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

penalty? That her life had no meaning?
    That Macnachtan honor was a small thing?
    “I want him to feel my pain,” Fenella whispered.
    Ilona and Aislin stood by her side. They nodded.
    “He will not escape me,” Fenella vowed.
    “But he is gone,” Ilona said. “He has become a fine lord while we are left to weep.”
    Feeling the heat of the bonfires. She knew better.
    At last the moon was high in the sky. The time was right. Nain had said a witch knows when the hour is nigh. Tonight would be a night no one would forget. Ever.
    Especially Charles Chattan.
    The fires had drawn the curious from all over the kirk. They stood on the shore watching her. Fenella raised her hand. Her clansmen and her kin on the shore below fell silent. Michael picked up the torch and held it ready.
    She brought her hand down and her oldest lit his sister’s funeral pyre as instructed.
    ’Twas the ancient ways. There was no priest here, no clergy to call her out—and even if there was, Fenella’s power in this moment was too strong to be swayed. It coursed through her. It was the beating of her heart, the pulsing in the blood in her veins, the very fiber of her being.
    She stepped to the edge of the rock and stared down over the burning pyre. The flames licked the skirt of Rose’s white burial gown.
    “My Rose died of love,” she said. She whispered the words but then repeated them with a commanding strength. They carried on the wind and seemed to linger over Loch Awe’s moonlit waters. “A woman’s lot is hard,” she said. “ ’Tis love that gives us courage, gives us strength. My Rose gave the precious gift of her love to a man unworthy of it.”
    Heads nodded agreement. There was not a soul around who had not been touched by Rose. They all knew her gift of laughter, her kindness, her willingness to offer what help she could to others.
    Fenella reached a hand back. Ilona placed the staff that Fenella had ordered hewn from a yew tree and banded with copper. “I curse Charles Chattan.”
    Raising the staff, Fenella said, “I curse not just Chattan but his line. He betrayed her for a title. He tossed aside handfasted promises for greed. Now let him learn what his duplicity has wrought.”
    The moon seemed to brighten. The flames on the fires danced higher, and Fenella knew she was being summoned. Danse macabre. All were equal in death.
    She spoke, her voice ringing in the night.
    “Watchers of the threshold, Watchers of the gate,
    open hell and seal Chattan’s Fate.
    When a Chattan male falls in love,
    strike his heart with fire from Above.
    Crush his heart, destroy his line;
    Only then will justice be mine.”
    Fenella threw her staff down upon her daughter’s funeral pyre. The flames now consumed Rose. Fenella could feel their heat, smell her daughter’s scent—and she threw herself off the rock, following her staff to where it lay upon Rose’s breast. She grabbed her daughter’s burning body and clung fast.
    Together they left this world.
    S IX MONTHS TO the date after his wedding, Charles Chattan died. His heart stopped. He was sitting at his table, accepting congratulations from his dinner guests over the news his wife was breeding, when he fell facedown onto his plate.
    The news of his death shocked many. He was so young. A vital, handsome man with so much to live for. Had he not recently declared to many of his friends that he’d fallen in love with his new wife? How could God cut short his life, especially when he was so happy?
    But his marriage was not in vain. Seven months after his death, his wife bore a son to carry on the Chattan name . . . a son who also bore the curse.

 
    Chapter One
    London
    April 1814
    T HEA M ARTIN’S FIRST thought upon receiving a letter from Sir James Smiley, Esq., renowned solicitor for Persons of Great Importance, was that her brother had hatched a new scheme to chase her out of London.
    Her hands shook as she broke the sealing wax. So far, her brother Horace had attempted to bar