Chapter One
 
Fort William, the Scottish Highlands,
August 1716

Monstrous and mighty, teeth bared like a feral beast, the Butcher rose from his battle lunge and watched the English soldier drop lifelessly to the floor at his feet. He swung his damp hair away from his face, then knelt down and removed the keys from the dead man’s pocket. The Butcher continued in silence through the cold corridor of the barracks, ignoring the stench of stale sweat and rum, while he searched for the staircase that would take him to his enemy.
The chilly haze of death flowed through him, steeled him viciously, and compelled him to the top of the stairs, where he stopped outside the heavy, oaken door of the officers’ quarters. The Butcher paused briefly to listen for the ill-timed approach of yet another tenacious young guard, but there was no sound other than the noise of his own ragged breathing, and the beat of his heart as he savored this long-awaited moment of vengeance.
He adjusted the shield strapped to his back, then squeezed the handle of the sawed-off Lochaber axe in his hand. His shirt was grimy with dirt and sweat from days in the saddle and nights spent sleeping in the grass, but it had all been worth it, for the moment had come at last. It was time to cut down his foe. To slaughter the memory of what had occurred that cold November day in the orchard. Tonight he would kill for his clan, for his country, and for his beloved. There would be no mercy offered. He would strike, and he would strike fast.
With a steady hand he inserted the key into the lock, then entered the room and closed the door behind him. He waited a moment for his eyes to grow accustomed to the darkness, then moved silently toward the bed where his enemy lay sleeping.
*   *   *
Lady Amelia Templeton was dreaming of a butterfly, fluttering over a hazy field of heather, when a faint noise caused her to stir in her bed. Or perhaps it was not a noise, but a feeling. A sense of doom. Her heart began to pound, and she opened her eyes.
It was the nightmare. She had not had it in years, not since she was a girl, when images of the massacre she’d witnessed at the age of nine still burned hellishly in her mind. On that dreadful day, she had pressed her tiny nose to the window of her coach and watched a bloody battle between a band of rebel Highlanders and the English soldiers sent to escort her and her mother into Scotland. They had been traveling to visit her father, a colonel in the English army.
Amelia watched the dirty Scots slit the throats of the soldiers and bludgeon them to death with heavy stones they picked up on the road. She heard the screams of agony, the desperate pleas for mercy, quickly silenced by sharp steel blades through the heart. And just when she thought it was over, when the screaming and sobbing faded to an eerie silence, an ugly blood-splattered savage ripped open the door of the coach and glared in at her.
She had clung to her mother, trembling in fear. He studied Amelia with burning eyes for what seemed an eternity, then slammed the door in her face and fled to the forest with his brethren. They disappeared into the glistening Highland mist like a pack of wolves.
The sense of terror Amelia felt now was no different, except that it was mixed with anger. She wanted to kill that savage who had opened the door of her coach years ago. She wanted to rise up and shout at him, to slay him with her own bare hands. To prove that she was not afraid.
The floor creaked, and she turned her head on the pillow.
No, it could not be. She must still be dreaming.…
A Highlander was moving toward her through the darkness. Panic swept through her, and she strained to see through the murky gloom.
The light sound of his footsteps reached her ears, and suddenly he was above her, raising an axe over his head.
“No!” she cried, reaching out to block the strike, even when she knew the heavy blade would cut straight through her fingers. She squeezed her eyes shut.
When the deathblow did not fall, Amelia opened her eyes. The brawny, panting savage stood squarely over her bed. His axe was poised and gleaming in the moonlight from the window. His long hair was wet with grime or sweat or river water—she knew not which. Most terrible of all, his eyes glowed with the boiling furies of hell itself.
“You’re not Bennett,” he said in a deep, growling Scottish brogue.
“No, I am not,” she replied.
“Who are you?”
“I am Amelia Templeton.”
He had not yet lowered the macabre weapon, nor had she lowered her trembling hands.
“You’re English,” he said.
“That’s right. And who are you, to dare enter my bedchamber at night?”
She wasn’t quite sure where she’d found the courage or sense to inquire so boldly about his identity when her heart was pounding like a mallet in her chest.
The Highlander took a step back and lowered the axe. His voice was deep and terrorizing. “I’m the Butcher. And if you scream, lassie, it’ll be the last breath you take.”
She held her tongue, for she’d heard tales of the brutal and bloodthirsty Butcher of the Highlands, who committed grisly acts of treachery and left a trail of murder and mayhem in his wake. According to legend, he was descended from Gillean of the Battle-axe, who had long ago crushed an invading fleet of Vikings. The Butcher was never without his morbid death weapon, and he was a Jacobite traitor, straight to the bone.
“If you are who you claim, why have you not killed me?” she asked, fear and uncertainty burning in every pore.
“I was expecting to kill someone else tonight.” His sharp, animal eyes surveyed the room, searching for some hint of the person he’d come to slaughter. “Whose room is this?”
“There is no one here but me,” she informed him, but his heated gaze swung in her direction and compelled her to answer the question more thoroughly. “If you are looking for Lieutenant-colonel Richard Bennett, I am sorry to disappoint you, but he is away from the fort.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
He studied her face through the moonlight. “Are you his whore?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“If you are, I might slice your head off right now, and leave it here in a box on the table, for him to admire when he returns.”
A nightmarish queasiness churned through her belly as she imagined her head in a box. Where would he put the rest of her? Would he toss her headless body out the window?
She struggled to breathe evenly, in and out. “I am not Colonel Bennett’s whore. I am his betrothed. My father was a colonel in the English army and the fifth Duke of Winslowe. So if you mean to kill me, sir, be done with it. I am not afraid of you.”
It was a bald-faced lie, but she would not let him see her cower.
Something in his face changed. One large, strong hand squeezed the handle of his axe, and he lifted it to rest on the edge of the bed. She found herself staring mutely down at the dangerous hook at its tip, which was pressing against her thigh. She noted the huge broadsword in a scabbard at his side, and the flintlock pistol in his belt.
“Get up,” he commanded, poking her. “I want to...