Abby cast her gaze down the length of the long table slowly filling with the senior clansman of each of the seventeen families that made up Clan Kerr as well as the eleven that made up Rosston’s sept. Twenty-eight identical chairs, twenty-eight caped footmen prepared to serve at an instant’s notice. Abby met each set of eyes carefully, just as she’d watched her father do. The tapestries that lined the walls, fading with time, reminded the men of the glory of Clan Kerr, and the swords, glinting in lethal circles on the walls and ceiling, reminded them how that glory had been won.
There was one set of eyes Abby was careful to avoid, though the owner of those eyes was sitting not at the table, but just inside the door at the far end of the room. Undine’s divining was the last thing Abby needed on this disastrous day. She knew well enough she’d been a fool to give in to the heady rush of a sword fight. She’d grown up around warriors. She was as familiar as anyone with the aphrodisiacal powers of battle. She didn’t need Undine’s prying gaze searching for the truth, like some uninvited surgeon digging through her head and heart.
But aphrodisiacs are curious things. Just like the infernal powder that had summoned MacHarg, they couldn’t always be counted on to behave in the way one desired.
What she’d wanted this morning was to strut off from the fight, heady with victory, having forced MacHarg to his knees. What she got instead was his knees between her legs.
Flashes of heat exploded on her cheek and another in her belly.
She’d had men before—a lad who’d called her his wild Scottish rose, a prince in Paris, even a sympathetic English officer once—more out of curiosity than desire. She’d had her curiosity satisfied and even occasionally her body. But nothing had felt like those heated iron arms on her today or smelled like the scent of sea air that seemed to permeate MacHarg’s skin. And nothing, nothing had ever been like the driving hunger with which they seized those moments.
He was a risk in every sense of the word—too smart to be the addle-brained interloper she’d first thought he was and not quite smart enough to be an enemy spy, he begot more questions than he answered.
Of course, look where your instincts got you this morning.
She had almost welcomed the unhappy news delivered by Nab, who had pelted across the hilly path to intercept her on her way back to the castle. It had focused her mind where it belonged—on her clan, not on the distractions of sword fights and summer swains.
The last clansman bowed and took his seat.
She rubbed a thumb against the inside of her palm, wishing for the reassuring, worn beech of her bow. With her weapon, she was the equal of the men in the room. Without it, she was forced into the position of their superior, a role in which she was far less comfortable.
She spread her hands and placed them on the table.
“A report has reached me,” she said, “of English soldiers amassing at the border.”
The men quieted instantly. Many looked surprised.
Cathal Kerr asked, “Was this the report ye received last night?”
“No.”
Murgo Kerr leaned forward. “Do ye intend to act?”
The eternal conflict between men of war and a woman of a more tempered mind. The question was more than a question. It was the first volley in a familiar blood sport where the clansmen were one team and she another. But this time, she would prevail.
“No, Murgo. I dinna. I intend to do absolutely nothing.”
* * *
Duncan shoved himself past the guards outside the Great Hall door, hardly troubling himself to wrestle his arms from their grasp, though even he had to admit the trouble would have been quick in coming had not a clansman at Abby’s table jumped to his feet at the same instant and shouted, “Have you lost your mind, woman?”
Stunned into stillness, the guards stared, mouths agape, and Duncan, instantly ready to launch the offending clansman into a different zip code, made it over the threshold before a cool touch on his knee brought him to a full stop.
“This is her battle,” whispered Undine, who was sitting by the door.
He didn’t know how she’d stopped him. He’d felt only the lightest touch.
“I’m her strong arm,” he said.
“Not yet, MacHarg. Not yet.”
Abby’s shoulders trembled as she regarded the offending clansman, and the hard, blue ice in her eyes made it clear the tremble’s origin was fury not embarrassment.
“Sit down, Murgo,” she commanded.
Take care, Abby, Duncan thought, his heart pained to see her tested like this. Anger can be as debilitating to a leader as timidity.
Her fiery stare didn’t waver, and Duncan swore she grew half a foot.
One by one, the other clansmen, whether out of disagreement with Murgo’s tactic or pure discomfort, dropped their gazes. Not Murgo, though. Duncan would have jumped out of his skin had Abby pointed such a glare at him. After what seemed like an hour, Murgo wilted and dropped into his chair.
Duncan tried to catch Abby’s attention, to signal his readiness to assist, but her eyes flicked past him as if he were a hat rack. Dammit. He might not be the world’s finest swordsman, but he’d managed to best her at least, and, in any case, he could take on any man in this room with his fists.
He took a step closer, and the warning in her eyes stopped him.
“I dinna intend to act,” she said, addressing the clansmen, “because I am in possession of information that ye are not. Robby, open the side doors.” She nodded to one of the footmen, who did as she commanded.
In streamed several dozen boys, none more than ten, clearly awed at being invited to enter the esteemed gathering.
The looks on the older clansmen’s faces, however, ranged from confusion to shock.
One of the smallest boys, who looked about four, ran to a nearby man and clutched his legs. “Da!”
Abby said, “I have gathered your youngest sons and grandsons here to witness our council—twenty-eight in all, one boy from each family.”
Some boys climbed onto the laps of their relatives, others stood alongside.
“Welcome, lads,” Abby said warmly. “Let this serve as your first introduction to the workings of the clan.”
Abby, however, was the only adult remotely close to smiling. Duncan felt the back of his neck tingle.
“We were talking about the English army,” she said in the same tone a much-loved teacher would use. “The clan has received a report—well, I did, to be clear—that the army is doing a little sword rattling over the border to scare us. However, I have a source who is very close to the English army and, like I, values peace in the borderlands. He knows some things that no one else knows.”
“A spy!” whispered one obviously thrilled boy, who was immediately shushed by his father.
“That’s correct, Charlie, a spy. This spy has put his life on the line many times to help our clan. His information is sterling. He is paid nothing for his risk. You must never pay a spy. A spy who works for gold can be bought by the highest bidder.”
Charlie nodded, wide-eyed.
“This spy assured me the sword rattling is a mute-show meant to prod our clan into an attack. The army is under strict orders from old Queen Anne not to stir up trouble during the negotiations to unite our countries. I believe the spy, so Clan Kerr will not be mounting an attack—nor will any other clan whose chief I can convince. And yet, someone in this room, someone who is not a clan chief, took it upon himself to decide what this clan should do. Men?”
The men at the table looked at each other, uncertain what response she was asking for. It turned out, however, the men in Abby’s directive were not the men at the table, but the footmen at the perimeter of the room, who each drew a short sword from a sheath on the wall and pointed it directly at the back of the man seated before him.
The men leaped to their feet, tossing boys to the ground, but none had arms to respond.
Abby said, “I should like every man here who is sworn to my leadership to raise his hand now. Lads, you too. No one is too young to make this vow.”
The boys, deciding perhaps this was part of the ceremony, lifted their hands at once. The men’s hands rose more hesitantly, but each did rise. Undine flicked Duncan’s leg with a fingernail, and he lifted his hand, belatedly remembering he, too, was a part of this now.
“One of you, unfortunately, is a liar,” Abby said. “One of you, upon hearing the news of the English army’s sword rattling, decided to take matters into your own hands this morning. You gathered your sons. You went to the border intending to stir up trouble. And you turned back when realized you weren’t prepared for what you saw. I do not blame your sons. What, after all, is a loving child to do when his father commands him? But you…you are spineless and false. Do ye have the courage to admit your treachery?”
The men stared blankly, but the boys were enthralled, save one—a lad of six or seven, who looked up, terrified, into the shifting eyes of his bearded father.
The man squeezed his son’s shoulders, and the boy steeled himself. Duncan didn’t know what was going to happen next, but he knew he wanted Abby to look to him for help. He made his way to where she stood. The fire in her eyes nearly set him ablaze, but he took his place beside her.
“Repeat your oath before God.” Her voice filled the hall. “All of you—if you dare.”
The men repeated words in Gaelic Duncan didn’t recognize. His grand-da had tried to teach him the language, but Duncan had had no interest and knew only the everyday phrases he’d heard his mother and grand-da say. He recognized only two words in the oath: blood and death.
The bearded man did not move or speak. But at a pause in the oath, when the other men pressed their hands to their hearts, the man closed his eyes for a long instant. Then he opened them and launched himself through the open door, leaving his son behind.
The footmen, stock-still, waited for Abby’s command.
Duncan grabbed her arm. “Choose me,” he said.
She shook her arm free. “Sit down.”
“No.” He hardened himself against her gaze.
“Damn you,” she said, and Duncan knew she’d given in. “Go! Make him repent.”