The Heather and the Plaid

By Raven McAllan

FROM EXCITING ROMANCE AUTHOR RAVEN MCALLAN

Book two in the Castle on the Loch series

History, family, fate. Accept it or deny it at your will. To have a future they need to make peace with the past.

Condemned to a half life for helping to protect Bonnie Prince Charlie, the only way Lachlan Stuart can live properly is to find someone who trusts and believes in him in the present day.

That person is Bonnie Drummond, who is not best pleased at having her peaceful life disturbed.

Especially when she discovers just what she has to do to give him, and that it appears there are powerful entities who will stop at nothing to ensure they don't succeed.

Can Lachlan and Bonnie achieve what's needed and get the happiness they both deserve, or is he condemned to forever be on the outside?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Totally Bound Publishing
• Release date: Mar 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781839435829

Raven McAllan

After 30 plus years in Scotland, Raven now lives near the east Yorkshire coast, with her long-suffering husband, who is used to rescuing the dinner, when she gets immersed in her writing, keeping her coffee pot warm and making sure the wine is chilled. With a new home to decorate and a garden to plan, she’s never short of things to do, but writing is always at the top of her list. Her other hobbies include walking along the coast and spotting the wildlife, reading, researching, cros stitch and trying not to drop stitches as she endeavours to knit. Being left-handed, and knitting right-handed, that’s not always easy.

Book preview

Totally Bound Publishing books by Raven McAllan

Single Books

Hong Kong Heat

Taken Identity

Fairground Attraction

The Duke’s Temptation

The Viscount Meets his Match

Diomhair

Secrets Shared

Secrets Uncovered

Secrets Remembered

Secrets Dispatched

Secrets Learned

Secrets Dispelled

Daring Ladies

The Earl and The Courtesan

Castle on the Loch

Love by the Stroke of Midnight

Anthologies

Bully for You: Chasing Charlie

Collections

A Little Bit Cupid: For One Night Only

S.W.A.L.K.: The Love Token

With Cassie O’Brien

The Scots and the Sassenachs

The Earl of Callander’s Secret Bride

Castle on the Loch

THE HEATHER AND THE PLAID

RAVEN MCALLAN

The Heather and the Plaid

ISBN # 978-1-83943-582-9

©Copyright Raven McAllan 2022

Cover Art by Erin Dameron-Hill ©Copyright March 2022

Interior text design by Claire Siemaszkiewicz

Totally Bound Publishing

This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

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The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.

Published in 2022 by Totally Bound Publishing, United Kingdom.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors’ rights. Purchase only authorised copies.

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Book two in the

Castle on the Loch series

History, family, fate. Accept it or deny it at your will. To have a future, they need to make peace with the past.

Condemned to a half-life for helping to protect Bonnie Prince Charlie, the only way Lachlan Stuart can live properly is to find someone who trusts and believes in him in the present day.

That person is Bonnie Drummond, who is not best pleased at having her peaceful life disturbed.

Especially when she discovers just what he wants her to do—and that it appears there are more powerful entities who will stop at nothing to ensure she doesn’t succeed.

Can Lachlan and Bonnie achieve what’s needed and get the happiness they both deserve, or is he condemned to forever be on the outside?

Dedication

To Paul, Ann, all at Totally Bound

and The RavDor Chicks—

Thank you all for your support.

Trademark Acknowledgements

The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

Pinocchio: Carlo Colladi

Google: Google LLC

I Am What I Am: Jerry Herman

Evanescence: Lee, Amy

Lost in Paradise: Amy Lee

Dead March: George Frideric Handel

Saul: George Frideric Handel

Flower of Scotland: Roy Williamson

Prologue

Scotland 1746

No birds sang, no animal scurried in the undergrowth. Even the air was silent.

The world shrank to be her and the man she loved. Just the two of them.

She watched as the boat sailed away. With him. Not with her.

Away from their future.

He stood in the stern, legs apart to steady himself. His plaid—tattered, bloodied but still worn with pride—unmoving around his legs, as if in mourning. His long hair danced in the wind, and one hand lifted in farewell.

His words floated over the water to her.

Until the yellow’s on the broom and heather blooms on our isle and we meet again, my love.

She sighed and blew him a kiss. Stay safe, my love. I’ll wait for you. Brave words, even then she knew she would be waiting until the day she died. He fought and aided their prince. That came first.

She cradled her stomach where their unborn child—or children—kicked, secure in the knowledge he or she was wanted and loved. Their father might need to be absent from Scottish shores, but their mother would be with them.

And she, witch that she was, would be sure no harm befell them.

She might not be able to protect her lover on Scottish soil, but their children, and she knew there was more than one in her womb, were a different matter. They, she would defend with her life if need be.

A few months previous the ’45, the Jacobite Rebellion, had ended with their defeat at Culloden, and those spared now scattered far and wide. Chased by the English.

For the women whose lives were shattered it wouldn’t be easy.

For her, it meant a whole new way of life.

She climbed onto her horse and set a course south. For the Castle on the Loch. Where she knew without doubt the heather would never bloom or the yellow come on the broom.

But where she would be welcomed, and her children be loved and safe.

Morven, her guide and mentor, told her so.

Chapter One

Present Day

No, no and even more so no. Bonnie Drummond folded her arms and glared at the tall, long-haired man in front of her. "Get that into your thick head. Watch my lips. N…O… No."

His dark, almost black, grey eyes twinkled as he laughed at her, lifted her and swung her around in a circle. Her multi-coloured scarf tangled about her neck and arms, and one tasselled end hit her on her nose. It stung.

Ooft, no. She blew a rogue tassel off her cheek. Yuk, noooo.

Bonnie, my love, you’re awfy fond of that wee word and you don’t mean it. Yes, yes and even more so yes. We’ll do it. You’ll love it.

Lachlan Stuart, don’t you dare. Brave words, because she knew he would. I’ll be sick.

Sick? My brave Bonnie? Never and if you are then…

Then?

Where are we?

She strained to see him, twisted and turned and…

Woke up as she fell out of bed.

Of all the stupid, idiotic, ridiculous…argh. Bonnie unwound the sheet—she’d been too hot to use the duvet and had put a sheet over her instead, which somehow was wrapped around her like a shroud—kicked it away and stood up, yawning. Enough is enough. Give me a break.

Yet another night of broken sleep. Of dreams and conversation with someone called Lachlan. Lachlan Stuart. Why Lachlan Stuart? What’s it all about? Whose life was I in?

The name seemed familiar—probably from being told it in her dreams—but she didn’t know anyone called that in reality. Crazy statement, she muttered. In fact, the whole thing is.

Not at all.

That was all she needed. The mystery voice in her head adding its tenpenn’orth. Shut up, and don’t butt in where you’re not concerned.

Oh, but I am. Concerned. Really, Bonnie. Use your senses.

She ignored that. She was using them, wasn’t she? How else would he have invaded her mind?

The laugh that echoed round the room made her scowl. Something screwy was going on and she didn’t like it one bit. Bonnie admitted she hated not being in charge of every part of her life. Why, when she acknowledged she was a ’seer’, someone who could hear voices, sense things, see happenings—in both the past and, she assumed, though it was never verified, the future—did one new voice bug her so much? Why did her life have to change anyway? She was content—sort of—as she was. Content enough not to want anything drastic to occur, at least.

Bonnie accepted her thoughts and dreams as part of her. Until recently those thoughts and dreams had been positive, mild even. Rarely about herself, more often about her close family. Sometimes about people she didn’t know and subsequently met. Those, though, didn’t unsettle her like this one had. Enough to wake her up sweating.

All her life she’d had conversations in her mind. Chatted to herself, so to speak. Argued and got the conclusion she wanted. Usually. The times she hadn’t she tried to rationalize.

Now, though… Now she couldn’t explain what she heard and thought. Nor, she decided, could she share those conversations with her parents. It was fine as a teenager, asking why she had silent conversations, could magic things to move—sometimes—and see and hear what other people thought—on occasion. But not why you were convinced you’d made love with someone who spoke softly to you in a language akin to but not the same as Gaelic, and you understood them. Experienced the sensations of heat and arousal as they caressed you. Sensed them fill you and rejoiced when you moved together as one hot, aroused and powerful entity. Saw stars as you climaxed and heard him shout his completion.

Not the sort of information she chose to share with anyone—especially her parents.

Her dad would have a conniption, her mum ask for more details, and if they passed the information on to her brother, Baird, she daren’t think what might happen. He was a bit ‘act now, think later’ when it applied to his sisters. How Marcail, the eldest, had managed to meet, make love with and marry her husband was one of life’s unsolved—or untold—mysteries.

Bonnie headed for the shower and ruminated over what she needed to achieve that day.

First thing on her mental list was to decide on the colours of the plaid she was making for her nephew’s first birthday. Once she had a rough idea about that, she intended to get stuck in and write a synopsis that made sense for her next paranormal mystery and romance book series. For a week or so it had been simmering in the back of her mind. Now she thought—hoped—she had the plot fixed, and a rough idea of how her characters looked. Tier traits and characteristics.

Like me.

Where had that thought popped up from? ‘Like me’ who? She mentally shrugged. In general her heroes came out of her imagination and not from seeing someone in the papers or walking down a street.

No one had been more surprised than Bonnie when a dare by Baird—to enter a competition where you wrote a thousand-word hint-of-intrigue snippet for a magazine competition—had culminated in her being asked to expand the story, and subsequently being offered a three-book contract. She hadn’t mentioned it to anyone, except Baird, and he had been sworn to secrecy. When the first book had come out, under the name of Belle Scott, she’d casually asked her mum—who had been kneading dough—if she’d read it.

Her mum had shaken her head and put her dough to prove. ‘Should I have?’

Bonnie’s heart had sunk. ‘Just wondered.’

‘Ah, okay. The book club are interested. I’ve read an excerpt. It sounds great, and I’ve got it on my ‘buy next time I go online’ list. I reckon it will be right up my street. Hope to get it in the next day or so.’

Bonnie had grinned. ‘No need. Here you are.’ She’d handed a paperback to her bemused parent. ‘I reckon if you think about it, you might realise you know the author.’ Then she’d headed home in a hurry and immersed herself in weaving a cloth she’d decided to use to make Christmas presents. As ever, the simple repetition of working her loom had soothed her and as she’d weaved, she’d plotted, so by the time her mum had appeared at her door several hours later, she had almost forgotten she’d handed the book over.

‘Bonnie, its fabulous,’ her mum had exclaimed as she shared one of her gorgeous and jealously rationed homemade loaves with Bonnie. ‘You did write it, didn’t you? I wasn’t sure at first, but little things gave it away.’ She’d grinned. ‘Now I want it signed.’

‘How did you guess?’ Bonnie had chuckled and resisted the impulse to punch the air.

‘Your choice of words. Often those we use as a family for one, and then Belle for Bonnie and Scott because you’re Scottish?’

Bonnie had nodded. ‘Baird bet me to enter a competition. I couldn’t believe it when I was offered a three-book contract. I’m plotting book three now.’

‘Book three? What about book two?’ Her mum had appeared confused. ‘What’s happened to that?’

‘That’s gone off for editing. This next one is the last in the series. Hot, sexy hero. You’ll love him. He’s everything any woman wants all rolled into one sex-on-legs body.’

Thank you.

Bonnie almost jumped. A new voice in her head? I was going to say like my dad.

That sounds dodgy.

Not to my mum, and who are you anyway?

You’ll soon discover that.

‘Bonnie?’ Her mum had looked at her in concern. ‘Are you okay? You look a bit peely wally.’ A Scottish expression for