The Bastard (Golden Chances #1)

A fast-moving, dramatic California saga about the people--Spanish, Anglo, Mexican and Indian who struggled, fought, made mistakes, loved and survived to build the foundations of the Golden State:

The Bastard
The Interloper
The Dancer
The Rebel
The Fixer
The Deceiver
The Wild Card .

Diarmid Burwash felt the heat of the fire before he saw the flames stretching their scarlet and gold tentacles toward him. Scarlet and gold, gules and or, heart and lion, and he the stranger-in-blood who had no right to any of it. Not to his father's coat-of-arms, to the family motto, nor even to the name.

* * *

Diarmid lay rolled in his blankets on the rough wood floor, face toward the dying embers of the night fire, glowing red eyes that winked slyly at him as if to deny they were real embers from a real fire. His mother was dead these six years, he wasn't in county Ross, thank God, he was thousands of miles from Scotland.
Not only across the ocean but across all the forests and plains of America to California where gold lay in the streams like sand.

* * *

Diarmid clenched his fists. Bastard or not, he'd had a right to that land! There was no denying he was the spit and image of his father, dark they both were, hair, eyes and coloring. Little difference that had made after his father died. Malcolm Burwash was scarcely cold in his grave before The McLeod had proclaimed a bastard such as Diarmid had no rights and seized the land for himself. When fourteen-year-old Diarmid tried to fight The McLeod’s armed men, they'd knocked him senseless and fired the cottage. Watching all their belongings go up in flames had killed his mother.

Diarmid Malcolm Burwash was the only survivor. A thin smile twisted his lips. Survive he would until the time came to meet The McLeod in hell and settle the score. In the meantime, he'd find his own land. In California.