The Key to Her Past Read online

  Contents

  About the Author

  Also by Blanche Dabney

  The Clan MacGregor Series

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Also Available

  About the Author

  Blanche Dabney is the author of the bestselling Clan MacGregor books, a series of sweet and clean time travel romances set in medieval Scotland.

  Growing up in a small village on the west coast of Scotland, Blanche spent many happy childhood hours exploring ancient castles, all the while inventing tall tales of the people who might once have lived there.

  After years of wishing she could travel through time to see how accurate her stories were, she decided to do the next best thing, write books about the past.

  Her first romance, Highlander’s Voyage, came out in 2018, and reader reaction was positive enough for her to dedicate herself full time to writing more.

  Since then, she has published more than half a dozen highland adventures, each filled with the passion, danger, and intrigue that are her hallmarks.

  Blanche lives in Haworth, home of the Bronte sisters, with her partner and their two children.

  Also by Blanche Dabney

  The Clan MacGregor Series

  The Key in the Loch

  The Key in the Door

  The Key to Her Heart

  The Key to Her Past

  Medieval Highlander Trilogy

  Highlander’s Voyage

  Highlander’s Revenge

  Highlander’s Battle

  Highlander’s Time Trilogy

  Held by the Highlander

  Promised to the Highlander

  Outlaw Highlander

  The Clan MacGregor Series

  The Key in the Loch

  When a mysterious key sends Rachel Fisher back through time she arrives during a violent time in Scottish history. Her only hope of survival lies with grizzled medieval warrior, Cam MacGregor.

  The Key in the Door

  To save her life, Jessica Abrahams must convince everyone in the clan she is the missing fiancée of the laird.

  The Key to Her Heart

  Daisy Stone doesn’t believe in love stories. But when she steps into the past she discovers the one man who might be able to give her a happy ending of her own.

  The Key to Her Past

  Natalie MacCallister lands in medieval Scotland in time to change history for the better.

  The Key to Her Past

  Blanche Dabney

  For Ellen, who supported me through the past and the present

  1

  When Natalie MacCallister opened her bedroom curtains, the first thing she saw was her past. It stood forty feet high, slate gray in color, and it towered over the surrounding countryside.

  She smiled. It was the same view she’d enjoyed for the last six months and it had yet to grow old. MacCallister Castle, home of her ancestors, up there on top of the mountain, lush fields below, all of it bathed in the golden sunlight of early morning.

  Seven hundred years before Natalie opened her curtains for another admiring look at MacCallister Castle, Wallace MacGregor was looking up at the very same battlements. Unlike Natalie, he was not enjoying the view; he was trying to work out how to break in.

  Wallace had often looked enviously up at the castle. Tales abounded of roast suckling pig served on beds of juicy vegetables, bread so readily available the stale loaves were tossed to the dogs rather than eaten. Barrel after barrel of ale was enjoyed with much accompanying laughter and music while his stomach grumbled, and the village wasted away.

  He thought about the last time he’d had fresh bread. The thought made his stomach rumble. They never had fresh bread in Cromarty.

  He’d lived in the village since he was found in the marshes as a baby a decade earlier. The village was all he knew. He had never walked the six miles to the castle before. He’d never even left the village boundary. Why would he?

  If it wasn’t for the letter, he would have been quite happy to remain in the village for the rest of his life.

  The letter had arrived that morning and shaken him to his very core. Not only did he have a father, but his father was alive and being held captive in MacCallister Castle at that very moment.

  Wallace was part of the clan most hated by all MacCallisters. He hid the letter in his waistband once he’d read it. No one must know the truth. The village would kill him if they discovered he was a MacGregor.

  He made his plans alone, taking counsel from no one. He shivered when he left the village that night, his shivering nothing to do with the October chill.

  He hugged the letter tightly to his chest as he walked, hoping that its contents would act as a charm, protect him from the will-o-the-wisps and vicious hobs that wandered the moors at night.

  He had a long way to go. His feet were bare, the mud under them thick, dragging his ankles down, tiring him before he’d traveled far. He kept on; his eyes fixed on the twinkling lights in the far distance that lit MacCallister Castle.

  Whenever the hills rose before him and cut off the light he had to pause, control his breathing, not let panic rise up too far within him.

  He kept moving despite the terror he felt. He was doing this for his father, a man he had no memory of. He thought about the letter. Jock and Daisy MacGregor, his parents, had given him up when he was little more than a baby.

  They had lost the clan war against all the odds a decade earlier. The MacCallisters were outmanned and outfought, and yet somehow, they had defeated the mighty MacGregor clan.

  Jock was captured. Daisy fled with Wallace, leaving him at the edge of Cromarty for the villagers to find. Then she simply vanished.

  With the MacGregor laird captured and the lady gone, their lands had been forfeited, taken by the MacCallisters as the spoils of war.

  Wallace was heir to the MacGregor lairdship. Him, the farmer’s lad with not even a square yard to call his own, the lad who’d always dreamed of finding out who his real parents were, the ones he’d been told abandoned him as a baby. The village said anyone who abandoned a baby must be a rogue or English.

  He squeezed the letter tighter as a twig snapped nearby. Would the spell within protect him? He felt exhausted. Fear was tiring and it had been another long day.

  He was always first up, fetching eggs for breakfast from the chicken coop by the water butt. He had walked outside and the first he knew of the package was when he fell over it.

  Stumbling into the dirt, he turned to see what had caused his fall. The letter sat there like a living thing, looking back at him as he looked at it.

  There was an aura of magic to it, something he could taste in the air that swirled around it, the sensation drifting away when he untied the string and pulled open the waxed parchment. Inside was the letter he held ever tighter as he continued toward MacCallister Castle.

  From his left a rustling sound. He froze and glanced that way, praying it wasn’t a hob come to turn his feet to lead and his body to gold.

  Another rustle and he bit his lip as there was a crash from the undergrowth and something leaped out onto the grass. He found himself staring at a rabbit that had hopped forth from under a gooseberry bush. He sighed with relief, forcing his heavy legs to start moving again.

  As his heart slowed to normal, his mind returned
to the letter. He had no reason to doubt what it told him. All he had to do was travel to the castle, and then read the incantation it had provided.

  That would free his father from the curse that had held him bound in chains all these years, chains that no mortal man could break.

  Wallace knew all about curses. Old Lady Gertrude had cursed the tinker that passed through last year and he was found dead the next morning down by the brook. And then there was Derek the blacksmith’s boy who’d mocked the witch when she wouldn’t cure his boils. Burned to death at his own forge a week later.

  Curses abounded in village life. If the letter said his father was cursed, Wallace saw no reason to doubt it. Cursed to remain bound in chains for all eternity.

  Unless Wallace could break in and then break the spell.

  He had no idea who’d sent him the letter, but he didn’t care. What he cared about was his father. Perhaps together they could hunt for his mother, find her alive, reunite the family. Retake MacGregor Castle even? Wouldn’t that be something? Bring the clan back from oblivion.

  To do all that he had to be brave. He had to ignore the sounds coming from the darkness, concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other.

  His father was in the dungeon. All he had to do was get into the castle. It was impregnable to attackers, but he wasn’t an attacker, he was an eleven-year-old skinny boy.

  Would they even notice him? Few people wanted to invade MacCallister land. It was infertile after years of neglect. There was nothing worth fighting over.

  The MacCallisters had little to defend anymore. They had taken over the MacGregor territory after the clan war, but they’d been unable to hold onto it. The gossip in the village was always about how much had been lost in any given month.

  Other clans continually encroached and soon the MacCallister border would be back where it had been for centuries. The MacGregor land became no man’s land, many clans fighting over it, none able to emerge victorious.

  All the MacCallisters had to show for their effort was the laird of the MacGregors captured at their hand.

  It took longer than he expected to get to MacCallister Castle. When he did, he almost lost hope. The castle definitely looked impregnable, a taller building than he had ever seen, towering over the surrounding landscape. The village church was a hay stack in comparison. How could he ever have hoped to get inside?

  His legs ached from the effort of walking so far through the thick mud of late fall. He tried to be brave. He couldn’t turn back. He could do this. If only he could work out how.

  The castle was lit by torches. There was one above the gatehouse. It provided enough light to show him the gap where the drawbridge had been raised for the night.

  There were more torches higher up on the outside of the keep, those had been the ones that had guided him through the darkness.

  He kept to the shadows, working his way around the edge of the moat. Then he smiled. It was no moat. It was only an earthwork, the slopes steep and covered in undergrowth but not too difficult for a boy used to clambering through bramble bushes to fetch berries.

  Two guards manned the near side of the drawbridge. They looked mean and he was glad they were too far away to see him as he moved silently down the slope of the earthwork. He took care to protect the letter from clawing thorns.

  At the bottom he paused, catching his breath before beginning the tough ascent on the far side. At the top he paused again, listening hard, peering around the corner. He relaxed when he saw the guards had not moved from their post.

  Looking up, he smiled again. The wall that had seemed so solid from the far side of the earthwork was not nearly as neat as it had appeared. Stones jutted out in many places. In others the mortar had crumbled, leaving gaps the perfect size for handholds.

  Tucking the letter into his waistband, Wallace began to climb, telling himself this was nothing more than the wall of the farmhouse which he regularly climbed to tend to the thatch. Just a wall like any other. Only ten times higher.

  Halfway up, he had to stop. Voices could be heard above, gruff men’s voices talking together quietly.

  He craned his neck upward. On the battlement two men were crossing each other on patrol, pausing to share a joke before moving on. He held his breath, hoping neither man would look down. One spat over the side then moved off.

  He was alone once again.

  He resumed the climb, reaching the top a minute later. Hopping over the top of the wall, he ducked low and then ran for the safety of the corner tower.

  The door was locked. That meant no guard would be coming out from there any time soon. By the door he found more evidence of MacCallister complacency. A coil of rope sat abandoned, one end still tied to an iron ring in the wall. The cord was rotten, but it was still solid enough to take the weight of a half-starved boy and his letter.

  Kicking the rope off the wall into the courtyard, he waited, wondering if anyone heard the noise he’d just made. Nothing.

  Not wanting to push his luck, he climbed down quickly while contemplating his next move. The dungeon was most likely below the keep and over there was an unshuttered window. It had been left open as it was too small for a man to climb through. Perfect for one such as him.

  He squeezed between the rough stones, his hips catching, scraped cruelly by the jagged edges. For a moment he thought he was stuck but then with a shove of his arms he was through, falling heavily onto the wooden boards on the far side.

  At this point something odd happened. He became aware of exactly where his father was being held prisoner. He could never have explained it, but he knew exactly which route to take.

  He passed along the pitch-black corridor, needing no light. When he reached stairs, he descended them without hesitation, guided by something outside himself. Could it be the letter was helping him?

  Whatever it was, he was glad of the assistance because the keep was a maze. He marveled that man could build something so large. How did anyone find their way around such a place?

  At the end of the next corridor he found a candle in a sconce. He took it, knowing he would soon need light to read the incantation.

  At the foot of a second flight of stairs the air changed, growing staler and colder. He shivered, his nostrils wrinkling, a strong stench hitting him from ahead.

  One more door. He knew it would be locked.

  It was.

  He set down the candle and then felt the hinges of the door. Rotten wood just like in the barn back home. He had watched the villagers pull that door free with little more than their hands. Could he do the same?

  Digging into the rotten wood, ignoring the splinters that scraped his skin, he gouged out the hinge at the top and then the bottom of the door.

  One firm pull when that was done, and the door gave way with a loud crash. It fell against him, almost crushing him against the far wall, the noise echoing far into the distance.

  Wallace’s heart pounded in his chest as he freed himself from behind the door. Surely someone would have heard that? He would have to hurry.

  Passing through into the darkness beyond he stopped dead. What was that sound? The rattling of chains somewhere beyond the low glow of the spluttering candle. The air was thick with the stench. It clung to the inside of his throat, making it hard for him to breathe.

  “Father,” he said quietly, hand over his nose, hardly daring to believe. “Is that you?”

  “Who’s there?” a man’s voice replied hoarsely.

  “It’s me, father. Wallace. I’ve come to save you.”

  “Get out of here! Now!”

  “I have an incantation to recite. Soon you will be free.”

  The candle light fell on a figure slumped against the far side of the room. His ankles and wrists were bound to rusty iron chains, his flesh marked and swollen from years bound in place.

  The man winced at the glow of the candlelight. His face could not be seen behind lank greasy hair and a thick straggly beard. Only his eyes were visible as th
ey focused on Wallace for the first time.

  Jock held up a hand, the fingernails yellowed and broken. “Go!” he said. “Now!” The hoarseness of his voice was gone and suddenly he was on his feet, towering over Wallace, his head brushing the ceiling.

  Jock reached out to push the boy away, but his chains held him too tight to the wall. He looked at his son as if with fresh eyes. “My boy,” he said, his voice failing for just a moment. “Has it been this long? You have grown so much.”

  Wallace started to read the incantation.

  Jock yelled at him. “Stop. You must not read that.”

  It was already done.

  The chains fell away, thudding into the floor.

  “What have you done?” Jock asked, grabbing at the manacles and trying to bind them around his wrists once more. “Take me back, he has nothing to do with this.”

  Wallace ran to his father, tugging at his arm. “Come, let us leave now. You are free.”

  Wallace tried to pull his father away but for some reason he could not move his own arm. He looked down. The manacles were bound tightly around his own wrists. He moved his feet and immediately found they had become chained as well.

  The manacles that had held his father had silently locked around his limbs, bound with a strength stronger than any metal, trapping him in the dungeon.