Free On a Highland Shore by Kathleen Givens Page B

Haraldsson, who had been born and raised on the northeast coast of Ireland, but who could trace his line back two hundred years to King Harald Hardrada of Norway. Magnus had been proud of his blood, explaining to his sons that they were descendants of the Vikings who had first come to Ireland to pillage and steal, but who stayed to marry and farm and raise families.
    It was a familiar story. For hundreds of years, first the Danes, then the Norse, had attacked, claiming a great deal of land in Ireland, England, Wales, and Scotland, settling what they’d captured by force, mixing their blood with the people who lived there until those who called themselves the descendants of Norsemen lived with those they’d once fought, accepting Christianity and much of the local cultures. They became powerful political figures in the lands they’d settled. In Antrim, in the northeast of Ulster, at the edge of the sea, as in so many other places, the Norse allied with the Celts to form a strong union against all outsiders. It was only in Orkney—and on the western islands that lay between Scotland and Ireland—that the Norse had stayed Norse, were still under the control of King Haakon of Norway.
    Magnus had taught his sons that their heritage was one of courage and valor, and Gannon, the oldest, had loved to hear his father’s stories, reveling in the blood-lines that had come to him. Until the day his father died. From that day on, Gannon had turned his back on his Norse blood, had no longer called himself Gannon Magnusson, but instead the Irish form of the name, Gannon MacMagnus. He’d tried to forget why they’d left Haraldsholm, of his life before coming to Maguire’s Bridge, but now he was about to face it again.
    Tiernan came alongside him, throwing Gannon a sharp glance. “Are ye going to be silent the entire journey?”
    Gannon smiled. Tiernan was ever one to wear his heart on his sleeve. If he was worried, all knew it. If angry, there was no mistaking it.
    “Not the entire journey,” Gannon said. “Perhaps just the most of it.”
    Tiernan laughed, then gestured at the road ahead. “What d’ye think happened that’s got Rory O’Neill himself going to Haraldsholm?”
    “Something important.” Gannon suspected it was something very important indeed, that death was once again roaming the northern shore. And that this time it would not go unavenged. Rory O’Neill was not a man to arm himself without reason, and the chieftain and his men were both well armed and wary. “I keep asking, but he keeps saying nothing more than before.”
    “How long has it been since we were at Haraldsholm?”
    Gannon gave his brother a glance. “Fourteen years.” A lifetime when one was Tiernan’s age. A lifetime for him as well, for so much had changed.
    “Wonder what we’ll find,” Tiernan said.
    Gannon shrugged. That was but one difference between them. Tiernan couldn’t wait to discover the future. Gannon was mistrustful enough of it to let it unfold as it would.
    “If we dinna like what we find,” he said, “we leave. If we do, we stay. We’ve nothing to hold us anywhere. We’ll make our own future, Tiernan.”
     
    Margaret felt her mood sink as the ponies descended down to Brenmargon Pass. They’d left the crofthouse where they’d slept shortly after dawn, the world still damp from the dew and the ponies not thoroughly rested because the darkness was so short. Their journey was made more difficult by the lowering clouds that opened at midday and drenched them. She covered her yawn. She’d been awake for much of the night, lying in the dark, thinking of the decision she would soon have to make. Nell no more wanted to marry Lachlan than Margaret did. What a horrible choice Father had given her. How foolish she’d been to think that he might love her as more than simply one of two marriageable daughters. She was nothing more to him than a cow, one as like another to the farmer who killed it. And yet…she remembered