To Love a Warrior

Book 4: Brotherhood of the Border

by Cecelia Mecca

Genres: Literary Fiction; Ancient World Romance

Synopsis

Lady Isolda will not be forced into a marriage with a Scotsman.

This warrior comes to claim her with a wild tale, a battlefield vow he made to her father when he lay dying in his arms. A vow to marry the earl’s eldest daughter. To marry her.

Except Isolda is already betrothed. A fact her father knew well.

Unfortunately, the Scot refuses to leave Bramton. He claims her father willed their marriage just before taking his last breath, after having been stabbed in the back by an Englishman—one of his own countrymen. As all of Bramton mourns the earl’s death, Isolda finds herself unable to deter this Scotsman, who remains steadfast to his story. Instead, she is increasingly drawn to him, Conall Kerr filling every room he enters with a commanding presence.

Even if he is not the enemy, the danger Conall poses to Isolda and her family cannot be ignored. For if Father truly was murdered by a king’s loyalist, a union between her, the eldest daughter of Bramton, and a Scotsman with ties to William Wallace could incite a new war along the border.

One as fraught with uncertainty as Isolda’s desire for a man she’d been told to hate.

Thirty years after the Border Series ends, a new saga of family, loyalty, and love along the turbulent Anglo-Scottish border begins.

Authors Note: If you like multi-generational families, bad-boy heroes and forced proximity romance with a bit of extra spice, put To Love a Warrior on the top of your reading list.

 

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Release date: June 5, 2022

Publisher: Altiora Press

Print pages: 216

Sample

Chapter 1

Pexford, Anglo-Scottish Border, February, 1301
The battle had been all but won.
“Conall,” his cousin Hugh yelled from afar. Just in time, Conall turned and sent the man
to hell. He’d long stopped thinking and simply relied on his training. Strike after strike, he fought
through the lines of English knights and mercenaries, knowing victory was within their grasp. If
not for the information gained by Wallace and his supporters in France, they’d not have found
such a decisive victory this day.
As it was, King Edward’s men had been taken unaware. By the time they realized their
positions had been discovered, the men, superior in number, had been surrounded. None had the
constitution to fight much longer in these dreary conditions. But Conall, a warrior born and bred,
ignored the cold. He ignored the pain, his left temple throbbing from a strike he’d not seen
coming. Thankfully it had been from the hilt of a sword and not its blade.
As he’d done every time there had been an opportunity to search the field, Conall looked
for his father. He fought like the devil, the same way he’d taught Conall to do, and appeared safe
for the moment. Just then, the most extraordinary thing he’d ever seen unfolded before him. An
Englishman thrust his sword under the arm of another Englishman from behind.
It would be a fatal blow, executed perfectly by a skilled swordsman.
“Retreat,” the word they’d been waiting for, rang out from the field. “Retreat,” again and
again until the Englishmen did just that. Knights wearing surcoats of all colors, though all

gloriously English, began to move back. Conall could see his father and Hugh, but not his cousin
Boyd, the only other member of his family on the battlefield today.
“Boyd,” he screamed, over and over again, until his father caught up with him.
“He is well,” Alex Kerr pointed to the very edge of the treeline where they had first
emerged from. Unsurprisingly, bodies littered the ground around him. Some in their clan called
Conall the greatest of all their young warriors, but Conall easily passed that moniker along to
Boyd. The man yielded a sword like none he’d ever seen.
Conall and his father began to assess the injured. They’d not suffered heavy losses, their
element of surprise having served them well, but one man in particular, one not of his clan but a
supporter of Wallace Conall recognized, needed a healer. He called for a cart to be brought to
them. Waiting until he was loaded onto it, Conall’s eyes wandered to the slain Englishman.
Remarkable. The man had been killed by one of his own. Suddenly, the man’s leg
twitched. The final moment before death, most likely. Despite that he was the enemy, Conall
would not allow the man such a dishonorable death. He went to him, kneeling, pulling away the
Englishman’s helm.
Gasping, he slipped his hand under the head of the Earl of Bramton. “What are you going
on this battlefield?” he asked of the earl, very much alive, but not long for this world.
He blinked, the man’s thick beard hiding much of his face. “Kerr. . .” His voice was
weak, his eyes filled with unshed tears.
“Why?” he asked again. The powerful border lord was known to sympathize with their
cause and had not fought against his people in Stirling or Falkirk. Why, then, was he here?
“My daughter,” he said weakly.

“Your daughter,” Conall repeated. He knew the earl had four daughters but he’d never
met them. Nor did he know which of his daughters Bramton spoke of now.
“Protect her, Kerr.”
The man made no sense. “Why did you fight us?” he asked for the third time, unwilling
to tell the earl ‘twas one of his own who slayed him. He’d not have the man die with that
knowledge.
“The king.” His words came slowly. Shouts around them, orders from those in charge
and calls for aid, made him difficult to hear. Conall leaded his head closer to the earl. “The king
demanded it. Wroth with me, and the others. The borderers. Angry with us.”
The king had been angry with many of the English border lords for years. He was angry
with Conall’s own English family, the Waryns no longer in his favor. He was angry with all
those who had not joined his fight against Wallace. But this was nothing new.
“Why now?”
“Threatened imprisonment. To take Bramton.”
It was well-known Bramton had no sons but four daughters instead. The earl was
growing weaker. Or so Conall thought. The man he’d met on just a few occasions, but one who
was a friend and ally to his Uncle Geoffrey, reached up and grabbed his tunic quite forcefully.
“Protect her. Marry her. Promise me.” It was the most outlandish request Conall had
heard in his lifetime. He had no intentions of marrying any woman, much less the daughter of a
man who had just fought against him and his kinsman. “We were forced to this field but did not,”
he stopped, pained. His grip did not loosen.

Conall sensed a presence behind him. The earl looked up, over his shoulder. Conall
turned to see his father standing beside them. Giving his attention back to the earl, he said, “You
were forced to this fight by the king who’d threatened to seize your lands and title?”
“Aye. Four daughters,” he was struggling to speak, “three unmarried. Isolda. Marry her.
Bramton needs the protection of the Brotherhood.”
His father knelt beside him. Conall exchanged a glance with the man he admired above
all. The one who had told him the measure of a man is what he would risk his life for.
The earl had given his life for his family. Protecting them against the king’s increasing
dissatisfaction with his own subject, especially the border lords who refused to fight for him
against the Scots. Conall knew the predicament well. It was one his own family had been
navigating for as many summers, one he feared would come to a similar end as the Earl of
Bramton. Death or would come to all, but for those who stood against the English monarch in
sympathy with Scotland’s cause, it lurked around every corner, ready to strike.
As it had for the earl.
He was about to tell the earl he could not make such a promise, sorry he would die on this
battlefield without it, when he remembered how Bramton came about his fatal blow. Conall
closed his eyes, weighing such a decision.
“I’ve seen none of your men with you here today Bramton,” his father said.
Conall’s eyes flew open. He scanned the field, looking among those that lay beside them.
Attempting to remember the coats of arms he’d seen this day. Indeed, he could think of none
bearing, purple and gold of the Earl of Bramton’s colors.
“I forbade them,” he said, his hand still gripping Conall’s tunic. “A compromise. For the
king.”

Conall finally understood. “You offered yourself in lieu of your men, to appease the
king.” Reponere hominun. A rarely used tactic but one with backed by English law. A lord, if his
title substantial enough, could appease his overlord’s call to arms by submitting his own
swordhand in lieu of his men’s.
The earl gave no answer, in words at least. His eyes still held Conall’s own, the truth of
the words passing between them. He would die having been stabbed in the back by his own
countryman, his life a sacrifice for the Scot’s cause. He’d come alone, defying the king the only
way he was able without forfeiting his lands and title. There was but one honorable answer, and
he was nothing if not honorable.
“I offer you my vow,” he said. “I will marry Lady Isolda.”
The earl’s eyes widened, and likely because he knew Conall’s reputation, he did not ask
for the words again. He did not beg for Conall to repeat himself or for any further assurances.
Instead he allowed the tears that had been gathering in both eyes to fall as his lids closed. “Thank
you,” he said, the earl’s grip loosening. “Take the pendant,” he said, “show her.” With that, as if
holding onto life, waiting for Conall’s vow, the earl was gone from this world.
Brampton’s hand fell to his side, all life now having abandoned him. Yet Conall did not
move. Instead, he stared at the face of the dead man, one of many this day. How long his father’s
hand had been on Conall’s shoulder, he did not know. But it squeezed now, forcing him to look
up into the face of the greatest warrior in all of Scotland. At least, that was Conall’s opinion, and
he’d challenge any who claimed otherwise.
“You are a good man, my son.”
His father was effusive with his praise. Always had been, and Conall was grateful for it.

“I had no choice,” he said, by way of explanation. “I saw with my own eyes one of his
own countrymen stab the earl from behind. Brampton’s plea, coupled with that knowledge. . .”
“You did have a choice, Conall. Though, as always, you’ve made the right one. Though I
am sorry you are to gain a wife in such a manner.”
His father was sorry only because their family’s history of love matches was a tradition
Conall’s mother hoped would extend to her children. But Conall was not so idealized as that, and
giving a man such as the earl of Bramton the comfort of having been granted a dying wish was
as good a reason as any to marry.
He’d planned on returning home after this fray, but it seemed Conall’s course was now
altered. Instead he would travel deeper into enemy territory rather than back into Scotland. The
detour should be an easy enough one to navigate. He would go to Bramton, collect his bride, and
then return home to Brockburg.To Scotland, where he belonged. ...