Ashblane's Lady

Heathwater Castle, northwest England. 30 September, 1358 "There is a grounde called the Debatable Grounde, lying between the Realme of England and Scotland." "Ian!' The anguished keening cry of a name travelled on the wind over Heathwater as Laird Alexander Ullyot tore off his jacket and rocked back and forth across the dead body of his clansman. Lady Madeleine Randwick, watching from the woods, could barely believe such emotion to come from him, for the Chief of the clan of Ullyot, born and bred in the Scottish Highlands and the bastard son of a royal father who had never claimed him, was far better known for his cruelty and callousness. And she could well understand why. With the rain pouring down in earnest, his face looked hewn from cold hard marble. Not pretty. Not comely. No young man's face this, full of dreams and promises, but a worn and tried visage underscored by danger and seasoned by tragedy. The scar that ran across his right cheek and into the hairline of his dark blond hair could be seen even from this distance, lending him a hardened beauty that took Madeleine's breath away. No healer worth her salt had worked on him, she thought, folding her cloak across the brightness of her hair as his double-handed claymore caught the sun. Lord, if he saw her! Crouching lower, she viewed the oozing wounds on his arm and back dispassionately. A deep gash might well poison his blood. With intent, she weighed up her options. If he died, her brother might relax his guard around Heathwater, giving her the chance she needed to escape. Escape from Noel and Liam and Heathwater. How long had she dreamed of that? She was about to turn away when she noticed his shoulders shaking. He was crying. The hated Laird of Ullyot, scourge of the borderlands and instigator of a hundred bloody battles, was crying as he brought the fingers of the one he mourned to his lips in a tender last embrace. Madeleine stayed still, the image of muscle and wartoughened invincibility strangely disconcerting against such grief. She noticed him stiffen as soon as he perceived a sound from further down the valley, the dirt on his hands marking his face as he swiped his eyes and stood, glance chilling and sword drawn. So this was her enemy close up. This man, whose land ran north of her own along the border of Scotland and joined with the tracts of her brother's domain west of the River Esk. She sensed his awareness of being watched as he scanned the undergrowth on the hillock behind her, but the arrival of a group of Ullyot men drew his attention away. She could hear his deep voice relaying orders as the bodies of fallen friends were separated from foe and placed on a dray pulled by two horses. She wondered where his own horse was, her curiosity appeased a moment later as he tilted his head and whistled to a steed of the deepest black. With a growing fear, Madeleine burrowed back into the root space and tried to recall all she had ever heard of the clan Ullyot. Ashblane. His keep hewn of stone, tall and windowless, the little light allowed in banished by dirtied cattle skin. Terence, her brother's servant, had told her this once just after her mother had died. A cautionary tale, she had guessed, to balance her own lot against that of others, for no one could live more bleakly than Alexander, the powerful and arrogant Chief of Ullyot. The bodies had been stacked now and angry drifts of conversation reached her fleetingly before the rising wind snatched them away and pulled at the plaid Ullyot had draped across the faces of his fallen. The dirty tartan was stained in red. His arm, she supposed. Or his nose. Or the slash she could see deep across his back as he turned, the marks of battle mingling with the rusty blush of blood. His men crowded around him as if for comfort. Fleetingly she wondered who would give him cJames, Sophia is the author of 'Ashblane's Lady ', published 2007 under ISBN 9780373294381 and ISBN 0373294387.