Dair settled for the night with his back against the cart’s wheel and his sword and a polishing cloth in hand. The position gave him an unobstructed view of his surroundings and granted him the best possible chance of protecting the women sleeping within the outcropping of rocks behind him. The natural formation was both a shelter and a barrier on one side, while he and the cart were the same on the other. He expected the night to prove a long one. Not due to his not sleeping, but because the moment he sat, every unanswered question that had filled his mind since they’d reached Mortlach tormented him and only led to another.
What or who had prevented Euan from purchasing Keila’s ale, and why had the innkeeper not given them a room and then offered one to Dair? Why had no one bought their goods or stopped to talk with Keila and Moira at market? He’d witnessed it all from his vantage point within the trees above the well, and all the while he’d wanted to stride down and lift every man and woman and deposit them before Keila and Moira and their cart of goods. Watching them being ignored had been like suffering an open, festering wound in his chest. He’d wanted to fix the problem. He’d wanted his unfamiliar feelings of helplessness to end.
He’d had his horse and his sword, but this problem was different from any he’d encountered in the Borders and his usual methods of dealing with problems wouldn’t suffice here.
And then Leith of Drummin Castle had slid into view and Dair’s dislike of the man had him rethinking whether he could indeed use his usual methods in this particular instance.
The place deep down in his gut that had saved his neck more than once told him that Leith was involved, but Dair didn’t know exactly how. Though the why could be easily answered now he knew Keila had refused Leith’s suit. And if Leith of Drummin was as greedy and as ruthless as Moira purported him to be, Dair didn’t believe all the protection money in the whole of Scotland would be enough to appease Keila’s rejection.
A small noise from within the makeshift shelter alerted him that one of the women was awake.
‘May I join you?’
Dair recognised the lilting tones of Keila’s voice and welcomed the sudden jolt of pleasure that tempered the growing chill at his recent thoughts. ‘Aye. You’ll need to crawl beneath the cart to reach here.’
He placed his weapon close by and crouched beside the wheel, waiting until Keila’s darkened form emerged from under the timber tray of the cart. ‘Here, take my hand.’
She fumbled in the dark for a moment while her fingers searched and then latched onto his. Her hand was so small captured within his, but she’d proven size had naught to do with her strength of will. He’d seen for himself that her aim was true, and her decision not to give in without a fight proved her courage immense. Dair stood and helped her straighten.
‘My thanks.’ Despite her words of gratitude, her fingers remained in his for another moment. Or perhaps her reluctance to release his hand stemmed from wishful thinking on his part.
Dair stepped back and allowed his gaze to trace the dark outline of her slender form against the rest of the night.
‘The fires still burn. I hope nae one has been harmed.’
He hoped so too. In the Borders he’d seen several victims left blackened, their flesh peeled and raw after a fire, and had later heard the pain they’d suffered was beyond agony. He kept such thoughts to himself. ‘I thought you were sleeping.’
Dair heard her heavy sigh. ‘I thought I would be, too. I’m pleased Moira is. I fear I kept her awake last night with my restlessness, while tonight it is only my thoughts and memories of the chase that stop me from sleeping.’
‘Do you want to talk about it?’
‘Nae. ’Tis too soon. I don’t want to relive it again just yet.’ Another long inhalation and then. ‘I’d rather talk about you.’
It wasn’t often Dair was surprised, but Keila managed to catch him off guard. ‘I am not something I talk about often.’
‘Nae, but you must be pleased you can now remember everything.’
‘Aye.’ A twinge of guilt prickled his nape that he’d known his name all along. ‘Here, sit.’ He lifted a square of linen that lined one of the few remaining baskets and spread it on the grass before the cart’s wheel he’d been resting against.
She settled on the cloth. ‘Was Mortlach Inn the one you’d last visited?’
‘Aye.’ He hadn’t known it was until he’d seen the inn again.
‘Do you want to talk about the attack, or is it too soon now your memory has returned?’
Dair settled on the grass close by, facing outward so he could keep a watch over their surroundings. ‘I still don’t know who attacked me or why, only that I’m certain there were several attackers. There is naught else to discuss until I learn more.’
‘Perhaps it will help if we talk about what brought you to Mortlach in the first place.’
Dair honestly didn’t talk about himself often, but sharing with Keila his reasons for being in the Highlands somehow seemed right. ‘Mortlach Inn is one of many Highland inns I have visited since last winter’s end, and not due to me having a penchant for ale.’ He smiled. ‘You know my name is Adair,’ he paused, ‘Dair to those who know me well, but that is also as much as I know.’ He looked directly at Keila, despite not being able to see her. ‘I’ve come to the Highlands to find out who I am.’ What would she think about him now? ‘It sounds like an odd thing to do when spoken out loud.’
‘I don’t think it sounds odd at all. You’ve come to the Highlands from where?’
‘I grew up in the Borders.’ He lifted his sword and pulled the cloth from his waistband and began polishing the steel.
‘The Borders are so very far from here.’
Dair smiled. ‘Nae too far.’
‘What is it like there?’
Dair ceased polishing and peered out into the darkness as he recalled what it was like in the Borders. Images of the people he knew and had grown up with filled his head. Faces he missed. Duff and Cal, Lachlan and his wife Kenzie and Lundy and Ailsa. ‘For me, the Borders are home. I have lived with the Elliot clan at Redheugh Castle since I was four. Our days and nights are tormented by the English stealing our cattle.’
‘Truly? Do they not have their own cattle?’
‘Aye, they do, and we have been known to steal back our cattle and oft times more.’
‘You sound as if you enjoy it.’
‘I do. It is what I know.’ He paused in thought. ‘Your Highlands are beautiful. The mountains are magnificent and are much larger than anything I’ve ever seen. They make a man feel small.’ Images of the mountains and scenery he’d seen and travelled over formed inside his mind. ‘The mist that fills the valleys in the early morn and at gloaming is thicker than any I have touched or ridden through.’ He slowly shook his head. ‘The Borders have a beauty all their own. From rolling green hills as far as the eye can see and golden trees and sparkling burns and lochs. But the greatest gift in the Borders are the people I have come to know.’ His chest clamped tight. He missed them. ‘You should visit the Borders.’
‘I doubt I will. Drummin House is my home.’
Dair smothered his disappointment and said, ‘Have you always lived there?’
‘Nae.’ She paused as if contemplating whether or not she should say more. ‘I lived with different relatives until I was ten summers. Drummin House was a gift to me from a caring woman who knew my mother before I was born. I never met either of them.’
Sympathy for never knowing her mother clenched Dair’s heart. At least he had a few faint memories of his mother before she’d abandoned him. He heard Keila draw her next breath and the air seemed to change with it.
‘Are you married?’
Keila’s unexpected question surprised Dair, but it wasn’t the first time he’d been asked. His initial reaction was to respond as he usually did, in a jovial manner about there being too many beautiful women he’d yet to explore, except … A moment before she’d asked if he was married, in that last drawn breath he’d heard, he sensed a change in Keila, a withdrawal, a sudden defensiveness. So instead he replied, ‘Nae. Are you?’
‘Me? Nae.’
The protective wall between them fell as quickly as it had formed. Before he could think more on the matter, Keila turned the conversation back on him.
‘Do you remember anything before you lived with the Elliots?’
Dair called to mind one of the few memories that had haunted him for as long as he could remember. He admitted to having memories, but it didn’t mean they were always pleasant to recall. ‘I see the face of a woman with fine features and dark hair. She is smiling down at me.’ He smiled now in the darkness at his childish confession. ‘I’m certain she was my mother.’
‘What happened to her?’
His chest tightened and hardened at the memory of standing in the small wood, staring up through the dappled sunlight into his mother’s smiling eyes. ‘I do not know what became of her after she left me.’
‘She left you?’
Dair turned toward Keila, even though the night prevented him from seeing her, or perhaps saved him from seeing the pity he’d heard in her voice staring back at him. He’d relived that day over and over again to see if he’d missed something or done something wrong to give his mother cause to abandon him.
‘We’d been riding together on the same horse for what seemed like days, sleeping under the stars and beneath trees for shelter.’ Something he still enjoyed doing to this day. ‘We’d stopped to rest by a burn and then walked our mount for a time, until we heard voices on the other side of a small gathering of trees. We tethered the horse and crept through to the other side and happened upon a group of lads practising with wooden swords.’ Even now, Dair could see the lads clearly in his mind.
‘I’d not known any lads of a similar age to me and was enthralled at the sight of them. I knelt by one of the trees and watched them. I could have watched them all day. I looked up and saw my mother smiling down at me.’ Dair looked up now as if replaying the moment would bring her back. ‘That’s the last time I saw her.’ He lowered his chin. ‘When I next looked up, she was gone, as was the horse.’ He’d told the Elliots the same story when they’d found him alone, sobbing like a babe at the edge of the wood. ‘The Elliots took me in and taught me all I know. I owe them everything.’
A tide of weariness washed over Dair at the end of the telling. Weariness steeped in frustration at still not knowing what happened to his mother.
‘The Elliots sound like caring people.’
‘Lachlan Elliot is now laird and was one of the lads practising his sword skills that day. But I was not the first lad they took in. Two of the other lads, Duff and Callum, were also without kith or kin. I am proud to call them all great friends. We all searched the Lowlands for our origins but turned up naught. Lachlan Elliot has granted all three of us a year’s leave from our clan duties to scour the Highlands in the hopes of finding where we came from. So I am not the only Borderer wandering your Highlands at present.’
‘The Highlands are a big place. Have you had any success?’
‘None, and my time away will soon be up. I’m to meet Duff and Cal in Braemar a sennight before Lammas.’ Several moments of silence followed his words about returning south.
‘Your time is precious. You have done more for us than expected.’ Fabric rustled as she stood. ‘There is nae need for you to escort us home. We know the way and—’
‘Time is precious,’ Dair conceded and rose to his feet. ‘But there is nae place I’d choose to be right now than here with you, Keila.’ He reached for her arm and his fingers slid down the slender limb to her hand. ‘I did not share my memories with you because you asked. I shared them because there was a need to, a sense of rightness. I have only known you for a sennight, but it feels like I have known you for so much longer.’ It wasn’t something he would normally confess with such ease. But naught about Keila seemed normal to him. She seemed so much more. ‘Am I alone in the feeling of it, or do you feel it too?’
Perfect stillness and then her fingers curled about his hand. She turned toward him, but her head remained bowed. ‘I feel it too,’ she whispered.
Dair stepped closer to her, closing the small gap between them. ‘There is nothing more I long to do right now than kiss you.’ His indrawn breath shuddered with restraint. ‘But I know I will be lost in the taste of you and cannot take the risk of dropping my guard when I have promised to keep you safe.’
‘Then leave her be and let us get some sleep,’ Moira said from the other side of the cart, shattering the moment.
‘Sweet Moira. How is it you manage to catch me at my best?’
‘If that is your best, lad, you have little to offer.’
Her reply battered his masculine pride, but he couldn’t withhold a smile at the older woman’s wit. He was also relieved she couldn’t see it in the dark.
‘Get some sleep now, Keila.’ He gently squeezed her hand and released her.
After a few whispered words exchanged between Keila and Moira, he heard no more and settled himself on the grass to polish his sword. Like a morbid kind of company, the three fires burned for much of what remained of the night. The two smaller fires, both looking to be on the far side of Mortlach, ceased to burn first. The largest blaze, which appeared to be situated within the vicinity of the inn, burned more fiercely. Dair’s unease that Euan might have suffered for providing shelter for Keila and Moira inside his stable grew with every flickering flame, and didn’t fully subside even when the final blaze had ceased to compete with the moon in the small hours of the morning.
With the return of natural darkness, so too did one image from the day’s events that was forever burned into Dair’s mind. The sight of the steel blade slicing the air so close to where Keila knelt in the cart set a cold hand of fear around his heart and squeezed. The thought of it, the memory, and the tightening of his gut, haunted him the rest of the night.
He polished his sword with renewed vigour, until the blade gleamed in the descending moon’s light. He was relieved to have his weapon back, but the sooner he returned Keila and Moira to the safety of Drummin House, the better. Not that he’d be returning to the Borders until he was certain Keila and Moira were safe after he left.
In the pre-dawn light, Dair appraised the carthorses after their unexpected flight and was pleased they seemed well rested and fit for travel. They were on the road to Drummin the moment the sun cast its first rays of morning light across the hills and glens. Neither woman complained about the early start, nor about breaking their fast with a half loaf as they travelled. He suspected they were both eager to reach home.
He set a good pace and held it throughout the misty Highland dawn, but followed a path of his own making, while keeping the burn they’d followed north to Mortlach far on his left. He didn’t know how many of the four riders had survived their wounds and falls from their horses, but none of them had returned during the night to finish whatever it was they’d started. It didn’t mean they weren’t being watched or followed, by the same men or by others.
He rode Demon beside the cart, level with where the women shared the bench seat. Keila held the reins, and despite their efforts to appear relaxed, they spoke not a word to each other and threw a darted glance here or there, or turned of a sudden to look behind them, proving they were far from feeling calm.
Before the warmth of June’s sun reached its peak, Dair called a stop beside a small loch that boasted a copse of assorted shrubs nearby that would provide necessary privacy.
‘We will stop for a short time.’ He dismounted and assisted the women from the cart. ‘I’ll see to the horses. Stretch your legs,’ he said, indicating the cluster of foliage, ‘but don’t wander too far.’
Both women headed straight for the bushes. They wouldn’t be stopping long enough for him to unhitch the horses, so Dair led them to the edge of the loch to drink. Demon followed a little further along the bank.
‘Your horse is well trained,’ Keila said, as she halted beside him.
‘Demon is a clever beast and is free to move where he likes, but never strays far from my side.’ The reason he wasn’t taken the night Dair was beaten, and then followed him to Drummin House. Now he knew for certain that Mortlach’s inn was the last place he’d been before the attack, the chances he had reached Drummin House on his own were impossible. Someone had left him there. But why?
‘How is your wound?’ Keila’s voice was much closer.
He turned his head. ‘My wound is fine.’ The stitches beside his right eye tingled as she stepped closer still and appraised his injury anyway.
‘You do not believe me?’
Her green gaze shifted from his stitches to his eyes. ‘In my experience, some men have a habit of saying they’re fine when they are not.’
How much experience had she had with men? Had Leith of Drummin been a part of her experience? A surge of heat infused his blood at the thought.
‘In my experience, some women share the same habit,’ he said, looking into her green eyes. He saw the same query he’d had of her in the emerald depths.
‘I am certain they all have their reasons.’ She searched his gaze a moment more before stepping back. ‘You heal quickly. I will remove the stitches at Drummin in the morn.’
***
He did heal quickly. Despite the distance between where Keila swayed with the cart’s motion and where Adair rode Demon, she could clearly see the swelling about his mouth and eyes had gone. The gash beside his eye had all but fully healed and most of the bruises discolouring his face had faded to nothing, leaving naught but a very fine-looking man.
‘You look like you’ve consumed one cask too many of your own ale.’
Keila blinked at Moira’s unhappy tone. ‘I am happy to see Adair’s wound has all but healed.’
Moira looked like she’d eaten an onion whole. ‘Good. Now he knows his name he can be on his way.’
‘Why do you want him gone?’
‘I see how you look at him, lass. He might be handsome now, but he wasn’t fine-looking when he arrived on your doorstep battered and bruised. Yet still you were drawn to him.’ Her tone lowered with displeasure. ‘He will bring you naught but trouble.’
Keila understood Moira’s caution, but after yesterday’s fright she didn’t want to dwell on dark thoughts. ‘So you agree Adair is a handsome man?’
Moira looked at Keila with a hopeless gaze but didn’t respond, which to Keila’s mind was answer enough. She glanced across to where Adair rode and felt fairy wings take flight inside her belly. Keila knew Moira was only concerned she’d end up hurt like Moira had been. She grasped one of her friend’s hands and said, ‘I learned many things about Dair last night, Moira, but one of the first questions I asked of him was if he was married.’
Moira’s constant warnings had strangled the growing feeling of contentment Keila was experiencing, sitting in the dark of night listening to Adair. His voice had been like a melody playing across her heart. But her heart had drummed the fiercest beat while she’d waited for his answer to her blurted question. When he’d finally answered, ‘Nae,’ relief spiralled through her like a leaf caught in a whirly wind and she’d wanted him to hold her. It had then taken several moments for her to realise he’d asked her the same question. She’d almost laughed.
‘If I hadn’t already heard his response last night, I’d know he wasn’t wed by the dreamy look in your eyes this morn.’
Keila couldn’t help a shy smile curving her lips. She enjoyed his teasing manner and realised Moira was right. She had found Adair fascinating from the moment she’d laid eyes on him and the more she learned, the more intrigued she became. She’d come to know him before his memories had returned and now she was learning about him all over again.
The rest of the journey home passed swiftly and without incident. Due to Adair taking them on a slightly different path to Drummin House, she didn’t have the chance to stop by Rory’s cottage to let him know they’d returned home early. A happenstance that suited Keila at present, as she wasn’t in the mood to replay the disastrous events of the whole journey. Tomorrow would be soon enough. For what little remained of this day, she just wanted to wash and change her gown and discover everything she could about handsome, unwed Adair.