HEARTS AFLAME Read online

  Hearts Aflame

  Four historical romances

  by

  Jill Hughey

  Anna Markland

  Catherine Kean

  Nancy Morse

  Rowan’s Legacy © 2016 Jill Hughey

  Passion’s Fire © 2016 Anna Markland

  A Legendary Love © 2016 Catherine Kean

  Love Remembers © 2016 Nancy Morse

  Cover design by Steven Novak.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this eBook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this eBook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.

  These stories are works of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writers’ imaginations or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this eBook may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the authors.

  Table of Contents

  Contents

  Hearts Aflame

  Table of Contents

  A Note to the Reader

  Rowan’s Legacy

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Passion’s Fire

  Dedication

  Dubious Reward

  Brig

  Carlisle

  The Shearing

  First Meeting

  Odd

  Annan

  Under Attack

  Bullies

  Betrayal

  Twelve Apostles

  The Campfire

  Keeping The Secret

  Cadha

  Flight

  Fire

  Saint George

  The Moth

  Choices

  The Test

  A Wedding

  About Anna

  More by Anna Markland

  A Legendary Love

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  About Catherine Kean

  Also by Catherine Kean

  Love Remembers

  About this book

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Also by Nancy Morse

  About Nancy Morse

  A Note to the Reader

  Dear Reader,

  You are embarking on an adventure that has been two years in the making. Hearts Aflame was the brainchild of a group of thirteen authors known collectively as Love Historicals.

  Four of us eventually participated in the final publication.

  For four busy, bestselling authors to collaborate successfully on creating brand new stories around a central theme is an achievement in itself, and we are proud of the result.

  We hope you come to love the Rowan family as you follow the history of their heirloom from the ninth to the twentieth centuries.

  For more information about each individual author, you can visit the Love Historicals website at http://www.lovehistoricals.com/.

  Rowan’s Legacy

  by

  Jill Hughey

  Chapter One

  May 29, 861

  Fia’s life circled fire. From the hearth where the glowing orange embers cooked their food and heated their small home, to the blaze of Papa’s forge, fire was a respected and necessary tool. But never in all her twenty years had she been so shrouded in smoke, so helplessly drenched in the oily stench of humanity burning and all its constructions ablaze as she was today.

  Paris was burning, sacked by the dreaded Northmen who’d come viking up the Seine. Most residents — such as the pre-pubescent boy hired to help at the forge — were canny and fast enough to run ahead of the flames while the soldiers of Robert the Strong fought back the rising tide of red-haired giants. Some of the soldiers’ bodies burned where they’d fallen dead. They must be soldiers and they must be dead, Fia told herself when the smell of charring flesh blew in with the smoke. It turned her stomach.

  She looked over her shoulder in the direction the boy had run, thinking for the tenth time in the last minute she and Papa should follow, and soon, even though the fire seemed to be veering away from this section of the town. They were only visitors here and didn’t know the city well, but Papa insisted on delaying to save his tools and precious iron bloom. Fia dutifully thrust the short stubs of worked iron that would become wicked semi-spatae in a sack. The sound of metal hitting metal clanged through the relative quiet of the deserted edge of the island of Paris. In the distance, people were screaming but here there was no one, only she and Papa, and they might as well stand here ringing bells.

  “Hush, Papa,” she warned when two chisels smacked together in his pack of tools.

  She looked from the dark hut toward the smoky daylight again. The hair stood up on her arms as the blue predatory eyes of a wandering Viking, bright in his broad, sooty face, fixed on the open front of their shelter. With terrifying speed and purpose he barged into the three-sided shed, eyes widening greedily at the sight of the raw blades and clumps of unforged metal. Though not silver or gold, this was treasure to an invading force, and everyone knew how raiders loved their treasure, especially the Northmen.

  This red-spattered beast fulfilled every nightmare born from those chilling stories shared across the empire. He strode forward as he lifted an axe with a sharpened curve painted in blood. Fia instinctively backed up and slammed into the table of tools behind her. She caught herself with her right hand, and it curled around the handle of something. Without even looking, and with the giant almost on her, she picked it up.

  Papa lashed out with
the broad side of an unfinished sword to smack the rogue on the side of his partially shaved head. The blow distracted the invader from her, and in one smooth motion, he reciprocated with a quick swipe of the axe that ended with a sucking sound. Beyond rational thought, Fia hefted her tool — a small finishing hammer — and lunged close enough to smell his stinking sweat. She swung her arm with all the power her shaking body could deliver. The sharp rap on his head reverberated down her arm, and she thought she felt the skull sickeningly give.

  Yes, it was enough to daze him. She drew back for another swing.

  Papa moaned, the sound so full of agony she paused to look at him.

  He went to his knees, hands clutched over his stomach. Fia cried out and dashed toward him, the hammer flying forward as she flung her arms out. She arrived just in time to grab ineffectively at Papa’s shoulder as he slumped to his side, then she dared another quick glance over her shoulder to see if she was about to be murdered from behind.

  The Northman’s brow furrowed as he said something incomprehensible in his native gibberish. He began a confused tour around the shed, stumbling and muttering while he gathered the larger blades Papa had made, stacking them like firewood in his muscular arms.

  As if suddenly remembering them, he looked down. Even his unfocused attention was enough to make Fia scramble to retrieve the hammer. The Northman blinked at her, grunted as though unsure what to do, then weaved dazedly out the door and down the street while Papa lay with blood squeezing between his fingers.

  She was not brave. She’d only ever been confident at home. She’d even been known as defiant. But not here. Not in this situation, in this place. It must be a dream, a terrible nightmare, because she could not possibly manage….

  Papa released another horrific moan. His legs worked in the dirt, trying to escape his pain, and he refused to lift his hands for her to tend the wound. She could not move Papa alone, nor could she leave him. Her cries for help finally attracted a sympathetic passerby who helped her slide him onto a blanket and drag him to safer ground where the soldiers were.

  “My tools,” Papa groaned as she tried to make him comfortable where he lay, all but in the street, with no water, no shelter, no cloth for a bandage, no supplies. “How will we live?”

  “I’ll get them,” she said, willing to do anything to soothe his worry.

  “Hide them!” he insisted, the effort wracking him with another pain.

  She ran back to the forge, very much aware of her vulnerability as she dashed through a haze of smoke and peeked around the corners of huts. At their own dismal shed — still unmolested at least — she strapped what tools she could to her legs and body, camouflaged under a tunic of Papa’s, sized to fit the broad chest and arms of a blacksmith, or in this case, the bulk of a set of blacksmith’s tools. As she wrapped the strips of cloth around and around, she thought inanely of her friend at home. Celine. Mild Celine would never be in such a predicament. She was marrying the most docile widower in town in August. What was Celine doing at this very moment, safe in Metz?

  A distant scream broke her trance. She tied a knot in the cloth, smoothed down the tent-like tunic, and gathered the sacks she’d prepared before, one for their clothing, two others with the iron and smaller weapons the Northman devil hadn’t been able to carry, then tossed the looped string of their water bladder around her neck, all while glancing nervously over her shoulder, sure she’d see him and his heathen brothers come to carry away the rest of Papa’s things, and probably her, too.

  The stories that gave children nightmares didn’t include what happened to the Northmen’s captives, because nobody knew. Having seen just one of the devils, she knew she didn’t want to learn first-hand.

  Amidst the confusion of a city under attack, burdened with the bulky, heavy packs that seemed to catch against every fleeing Parisian and the corner of every building and fence, she hurried back to the safety of people. She nearly got lost in the smoke, but finally returned to Papa where he lay, alone and untended. His body shivered violently even though the day was warm, his strength already wasting away enough that he did not fight her when she moved his hands.

  It would perhaps have been better not to look at the gash exposing the thin layer of fat and splitting open the muscled flesh beneath.

  A grizzled old soldier limped by on a crutch. Maybe it was the sound of her forlorn weeping that made him pause to have a look. He touched her shoulder. “Does the wound smell of something other than blood?”

  “Wh-what?” she asked.

  “Smell it. I’d do it myself but I took an arrow in the knee this morn,” he said apologetically, pointing a gnarled, bloodstained finger at the bulge of grayish bandage on his leg.

  Fia reluctantly placed her face near her father’s belly where the hairs were swirled in pinkish designs by her futile wiping. She sniffed, closed her eyes and sniffed again, not sure what the preferred answer was but not wanting to misinform the only helper presenting himself.

  “Yes, there is something else. I can’t name it, exactly.”

  The man wrinkled his nose. “Well, I’m sorry, miss, but there’s nothing to be done for your innards when they’re sliced. Don’t feed him, not even water. Except if you want to speed things up.”

  “What?” Fia whispered, horrified. Speed up what? The soldier was already hobbling away by the time she made sense of what he’d said.

  There was nothing to be done. Fia could only fashion a flimsy shade of sticks and linen over the top half of her tortured father, wipe his sweaty face and wave the flies away from his sickening wound. None of which soothed him.

  As the hours passed, Death schooled her. She learned it did not allow its victims peace or dignity.

  The city-dwellers avoided them. She and Papa were strangers after all, this Heric, a weaponsmith brought from the east to make arms, and Fia, his dark-haired, stiff-backed daughter.

  “What good is making a sword if you don’t know how to use one?” a soldier scoffed as he passed with his patrol.

  Papa writhed and called out through the night. The priest he begged for eventually came after dawn. The cleric was given a coin and made to promise on his rough wooden cross he would send word to Mam so that Fia could be rescued.

  After the priest had gone, in the warmth of a stunning spring day, Papa quieted. The muscles of his meaty hands flexed yet his grip around her fingers felt like a babe’s, except for the rough skin gone cold.

  “You must not attempt to journey home alone. There’s no telling how far from the river the Northmen have gone. A woman by herself….” His groan came out like a sob. “I’m sorry, daughter. I should not have brought you…selfish.”

  “Nonsense. You could not come by yourself. Who would take care of you, your meals and clothing, so you could do the work? I will take care of you now, just please don’t die.”

  They both knew he had no choice in the matter, but perhaps if she asked him to stay….

  “If someone does not come…few weeks…send another messenger. Money…here.” He struggled to loosen the stained leather pouch he kept tied to his waist. The motion renewed his cries of agony, and Fia wept over him as she tried to untangle the swollen leather ties.

  “There,” he said, somehow relieved when he saw the only wealth he had in the world resting in her palm. “Do not move me home. Leave me. Your mother…little enough to live on…a good wife. Tell her.” He squeezed his eyes shut at that and swallowed hard, then looked at the sack again. “Find the glass disc. Different from the coins.”

  She knew the object he wanted and found it easily by touch. He smiled wanly when he saw the translucent red glowing in the brilliant sunshine. Fia laid it flat in her palm. Scratchings in the surface made words, words she didn’t know how to read. “Do you know what it says?” she asked.

  His eyes had closed again. “Something like, ‘We go in circles at night and are consumed by fire.’”

  “Where did you get it?”

&nb
sp; “The hilt of a spata…I fitted a great gem in its place.” He paused, breathing hard, trying to find the strength to speak, or the words, or both. “When I offered the lord his glass…keep it, he said.” He swallowed. “I look at my forge through its lens. Fire through it…more beautiful than…any jewel.”

  “It is beautiful,” Fia admitted. The shining orb cast a reddish glow at the edges of her palm. “We go in circles at night and are consumed by fire,” she repeated so she didn’t forget the meaning.

  “Yes.” Her words pleased him, soothed him. He was calmer now though his breath came in rasping pants. “Keep this, daughter. Circles at night…yes…dark already, isn’t it, child? A short day.”

  She was blinded by a sudden gush of tears as, just like that, he slipped into unconsciousness and almost as quickly, completely away.

  And she was alone, among indifferent strangers, while Paris still burned.

  Chapter Two

  Rowan dozed, his back against a tree, long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. The cool weight of his spata rested on his thighs, with his hands protectively atop. The leaves over his head were the verdant green of fresh growth not yet burnished by the heat and drought of summer. In a few more weeks there would be cherries to eat, tiny and sour.

  But the army would be on the move soon. Even now his father met with the other seasoned leaders in camp to discuss King Lothair II’s plans, which would probably involve attacking one of the king’s uncles — Charles to the west or Louis II to the east — despite the fact they were all part of one empire.

  Of course, Lothair’s primary interest was divorce. Every battle and diplomatic mission furthered the aim to discard his barren wife, with little or no regard for gaining territory or improving the lot of his people.

  Rowan snorted at the thought. He had no patience for any of it. He did not fit the mold of a young nobleman, meant to be interested in the trivialities of the king’s court, bloodthirsty and full of himself, eager for ale and treasure and wenching. All he really wanted to be was home, left to diversions most men at court would find very dull.