Legacy of the Mist Clans Box Set (122 page)

But one never forgot loving a child, and she and Connell had loved Adam as their own. She doubted if Adam’s father had ever told him about the wet nurse who had kept him safe . . . the blacksmith who had stopped every threat against him. Adam had never sought them out, instead living in secrecy until he came of age and joined his father in his war against Scotland. Nay, Adam had been too little to remember her and Connell, but that was for the best.

Connell’s deep voice wove the tale for his children, and Mairi opened her eyes and looked up at him. For an instant, she was back in their small cottage in Edinburgh, and Christmas was only a month away.

“Da-da-da!” Adam burbled as he rested his head against Connell’s broad chest.

Connell looked at her, and she saw the love in his sapphire eyes as he smiled that beautiful smile she treasured so deeply. It was so very precious, but no longer so very rare, for there was not a day that had passed since their return to Glen Gyle that she had not seen it.

As Connell read, their children listened and learned of Adam and how their mum and da overcame terrible dangers to keep a wee bairn safe. But for Mairi, the experience was far different. Connell’s words brought the memory alive.

She remembered the hardships, their shared tears, but most of all she remembered their laughter and joy. She remembered falling in love with the gentle giant who had pledged his blade in service, who loved her in return, who became her husband and the father of her children.

She remembered it all as vividly as if it had happened yesterday.

Aye, Adam had been too little . . .

But Mairi and Connell remembered him . . . together.

For those readers who have followed the entire
Legacy of the Mist Clans
series, they will remember Connell’s humble beginnings as a tertiary character in
Demon Laird.
When I wrote the scene in that novel of the last member of his family, his son, dying, I could not help but promise Connell his own book. Watching him evolve over the course of this series has been quite intriguing on my part as an author. He is also the first hero that I’ve written in my books set during the medieval period who was not a nobleman.

I would like to take a moment to note the development of this truly unique character. While all of my characters pose a challenge in one form or another, delving into Connell’s past brought to light some surprising facets. His story is also a great example of how the best laid plans can fall by the wayside. Not only did Connell start out as a tertiary character who developed into a hero but when I began his story, the goal was to write a novella, and if you’ve read this far, you can see that goal did not stand either.

All I can say is that Connell’s development into a full-fledged hero demanded a story much longer and richer in atmosphere. I’m glad he didn’t settle for anything less.

Readers often ask me how I develop my stories. I start with the characters. All of us are shaped by the events of our past, so when working on character development, I begin with broad strokes—Connell is the son of a blacksmith. That’s a good start. I then ask questions such as why and how. Connell is in service to his laird. Why isn’t he standing over a forge with his father? Is his father alive or dead? Why didn’t Connell become the village smith after his father passed? As I discover the answers, the broad strokes gradually become more detailed.

After a certain point, Connell had enough detail that I was able to envision how he might respond in certain situations, and that’s usually when I start writing. I may not know everything about him at that point in time—a lot of detail comes out when I’m in the thick of the rough draft. Then even more details surface when my editor and I go through the draft and she adds her own questions to mine. That forces me to go back and make those details even more precise. It’s usually early in the development where the characters such as Connell develop their voice and start talking to me. He tells me his story in his own words. I simply write it all down.

I told my husband once that when I’m “in the writer zone,” it’s like watching a movie complete with soundtrack. All I do is write down what I see and hear. Fortunately, these movies also come with emotions and internal thoughts, otherwise I’d be writing movie scripts rather than novels. The problem happens when my characters stop talking to me.

That’s my form of writer’s block. The characters get in a snit, or overly shy, then clam up, and my writing comes to a screeching halt. When I started working on Connell’s story, I was quite nervous because, while I knew more than usual about his character thanks to the previous books, I only had one scene in my head, and that’s the mercenary attack that opens this novel.

I had a general idea (thanks to historical facts) of where I wanted the story to end up, but I had no clue how to get there. My editor again came to my rescue when she suggested I write a novella. That is nowhere nearly as daunting as to try to come up with 80-100,000 words when there absolutely are none.

So I began on the first scene, and I was very thankful that Connell and Mairi both were so cooperative. The next thing I know, I’m sending my editor updates on word count and where the story stands as far as development. When I get far enough along that I have a general idea of draft completion, that’s when we start working on dates to send everything to her so she can read and give me much-needed developmental feedback. About halfway through, I realized I’d just blown the doors off of the novella length. Oh well, as long as the characters keep talking and I have time with deadlines, I’ll keep writing—the work is as long as it needs to be to tell the story, and it ends when the characters say it ends.

The fun part was when Connell started offering the quotes that you see at the beginning of each chapter. When I asked where he was getting this from, that’s when he told me he was a writer too—he had written everything down for Mairi, and that developed into his gift for her in the epilogue. At that point, I was really burning up the keyboard. I completed the draft, and then my editor and I brainstormed. The rest of the story, as they say, is history, because history is how everything tied together.

Adam FitzRoy is documented as being the bastard son of Edward II. Longshanks’s son, unfortunately, is known for his dismal failure as a ruler. While historians continue to debate if his relationship with his favorites, Piers Gaveston and later Hugh Despenser the younger, Michael Prestwich, in his book,
The Three Edwards
, writes, “Opinion as to whether the king’s relationships with his favourites were homosexual has changed considerably in recent years, reflecting a change in modern attitudes rather than the discovery of fresh evidence.” Prestwitch goes on to state that Prince Edward and Gaveston entered something of an adoptive brotherhood. In other words, there are lots of theories, but there is no way to know for certain if there was anything untoward going on. Edward II did have four children by his wife, Isabel, (beginning when she was seventeen; she was twelve when they married), and of course, a bastard son, Adam FitzRoy.

It is not known exactly when Adam FitzRoy was born or who his mother was, only that he died on September 18, 1322, and was buried in Tynemouth Priory on September 30th. He joined his father in the 1322 campaign against Scotland, so historians place his birth year between 1305 and 1310. Apart from that, Adam’s story is entirely creative license on my part but extrapolated with as firm a foundation in history as I could possibly get when one takes into account the personalities of the monarchs, Longshanks, Edward II, and Robert the Bruce, as well as the situation during Scotland’s first war for independence.

In 1307, the English controlled Edinburgh, but it has been exceptionally difficult to find details of just how they took control of it. During the Great Cause, Scotland’s debate on deciding a king, in which they invited Longshanks to arbitrate, therefore starting this whole mess, Longshanks traveled to Edinburgh to hear the various claims. Even when tensions mounted between Longshanks and Scotland, Edinburgh was designated as a sort of no-man’s land in which he could enter without worry.

When Edward II withdrew the English forces from Scotland after his father’s death, he allowed Robert the Bruce, after a brief civil war, to consolidate his power and organize. That fact is glossed over a bit in this tale, but the important point was that the Bruce took advantage of every opportunity handed to him, and with Edward II, there were many.

In 1314, Robert the Bruce retook Edinburgh Castle and, as was his habit, destroyed it so the English could not make use of it. Therefore, while the castle that stands now is still old, it is not original. I also had a difficult time finding maps of the city. In a wide-ranging Internet search, the only ones I could locate of the actual city were Renaissance era and later. At least these showed a few of the various marketplaces, which had a tendency to stay put over time. So I was able to develop a decent layout for the market area where Connell and Mairi lived.

Sometimes researching information can get surprisingly hectic over simple things. The hours of the day, for example. Early in the medieval age, Nones was approximately three in the afternoon. In the thirteenth century, it changed, but not universally. If you were in London, Nones was noon. Of course, times changed during the seasons, but also in the fourteenth century merchants and tradesmen needed a more consistent way to keep time, so they had their system, and the Church had its own. Then late in that century, clocks were invented. So the struggle is, when did this all change? We know what century, but that’s a big span of time. Because there was really no way to nail it down quickly and easily, I decided on the later time designation of Nones being noon and stuck with it.

The same goes for locks. Blacksmiths had started being the locksmiths of their day, but eventually the trade branched out to its own profession, especially as blacksmiths started to specialize more during this era.

Smithing during this time period is absolutely fascinating, and a part of me wants to feature Connell in more novels in order to do justice to the trade. In the 1300s, smithing was entering its golden age. Trade guilds were being established, and the premise of the mastersmith and apprentice were developing.

Fortunately, general research is readily available on the Internet, but as Connell developed as a character, and as the story itself also developed, I found the readily available information a bit too general. I needed specifics and searched quite a bit, but I was unable to find what I needed quickly. The clock on my deadline was winding down, and I needed to locate this information fast.

Fortunately, I came across the website of
Simon Grant-Jones
,
an associate member of the
Worshipful Company of Blacksmiths
(a trade guild which saw its origins in the medieval age). But what caught my eye was his passion for the history of the trade. He creates items for reenactments and living history groups as well as having published a very informative article on the
History of the Blacksmith
.

Despite that informative article, I still had questions, so I sent him an email in the hopes that he would reply. He very kindly and quickly replied and provided the information I needed. His info also corrected some errant knowledge I had gleaned, so I was able to go back and fix a few aspects of the story as well as identify even more specific aspects of Connell’s character. So I would like to extend a huge thank you once again to him. If you get a chance, please stop by his website, for he has a lot of information. I assure you, if there are errors in this novel of the portrayal of blacksmithing during these times, the fault rests on my shoulders due to misinterpretation of the information Simon gave me.

I hope you have enjoyed
Highlander’s Hope
as this book brings us to a close for stories centered on these particular characters. But we are far from done, for there is another generation of MacGrigors whose time has come to step forward and carry the series onward. I’ve already got the first scene for the next story in my head.

As always, I would like to encourage my readers to please leave reviews on this work on sites such as Amazon, Goodreads, and others. If you are a reviewer for a blog, online or print magazine, or review website and post a review, please catch up with me on my
Facebook
page. I always enjoy hearing from my readers, so feel free to stop by just to say hello on my Facebook page or blog. Don’t forget to check out my
blog
for information and announcements on upcoming releases.

Until next time, thank you, and happy reading!

(If you have trouble with any of the links, please check my blog for announcements at
www.kathryn-loch.com
.)

Historical Romance

Legacy of the Mist Clans

1. Mist Warrior

2. Demon Laird

3. Shadowed Hawk

4. Highlander’s Hope

Heart & Soul

1. Heart’s Ransom

2. Heart’s War

Non-Series Titles

1. Blind Impulse

2. By Any Other Name

Contemporary Suspense/Paranormal

A Time for Love

1. A Time to Live

2. Finding Faith (Discontinued)

Vows of the Heart

1. Sworn to Protect

2. Sworn to Love

Non-Series Titles

Whisper to A Scream

Fantasy

The Dragon Wars

1. Spirit of Dragons

2. Rage of Dragons (forthcoming)