A Hellion for the Highlander: A Steamy Scottish Historical Romance Novel Read online

  A Hellion for the Highlander

  A Scottish Historical Romance Novel

  Lydia Kendall

  Contents

  A Little Gift for You

  Scottish Brogue Glossary

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Epilogue

  Extended Epilogue

  Preview: Captured by a Highland Pirate

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Also by Lydia Kendall

  About the Author

  A Little Gift for You

  Thanks a lot for purchasing my book. It really means a lot to me, because this is the best way to show me your love.

  As a Thank You gift I have written a full length novel for you, called Falling for the Highlander. It’s only available to people who have downloaded one of my books and you can get your free copy by tapping the image below or this link here.

  Once more, thanks a lot for your love and support.

  Lydia Kendall

  About the Book

  She was like a force of gravity, pulling him down to his damnation...

  Handling a farm with no male relatives, Cicilia O'Donnel realizes, would only make her easy prey. She vows to take this secret to her grave. Or at least until the day a Highlander shows up unexpectedly, looking for answers: the Laird himself.

  Proper in every way, Alexander MacKinnon, Laird of Gallagher, takes pride in the way he runs his lairdship. Apart from one small thorn in his side: the O’Donnel farm. When he meets the headstrong daughter of the farmer, everything about her seems wrong. Especially the way she seems to dominate his senses.

  A fire that destroys the farm forces Cicilia and Alexander to confront the one running through their veins for each other. Winds of war blow through Gallagher Castle, a storm started by the same man who took Cicilia's father from her. And only she seems to hold the key to stopping a bloodstained revolution...

  Scottish Brogue Glossary

  Here is a very useful glossary my good friend and editor Gail Kiogima sent to me, that will help you better understand the Scottish Brogue used:

  aboot - about

  ach - oh

  afore - before

  an' - and

  anythin - anything

  a'side - beside

  askin' - asking

  a'tween - between

  auld - old

  aye - yes

  bampot - a jerk

  bare bannock- a type of biscuit

  bearin' - bearing

  beddin' - bedding or sleeping with

  bellend - a vulgar slang word

  blethering - blabbing

  blootered - drunk

  bonnie - beautiful or pretty

  bonniest - prettiest

  cannae - cannot

  chargin' - charging

  cheesin' - happy

  clocked - noticed

  c'mon- come on

  couldn'ae - couldn't

  coupla - couple of

  crivens - hell

  cuddie - idiot

  dae - do

  dinin' - dining

  dinnae - didn't or don't

  disnae - doesn't

  dobber - idiot

  doesn'ae - doesn't

  dolton - idiot

  doon - down

  dram - a measure of whiskey

  efter - after

  eh' - right

  'ere - here

  fer - for

  frein - friend

  fey - from

  gae - get or give

  git - a contemptible person

  gonnae - going to

  greetin' - dying

  hae - have

  hald - hold

  haven'ae - haven't

  heed - head

  heedstart - head start

  hid - had

  hoovered - gobbled

  intoxicated - drunk

  kip - rest

  lass - young girl

  leavin - leaving

  legless - drunk

  me - my

  nae - not

  no' - not

  noo - now

  nothin' - nothing,

  oan - on

  o' - of

  Och - an Olympian spirit who rules the sun

  oot- out

  packin- packing

  pished - drunk

  scooby - clue

  scran - food

  shite - shit

  sittin' - sitting

  so's - so as

  somethin' - something

  soonds ' sounds

  stonking - stinking

  tae - to

  teasin' - teasing

  thrawn - perverse, ill-tempered

  tryin' - trying

  wallops - idiot

  wee -small

  wheest - talking

  whit's - what's

  wi'- with

  wid - would

  wisnae - was not

  withoot - without

  wouldnae - wouldn't

  ya - you

  ye - you

  yea - yes

  ye'll - you'll

  yer - your

  yerself - yourself

  ye're - you're

  ye've - you've

  Chapter 1

  Audentes Fortuna Iuvat

  Fortune Favors the Bold

  Alexander MacKinnon, Laird of Clan Gallagher, was not the type to delegate responsibility. Despite the vastness of his clan, he had in-depth knowledge of almost all the weddings, births, and business contracts created within his borders.

  He knew the variety of herbs in each healer’s shipment, the volume of ale in every tavern barrel. He could accurately recount the collection of livestock on every farm.

  Every farm except one.

  Alexander frowned at this thought, the discomfort causing a crease between his thick dark eyebrows. It was the only wrinkle anywhere on his person.

  Unlike many other Lairds, Alexander placed prime importance on his appearance. It was not vanity, but rather a wish—a need—for his outward appearance to reflect the strict control he practiced within.

  Someone was knocking at his door, but he was not yet ready. “A moment,” Alexander called as he brushed a tiny crease from his pristine white shirt. “I am nearly ready.”

  “Aye, Me Laird. Sorry to interrupt, Me Laird,” a maid’s timid voice said. “It’s only tha’ Mr. Cunningham asked me to come to fetch ye.”

  Alexander sighed, reaching for the embossed golden pin that he always wore on his shirt, attaching it to his breast. “Tell Thomeas I’ll be there directly.”

  The maid did not reply, but he heard her footsteps as she hurried away down the corridor, eager to do his bidding quickly and accurately.r />
  Ye’re too harsh, Alexander. Ye scared the poor woman again.

  His brow creased again, and then he shook his head. No time for sentiment now. He could not worry about hurt feelings while he had a day’s duty ahead of him.

  An’ ye ken they’re whisperin’ about ye regardless. It’s been that way for a decade past.

  Alexander glanced at himself at the looking glass on the way past. He knew he cut an imposing figure, which no doubt added to the intimidating aura that seemed to follow him around. He was taller than most men, more than six and a half feet in height, with piercing blue eyes he’d heard the clansmen compare to ice.

  He raised his hand, brushing an errant dark hair behind his ear in line with the rest of his uniformly short, impeccable hairstyle, and straightened the pin on his shirt.

  “Audentes Fortuna Iuvat,” he muttered. “Fortune favors the bold.”

  They were the words of his father and his ancestors before him. Most clans who bothered with a motto used their native Scots Gaelic, but Alexander’s great-great-great-grandfather, for whom he was named, had been a strange Laird. He was a scholar rather than a warrior. He was a man who dedicated his life to the pursuit of knowledge and its benefit to the Scottish people.

  An’ bold we’ve been since. At least, I’m tryin’ me best.

  The pin should not be his yet. His father should still be bearing it. His father, Declan, should still be leading the clan. Alexander remembered the irony of the day he’d received the pin. He’d coveted the shining status symbol his whole life, always asking his father when it would be his turn to wear it.

  He’d been six-and-ten when his wish came to pass in the most horrific way possible, and he’d lived with the regret and not a little guilt ever since.

  I was just a bairn who thought himself a man. Barely old enough to grow a beard.

  The last words he’d ever spoken to his father had been those of adolescent irritation.

  “Ye have nae right to forbid me from anythin’. I’ll be a better Laird than ye ever have been.”

  Alexander flinched even now, remembering the tiredness that had flashed in his father’s eyes. Just six-and-ten and all too proud, Alexander had locked himself in his chambers and refused to even entertain seeing his parents away as they left to visit his older sister in the neighboring clan.

  Catherine had left her Laird husband and her weeks-old baby behind to travel back and tell him the news personally.

  Still injured, and pale as a ghost. She may be thrivin’ now, but I ken she never recovered in her heid.

  She’d been part of the whole thing, and young Alexander had all but forced her to tell him everything, trying to find some hole in the story, some error of judgment that told him that this was a lie.

  He could still picture the word-portrait she’d painted in his mind to this day. How, as she and her parents chatted amiably, something had spooked the horses. How they had whinnied and screamed and veered off, and the feeling of her stomach dropping away as the carriage broke away from their harnesses.

  How the carriage tumbled down the stark hillside, hitting every rock on the way down, and how the ice-cold water had soaked them through when it had plummeted into the water. How their father had been unconscious, bleeding badly from his head, and how their mother’s skirts had been tangled in the broken upholstery.

  How she’d forced Catherine to leave her and swim for the surface, passing the body of the driver on the way. How Catherine had clung to a rock for hours, knowing her parents were drowning just below her as she waited and prayed.

  I still thank God daily that the fisherman who saved her was fishin’ outside his usual area.

  Cut and bruised and with a broken arm, Catherine had only spent a day at home recovering before she insisted on traveling to the Gallagher lands to let her brother know.

  When she’d finished telling him, she’d held the pin out to him. “Father left it in his room,” she’d explained softly. “An’ it’s yer’s now, by right. I’m right sorry, Sandy, but I cannae stay more than a night or two. Ye ken that me bein’ wed to the Laird o’ Sinclair means I cannae interfere in business here.”

  She was right. As far as the law was concerned, Catherine belonged entirely to another clan now. Even if there had been no male heir, the Lairdship would likely just pass to the commander of his father’s army or another suitable male candidate.

  As if to punctuate the point, Catherine said gently but firmly, “Ye’re the Laird o’ Gallagher now.”

  Alexander hadn’t felt any pain as his sister described his parents’ death and called him by his childhood nickname. There had been pain later, of course, much of it, but none where anyone could see. He’d sat there like an old Celtic statue, frozen in time.

  Catherine had waited a few minutes, then gently reached over and pinned the badge to his shirt. “The servants are here, and Thomeas will be able to help ye with the finances. But ye’ve got a lot o’ tough decisions ahead o’ ye, and nae body much to help. Be brave. Be strong.”

  “I will be bold,” he’d told her emptily, raising his fingers to brush the cold metal. “Audentes fortuna iuvat.”

  “Aye, indeed,” Catherine had said in response, tears in her eyes. “Indeed.”

  Alexander saw his sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephew as frequently as his duty allowed, but no matter how she tried to approach it, he would never speak with her about that day.

  He knew she simply wanted to remember the parents they’d loved. Still, Alexander had spent twelve long years building his hard, protective shell. He needed to, for the good of his people, and he could not let anyone break it, not even his sister.

  Tha’s more than enough dwellin’ on the past, Alexander.

  He blinked a few times, drawing himself back into the present. Thomeas was waiting, with whatever financial wizardry he had performed today.

  The farmer had been due to leave for the town an hour before, but a mishap with one of the dairy cows meant that hadn’t quite gone as planned. Walking past one of their cottage’s windows, the loud voices of both siblings could be heard echoing loudly out.

  With a sigh, the farmer headed inside again, and to the kitchen door. If something went wrong, they had no mother, no father—only some servants, and the farmer alone to deal with the eight-year-old twins.

  It was hard, that was true, especially with the secret of their own identity that the farmer held close. Running a farm with two eight-year-olds would have been hard for anyone, never mind in these unique circumstances.

  I’ll just stay out o’ sight an’ watch whatever they’re bickerin’ about now.

  With that in mind, hiding just behind the doorway, the scene unfolded.

  “Stop it, Jamie, or I’ll smack ye in the face!” Annys screeched at the top of her voice, dodging out of the way as the thick slice of buttered bread flew at her head. “I’ll do it!”

  “Ye will nae!” her twin brother yelled back. “Ye stop it! Ye spilled milk on me best trews!” He picked up an apple from the table, ready to lob that at his sister’s head, too.

  “Yer best trews are as ugly as yer face. I did ye a favor!” Annys snapped back.

  “Stop it, the pair o’ ye!” a loud, imposing voice demanded, and the two eight-year-olds immediately stopped in their tracks.

  The farmer hadn’t noticed that Angelica Humphries was in the room with the twins, but it gave some relief. After all, the cook could get good behavior from anyone.

  “Sorry, Mrs. Humphries,” Annys said meekly, obviously trying her best to seem entirely angelic. “Jamie started it.”

  “Annys started it,” Jamie protested. “She always does, Mrs. Humphries, ye ken she does!”

  “Enough!” The cook was in her forties, plump and pleasant, red-cheeked with sandy hair and big brown eyes. She’d served the family for longer than the twins had been alive, sending most of her money back to help her widowed father, Old Ewan, who still lived in the village. “What would the farmer say at such a sc
ene? I have half a mind to go out to the village now an’ tell—”

  Usin’ me as a threat, are we? Ha!

  “Oh, dinnae!” Annys said, suddenly panicked. “Dinnae tell Cil we’ve been naughty, please. We’ll be good. I’ll even clean the milk off o’ Jamie’s trews.”

  Well, what do ye ken. It worked.

  Cil—Cicilia—had run the farm since the death of their father last year. As a woman, she had gone to all sorts of lengths to protect her family and their land. She knew that O’Donnel Farm should, by law, be in the hands of some distant male cousin or the other, but…

  Well, she’d lost her mother eight years ago, and her father even more recently. She would not lose her farm, too. She wouldn’t let anyone take away the only home her little siblings had ever known.