Updated Mar 23, 2026 • ~7 min read
Chapter 2: Bloody hell
The camp was two hours north of the border, set in a shallow glen where the trees gave enough cover to hide twenty men and their horses from any English patrol that happened to be riding the dark.
Callum MacKinnon had raided English estates before. He had done it three times in the past two years, and each time the objective had been the same: supplies. Grain, mainly, for a clan that had lost its harvest to a second bad autumn in a row. Salt, dried meat, wool, the practical necessities of winter in the Highlands that the English lords sitting fat on their lowland estates seemed to think they were entitled to hoard. He had never taken lives that didn’t require taking. He had never harmed servants. He had a code, which his father had hammered into him before the English soldiers had put his father in the ground, and the code included things like: leave the common folk in peace, take only what the clan needs, and for the love of God don’t do anything stupid that will give Whitmore and his like an excuse to bring the full army north.
He had apparently violated that last one with considerable thoroughness.
“What exactly,” he said, very evenly, to his lieutenant Fergus, “did I pick up in those stables?”
Fergus had the expression of a man who has recently made a very significant error and is processing the implications. “I thought she was a servant, Callum. Nightgown, loose hair—”
“She said her name was Lady Isolde Sutherland.”
“Aye.”
“Sutherland is a noble name.”
“Aye.”
“Bloody HELL, she’s NOBILITY!” He said it at a volume that woke three sleeping men and caused two horses to shift in their lines. He lowered his voice. “She’s *nobility,* Fergus. Sutherland. Do ye know what Lord Whitmore will do when he wakes tomorrow and finds—”
“I TOLD ye,” said the woman, from the other side of the fire.
She had gotten most of the rope off her wrists. He noted this. She was sitting on a fallen log with the remainder of the binding still looped around one wrist, her dark hair loose down her back, her wool cloak wrapped around her shoulders over what appeared to be an extremely fine nightgown, and she was looking at him with the particular expression of a person who is furious and has decided that dignity is the best possible weapon available to them.
He found, inconveniently, that he agreed with this assessment.
“Why were ye in the STABLES?” he said.
“I couldn’t SLEEP.” She said it with tremendous precision, each word its own sentence. “I went to see my horse. It is a thing I do. It is a perfectly normal thing to do. If you and your — your raiders had any regard whatsoever for the property of others—”
“We took grain,” he said. “And salt. And some wool. Which Whitmore’s estate has in quantities that could supply three villages for a winter. Which he has denied to the tenants on his northern lands for the past two years.” He held her eyes. “We were not there to harm anyone.”
“You’re harming me right now.”
He opened his mouth. Closed it.
She had a point. He was not accustomed to people who had points while also being deeply inconvenient, and it was an unsettling combination.
He turned away from her and pulled Fergus by the arm to the far edge of the firelight. “We need to think,” he said, low.
“Aye,” Fergus agreed miserably.
“If we send her back — they’ll say we kidnapped her. Whether we say she was an accident or no’, the English will have their excuse. We’ll be raiders who stole a noblewoman.” He ran a hand over his face. “Whitmore’s been looking for reason to petition the Crown against us for two years. This is a gift to him.”
“So we cannae send her back.”
“We cannae send her back.”
“But we cannae keep her.”
“We cannae—” he stopped. “We may have to. For now. Until I can figure out what in God’s name to do with her.”
From across the fire: “I can hear you discussing me,” she said. “I have perfectly functional ears. If you would simply provide me with a horse and an escort to the nearest English garrison—”
“No,” he said.
“I wasn’t asking.”
“I noticed.” He crossed back toward her. She tilted her head back to look up at him, and he saw in the firelight that her eyes were a peculiar shade — dark amber, more brown than gold — and that she was frightened beneath the composure. Not enough to show it on the surface, but frightened. He could see it in the set of her jaw, in the way she held herself too still, in the working of her hands on the remaining rope. “I’m no’ going to hurt ye,” he said. It came out rougher than he intended. “Ye have my word.”
She looked at him for a long moment. The composure didn’t slip. “Your word,” she said, “is not particularly reassuring given that two hours ago I was thrown over your shoulder like a stolen side of beef.”
“Ye were a mistake.”
“How wonderful for both of us.”
He was fairly certain he had never, in his thirty years, met a woman quite like this one. He was also fairly certain that his life had been considerably simpler approximately two hours and forty-five minutes ago, before he’d walked into a stable and found a furious English noblewoman who apparently could not sleep.
He crouched down to her level — removed the height advantage, which felt important, which he could not fully explain. “Lady Sutherland. I am Laird Callum MacKinnon of Clan MacKinnon. We are two hours north of the border. We’ll be in the Highlands by the day after tomorrow.” He held her gaze. “I am sorting this. Until I have sorted it, ye’ll be safe. I’ll see to it personally.”
She looked at him. The amber eyes were direct and slightly unnerving in their assessment, like she was reading something in his face he hadn’t intended to put there.
“And if I try to escape?” she said.
“Dinnae,” he said. “There’s nothing between here and the border but moorland and wolves and English patrols who’ll ask questions ye dinnae want to answer alone at night.”
She was quiet for a moment, turning this over with the focused intelligence of a person who is genuinely evaluating options rather than performing evaluation.
“I want my horse,” she said.
“Which one’s yours?”
“The grey mare. Rosalind.”
He looked at Fergus, who confirmed with a nod that the grey mare was among the animals they’d taken from the stables. “She’ll be brought along,” he said. “Safe.”
She looked at him for another long beat. Then she looked back at the fire.
“I am not going to thank you,” she said.
“I dinnae expect ye to.”
“Good.” She turned the last loop of rope off her wrist. She folded it with the precise, composed motions of a woman who was choosing every action deliberately and set it on the log beside her. “I’ll sleep by this fire until morning. Then I’ll ride my own horse.”
“Ye’ll ride with me.”
“I most certainly will not.”
“It’s no’ a question, Lady Sutherland.”
She looked at him with the expression of someone filing a grievance that she intends to pursue through every available channel until justice is delivered.
“MacKinnon,” she said.
“Aye.”
“I will make your life very difficult.”
He almost — almost — smiled at that. “I believe ye,” he said. He rose to his full height and turned back to his men, and he heard her shift on the log behind him, and he thought: *This is a disaster.* He thought: *The English lord is going to want blood over this.* He thought: *I have accidentally kidnapped a noblewoman and she is already more formidable than half my clansmen and I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to do with her.*
He thought, very briefly and entirely without permission: *Amber eyes.*
He went back to his men and did not think about it again.
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