Heaven and the Heather - By Elizabeth Holcombe

Acknowledgments

This endeavor was not, gratefully, a wholly isolated pursuit. For that very reason, I wish to offer my unwavering and deepest appreciation to those who have indulged me with their support, expert and enlightening opinions, and a few symbolic whacks with a big stick when panic set in.

To my awe-inspiring and enormously talented friends and critique partners, Karen Smith, aka Karen Lee, Courtney Henke, and Catherine Abbott-Anderson. Especially to Laurin Wittig, fellow Jove author and maven of techno and moral support; Julie Moffett, who drenched me in her positive attitude; and Mary Burton, lifelong friend and the most levelheaded person I know. And a huge thanks to my extended family of authors in Washington Romance Writers where there are no shortages of support or valuable resources.

I am enormously fortunate to be working with a stellar group of publishing professionals. Thank you to Kelly Sinanis, assistant editor at Berkley, who certainly knows how to make my year, and for her expert editing, kind words, and enthusiasm. And thanks to Gail Fortune, senior editor at Berkley, for her kind encouragement, and for requesting this tome. I am enormously grateful to my agent, Jennifer Jackson, of the Donald Maass Literary Agency, for handling all of the details with her experience, intelligence, and wry wit.

Thank you to the ever inspirational Barbara Shugrue and her mother, Grace Gorrie, two of the finest Scots I know. And thank you to Wayne Clark for many years of teaching me the Scots Gaelic. Alba gu bràth! Thank you to Kevin and Suzy Spence for enduring support and friendship. And a big thanks to Shari Mahoney, my “biggest fan.”

To my family, I offer my deepest gratitude for a myriad of reasons too numerous to mention here. I have received an unending supply of love and support from my parents, Calvin and Carolyn, since I decided to be a writer after reading Harriet the Spy, by the late, great Louise Fitzhugh. I love you deeply. I also give huge thanks to my brother, David, and to my delightful parents-in-law, Joseph and Patricia. And never last or least, to my husband, Dan, and son, Owen. You are my life and true inspiration . . . always.

Prologue

In 1561 the world was a dismal place for anyone named MacGregor. On August 19, hope arrived on a royal galleon from France bearing Scotland’s new sovereign, Queen Mary Stuart. For one of the MacGregor clan, hope did not wear a crown. It bore a crippled hand and a bleak heart.

chapter 1

Le Pays des Sauvages

19 August 1561, Leith Harbor, Scotland

Mon pere est mort.”

“My father is dead. And I can never go home.”

Sabine de Sainte Montagne stared at the paper in her twisted right hand. She had done so many times since she had sailed from Calais on the royal galleon bearing Mary, Scotland’s new queen. No matter how many times her eyes swept over the paper, it did not change the harsh truth. She was condemned to be a prisoner in this land.

She had received the letter, which bore a crimson wax seal and a ribbon as dark as the inside of a wine cask, just before stepping upon the gangway at the French port. She did not have opportunity to read it until the galleon was in full sail across the English Channel.

Her father had died of the king’s evil. She knew well of the elegant whores who languished in the halls of Château de Montmerency as frequent as winter snow came to the Alps. Her Alps. They shadowed her beautiful home. For that she mourned, not for her father. According to the letter from her father’s avocat, the château and all within it had been left to a woman Sabine had never met, another of her father’s river of lovers, the last lover.

Sabine could not bear to read the letter any longer or to have it in her possession. She crushed it in her mangled fist, ignoring the pain that suddenly tore up her arm with the subtle purchase of a lightning strike.

“Adieu, mon papa,” she said, tossing the paper over the salt-encrusted gunwale. “May you find solace where the heat touches upon your flesh.”

Her father had been so in name only. His cruelty, his banishing her five years ago to royal servitude, had been his parting endearment. Sabine’s curse into the mist that surrounded the galleon was the only endearment she could summon, the kindest words she could say.

He was gone, leaving her nothing but a crippled right hand.

“And a promise to my queen