Angel of Skye by May McGoldrick Page A

in pain, and then the sound of an infant’s cry had rung out in the torchlit room. When the nuns had finished their ministrations and the bairn had been laid in the fading mother’s arms, the girl had smiled and looked into Fiona’s face. Reaching out for her, the mother had placed Fiona’s hand on the infant’s head.
    Then she had closed her eyes, never to open them again.
    Malcolm had been Fiona’s responsibility ever since. She’d bathed and fed him. She’d watched him crawl and had helped him walk. And they had grown together.
    Until Torquil took him. In the late winter two years ago, the MacLeod chief had decided to bring his heir to Dunvegan. He was gathering the Highland clan leaders at Skye after the king’s death at Flodden, and he’d wanted to show off his son. Despite all the women that Torquil had lain with in his violent and lecherous life, Malcolm had been the only child of his to be born alive.
    But the bairn had been a disappointment. Young Malcolm, faced with the boisterous brutality of the father he’d never seen before, had been silent, teary-eyed, and homesick for the Priory. The five-year-old was not the tough and unruly youngster Torquil had wanted to display, so Malcolm had been kept hidden away in the dark chambers of the damp and grim castle keep.
    Malcolm had been away for six months, and that had been the longest half-year of Fiona’s life. The prioress had strictly forbidden her from ever trying to visit Malcolm, and something within had told her that this was one time she had to obey for fear of her life.
    Then the news had reached them of Torquil’s imprisonment at Sterling Castle, and the prioress had gone herself to Dunvegan to take Malcolm back. The neglected, wild-eyed boy who had returned to them had required much love and patience—and Fiona had supplied both.
    Fiona leaped to her feet, pacing the room again. She could not believe the prioress would allow the same thing to happen. Not again.
    True, Lord Macpherson was not Torquil MacLeod, but Malcolm was not what these men expected him to be. He was not a brute.
    Malcolm was kind and considerate. He was patient and intelligent. His blood might be noble, but so was his soul. He could never be a chieftain among the savage warriors of the Highland clans. And Fiona feared for him, feared for his survival in a place like Dunvegan—even if he were beside a man like Lord Alec Macpherson.
    Why had he taken Malcolm?
     
    “You enjoy beating me, admit it.”
    “You are pretty slow, for being so big.”
    “I am not slow,” Alec protested. “You cheat.”
    “I do not.” Malcolm giggled. “It was a straight race from the refectory. You just eat too much.”
    “You don’t eat enough,” Alec answered sternly.
    “You sound like Fiona,” the boy responded seriously. “She eats like a bird, yet she still complains that I don’t eat enough.”
    “She’s right,” the warrior said as they entered the chapter house.
    “I’ll beat you to Fiona’s workroom,” the boy blurted out, springing ahead of Alec.
    “You are cheating again, you elfin thing,” he called after Malcolm, chasing him through the darkened entryway. “You know the way.”
    Following the lad through the maze of corridors, Alec hung back enough to let Malcolm lead him all the way to Fiona’s workroom. But when the boy reached a door at the end of one hallway, Alec crashed thunderously into the heavy oak portal right behind him. Without knocking, Malcolm lifted the latch and shoved his way into the candlelit room.
    Alec stepped into the room right behind the laughing boy, but then the world stood still.
    She must have been asleep at the table because her look was one of a person in total disarray. Her dream-clouded eyes cleared with comprehension and then joy as Malcolm threw himself onto her lap.
    Alec stood mesmerized by the sight of the two before him. But then it was her beauty that made his pulse rise.
    She was perfection.
    Her red hair hung in a tangle of