For Love and Honor by Cathy Maxwell, Lynne Hinton, Candis Terry Read Free Book Online

of birth from one ancestress to another needed to take seed in Rose’s womb. . . .
    Suddenly a scream rose from the courtyard, an alarm of shock and grief.
    In that instant, Fenella’s foreboding gained life.
    The other women scrambled to their feet and ran to the window overlooking the stone courtyard. Fenella didn’t move. Her whole being centered on one whispered word. “Rose.”
    There were more shouts now. Fenella heard her son Michael call his sister’s name, heard weeping, wails of distress and mourning. Her kinswomen at the window threw themselves into shocked grief. They turned, looked at Fenella. Ilona, her face contorted, stumbled toward her mother. Aislin knelt, bowled over in pain.
    Fenella set aside her needlework.
    She did not want to go to that window.
    Tears burned her eyes. She held them back. She didn’t weep. Not ever. She’d not shed one tear for Macnachtan’s death. Death was part of life . . . that’s what Nain had said. One didn’t grieve for life.
    Fenella stood.
    It was hard to breathe.
    She walked to the window. Ilona held out her arms and then dropped them, as if knowing she could not stop her mother.
    Leaning forward, Fenella looked out upon the courtyard below.
    Rose’s body was sprawled there, her golden hair mingled with a stream of blood flowing from her head.
    Her dear daughter. Her darling, darling daughter.
    She’d thrown herself from the tower wall.
    She’d taken her own life.
    Michael looked up and saw his mother. Tears flowed freely down his face.
    He was so like his father—
    In that moment, Fenella’s legs gave out beneath her. She fell to the cold stone floor.
    Nain was wrong. Grief could not be contained. It started as a small flame that grew larger and stronger until it consumed her.
    T HERE WAS NO doubt Rose of Loch Awe had taken her life because of Charles Chattan’s perfidy, no saving her memory from the disgrace of suicide.
    Fenella longed for the magic to reverse time and bring her daughter back to life.
    For the next three days she poured over her nain’s book. Certainly in all these receipts and spells for healing, for fortune, for doubts and fears, there must be one to cast off Death.
    The handwriting on those yellowed pages was cramped and in many places faded. Fenella had signed the front of the book but not referred to it often, at least not once she’d memorized the cures for fevers and agues that plagued children and concerned mothers.
    She’d been surprised to discover Rose had also been reading the book. She’d found where Rose had written the name Charles beside a spell to find true love. It called for a rose thorn to be embedded in the wax of a candle and burned on the night of a full moon.
    They found a piece of the burned candle, the thorn still intact, its tip charred, beneath Rose’s pillow.
    Fenella held the wax in the palm of her hand. Slowly, she closed her fingers around it into a fist and set aside mourning.
    In its place rose anger.
    ’Twas said the Chattan kin had run for England. The rest had scattered to other clans. They feared Fenella of the Macnachtan, and well they should. Grief made her mad.
    They thought themselves safe. They were not.
    There was no sacred ground for a suicide, but Fenella had no need of the church. She ordered a funeral pyre to be built for her daughter along the green banks of Loch Awe directly beneath a stony crag that looked down upon the shore.
    On the day of Rose’s burial, Fenella stood upon that crag, waiting for the sun to set. She wore the Macnachtan tartan around her shoulders. The evening wind toyed her gray hair held in place by a circlet of gold, gray hair that had once been as fair as Rose’s.
    At Fenella’s signal, her sons set ablaze a ring of bonfires she’d ordered constructed around Rose’s pyre. The flames leaped to life.
    “Rose.” Her name was sweet upon her mother’s lips.
    Did Chattan think he could hide in London? Did his father believe his son could jilt Rose without