Highlander's Heart 0f Steel (Beasts 0f The Highlands Book 5) Read online

  Highlander’s Heart of Steel

  Alisa Adams

  Contents

  A Free Thank You Gift

  Beasts of the Highlands

  About the book

  Prologue

  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

  Afterword

  Beasts of the Highlands

  Highlander’s Golden Jewel

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  A Free Thank You Gift

  Also by the author

  A Free Thank You Gift

  Thank you a lot for purchasing my book.

  As a thank you gift I wrote a full length novel for you called Rescuing The Highlander.

  * * *

  Click here to get you FREE book

  Or use this link directly in your browser.

  * * *

  alisaadams.com/free

  Beasts of the Highlands

  Book #1

  Highlander’s Lionheart

  Book #2

  Highlander’s Scarred Angel

  Book #3

  Highlander’s Wounded Beast

  Book #4

  Highlander’s Fierce Wolf

  Book #5 (This Book)

  Highlander’s Heart of Steel

  Book #6

  Highlander’s Golden Jewel

  About the book

  Their old home is gone. Now they must find a new one in each other’s hearts.

  * * *

  Lord Greysteil McKinnon is a warrior haunted by the ravages of war, and his heart longs to see his home again. But when he returns, all he finds is a charred castle and ruins.

  * * *

  Part of what reminds him his home still remains though as Greysteil, meets again his first kiss, Neilina Eunson, now a beautiful vibrant woman.

  * * *

  Neilina, is looking for her Father, who disappeared during the battle that destroyed her home and the village of Brough. When she meets Greysteil, she realizes that the sweet boy she once knew is replaced by an icy, hardened warrior.

  * * *

  In the piercing blue eyes that always unsettled her, Neilina tries to find sighs that part of the joyful boy she remembers is still there.

  * * *

  Neilina must pull Greysteil back from the horrors of his past so that they can together rid Brough of the smugglers, and save her Father.

  * * *

  But discovering her Father will break her heart rather than mend it, and Greysteil and Neilina realize that their old home and way of life are forever gone…

  Prologue

  The night was alive with drenching, biting rain and winds that slashed and ripped at the men’s kilts as they rolled barrels across the sandy beach. A sudden sharp, reverberating crack of lightning lit up the single, jagged, black turret of what was left of the crumbling and burnt tower of Brough Castle above them on the rocks. Another crack of lightning ripped through the sky. Its eerily bright light illuminating a white sheet that hung, wet and limp, high up on the very top of the broken and charred turret. That tower was all that was left of the once proud castle which sat on the rocks of the cliff, just out of reach above the worst of the sea’s stormy waves.

  The white sheet was a signal to the darkened and waiting ship anchored out beyond the waves. A signal that there was a shipment of illegally distilled Highland whisky ready to be picked up.

  For the only people that now roamed about Brough Castle, its lands, and the caves that riddled the sea cliffs—were smugglers.

  The men moved furtively, rolling the heavy whisky barrels through the wet sand to the small boats waiting on the shore. The white-capped waves crashed into their legs, threatening to sweep them and the precious barrels out into the angry sea.

  It had to be done in the darkness and secrecy of the night, for the revenue men were always looking for the illegal stills of Highland whisky, and Gilbert Eunson had been eluding them for several months.

  Gilbert was out of breath as he bent over, pushing the last heavy and ungainly barrel across the sand. He was wet all the way through his clothes to his skin, and he had sand in unmentionable places that made him itchy and irritable.

  A pair of boots blocked the path of his rolling barrel. Gilbert looked up from the boots to the person wearing them. He groaned inwardly.

  “Walter Waddle git oot of me way!” he said testily as he swiped at his grey hair, which was dripping wet.

  “I want to know if this load will finally be the one to git us paid Gillie?” Waddle demanded as the rain dripped off his pronounced eyebrows and rolled down his long, crooked nose.

  “Ye’ve been paid for yer work!” Gilbert said angrily.

  “It is not enough! We want more,” Waddle complained.

  “It’ll come Waddle, word has to be got oot carefully aboot the new goods we offer,” Gilbert argued in frustration, “and these new folks need to taste our whisky to see how fine it is.”

  “Aye, ye been saying that fer months noo, but the men want more money,” Waddle insisted.

  “Tell them to take some of the dried beef or mutton from the caves for their families, as they have before,” Gilbert said loudly.

  “They dinnae want to take meat from the cows and sheep we took from those villages. The whisky though, we all have a hand in the making of,” Waddle said in a sullen voice. “We want to sell some of our own, where we want to sell it! Dinnae forget, we have given up quite a lot for this scheme of yours!”

  “Dinnae ye think I know this?” Gilbert said quietly. “I lost me own daughter. Me beautiful Neely had to escape Brough Castle with Lady Swan and those six orphan children.”

  “Aye, and ye left her there with no choice but to run, what with the castle and village being attacked by those soldiers!” Waddle said accusingly.

  “What would ye have had us do? Ye know they were looking for our whisky! We’d have been jailed and hung. Or worse, drawn and quartered if found!”

  Waddle stared at the older man who stood before him on the beach. His idea had sounded so good at the time. A way to make money for the men of the villages who were struggling to put food on their families’ tables. To smuggle whisky wherever the people were ready to pay a high price for such hard-to-get goods like whisky, beef, and mutton. Now Gillie had decided it was much safer to go north to the Orkney Islands instead of smuggling their whisky south into the Lowlands and England itself. They had run the risk of having to pay the penalizing high taxes set on whisky, much less risk being found out for running an illegal still. To be captured would mean being sent to the Tolbooth gaol in Edinburgh for sure, and from there to the gallows.

  “What mon leaves his own daughter in the middle of a battle? Do ye even know where she is now Gilbert Eunson?” Waddle demanded of Gilbert. The rain was dripping down his nose and onto his lips. With every word he sprayed droplets of rain and spittle that ran down his rounded chin.

  Gilbert looked away from Waddle. He stared out to sea and the waiting ship that sat anchored, bobbing in the waves. The men aboard were eager to receive the whisky and sides of salted beef and mutton that had dried in the salty sea air that blew steadily into the caves where they had been hidden and hung to dry.

&nb
sp; “Och, nay, I dinnae know where me Neely is,” Gilbert admitted dismally.

  He bent back over the barrel and shouldered Waddle out of the way as he pushed the last barrel to the waiting boats.

  He was a smuggler now, a thief. His daughter Neely wouldn’t care if he was dead or alive.

  Better off to be thought dead than have your daughter find out what you have become, Gilbert thought.

  1

  Neely Eunson sat on the stone wall in a patch of warm sunshine. The rain had finally stopped. It was quite the storm last night, she thought. The lightning had lit up the beautiful turrets of Castle McKay with their colorful flags flying high atop each of them. She had sat up all night, watching the storm.

  And thinking about her father.

  Where is he? Is he even alive? she thought, just as she had for the last six weeks since she had left the devastation wrought by the third and final battle at Castle Brough, her home.

  The soldiers had destroyed everything.

  And her father had fled.

  He had deserted her.

  She could not understand why he had not taken her.

  She had had no choice, as she had hidden during that last attack with the lady of the castle, Lady Swannoc McKinnon, as well as Kaithria, the young woman that had shown up many months ago with some displaced orphans. Kaithria had stated she was looking for a safe place for the children, and Lady Swan had welcomed them to Brough, offering them safety and a peaceful place to live.

  For it was a peaceful place, with the castle sitting on the very end of the Dunnet Head peninsula, the most northern part of the Caithness Highlands. In truth, Brough was the most northern part of all of Scotland. They were isolated there, with only a small village, the castle, and the sea.

  They had thought they were safe from the evils of the Clearances. But still, the Clearances had come to Brough in devastating waves. The first attack was when her father had fled. Then a second attack which had wiped out almost the entire village and castle. Finally, and most devastatingly, the third attack.

  Neely, Lady Swan McKinnon, the six orphan children, Kaithria, and the old horsemaster named Beak had hidden deep in a cave amongst the sea cliffs. After the attack they came out to find only a few cottages were left and fit to live in. The rest were still smoking and in ashes. Food was scarce and the villagers that had managed to escape never returned. Days later, they knew they must leave as nothing was left for them in the ruins that was Brough. It had also been overheard that the soldiers had been looking for an orphan boy that was reputed to be Bonnie Prince Charlie's son.

  They had come upon two Highland warriors and their horses stuck in the peat bog on their travel away from Castle Brough. One of the warriors turned out to be Laird Wolfram McKay. He was on a mission for the king of England to find the king’s illegitimate son, who had been sent to an orphanage. It was thought he had ended up in Brough. It had been a grand adventure that ended in marriage for Lady Swan and Laird Wolf McKay. The great laird had to choose between his duty to his king or his love for Swan and the children.

  Whether one of the little orphan boys was the king of England’s or Bonnie Prince Charlie’s, also called the Pretender to the throne of Scotland, both Wolf and Swan knew the boy would be used as a weapon between the two warring men. And very likely the little boy would die.

  Instead, Wolf adopted them, writing a missive to the king that the boy would be kept safe within his clan. Never saying that he doubted if the boy was the king’s or the Pretender’s.

  Lady Swan and Laird Wolf had offered Neely and Kaithria a home within Clan McKay. The six orphan children were now part of Swan and Wolf’s family, and they extended that to Neely and Kaithria as well.

  Neely sighed. It was a happy ending indeed for Swan. But herself? She wanted nothing more than to go home. Her home.

  Back to Brough.

  She wanted to find her father, or at the very least to know if he was alive or dead. Was he captured by the soldiers as he ran perhaps?

  She did not know the answer to that. But she did know she needed answers, and the comfort of her own place. Her little cottage by the sea.

  Neely sat there on the warm stone wall, swinging her legs under her pale blue tartan skirt. She gave a short whistle and watched as her horse, Mentieth, who had been enjoying nibbling on the rain-sweetened grass, ambled slowly over to her, his all-black coat gleaming in the sun.

  “Dia dhaoibh ar maidin,” she whispered in the old language as she stroked the elderly, black war horse’s elegantly arching neck, and then she repeated it again. “Good morn to ye.”

  She laughed softly as the horse she called Teeth used those very teeth to latch onto her tartan shawl and pull.

  Neely grabbed it away from the horse before he could chew and slaver green grass stains all over the soft, pale blue wool. The horse nuzzled at her hair, pulling bits and pieces out of her neat and tidy braid, and yanking her tam off the top of her head.

  “Ye are a rude one, ye are Teeth! Such naughty manners, ye auld battle beast!” She laughed as the huge, black horse flipped his head up and down, waving her tam above her head as if to tease her. She reached up and grabbed it out of his mouth, slamming it back down onto her light brown hair as she gave him a mock glare.

  “Shame on ye!” she said as she shook her finger in the horse’s face.

  Teeth just leaned down and blew softly in her face, nuzzling her cheek gently.

  Neely reached up and pulled her fingers through the tangles in his long, black forelock. It was so long it fell to his nose. Then her hands stroked down either side of his face to hold his large head. She looked into his brown eyes. His once noble head now had sprays of greying hairs intermixed with the black. The grey was showing up over his eyes and down his nose. His mane and tail were still as black and long as ever, and his neck still arched like the once magnificent war horse he used to be.

  “Sich a sweet horse ye are. Ye just pretend to be a terror,” she whispered. She sighed as she began working her fingers through the mane that fell all the way to the horse’s still-powerful shoulders.

  “I cannae believe that old, hateful, teeth-gnashing battle horse is still alive,” came a voice.

  Neely looked up, her fingers stilling in Teeth’s mane. Her heart stopped. She blushed hotly.

  There stood Lady Swan’s older brother, Lord Greysteil McKinnon.

  Her first and only kiss, when she was twelve years old.

  Soon after that kiss he had gone away without even a wave goodbye to train with the Black Watch Army. He had only recently returned to Caithness, stopping to rest with some of his men at McKay Castle, and was surprised to find his sister Swan there, married to Wolf McKay, the laird of the McKay clan.

  And at the same time, found out that his home and ancestral lands had been attacked and were destroyed.

  He was angry and took it out on everyone around him.

  Neely found her voice and sat up straighter. “He is not hateful,” she insisted. Then she quickly added rather begrudgingly, “My lord.”

  Steil raised his brow and narrowed his light blue eyes at the girl sitting on the stone wall. She was petting the huge, black war horse that he knew to be a cantankerous, hateful horse. A horse that liked nothing better than biting people.

  Though at this moment the old horse’s eyes were closed in contentment as the girl worked her fingers gently through the tangles in the horse’s black mane.

  Neilina Eunson.

  His first kiss, though not his last. He had kissed many braw lassies since Neely.

  Though none were as memorable as the kiss he had shared with this girl.

  The girl who had followed him around incessantly as they grew up together at Brough. The girl who was always clean and neat and tidy and had lectured him and nagged him about the dirt on his clothing or the bottom of his feet or on his hands or face.

  Her lips were still as full, soft, and inviting as he remembered. Her hair was still the same mixture of soft brown and bl
onde that hung silky and luxurious down past her breasts. Her eyes were still that haunting grey color that pulled one’s soul deep into their depths.

  She was a woman now.

  When they were young he had kissed her in the middle of one of her tirades just to stop her constant railing at him. It had shocked her, silenced her. And surprised even himself.

  And then she had given in and kissed him back with an exuberance and joyfulness, a complete giving of self, and a desire for him and only him that he had never encountered since.

  Steil scowled at her. He wanted to kiss her again, right now.

  He scowled even more furiously.

  Neely scowled back at Steil.

  Since he had arrived he had not said two words to her. He scowled any time he saw her, and she scowled right back at him. He infuriated her. The nerve of the man. Not even a goodbye then, and not even a hello now. Or an “I am sorry about that kiss long ago.” Or perhaps “Hello, I am not sorry about that kiss long ago and I would like another please.”

  She sighed loudly as she glared right back at him.

  He looked wonderful in a kilt. Even better than he did as a younger man. He wore a dark brown jacket over his cream linen shirt, with his tartan pinned at his shoulder. The coat made his shoulders look impossibly broad. His strong, thick, sun-kissed neck was exposed in the V of his open shirt under his jacket. He wore tall boots that encased and showed off his muscular calves. His dark auburn hair hung to his shoulders in waves and curls that made her fingers curl into her fists to stop them from reaching out to run her fingers through his hair.