreds of questions over the years, the wisdom he had unstintingly shared with her, the courage he’d shown in insisting she be named heir after her brother died.

“I need you, Papa, now more than ever.”

Silently she scanned the room, gathering what strength she could from the familiar. It was not a large chamber, measuring twenty feet by twenty, but rich in history. On the walls hung the tapestries woven by her mother, her grandmother and so on back for six generations. Two stone columns supported the vaulted ceiling from which hung an iron wheel set with a dozen tallow candles. The light gleamed softly on the only piece of furniture, an oaken table nigh as old as the keep. In its center sat an heirloom of even greater age. The chalice.

The tiny scallop shells on the base were white and worn smooth from use. The bowl formed of rock crystal was so clear the torchlight passed right through the dark amber liquid in it. Centuries ago, a restless ancestor, Henri of the Boyd, had returned from trading in the Mediterranean with the chalice and the recipe for distilling spirits from grain. Each succeeding generation of Boyds had improved upon the original.

Family pride and a sense of destiny filled her as her eyes moved from the chalice to the kinsmen assembled in the golden circle of light. Each man was here because tradition dictated it, and because he had a stake in the whiskey’s making. Roland the brew master’s narrow face was tight with anxiety. If the whiskey was found lacking, he could lose the position held by his father and his father before that. His son and apprentice, Wesley, grinned at her with the confidence of youth. Gordie the cooper stared at the small keg on the floor beside the table, grateful, no doubt, to see it did not leak.

Lastly Catlyn looked at Adair, the craggy-faced captain who was mentor to her as he’d been friend to her father.

Oh, Papa. Pain squeezed tight in her chest. Even after a month, it was hard to accept the fact that he was gone, the bluff, generous man who had guided her steps as a babe and taught her the craft when fate decreed she would succeed him.

“’Tis time, lass,” Adair said gently. In his level brown eyes she saw grief held at bay by the prod of duty.

Catlyn nodded, took a steadying breath and moved to the table. Without hesitation, she lifted the chalice and let the pungent fumes waft up her nose. Strong and so sharp they nearly stole her breath. Just as it should be for whiskey that was only a year old. She had been bred and raised for this, educated in the ways of marrying barley mash and fire while other lasses learned needlework and housework.

It was time to put theory into practice.