Page 1 of McKenna’s Honor (The Clan MacDougall #4)

PROLOGUE

A n old adage declares there is no honor among thieves. The same can be said of traitors. Traitors often hide in the open, in plain sight. The truth is there for people who choose to see it, for those who are determined to see things as they are and not as they wish them to be.

In reality, traitors are nothing more than pretenders. Master manipulators. Actors in a play in which only they know who is who and what is what.

The people around them are but an audience, often seeing only what they wish to see.

When a traitor performs, openly defending the weak, speaking only with highest regard for his king and country and displaying an unequaled facade of honor, well, who would question his fealty? The traitor reveals only what he wishes others to see and only what he knows they wish to believe.

All the while the traitor silently laughs at the folly he has created, taking great pleasure in the absurdity of the entire situation.

And if he is extremely careful the world will never know who or what he truly is.

However, as is often the case with thieves, traitors, and ne’er-do-wells, fate steps in at the most unexpected times. It rips away the heavy curtain of subterfuge and duplicity, to openly display to the world not what it wishes to see, but what it, in fact, must see.

Such inaugurations to the truth are often painful and traumatic, leaving the newly inaugurated feeling stunned, stupefied and bitter. For some, the only means of survival is outright denial. They shun the truth, cursing it, preferring instead to live in denial. Mayhap because they love the traitor so much, it is easy to justify the traitor’s behavior. Or, they may not wish to believe they could have been so easily duped.

But as in all good plays, there are subtle twists and turns. Some are quite obvious, others, not so much. Mayhap the truth isn’t always what it seems. Mayhap there is far more to it than anyone realizes.

What then, motivates a man? A man like Angus McKenna who has spent his life defending the defenseless, offering hope to the hopeless, lifting up the weak? Honorable. Honest. Steadfast. A leader of men. A man loyal to king and country. A man above reproach. This is the man Angus McKenna’s people see, the man other leaders see, the man the world sees.

Ever since the day he took his oath as chief of the Clan MacDougall and made the promise to uphold and protect his clan above all other things, Angus McKenna put his family and his clan first. Each decision he made since that fateful day in 1331 was made with only one thought in mind: how will it affect his family and his clan?

Nothing mattered but the safety and wellbeing of his people. Not his own comfort, his own desires nor his own needs could be taken into consideration when making decisions that would directly affect his people.

What could have made Angus McKenna don a red and black plaid and turn against his king? His country? How could a man like Angus McKenna do such a thing? What could be of such a value that he would plot to murder his king and to forge a pact with the English? A pact that would cause the fall of his country and put it squarely into the hands of the very people he has spent his entire life fighting against.

Gold? Silver? Power? Something more?

Time and experience reveal that things are not always as they appear.