A Bound Heart Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Endorsements

  Half Title Page

  Books by Laura Frantz

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Scots Glossary

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  Author Note

  Acknowledgments

  Excerpt from the Next Story

  1

  About the Author

  Back Ads

  Back Cover

  List of Pages

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  “In the 1750s, a lass and a laird are ripped from the Scottish isle and friendship of their youth and sent to the West Indies and Virginia Colony as indentured servants. Will they ever find one another again? An epic journey of faith and love wrought through hardship. Laura Frantz is a gifted writer.”

  Julie Klassen, bestselling author

  “Equally suspenseful and heart-wrenching, Laura Frantz’s A Bound Heart takes readers on a journey that begins in the misty isles of Scotland and crosses oceans to the sun-drenched plantations of the New World, with finely drawn characters who rose from the pages to quickly capture my sympathies. From start to finish, A Bound Heart is an absorbing, tenderhearted story about the grace of second chances.”

  Lori Benton, author of Many Sparrows and the Christy Award–winning Burning Sky

  “Make a spot on your keeper shelf, because this is one story you’ll want to reread! From the Scottish Highlands to colonial America, A Bound Heart keeps you riveted until you’ve turned the last page. You won’t want to leave Lark and Magnus behind. Classic Laura Frantz stellar writing, weaving in history and a solid biblical message. Highly recommended!”

  Michelle Griep, award-winning author of The Captured Bride

  “A soaring tale. With her trademark attention to detail and lush imagery, Laura Frantz takes readers on an unforgettable journey certain to stir the soul. Magnus and Lark captured my heart, and their courageous story stole my sleep until I reached the last page. Sweeping readers from Scotland to Virginia to Jamaica, A Bound Heart dazzles with authenticity. A triumph.”

  Jocelyn Green, Christy Award–winning author of Between Two Shores

  “Every Laura Frantz novel transports readers to a place long since past, a journey Frantz always skillfully, seamlessly facilitates. A Bound Heart thrums with the pulse of both historic Scotland and colonial America, but at its center is a relatable heroine of modern sensibilities, as lovely and unusual as her name. With unbound hair and bound heart, Lark is a woman of contradictions. She has one foot in the old world and one in the new, certain of her principles and gifts but uncertain where, and perhaps with whom, she belongs. As she skillfully prepares tonics to bring comfort to others and tends to her constants—her bees, her faith—readers long for Lark’s hero to be found constant too, and deliver the happiness she so richly deserves. Extraordinary storytelling in every way—a feast for historical romance lovers.”

  Sandra Byrd, author of Lady of a Thousand Treasures

  Books by Laura Frantz

  The Frontiersman’s Daughter

  Courting Morrow Little

  The Colonel’s Lady

  The Mistress of Tall Acre

  A Moonbow Night

  The Lacemaker

  A Bound Heart

  THE BALLANTYNE LEGACY

  Love’s Reckoning

  Love’s Awakening

  Love’s Fortune

  © 2019 by Laura Frantz

  Published by Revell

  a division of Baker Publishing Group

  PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

  www.revellbooks.com

  Ebook edition created 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  ISBN 978-1-4934-1662-2

  Scripture quotations, whether quoted or paraphrased by the characters, are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Published in association with Books & Such Literary Management.

  Contents

  Cover

  Endorsements

  Half Title Page

  Books by Laura Frantz

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Scots Glossary

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  Author Note

  Acknowledgments

  Excerpt from the Next Story

  About the Author

  Back Ads

  Back Cover

  Dedicated to my sixth great-grandfather,

  George Hume of Wedderburn Castle,

  Berwickshire, Scotland

  Scots Glossary

  addlepated—mixed-up

  aflocht—troubled

  Alba—ancient term for the kingdom of the Scots

  auld—old

  Auld Reekie—Edinburgh

  Auld Toun—old-town Edinburgh

  bairn—child

  bannocks—oatcakes

  bethankit—God be thanked

  blether—gossip

  bonny—pretty

  brae—hill

  Braiste Lathurna—the brooch of Lorn

  braw—handsome

  Buik—Bible

  canna—cannot

  couldna—could not

  da—dad

  didna—did not

  dinna—do not

  doesna—does not

  douce—sweet, lovely

  dunderheed—fool
/>   fash—worry, vex

  gaol—jail

  ghaist—ghost

  gruamach—sulky, moody

  haeddre—Scottish heather

  hasna—has not

  haud yer wheest—hold your tongue

  hoot!—pshaw!

  howdie—midwife

  hungert—hungry

  ill-scrappit—rude, bitter

  ill-trickit—wicked, dangerous

  isna—is not

  jings—gosh

  kelpie—water fairy

  ken—know, understand

  kirk—church

  laird—landowner ranking below a baron and above a gentleman in Scottish order of precedence

  leine—shirt

  loch—lake

  loosome—delightful

  michty me—goodness gracious!

  Moonbroch—ring around the moon

  neeps and tatties—turnips and potatoes

  och!—oh!

  peely-wally—sick

  ruadh—red

  sennight—week

  sgian dubh—black dagger

  shooglie—shaky

  shouldna—should not

  slàinte—(to your) health

  smirr—sprinkle

  sonsie—pleasing, pretty

  sporran—leather pouch

  stayed lass—spinster

  tapsalteerie—topsy-turvy, upside down

  tolbooth—courthouse, jail

  unchancie—dangerous, risky

  wasna—was not

  wheest—quiet, hush, to hold one’s tongue

  willna—will not

  wouldna—would not

  1

  Nae man can tether time or tide.

  Robert Burns

  Isle of Kerrera, Scotland, 1752

  As the sun slid from the sky, Lark pressed her back into the pockmarked cliff on the island’s west shore. The sea stretched before her like an indigo coverlet, a great many foam-flecked waves tossing gannets about. A south wind tore at her unbound hair, waving it like a crimson flag, as crimson as the fine cloth she’d seen smuggled ashore the previous night. These free-trading times were steeped in danger. Countless moonlit liaisons and trysts. Sand-filled shoes and sleepless nights. How oft she’d prayed an end to it all.

  On this breathless May eve, the only aggravation was the sting of tiny midges as night closed in—and the thickset Jillian Brody as she bumped into Lark and nearly sent her off the cliff’s edge.

  “Look smart, aye? There’s tax men about.”

  “I pray not,” Lark breathed, craning her neck to take in the sweeping coastal headland that could only be called majestic. She wouldn’t tell Jillian she was more addlepated about the handsome captain of the Merry Lass than the chancy smuggling run, and that she braved the midnight hour to gain but a glimpse of him or his ship.

  “Yer not out here for the same reasons as the rest o’ us.” Jillian managed to stand akimbo, hands fisted on her ample hips despite the path’s ribbon-like lip. “What’s this I hear about ye refusin’ to help bring in the haul?”

  “My conscience smote me,” Lark told her. “I canna be in the business of stealing even if it betters the poor.”

  “Hoot!” Jillian spat the word out as the night wind began a queer keening, lifting the edges of their plaid shawls. “Yer fellow islanders are not so high and mighty. Be off wi’ ye then.”

  The dismissal, though said in spite, was gladly heeded. Lark turned and hastened away, stepping ably along the path though ’twas nearing midnight. Darkness didn’t fall till late, which left precious little time for the free traders to do their work in the smothering safety of night.

  Tense, she climbed upwards, casting a glance over her shoulder at the beach now and again. But this long, miserly eve brought no goods ashore, nor a handsome captain home again, and so she entered the wee cottage no bigger than a cowshed, its humble stone her home since birth. Only she and her granny fussed with the peat fire and kept a-simmer the kettle of porridge or soup, which always seemed to taste of smoke. She washed up before donning a worn nightgown, then all but fell into the box bed, exhausted.