Finley had just reached the opening to the cache when she gave a short, hoarse scream and her hands slipped from their holds.
“Finley!” Lachlan shouted and braced himself. Even if it killed him, he would not let her body touch the stone floor.
But before her skirts could billow, before her arms stretched out in flight, a thin appendage, like a tree branch, shot from the opening of the cache and seized Finley by some upper part of her and snatched her into the side of the cliff as quickly and efficiently as a spider drawing its prey into the cage of its body. The stone shaft was tomb silent for a heartbeat of time, and then a hellish yowling filled the channel, bouncing from the rock, swelling with echoes, raising the hair on Lachlan’s neck.
He leaped onto the stone ladder three handholds up and ascended as if it was of no more effort than walking down a cobbled lane. He was level with the cache in a moment, and yet the screaming did not cease even for an instant. He didn’t know of a creature that could hold its breath for so long.
At least if it was screaming, it wasn’t eating Finley.
Lachlan threw himself onto the stone ledge, already shouting her name. “Finley! Finley! Fin—”
He understood at once why the screaming had gone on and on—it wasn’t only the creature vocalizing fear and outrage, but Finley, too, was shouting, each one leaving it to the other to carry on while they drew renewed breath. Little wonder the result was so piercing and discordant; it sounded like two cats lashed together inside a kettle.
“Stop! Stop!” Lachlan shouted, scrambling to his feet to step to the center of the small chamber between where Finley and the—man?—were crouched, each with their back to a wall of stone or piled goods, each staring across the stone floor as if looking upon a demon from the very depths of hell itself.
“Stop!” Lachlan roared. His own chest still heaved within the uneasy silence buffeted by gasps and sniffles. He looked to Finley. “Are you hurt?”
She wouldn’t take her eyes from the man, but she shook her head.
Lachlan turned at last toward the person crouched to his right and had to steel himself against an exclamation of shock. It was a man, or perhaps at one time had been a man. Only a score of thin, greasy black strands crossed the top of his head, and his long, thin, knobby fingers, like fat buds on winter-emaciated twigs in spring curled up over his temples and the blackened ovals of his fingernails pressed into the skin at his crown.
His eyes bulged like eggs in his face, his lips and cheeks billowing in and out like sails with the effort of his breaths. He was dressed in an ancient tunic, impossibly long and impossibly dirty, and for an instant Lachlan’s mind went to the image he held of his grandfather, Archibald Blair. The tunic sagged between the man’s knees to the floor between his raw skin boots, and his knees were like skulls themselves, disproportionately large in comparison with his skeletal legs, the creases and follicles stained by what was perhaps peat.
“Finley, do you know this man?” Lachlan glanced at her only long enough to see her head shake slightly again. “All right, friend,” Lachlan said softly. “We’re nae going to harm you. I’m in your debt for saving—”he paused for half a heartbeat; my wife? my woman?—“my lass, here.”
The man’s eyes watched Lachlan while he spoke, narrowing more and more until they were barely slits in his leathery face. Then they opened so wide, Lachlan wondered that they didn’t come free from his face altogether.
“Tommy?” he whispered. “Tommy, ’s’it you?”
Lachlan froze. The only Tommy he knew was—
“Do you mean…Thomas Annesley?”
The man dipped his head, like a seabird swallowing a fish. “Have I changed so much that you doona recognize me?” He edged up to a crouch on his feet and then hesitantly stood straighter, although he didn’t entirely rid himself of his stooped posture, and Lachlan didn’t know if the affectation was physical or mental.
“You seem to barely have aged, Tommy,” the man whispered, sidling nearer, reaching up a hand hesitantly and then drawing it back. “I thought you…I thought…” He reached out again, and this time touched the very upper part of Lachlan’s temple; he only felt the brush of it on his hair. “I thought you was dead. But you doona bear even a scar. Where’ve ye been, Tommy?”
“I’m not Tommy,” Lachlan said, and his voice sounded queer to his own ears. Did he look so much like the man who sired him? No one had ever mentioned such a thing to him. “My name is Lachlan Blair.”
The man cried out and fell backward, as if he’d been shot, skittering away from Lachlan until he crashed into a wall of piled crates and stacks of unknown composition, causing some of them to topple and slide and tumble over the edge. Splintering and breaking sounds echoed up from below.
“You’re a Blair?” the man said in a horrified whisper and glanced at the edge of the cache as if considering following the detritus over the side.
“Finley?” Lachlan called out.
“What do you expect me to do?” Finley edged into his line of vision, holding her slight, white hand out toward the man. “It’s all right, it’s all right,” she encouraged. “He’ll nae harm you, even if he is a stinking Blair.” She glanced up at Lachlan, and then turned her full attention once more to the man clutching at the crates at his back, seemingly preparing to climb through the chamber’s stone ceiling at any moment.
“I’m Finley. Carson. Me da’s Rory Carson, an elder in the town. Do you know him? Are you Carson?”
The man didn’t reply, but at least he had ceased destroying the ancient stacks behind him.
“Good,” Lachlan said. “Keep talking.”
Finley inched closer. “Have you been staying here? In the cliff? It must be cold in the nights.”
He shook his head hesitantly and then glanced toward the corner, where black remains were piled. “I’ve a fire. No one sees the smoke.”
“Well, that’s good,” Finley said, and lowered herself to a cross-legged seat, pulling her skirts down over her knees. “What’s your name?”
The man looked back at Lachlan, and the terror in his big eyes was very clear. “He’ll tell,” he rasped. “He’s a Blair and he’ll tell them. He’ll tell the chief I’ve been hiding all these years.”
“He willna,” Finley rushed, leaning slightly to put herself into his range of vision and gain his attention once more. “He is a Blair, but he and I are married. He lives in Carson Town now.”
The man glanced accusingly at Lachlan again. “He lives here.”
“He sleeps here, aye,” Finley allowed. “But he willna tell anyone anything you doona wish him to.” She looked up at Lachlan again. “Will you, Lachlan?”
“You’ve my word,” Lachlan said at once.
The man looked between them anxiously, and it was clear he wasn’t yet convinced of his safety. And so Lachlan made a fast decision—the only thing he could think of that might possibly instill some trust in him from the man.
“I couldn’t tell Archibald anything even if I wished to; he’s dead. And while I am called Lachlan Blair, Thomas Annesley was my father.”
“The chief is dead?” The man stilled and brought both filthy, thin palms up to cover his mouth and squeezed his eyes shut. He rocked himself slightly and took a long, jagged inhalation through his nose. Then, in a blink, he had crawled across the floor of the stone chamber and wrapped his arms around Lachlan’s legs, sobbing, “Edna’s son, Edna’s son.”
Lachlan looked down at Finley and tossed his head pointedly at the man who had attached himself to him. She threw out her hands in exasperation and then, with a roll of her eyes, turned on her hip, scooting closer to the man, and hesitantly lying her hand on the bony prominence of his shoulder.
“Shh,” she said. “It’s going to be all right.” She patted him until he had quieted and turned his head against Lachlan’s knees to face her. “There you are. Hello. Can you tell us your name now?”
He gave a noisy sniff and then swallowed before speaking in a hoarse voice. “Geordie,” the old man said. “I’m Geordie Blair.”
* * * *
Geordie sat in the brush of the wood, the skirt of his old tunic stretched across his knees and filled with the roasted nuts he’d brought with him into his hiding place. He’d stopped crying at last, he knew, because he could clearly see the nutmeats as the shells cracked open against the hilt, and then the broken tip of his knife, and also because his cheeks had the stretched-tight feeling left by a wash of salty tears now dried up.
They’d taken so many of his friends. Would have taken Edna, too. Thanks be to God he still had her in the town, even if she was cross and shouting at everyone most of the time. She never shouted at Geordie. Edna was very sad now, just like him, and Geordie reckoned they both would be sad for a good long while.
He bit down on the walnut flesh, soft and bitter and still slightly green-tasting, and chewed it to a pulp. He didn’t understand why his friends had wanted to go with the Englishman and be servants in his house, any matter. Northumberland—he didn’t even know where that was. It couldn’t be so nice as here, with the mountain and the loch and the wood and all their family. But Harrell had said there would be more food for them in Northumberland, and more food to go around in the town now, too. Lots more.
Blairs is poor, Geordie-boy; you know that. Poor and starving.
Acras.
Geordie didn’t care; he would have shared his part with them all if they’d just stayed. He’d thought perhaps Tommy Annesley would have been his best friend of all, the way he’d listened to Geordie and not shushed him or called him “daft bugger” or “runt” or “fool.” Edna liked Tommy very much, too. But Tommy didn’t choose to leave, so it weren’t his fault, Geordie reckoned. Tommy was dead, his skull bashed in on the hillside by them mean, greedy Carsons.
His chin flinched and his vision grew watery at the remembrance of it, and he would have descended into weeping again had it not been for the crashing sounds of someone approaching in the underbrush. Geordie turned his head and listened, and the sound grew louder and closer, the arrhythmic crunching hinting that there was more than one person sharing this corner of the wood with Geordie.
“It must be tonight.” Harrell’s voice; Geordie recognized.
“Good God, Harrell, they’re still buryin’ their dead.” That was Archibald. “Give the bastards at least the night.”
“Sure, give them the courtesy they’ve nae shown us,” Harrell taunted, and his voice was rough, not the way he usually spoke to the chief. It made Geordie feel sick in his belly. “They torched the boats with our own aboard.”
Geordie’s mouth fell open and his temples ached at trying to make sense of what Harrell was saying. Did he mean the Englishman’s boats? The boats his friends had gone on?
“And you would have had Edna going with them!” Archibald accused.
“Hargrave would have made it worth yer while—he said as much. Look here.”
Geordie leaned down to peek through the brown and red dying leaves to see Harrell handing a sack to the chief.
Archibald took it. “What’s this?”
“Yer share. Payment for us finding Hargrave such fine servants.”
Archibald was quiet for a long moment. “You…sold them, Harrell?”
“They went willingly, did they nae?” Harrell argued. “They was lookin’ for a better life than what they’d had. They chose to leave, Archibald. They get what they deserve, if ye was to ask me.”
Geordie didn’t see Archibald’s hand striking Harrell’s face, but he well recognized the sharp crack of skin on skin.
“You’re a disgrace to this clan,” Archibald gasped.
In a moment, Harrell had seized the chief by his tunic and jerked him up close to his face. “Am I, Archie? Am I?” He shook Archibald, but Geordie didn’t think of going to the chief’s rescue; he could call to mind too many times when Archibald himself had laid hands upon Geordie, usually as a result of things that were none of his own doing.
“Seems to me it’s yer precious Edna that’s played ye false. I only tried to turn it to our advantage. For the clan.” He shook him again, then Harrell shoved the chief away so roughly that Archibald fell to the leaves on his arsey-parsey, as Edna always called it.
“We have but one chance to take the upper hand with the Carsons,” Harrell continued, coming to stand over the half-reclined chief. “We gather the fine and ride in an hour, and we tell them we’re willing to make a treaty so that Vaughn Hargrave willna return. We take the river, the salmon. We take the wood. We take whatever else we want in the whole of that town, and then we tell them that if they take on cargo from another merchant ship in the bay, Hargrave will hear about it. It’s time the Blairs prospered, and I mean to see ye stand up to it, Archibald.”
“They’ll never agree,” Archibald rasped.
“Sure, they will,” Harrell said. “I might have been rough on ye tonight, Archie, but ye’ll soon see that I’ve done it for yer own good. For the good of us all. And when the treaty’s agreed to, and all’s quieted, ye’ll consider me for your Edna.”
“I canna do that, Harrell. She knew Tommy. She told me they—”
Harrell leaned down and picked up the sack Archibald had dropped and tossed it to the man’s chest, where it landed with a tinkle.
“I’ll nae be needing any dowry, then.”
Geordie’s rage threatened to deafen him, his thoughts buzzing so loudly in his head. He shot to his feet, the nut shells falling to the ground, and he burst from the brush toward the two men.
“Nay! Nay!” he shouted, swinging his arms in great circles, hoping he could get close enough for just one blow before Harrell stopped him with a fist. “You canna have Edna! You’ve done enough! Yer bad, Harrell! Yer bad!”
He expected the clout to land at any moment, but Harrell only grabbed hold of his wrists, jerking him to a stop, and struggling to hold him at arm’s length while Archibald scrambled to his feet.
“Now hold on there, Geordie-boy,” Harrell grunted while he struggled. “Hold on there. What are ye on about? Ye must have misheard.”
“I didna mishear nothin’, Harrell Blair,” Geordie shouted. “You sold my friends to…you sold them for coin! That English coin! An’…an’…” He jerked himself free at last and stumbled back a pair of steps. “Now they’re dead! Dead o’ fire! Just like all them Carsons—dead o’ fire! Dead like my friend Tommy! And you got coin for them!”
He turned his eyes to Archibald. “Say you willna let him have Edna, Chief. You canna. Nay. I’ll tell her.” He swung his glare back to Harrell. “I’ll tell Edna what you done, and then she’ll never want you. Never-never!”
“Och, Geordie-boy, calm yourself,” Archibald said in a shaky voice, running his fingers back through his graying hair. “There’s naught to tell anyone. You didna hear right, is all.”
“I did hear right,” he said, stumbling backward. “I’m not a fool and I did hear right!”
Harrell and Archibald shared a glance, and Geordie knew all too well the meaning of it. He turned and ran, intending to gain the town and shout for Edna’s help, but the town was on the other side of Harrell Blair, and Geordie found himself running down, downhill through the wood, leaping over logs, sliding through the leaves, blocking Harrell’s shouts from his pounding ears.
He ran and ran, until at last the rickety old bridge to Carson Town was in sight, and the roar of the falls pushed the air around him like invisible waves. He could still smell the smoke on the air from the smoldering town, and occasionally little flakes of ash swirled in the air like dry, dirty snow. Geordie dashed onto the treacherous bridge and froze in the middle, clinging to the rope as Harrell heaved to a stop on the end.
He stepped carefully onto the bridge. “Now, Geordie-boy, doona be running off like that. If ye’d have waited, I could have told ye it was all right. Yer right.”
“I’m right.”
“Aye.” Harrell moved closer. “I willna take Edna from ye. And I’ll tell the town all that was done. They’ll understand. Ye’ll see. We’ll all share the coin.” He was standing next to Geordie now. “Come back with me, Geordie-boy.”
Geordie looked down at his offered hand, the wide-gapped teeth of the bridge planks burring in and out of focus beneath his palm. The water from the loud, loud falls misted around them, the ash whirled on the soot-scented wind.
Geordie had first laid eyes on Tommy on this very bridge.
“I doona trust you, Harrell.”
“Och, now.” Harrell Blair smiled. “Maybe yer nae so dumb after all.”
And then Geordie was falling through the mist, turning, turning. The water was cold, but only for an instant, and then the top of his head was very hot. But it didn’t matter that he was wet because he was going to sleep.
* * * *
Neither Finley nor Lachlan said anything as they made their way to the lower chamber of the old house’s storeroom. Lachlan descended first and then reached up to take the lamp and her cloak, and then guided Finley down as she slid over the rounded, sandy lip on her stomach. She couldn’t help the awareness of his strong fingers pressing into her waist in the moment before he released her and turned away to resurrect the fire.
Finley sat on the edge of Lachlan’s pallet in the flickering shadows of the lamp and pulled her cloak up over her legs and to her chin, watching him stoke the blaze. Her mind whirled with the disjointed bits Geordie Blair had just told them. If any of it was even partly true…
The fire grew taller, warming the small storeroom and giving it a cozy glow that Finley very much needed. Lachlan turned on one knee and then sat back on his foot, resting an arm across his stomach. He was staring through the flames, but Finley didn’t think he really saw her. He was lost in thoughts, perhaps of the past. Perhaps of the future.
And Finley reckoned she didn’t play into either one of those circumstances. For Lachlan, Finley was only his inconvenient present.
She pushed herself farther back on the pallet and pulled up her feet beneath the cloak. It was surprisingly pleasant to lean against the cliff wall and watch Lachlan watching the fire with his furrowed brow, his smell wafting up from his blankets all around her, like the fragrance of summer from warm sand. Her muscles were already stiffening from the climb and the shock of nearly falling to her death, and the sight of him with the glow of the fire flickering over the planes and angles of his handsome face soothed her, pushed the troublesome worries of her own future from her mind.
There were two other people in the old house this night who had burdens far heavier than hers.
“I have to take him back,” Lachlan half-muttered.
“Geordie?” Finley whispered, and then glanced up at the passageway to the upper chamber as if he might overhear their conversation. “He’s frightened to death of Harrell, Lachlan. He’ll nae go. Or worse, he’ll run off, and then where would you be? I canna believe he survived the falls in the first place, never mind all these years alone on his own. What that must do to a person…”
Lachlan’s generous mouth pressed into a line. “There’s no one else who knows what he does. No one else who can confront Harrell before the fine with the truth.”
“Do you think it will matter if he does?” Finley pressed, even as an uncomfortable feeling sank into her middle. “The man’s clearly…I mean, he’s been alone for such a long time. Perhaps it’s affected his thinking—his memories, even.”
“Perhaps it has,” Lachlan agreed. “I’ve heard Geordie’s name mentioned, although it’s been years now. But never by Harrell or my grandfather. Everyone at Town Blair has thought him dead, all these years.” He stared at the fire again. “I’ve got to find someone to corroborate his tale, and Murdoch’s been avoiding me.” His brows lowered even further.
“Aye, Murdoch does tend to disappear now and again. There’s my father, though he didn’t return to Carson Town until—” Finley broke off as Lachlan bolted to his feet and rushed toward the pallet, plunging his hands beneath the makeshift mattress and causing Finley to skitter back against the cliff wall.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“Not someone to corroborate the tale,” he muttered as he rummaged beneath the lumpy cushion. “Something.” He withdrew his arm, and there was a long, cloth-wrapped object in his hand. Lachlan got to his feet only long enough to turn and perch on the edge of the pallet, and Finley pulled herself next to him as he unwrapped the mysterious item.
“What is it?” she asked as the dull metal of a sheath was revealed.
Lachlan tossed the cloth aside and held the dagger point up across his chest. “Carson steel,” he said, and then reached up with his right forefinger and tapped the brooch on his shawl.
Finley leaned forward to examine both pieces and gasped as she recognized the identical pattern. Then she reached up and slid the dagger from his hand. Lachlan let it go easily, and this time it was he who moved closer to look over her shoulder as Finley settled back on her hip and turned over the sheath in her hand.
“Did it come from the cache?” she asked.
“Nay; Dand brought it to me the first day we took the sheep up to graze,” Lachlan answered, and his breath was warm on her neck, his low voice tickling her eardrum with its deep resonance. “He came upon Harrell tearing apart Archibald’s house, searching for something. Dand later found this, hidden in a wall.”
Finley turned her head and was nearly nose to nose with Lachlan. “Thomas Annesley’s, you think.”
“Possibly. Where did my brooch come from?”
Finley felt her brows raise in surprise. “It was my mother’s, of course. Received on her own wedding day. But neither she nor my da’s ever said anything about it having a twin in a dagger.”
“Hmm.” He was lost in thought again, and Finley could see every pore and line and dark hair on his face. Such a combination of rough and smooth. She wondered what it would be like to slide her hand along his jaw…
“I’ll show it to Murdoch tomorrow,” he muttered. “If I can find him. He must know something.” Then he blinked, bringing his thoughts back to the present and meeting Finley’s gaze once more.
“But you won’t tell him about Geordie, will you?” Finley pressed. “Lachlan, you gave your word.”
“I won’t,” he promised, seeming to search her eyes for something he expected her to be or say or do. Finley wished she knew what it was he wanted. “I’m glad you came with me tonight,” he said. “We’re friends now, are we nae?”
Finley barely nodded. “How can we nae be?” She felt an inexorable pulling sensation in her middle, as if some magnetic force was drawing her closer to Lachlan Blair, a force she couldn’t resist.
Now he was closer to her, too, so perhaps this force was pulling him as well. Or pushing him. But when he closed the distance between their mouths, pressing her lips with his, bringing his hand up to cradle the back of her head and deepen the kiss while the Carson dagger rested between their hearts, Finley realized that Lachlan himself was the force.
Finley felt every bone, every muscle in her body with exquisite detail, heard the rushing of her blood in her veins, pulsing like the roar of the falls above the bridge. It was a new world spread before her to discover; it was an ancient secret, her palm brushing away the centuries in a sparkling cloud to understand the very meaning of her existence. It was magical and mundane; made law by their marriage vows and also forbidden by their own agreement with each other.
Finley’s world changed with the mingling of their breath.
Lachlan pulled away and yet stayed near, his thumb stroking her hair back and forth.
“Do friends kiss like that?” she whispered.
“Probably not,” he admitted with his wry grin. His hand fell away from her scalp, and the chill rushed in maliciously to replace his warmth as he rose from the pallet. “I’ll sleep on the floor.”
“Nay,” she said, her head swimming with confusion and excitement and sadness, and she gained her feet. “I’ll go.” He started to protest, but she cut him off. “I’d not have my parents searching for me in the morning and take the chance of Geordie being discovered.”
“He’s managed to stay hidden for thirty years,” Lachlan argued, his hands on his hips causing him to look oddly unsure of himself. “Are you afraid I’ll kiss you again?”
“I’m not afraid of anything,” she said and stood before him, presenting the dagger to him across her palms. She looked up into his face, and perhaps now she understood what he had been looking for in her eyes.
Who was Lachlan Blair to her? Who would he be to her in the future? Did he care? Should she?
“I’ll see you in the morning,” she said.
Lachlan wrapped his fingers around the sheath and took it, not meeting her eyes. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—let me walk you back.”
She shook her head and then did what she’d been longing to all evening: She reached up and placed her hand along his jaw, her skin breaking out in gooseflesh again at the warm, prickly feel of him against her palm. She smiled at him.
“You didn’t take advantage of me, Lachlan,” she said. “And even if you had…we are married.”
His eyes smoldered. “Stop.”
Her smile grew, triumphant that she had gained the upper hand at last. “Good night,” she said pointedly. She turned and ducked out of the storeroom, running lightly through the cavernous hall until she burst through the wide, arched entrance of the old house, beneath the sky pricked with countless blazing stars.
The village below was dark. Everyone was asleep, oblivious to the secret Finley had discovered tonight and was walking away from, back to the old farm.
Not Geordie Blair; no, no.
Finley Carson was in love with Lachlan Blair.