MacKinnons' Hope: A Highland Christmas Carol Read Free Page A

little girl’s gaze. The two spoke at length, after which the child hugged her neck and went racing away, laughing with unrepressed joy. By now, Hugh’s heart pained him immensely. He could watch no more.
    Dear God, he could watch no more!
    Cruelly, Eleanore pushed him closer. He glided uphill, all the easier to eavesdrop on his daughter’s conversation with her laird husband. At first, Hugh was afeared they might spy him.
    “You spoil them overmuch,” Iain complained.
    Hugh waved a hand before their faces. It swished through the air nebulously, passing through the MacKinnon’s short gray beard.
    They could not see him.
    “And why not?” Page asked her laird husband, who by the way, had kept a hand about her waist, as though he could not quite bear the thought of losing touch. “I will not treat my children the way my father treated me.”
    Page’s words were like daggers cast unerringly at Hugh’s heart. He writhed a bit in pain.
    The MacKinnon drew his wife close. “There is very little danger in that, my love.”
    “A single tart for each will surely not break us,” Page maintained, and then she cast her husband a worried glance. “Do you think there’ll be enough to last the winter long?”
    “Dinna worry, Page. The winter will be gone afore ye know it, and then come spring we’ll fill the stores. We’ll find a way. We always do.”
    Hugh turned to Eleanore and whispered, “What happened here?”
    Eleanore placed a finger to her lips, bidding him listen awhile longer.
    Hugh glanced about the field, realizing suddenly that he was standing, not in the middle of a celebration as he’d originally imagined, but in the midst of men and women hard at work, rebuilding barns and clearing fields—and yet their smiles and laughter were scarcely dimmed by this fact. The summer blue bonnets were all dead now. The ground was brown and charred. And yet men and women joked and laughed and traded barbs.
    Fire?
    “Good day to ye, my lady,” said a woman passing by.
    “And to ye,” Page greeted the woman with a wave.
    “Bless ye mistress for givin’ my girl a sweet tart.”
    “’Tis my pleasure,” Page assured the woman, and then she said beneath her breath, so that only her laird husband might possibly hear, “If only everyone were so easily pleased.” Nibbling pensively at her bottom lip, she turned her gaze across the meadow. After a moment, she asked her husband, “What shall we do about him?”
    Hugh followed his daughter’s gaze and found her watching a young man, hard at work, lifting up beams for a peasant’s roof. “It pains me to see him at odds.”
    “For that, we may thank your Da,” the MacKinnon suggested.
    Hugh’s cheeks burned hot.
    What had he done now? Of course, he would be their demon, their ogre. He was the monster who stole in at night to steal little children from their beds—
    Except that he had.
    Not Hugh precisely, though of course, he was the one who’d detained young Malcom for the king. FitzSimon studied the youth a bit closer, realizing with a start that he recognized the face. It belonged to none other than the child he’d once harbored within his home.
    Malcom MacKinnon worked side by side with his kinfolk, his shoulders shaped by the weight of too many heavy loads. He was a strapping young lad, Hugh thought—just the sort of man he’d always envisioned to take his place. Too bad he was not of Hugh’s blood.
    How much time had passed? He counted upon his fingers. Eleven years since the day he’d cast his daughter away. Ten since he’d last beheld her face. And Malcom, he must now be about seventeen.
    His gaze sought and found the children across the field. They were all seated together, shoving sweet tarts into their faces. His gaze returned to his daughter—the child he’d denied for far too long. He longed to hold her in his arms. Had she ever in her miserable childhood enjoyed a single sweet tart? He didn’t know, couldn’t recall.
    His throat felt too