Page 2 of The Highlander’s Fallen Angel (Brotherhood of Solway Moss #2)

“Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air.”

William Shakespeare – English playwright, 1564–1616, spoken by the three witches in Macbeth

Three Months Later - 22 August 1544

Waters Off Claigan Beach, Isle of Skye

Kenan Macdonald stared in disbelief at the woman dangling from his flying machine over the choppy sea. How had she gotten the huge wings airborne? More importantly, why?

Kenan had weighted his set of canvas wings, based on Leonardo da Vinci’s sketches, down on the top of the hill overlooking the beach where his sister’s wedding had just concluded. He was to fly for the first time in Sara and Rory MacLeod’s honor later that day.

“She is going to crash into the sea!” Sara yelled, grabbing her brother’s arm and trying to shake it. She clearly remembered the terror of flying herself.

“There is little chance she won’t,” their aunt Morag said, her voice curious but cheerful.

The sound of the woman’s splash was muted by the constant crash of waves.

“I wonder who she is,” Eleri MacLeod said, clasping her twin sister’s hand as they watched with wide eyes.

“She won’t be anyone if she drowns,” Rory said and began to yank his boots off.

“Stay here with yer bride,” Kenan yelled, yanking off his own boots. “’Tis my folly.” Clearly, he should have left guards up on the hill. He charged through the breaking waves with his knees high, keeping the floundering woman and her splashing arms in his sight. He yanked off his tunic, unbuckled his belt, and let his plaid drop just before rushing into the froth of the churning sea.

With a shove against the sharp bottom, he propelled himself in a dive over the next wave, the cold enveloping his heated body. Bloody, foking thief! She might not be successful in stealing his flying machine, but she was tearing it apart. Even though she’d managed to get her feet in the stirrup to keep her body from dangling, she’d let the nose of the glider tip downward, sending his creation into the sea.

He sucked in air when he surfaced and stroked through the icy north Atlantic, blowing bubbles out of his nose and ignoring the ache of cold in his bones. He would save her even though he’d rather throttle her. Once again, his sister’s wedding had been disrupted, the first time by fire, and now by his glider plummeting through the air, ruining her happy day.

Pull. Kick. Breathe. Dive. He continued his strokes, the taste of salt on his tongue, the burn of seawater in his nose.

“The useless thing won’t hold me up,” the lass yelled, not toward him but toward the sky as if she cursed God for not saving her. Her curled fingers clawed at the canvas wings.

“’Tis not a bloody boat,” he yelled back, and her face snapped around toward him. “’Tis a glider made for air, not water.”

Wide eyes stared at him over the spread of canvas just under the surface. Light-colored hair was plastered around a pale oval face. Droplets of seawater made her eyelashes dark under gently arching brows. With a white tunic, soaked through and clinging to her slender shoulders, she almost looked naked like a mermaiden.

Her full lips looked pale with the cold and parted. “Are you Kenan Macdonald of Sleat?” She coughed against the water that had lapped into her mouth.

“Aye.” He stroked past his dying creation until his hands bumped into the warmth of her soft body. Kenan pulled her to him, her legs kicking his as she tried to keep herself afloat.

Green eyes stared into his, her long lashes spiked with seawater. Her hands encircled his arms as she abandoned the canvas wings. Perhaps she couldn’t swim.

She’s definitely not a mermaiden.

“Are you Kenan Macdonald?” she asked, her brows pinching together.

“Aye, the creator of the wings ye’ve ruined.”

“I need you,” she said, her grasp on him tightening as if she feared he’d swim away without her.

“Aye, ye do.” His tone added “foolish lass” without him having to say it. “Else ye’d sink like my violated wings.”

At first, he attempted to hold her with one arm and drag his glider, but the saturated wings and the heaviness of the control bar and leather straps meant he’d inch his way back to shore. The woman was already shivering in the sea’s unwelcome embrace.

“Daingead!” he roared and released his glider to float along the undulating surface. He slid both his hands up the woman’s form, unwilling to release her in fear she’d sink. Her waist was slim but not thin. No petticoats hit his legs, but she wasn’t naked like him. “Hold onto my shoulders,” he said, turning and placing her hands there. Her fingers pinched into his skin, holding tight, and he began to swim back to shore.

A glance above the waterline showed the whole wedding party and the curious villagers of Dunvegan pointing and staring at them from the white beach made of sharp crystalized, bleached seaweed. Kenan’s muscles bunched and pulled, keeping him warm enough as he kicked and stroked to shore. When he’d yanked off his tunic before wading into the water, they had all gotten a look at the lashing scars across his back, including Cyrus’s sister, Grace Mackinnon. Well hell, if she was going to marry him, she’d see his back anyway.

The thief clung to him, and he felt her kicking at the surface as she let her legs float out behind her. When her legs collided with his, it made him even more ornery.

Foking hell .

She’d destroyed the glider he’d built, based on Leonardo da Vinci’s plans for wings. It had taken him months to measure, cut, and stitch together, assembling it in secret while his father still lived. The glider had saved his sister’s life, surviving the flames that had engulfed his castle at Dunscaith only to be destroyed by this slip of a lass who’d flown it into the sea.

“Are you naked?” she asked and then sneezed, the saltwater no doubt stinging her nose.

Kenan breathed past the rise and fall of the lapping waves, not bothering to answer. She was just lucky he’d braved the waters for her. For her or for his glider? He wasn’t sure. He’d like to think he’d dove into the icy Atlantic to save the life of the lass who was a thief at worst and a curious fool at best.

When he got to the underwater shelf where the waves broke, he lowered his feet, finding the sharp sand and shells. He pulled the lass around before him as the water gave way, exposing his shoulders and chest. No need to shock the ladies who may not know how a man’s cock and ballocks crawl up inside him when exposed to the brutal cold. He sure as hell didn’t need rumors about him having a small pisser.

The woman was shorter than him by almost a foot and half his width. The heavy water slicked her hair back and only fell to the middle of her back, much shorter than most lasses he knew who coiled their arse-length hair up into intricate buns and crowns on their heads.

Kenan’s sister, Sara, the newly wedded Lady MacLeod of Dunvegan, lifted her voluminous petticoats to meet them at the shore’s edge with her husband, Rory MacLeod.

“Holy Mother Mary,” Sara said. “Let’s get you up to the castle and into a warm bath.”

Dunvegan’s housekeeper, Margaret, also helped to guide the bedraggled, sodden woman from the sea. “Ye poor thing.”

Poor thing, his arse!

“Lass, your element is definitely not water,” Aunt Morag said.

Without a word, Kenan turned and trekked back into the water, giving everyone on shore another view of his naked arse and twisted scars.

“Where are ye going?” Rory yelled.

Kenan’s friend, Tomas Duffie, called, “Damn fool is going back for the glider.”

“Ye bloody dolt,” Cyrus Mackinnon said. For a split second, Kenan wondered what Cy’s sister thought of the man her brother wanted her to wed. Grace was standing there on the shoreline with all the rest, watching him charge naked back into the sea after his creation.

Of course, he was going back for the glider. At least he needed to try to save it. He hadn’t yet had a chance to fly with it and yet already his sister and this unknown lass had flown. Who was she? No mythical mermaiden. She was too water-logged for that. And too warm. Her body heat had covered his back like a mantle of soft curves.

Kenan dove through the breakers and surfaced, the cold Atlantic numbing him. Having grown up on the Isle of Skye, he’d become used to swimming numb, and he stroked back out toward the glider.

How had she gotten pulled into the air? Had she been trying to steal his creation, or was it an accident born of curiosity? She was light. His wings were meant to be caught by the air, and he’d left them unattended under rocks at the top of Cnoc Mor a Ghrobain, a hillside above the shoreline.

Stroke. Kick. Breathe .

He’d never seen her before. She was not a Macdonald of Sleat. Perhaps she lived here at Dunvegan with the MacLeods. The lass’s almond-shaped eyes were the green of a spring glen and framed by long lashes that any lass would envy. Her nose was straight and slightly tipped at the end, her nostrils flaring as she sucked in air over the rising and falling water surface. Would they flare like that when she ran or gasped on a passionate moan?

Kenan’s hands hit the canvas floating just below the surface, and he raised his head, treading water. Her ire-filled curses had revealed the fire within her even with the threat of drowning. She would be just as passionate in a warm nest of blankets.

Despite the frosty depths, Kenan felt his cock twitch. Lord, it had been too long since he’d tupped. “Shite,” he said, and gripped the canvas wing, turned toward the shore, and began to kick. A small group of women surrounded the sopping lass as they climbed the shoreline to the path leading to Dunvegan Castle. Sara waited with her new husband, Rory’s two uncles, and some Macdonald and MacLeod warriors to see him pull in the glider.

“We need to get you into a warm bath, too,” Sara called as he found his footing.

Kenan had planned to ride back to Dunscaith an hour into the wedding feast. He’d left his castle in ruins and his clan weak after his father was killed and his brother ran away with a known murderess. He couldn’t be away from Dunscaith for long.

But for the first time since the battle for the Fairy Flag several months ago, Kenan wasn’t thinking about renovations and reaffirming clan alliances. His gaze relocated the group taking the woman away. Grace Mackinnon was amongst them, her yellow petticoat flapping in the wind. But Kenan could only think of the mystery woman’s green eyes: inquisitive, annoyed, and then…determined.

I need you .

That’s what she’d said.

And Kenan didn’t think she was referring to his rescuing her from the North Atlantic.

…

Tierney MacNicol shivered and dripped as she walked with several ladies toward the foreboding two-towered form of Dunvegan Castle. The ten-foot-thick curtain wall made it impenetrable with the only entrance from the water side.

“What is your name, lass?” the middle-aged woman named Margaret asked.

“Tierney,” she said, her gaze scanning the crowd that seemed to be dressed in their best, waiting for the bride and groom. Tables were set up everywhere, and garlands of summer wildflowers swooped along houses lining the path through the village.

“Now what’s happened?” an elderly woman with a tight-lipped frown asked. “Another attack?” She looked Tierney up and down with a disapproving glare.

“A mishap in the water, Mistress Bounce,” Margaret said. “The bride and groom will be along shortly.”

“’Tis about time we had something to celebrate,” the frowning woman called after them.

Tierney crossed her arms over her chest, which was only covered with a tunic over a simple binding. The chill was making Tierney’s nipples sharp enough to show. The men’s trousers she wore also stuck to her. She hadn’t wanted to wear petticoats while trying to fly.

“’Twas a beautiful ceremony,” one of a pair of remarkably identical twin girls said and smiled as if dragging a woman from the sea who’d crashed a flying machine were an everyday affair.

The other twin smiled, too. “I sketched the scene and will create an oil painting of it.” She held a rolled scroll up as they marched toward one of three waiting ferries tied to the dock next to the castle wall.

“A blanket, mistress.” The familiar voice made Tierney’s face snap to the far left as a young woman pulled a woven blanket from her wagon and ran it over to her.

God bless Cora .

Tierney’s gaze connected with her wide eyes. Cora Wilson had been her friend since they were no taller than a Highland calf. Despite her reticent questioning, she always ended up helping Tierney with her wild plans. So of course she hadn’t abandoned Tierney to the MacLeods.

“Thank you,” Tierney said, and raised two fingers, rubbing them along her lips as if the drying saltwater made them itch. But this was no random scratch; it was a signal to Cora.

Cora’s eyes opened wider, but then she fished around in her pocket for a vial. “A tincture against fever, milady,” she said, pressing it into Tierney’s hand.

Tierney smiled, even though she trembled both from the cold and what was to come. “Thank you.” Plan number one had failed with the glider crashing into the water, so it was on to plan number two.