Page 3 of For a Scot's Heart Only

“Then you know I cannot leave you.”

“You must. For—for... your sister’s sake.”

She leaned in with a fierce, “I can take care of both of you.”

A curdled noise startled her. It was her mother’s mournful laugh.

“Isn’t that... what you’ve... always done?”

“Then let me—”

“No! Your duty is... to Margaret.” Her mother’s face crumpled. “She is better off... with you.”

Hot tears pricked Mary’s eyes, agony rising with them. Her mother’s defeat. A family lost. Their slow demise finally met. An ache spread behind her breastbone, more truth coming with it.

A choice must be made.

Her sister. Or her mother.

She wavered as if the ground wanted to swallow her in one bite—part of her wished it would.

“You can... do this,” her mother said.

Could she?

At the tender age of ten, a midwife had set a newborn slick with blood and afterbirth in her arms. Her heart brimming with love, she’d bathed and swaddled Margaret. But love wasn’t enough. The babe couldn’t knit their family together. Barely two months later her mother had embarked on a journey to the Baltics. Another adventure, she’d called it. The following year her father and her half brother took up residence above her father’s shop, while the women remained in Mary King’s Close off High Street.

Mary had endured the brunt of this new arrangement. Grumbling neighbors; the wet nurse who’d lived with them, frowning her disapproval. It didn’t matter. Little Margaret was deeply, deeply loved.

But the same brazier that shined on Margaret’s birth lit her mother’s sunken eyes.

“Go to your father. Tell him... about this fever,” her mother said. “And tomorrow... arrange for an escort to—to Arisaig.”

“You are sending me away?” Mary’s voice pitched painfully.

“To Clanranald MacDonald. My kin—they will... look after... you.”

Mary cuffed her watery chin. “What about you?”

Eyes the shade of a storm-tossed loch scolded gently.

“Mary...”

“No, Mama!” she wailed. “Don’t make me leave you.”

But her mother was already gasping instructions. In the kitchen there were silver coins in the Niderville soup tureen. They were hers to keep. For her future and Margaret’s. At the bottom of her mother’s traveling chest was a false bottom. She should hide the money there, and when the time was right, use it.

The orders given, her mother’s head fell onto the pillow.

“Dear Mary... you are blessed with—a—a keen mind. Use the money and... make a new life... God willing.”

Her heart banged, raw and aggrieved. Why would God steal her mother? The one person who understood her? Her father, an eccentric silversmith, was kind when he thought of her, but for him, the sun rose and set on her half brother, the fruit of his first marriage. His eldest daughter was from his second wife, the fair lass from Clanranald MacDonald. His youngest daughter? Her paternal line was debatable. The silversmith claimed his willful wife was a blight on his reputation, but she was Mary’s bright morning star. She’d encouraged her eldest daughter to expand her mind and use her talents and never let a man diminish her worth.

And now she was dying.

“Be... smart,” her mother said. “Do not let... men turn your head as... they have... turned mine.”

“I won’t.”