Border Lord by Julia Templeton

1
    The Priory of Grace, Scottish Borderlands
Present-day
    The priory with its amazing Gothic architecture and stained-glass windows caught Terri’s eye, and on a whim she stopped.
    She needed the time to rest anyway and think about her future…now that she knew the truth about her fiancé.
    No wonder Elliott had seemed so distant of late. After a restless weekend he had woken at the crack of dawn, saying he needed to get to their London office early.
    Certain his worries had to do with the new Egyptian artifact exhibit coming that day, Terri took a shower and arrived to work two hours early to help.
    Instead of finding Elliott knee-deep in paperwork, she found him fucking her twenty-year-old assistant, right there on his prized Edwardian desk. The very desk Terri had given him for his fortieth birthday. Stunned, she watched in silent horror as the girl she’d hired some three weeks before reached a staggering climax.
    Terri walked out of the museum as fast as her feet would carry her. Feeling as though her heart had been ripped from her chest, she stepped into her Mini Cooper and started driving.
    That was two days ago. Now she was in Scotland, confused, angry, and in of all places, an old priory, much like the one in which she had planned to marry Elliott next summer.
    There would be no wedding now.
    Adjusting the rearview mirror, Terri winced at her reflection. Her red-rimmed eyes were puffy and swollen from crying, and her cheeks deathly pale.
    Pulling her blond hair up into a ponytail and adding a spot of blush to her pale cheeks, she joined a tour in progress.
    “Please, everyone, no crowding.”
    Terri glanced at the flushed, middle-aged tour guide, a jovial Scottish woman, who tried with little success to keep the small group in line.
    “What’s that door there?” an old man with thick glasses asked, pointing toward a solid mahogany door with a heavy board across it.
    The tour guide smiled widely. “Ah, good question. That is the door Laird Brochan Douglas broke down to steal away Annabelle MacLellan, Laird MacLellan’s only daughter. Legend says that Annabelle’s father, knowing Douglas would seek revenge over the murder of his brother, spirited his daughter away from Castle Blackcurn, here to the Priory of Grace. The old laird felt that the only safe haven for his daughter would be here with the nuns.”
    “Did he succeed?” Terri asked, her interest piqued by the vision of a medieval warrior busting down the chamber door.
    “Aye, he did, lass. Though the nuns tried to hide Annabelle’s appearance by dressing her in thick habits, her beauty was such that Brochan knew her on sight. It is said he rippedthe robes from her body, and left her standing naked in front of the nuns and all his men.”
    An elderly woman gasped. “What a horrible man!”
    The tour guide shrugged. “I’m not so sure he was horrible. He felt he was right doing what he did. After all, MacLellan had killed his brother. And being the great warrior that he was, Brochan sought to hurt Angus MacLellan the best way he could.”
    “By taking his daughter,” Terri finished for her, thinking how she herself would love to get revenge on Elliott.
    The tour guide nodded. “Indeed. He knew MacLellan loved his daughter more than life itself. The girl was the laird’s one weakness, and so Douglas snatched her from the priory, never to be seen or heard from again.”
    “Did he kill her?” the old man asked, glancing at the door again.
    The tour guide shook her head. “Nay, not that day.”
    “Why is the door locked then?”
    “Because when Laird MacLellan learned of his daughter’s fate, he stormed into the priory.” The tour guide’s voice rose with each second. “So furious was he with the nun who was to protect his daughter, he strangled the poor woman in that very room. From that day forth, strange noises started coming from the room—a terrible moaning, one that sounded much like the murdered nun. Horrified that one of their own