“Thanks, Aid.” Cormac's breathing reverberated loudly in the tight chamber. He closed his eyes, forcing himself to calm. He stretched his toes down as far as they'd reach.
“Eh, don't fash yourself over it. Though it does mean you lose the dare.” Chuckling, Aidan jumped, and Cormac felt a hand swipe at his foot. There was a loud clanging, and a cloud of ash exploded as he landed.
“Mind the grate!” Marjorie shouted.
“Thanks,” Aidan said dryly, “I hadn't considered that.” He coughed. “Losh, Cor, how'd you get up that high?” He slapped at his clothes. “My breeches are a wreck. Mum will have my hide.” Aidan repeated his jump, and then again. His fingertips grazed Cormac's feet each time, but he didn't manage to get purchase.
“Aye, Marjorie,” Aidan said, his voice booming up along the chimney stones, “what say we bring one of your uncle's chairs to—”
There was a whoosh of air from below, and Cormac's twin was suddenly gone from beneath him.
Cormac waited a moment, and panic prickled in his chest. “Aid! Don't you dare leave me here.” Marjorie cried out.
What were they doing? Had Aidan gotten bored trying to help? It was strange and confusing and a little scary.
“Aidan,” Cormac yelled, “what are you playing at?”
“No!” His twin was shouting, and there was real fear in his voice.
Had their mothers returned home? Marjorie's uncle? Were they in trouble?
Dread shot up Cormac's spine. “What is it?” he shouted lamely.
His question was met with muffled cries, and his heartbeat surged with renewed force. Something was wrong. He began to wriggle and jerk his body roughly, desperate to free himself.
Aidan shouted again. “Take your hands—”
There was the sound of scuffling, and his brother's cries grew silent.
Marjorie began to shriek, and it chilled Cormac to the bone. She shrieked until her voice grew ragged and she seemed barely able to catch her breath. And then, unimaginably worse, the shrieking was cut short.
“Ree!” Cormac screamed, writhing madly now. The movement wedged him more snugly into the stones. The chimney was a tomb, sealing him in. “Aidan!”
There was one last yelp from his twin, a terrible faraway sound, and then silence.
“Where are you?” Panic shrilled in Cormac's brain and exploded in his chest. Trapped. The chimney stack seemed to shrink around him, and he panted, desperate to catch his breath. His pulse thundered, and he wondered if it were possible for hearts simply to burst.
Think. He had to think. Fear could kill. But he had a job to do. Something had happened to Aidan and Marjorie.
He had to help them. He'd gotten himself into the chimney, and he'd get himself back out.
Relax. Fear nothing.
He needed to shift his arms over his head. Slowly. Exhaling as much as he could, he gently snaked an elbow up along his belly. One arm slipped free, and then the other.
His fingers roved blindly overhead, looking for anchorage. There. He found a thick seam between mortar and stone.
Flexing his wrists, Cormac fisted his hands and ground them onto the chimney walls, just beneath the protruding stone. Mortar crumbled, falling into his eyes. The old masonry scored his knuckles, and wet warmth trickled along his arms. He ignored the pain, focusing only on what he had to do.
He exhaled again, making his body as compact as possible. Then he pushed.
His body crept an inch at a time, and then jolted suddenly, as though sprung from a trap, and Cormac plummeted down the chimney, falling hard to the bottom. He landed on the metal grate; it smashed just below his ribs, momentarily stealing his breath. Still, he rolled off, jumping at once to his feet. “Aidan? Marjorie?” He spotted Marjorie's feet, splayed on the floor, poking from behind a small divan.
“Ree?” Cormac ran to her, his heart in his throat. He tenderly gathered her head in his hands, shuddering at the large lump on the back of her skull.
She'd been hit. Someone had hit his Marjorie. Rage boiled hot and sour in his gut.
He gently threaded his fingers through her hair, and breathed a sigh of relief when they came back dry. No blood was good, and a lump was better, or so he'd been told, since it meant she'd not be bleeding inside her skull.
“Ree?” At the sound of his voice, Marjorie's eyes fluttered open. “Ree, lass? What happened? Where's Aidan?”
“Aidan… “ Clutching at Cormac's sleeves, she looked around frantically. Tears spilled down her cheeks.
“Did Aidan hit you?” His eyes swept the room, taking in an overturned chair, a displaced rug. “I'll kill him.”
“No,” she said quickly. “A man. Two men. They took him. They took Aidan.” As though on cue, a burly workman sauntered into the room, sizing up the two children twined on the floor.
“What's this, then?”
Cormac sprang to his feet, his hand going instinctively to his side, where a grown man might sheath his sword.
“Who are you?” he asked in a booming voice, standing as tall as his ten years would allow.
The man narrowed his eyes, assessing Cormac. After a moment, he said, “I'm the master sweep. You two run along, then.” A handful of chimney boys drifted in behind him, their eyes dazed and cheeks blackened with soot. “We've work to do here.”
“Was it you?” Cormac demanded. “Did you take him?”
Marjorie grabbed Cormac's arm, shaking her head. “That's not the one,” she whispered hoarsely.
“Took who?” The man glanced from Cormac to the spill of ash on the hearthstones. A look dawned on his face. “Oh, good Christ help us, 'twas the bloody yeoman. To the carts,” he shouted to the boys.
Terror quickly infused their blank eyes, and the sweeps scrambled at once from the room.
“Who?” Marjorie cried.
“Who's the yeoman?” Cormac demanded.
The master sweep went to peer out the window. “Sometimes the men come; they gather the sweeps.”
“Gather them?” Marjorie said slowly, as though repeating foreign speech.
Cormac pulled Marjorie to her feet, setting his hand at her back. “Where'd they take Aidan?”
“They take the boys to Barbados.” Distracted, the man hurried to the door. “Or the Americas. Wherever their plantation is.”
“Plantation?”
At Cormac's question, the man paused in the doorway. “You wee fool,” he said in a voice thick with disdain.
“What do you think happens to lads too poor to be claimed? To lads who need to beg for their supper? The boogies come and snatch you away.”
“But… “ Cormac stammered, “we're not poor. Our mother's just gone to the shops. Aidan's not a beggar.”
“Then this'll learn him he shouldn't have played at one. Because the lad, he's surely a beggar now.” The man turned and walked out.
Chapter 1
Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire, 1660
Marjorie skittered down the steep path, purposely descending too quickly to think. The specter of Dunnottar Castle felt heavy over her shoulder, looming in near ruin high atop Dunnottar Rock, a massive stone plinth that punched free of Scotland's northeastern coast like a gargantuan fist. Waves roiled and licked at its base far below. Chilled, she clambered even faster, skidding and galloping downhill, unsure whether she was fleeing closer to or farther from that grim mountain of rubble the MacAlpins called home.
She shook her head. She'd sworn not to think on it.
She'd done entirely too much thinking already. Much to her uncle's consternation, she'd chosen her gray mare, not his carriage, for her ride from Aberdeen. She'd realized too late that the daylong ride offered her altogether too much time to brood over what felt like a lifetime of missteps. And she hoped she wasn't about to make the grandest, most humiliating one of all.
She was going to see Cormac.
Whenever she'd thought of it-and she'd thought of little else on her interminable ride-she'd turn her horse around and head straight back to home. But then those same thoughts of him would have her spinning that mare right around again, until her horse tossed its head, surly from the constant tugging and turning.
She reached the bottom of the hill, where the knotted grass turned rocky, its greens and browns giving way to the reds and grays of the pebbled shore. The beach curved like a thin scimitar around the bay, its far side concealed from view by the ragged hillocks and blades of rock that limned the shore as if the land only reluctantly surrendered to the sea.
Marjorie slid the leather slippers from her feet and set them carefully down. She wriggled her toes, leaning against the swell of land by her side. The pebbles blanketing the shore were large and rounded, and looked warmed by the late afternoon sun. She stepped forward, moving slowly now. The water between the stones was cold, but their smooth tops were not, and they sounded a soothing clack with each step.
She was close. She could feel it.
Cormac. He was close. Amid the gentle slapping of the waves and the sultry brine in the air, she sensed him.
She'd not needed to stop in at Dunnottar to ask his siblings where to find him. She and Cormac had known each other since birth, and Marjorie had spent every one of her twenty-three years feeling as though she were tied to him in some mysterious and inextricable way. Though they hadn't spoken in what felt like a lifetime, she'd spared not a penny nor her pride to glean word of him, writing to his sisters for news, aching for rare glimpses of him through the years.
She'd offered up the prayers of a wretched soul when he'd gone off to war, and then prayers of thanks when he returned home whole. And, God help her, the relief she felt knowing he'd never married. She couldn't have borne the thought of another woman in Cormac's arms.
No, Marjorie knew. Alone by the sea was exactly where she'd find him.
She screwed her face, shutting her eyes tight. There were many things she knew.
She knew that Cormac blamed her. To this day, he blamed her, just as she blamed herself for the foolish, girlish dare that had ripped Aidan from their lives. Because of her silliness, the MacAlpin family had lost a son and brother that day. And Marjorie had lost more still than that. She'd also lost Cormac.
