Ronan held back a curse as his little cavalcade jingled through the scudding mist. He stared into the gloom, his jaw locked and his entire body wound tight as a bowstring. He shifted in his saddle, so stiff he might have been hewn of graven stone.
Had he truly praised the saints not so long ago?
Well earned as such paeans might have been, he was now of an entirely different mind.
Several hours and many cold and drizzly miles after the bull attack, he felt more like challenging than praising long-dead holy men. Truth be told, at the moment, he was more than capable of calling out anyone.
Friend, foe, and, aye, even those of otherworldly nature.
A black wind was whistling past his ears, each icy, indrawn breath burned his lungs, and his fingers felt frozen on the reins. Squaring his shoulders, he sat up straighter, refusing to grimace.
That small victory he would claim, difficult as it was.
Every inch of him flamed with pain, especially his ribs, though the day’s bitter chill had taken care of his throbbing toes.
Blessedly, he could no longer feel them.
Would that the rest of him wasn’t proving so susceptible to every jarring, jolting bit of the long journey home.
Even his head throbbed, the annoying pounding in odd rhythm with his garron’s endless, clip-clopping hoofbeats.
As for his ribs, he’d known they were cracked not long after leaving Creag na Gaoith, when he’d halted to shrug off his travel cloak, twist around, and sling the mantle’s voluminous warmth over Buckie’s onion creel.
The twisting round left no doubt, that one simple movement sending a white-hot fire-vise to clamp around his chest. Fierce and scalding, the pain stabbed him, stopping his heart and cutting off his breath.
Only his pride — and his lady riding beside him — kept him from crying out.
Just as pride and her presence wouldn’t let him show his disappointment now on noting how dismal Dare looked silhouetted against the bleakness of what promised to be a particularly black wet night.
Thick, billowy mist poured down the braes, and the deep green tops of the pines near the curtain walls were already sinking from view. High above, an early moon broke through the clouds, silvering the rolling spread of the moors and the long slopes of rock and heather.
But then the moon vanished, slipping from sight and leaving Dare’s gatehouse to loom before them.
Night-darkened and formidable, the machicolated walls stood out against the blackness of the trees, the double towers’ gloomy face making the brief autumn sun of Creag na Gaoith seem a distant memory.
A muscle began to twitch in his jaw.
This was Dare at its worst.
But the gates creaked open at their approach, dutiful as always. And the heavy iron-tipped portcullis rattled noisily upward as the little party cantered near.
Ready as ever to greet any guests, Dare beckoned with bright lanterns and torches lighting the way through the long, tunnel-like entrance. Still more brands smoked and sputtered in niches set into the bailey’s walling. But rather than seeming welcoming, the hissing flames only threw eerie orange haloes into the darkening twilight.
Wild flickering circles of mist-hazed light that looked too much like staring, piercing eyes of red.
Ronan shuddered and then ducked as one of the flaring pitch-pine torches popped as he rode past, the wretched thing sending a spray of sparks and ash right at him.
He bit back a curse.
Then he allowed himself the scowl he’d been trying so hard to squelch.
A frown he surely deserved, for his head pounded and his patience had long since flown. Even more vexing, despite his ills, he couldn’t banish the image of Gelis’s fingers sliding up and down the sheath of her thigh-dagger.
Or the sweet triangle of lush red-gold curls he’d glimpsed so briefly when she’d whipped up her skirts to show him the sgian dubh.
He slid a glance at her, not at all surprised to see that the day’s turn in weather scarce affected her.
She sat her steed as if she’d been born on the beast’s own back. A true daughter of a thousand chieftains, she held herself erect and kept her shoulders straight, her chin proudly lifted. Indeed, she rode along as easily as if the summer sun shone bright above them and the blue roll of the hills weren’t blurred by mist and the fast-encroaching darkness.
Even so, the day’s cold and wind had touched her. Her cloak and skirts were damp, the woolen folds clinging to every lush curve and swell of her voluptuous body. Even more telling of her nature, Ronan was sure, her braid had come undone, again. Wholly loosened, her flame-bright hair tumbled in a welter of riotous curls over her shoulders to her hips.
Eyeing those curls now, he swallowed, certain he’d ne’er seen a more fetching sight.
Every line and curve of her stirred him, her very dishevelment taking his breath, and in ways that pained him far worse than any cracked rib or crushed toes.
But now wasn’t the time to heed such an ache.
Already they were riding into Dare’s thronged bailey and mist swirled everywhere. Snaking tendrils curled rapidly over the damp, wet-gleaming cobbles, and great, billowing sheets of it blew across the open spaces.
The tower stood dark and silent, its narrow slit-windows and arrow loops showing scant light while its massive bulk proved nearly obscured beneath the fuzzy-white drifts rolling in off the moors.
A quick glance showed that Maldred’s hoary crest glared down on the bailey from its place of honor above the keep’s oaken, iron-studded door. But, surprisingly, the ancient stone looked more like an ordinary clump of hill-granite than Ronan had ever seen it.
Of the bold horned raven of the vision his lady had shown him there was nary a trace.
Indeed, the stone’s engravings had so deteriorated that it was no longer recognizable as a heraldic shield.
But before he could wonder o’er the matter, Sorley, Tam, and the Dragon pushed through the tumult, eager to see to his wishes and help him and his lady dismount.
The Dragon lavished his usual care on Buckie, lifting the now-tail-wagging dog from his onion creel.
“See he is bathed properly and combed,” Ronan said, turning aside even as the pock-faced, gap-toothed guardsmen strode away with the dog. “Then have Hugh MacHugh give him as many meat-bones as he desires.”
A wind-muffled as you wish drifted back to him, but he scarce heard.
Nor did he do more than nod his thanks when Sorley handed him the Nordic armlet Gelis had gifted him with just before the bull appeared.
At the moment he had greater matters on his mind than bejeweled armpieces.
His lady had somehow slipped through the ring of guardsmen and was tripping up the outer keep stairs, already nearing the landing.
But it wasn’t her light step or her remarkable speed that sent him bolting up the steps after her.
Not even the tempting bounce of her shining, loose- swinging hair.
Nor the promise of her seductive siren’s bauble, bouncing just-so betwixt her thighs, its glittering green gemstone an allure powerful enough to turn the most resolute abstainer’s best piece into granite.
Nor was it the way she seemed to glow from within.
An irresistible beacon to a man so long without a woman’s warmth and loving.
Och, nae, it was nary a one of such disasters.
It was the horrible red stain soiling one side of her uphitched skirts.
Ronan stared, at first not comprehending.
Then something inside him ripped.
The world turned as red as the spreading stain and his pain vanished.
At his elbow, young Tam was just lifting his travel cloak from Buckie’s onion creel, and a laundress stood by, her hands outstretched to take it.
Ronan almost plowed them down in his haste to reach the keep stairs.
“Suffering saints!” He pounded up the steep stone steps, catching Gelis just as she set her hand on the door’s great iron latch. “Hold, lass! Dinna you move!”
Gelis started at the loud words.
She swung around to face him, about to ask what was amiss, but he was on her in a wink. Eyes blazing and hair whipping in the wind, he swept her into his arms and kicked open the hall door.
“Someone fetch the hen wife!” he yelled, racing through the crowded, smoke-hazed hall. “My lady is injured!”
He crashed into a trestle table, near overturning it before sprinting on, knocking aside startled, wide- eyed kinsmen.
“Bring bandaging and have MacHugh send up his selfheal unguent!” he roared, bursting into the dimness of the stair tower.
“Put me down!” Gelis wriggled in his arms as he bounded up the curving steps, taking them two, sometimes three at a time. “You’ll kill us both!”
“Hush, lass.” He clapped a hand over her mouth, pressing her head against his shoulder. “You’ll weary yourself if you speak.”
“ Pah-phooey!” She squirmed, her protest muffled. “You are the one who was hurt, not me.”
“Say you?” He gained the top landing, streaked down the darkened passage. “ ’Tis you who are bleeding, no’ I,” he flashed, slamming open his bedchamber door.
He ran across the room, barely avoiding a collision with the steaming bathing tub some fool had placed in the middle of the room instead of before the hearth fire.
Then, chest heaving, he lowered her to the bed with a gentleness that belied his wild flight across the great hall and up the turnpike stair.
“Your skirts are bloodied,” he panted, stepping back now, a glossy spill of raven hair falling across his brow. Shoving it aside, he looked at her, the dread in his eyes squelching her denial.
She blinked. “My skirts?”
“Aye, yours.” He swiped at his hair again. “To be sure, and they’re no’ mine!”
His dark brows lowering, he leaned close and snatched up a fistful of her damp, red-stained gown. He shook the reddened folds at her.
Gelis pushed up on her elbows, eyeing her ruined skirts. “I am not hurt — not badly,” she insisted, only now feeling the slight sting on her thigh.
The faint but steady throbbing and the telltale trickle of warmth.
“I must’ve cut myself when I withdrew my sgian dubh.” There could be no other explanation. “ ’Tis nothing, I say you. I’ve done so before and —”
“You are bleeding worse than a Martinmas goose!”
“But unlike that unfortunate creature, I shall live to see the morrow.”
The Raven’s expression said he doubted it.
He dropped her skirts and strode to the table. Grabbing a ewer, he half-poured, half-sloshed water into a basin. His hands were shaking.
Even in the room’s dimness, she could tell.
Especially when he snatched a small drying cloth off a chair back and his hand passed in front of the light cast by a candelabrum.
A thought — horrible and damning — popped into her mind.
Her brows shot upward and she stared at him, her fingers digging into her bloodied skirts.
“You do not think you caused me to cut myself?”
“It would not be the first time.”
“Dia!” She slashed the air with her free hand. “I have never heard aught more foolhardy!”
With an oath that would have done her father proud, she yanked up her gown, flipping it back to expose her legs. “See you, Raven — look here,” she cried, thrusting her right leg at him. “ ’Tis a wee scratch, naught more, and was done by my own clumsy hand!”
“How it happened scarce matters.” He set the basin on the night table, plunged the linen into its depths. “Only that it doesn’t again.”
“It won’t.” She fumbled to unlatch the buckle of her dagger’s thigh-belt, tossing the thing to the floor. “I’m not often so clumsy —” she broke off, her mouth twitching. “With my sgian dubh, anyway.”
He humphed.
“ ’Tis true.” Sheer stubbornness made her emphasize the point.
He turned a skeptical face her way.
Keeping her own expression confident, she looked on as he wrung out the cloth. His hands still shook. She swallowed, striving to find a way to reassure him.
But he’d clenched his jaw and when he stepped up to the bed, his gaze fixed on the tiny scrape on her thigh, she would’ve sworn his eyes darkened.
Indeed, they almost smoldered.
“S-surely” — she jerked when he touched the dripping, icy cloth to her leg and began wiping at the dried streaks of blood — “surely, you do not believe you have the Droch Shùil?”
“The evil eye?” He dabbed carefully at her inner thigh. “With surety, nae, though I’ve heard enough tales of those who have but to glance at something they admire and blight it — much to their distress!”
“Then why —”
“Because what plagues me is far worse,” he spoke over her objection.
His eyes still on her leg, he reached to dampen the cloth again.
“I believe your nick was a warning.” He missed the basin rim by a good hand’s breadth. “I can’t risk daring Providence much farther.”
Gelis watched as he corrected his mistake, this time finding the bowl.
And still his gaze hadn’t left her thigh.
Not even as he wrung out the cloth.
“Providence brought us together, as I’ve tried to tell you,” she argued, not objecting when he lifted her knee, bending her leg a bit to better dab at the thin runnels of blood striping her calf.
“And” — she leaned forward — “if you’ve any doubt, I can assure you it was my own haste in drawing my dagger that caused me to nick myself. It had to do with the bull, not you.”
“The bull?” He looked up.
She nodded. “Did you not see his red eyes and ears?”
His fingers stilled on her calf. So she had known. “I saw his fiery eyes” — he kept his answer neutral — “but his ears looked grayish-white to me.”
“Ah well . . . ” She leaned back against the pillows and stared up at the bed’s dark, heavily carved canopy. “Then I guessed rightly. He was indeed a creature of the saoghal thall.”
“The Yonder World?”
“So I would say, aye.” She plucked at a loose thread on one of the pillows. “Why else would I have seen his telltale red ears?”
Before he could answer, she rushed, “My taibhsearachd let me see him more clearly than you did. Everyone knows enchanted creatures from the Nether Regions have red eyes and ears. Surely even you will not deny it?”
The Raven snorted and turned away to rinse the cloth again.
He did slide a glance at her. “And you know much of bespelled beasts?”
“I know enough.” She broke the thread she’d been fretting at, twirled the length of it around her finger. “That is why my hand slipped when I pulled out my dagger.”
“The charge of a bull is enough to unsteady anyone’s hand.” The words spoken, he reached for her knee, this time dabbing gently behind it.
Gelis bit her lip.
His touch was doing more than cleaning the blood streaks from her legs. Every glide of his hands on her skin sent delicious tingling warmth shivering and spilling through her, a cascade of delight that rippled clear down to her toes and — she drew a shaky breath — spread up her legs as well.
Sweet titillating sensations, they spiraled across a certain very feminine part of her, each luscious new swirl of desire making her pulse and tingle with an almost unbearably delicious thrumming.
Almost as if he were touching her there.
Wishing he would, she squirmed on the bed. She imagined, no, she willed, his fingers to circle higher. To caress and stroke her, perhaps even to look at her there, peering as intently between her legs as he was now staring fixedly at her wee, meaningless cut.
After all, when Evelina of Doon had given her the golden bauble-chain, the one-time joy woman had sworn that if all else failed, she need only ensure he catch such an intimate glimpse of her.
If so, the older woman had vowed, he’d be unable to resist her.
Such was the nature of men.
Embarrassed by such a scandalous notion, however rousing, she drew a deep breath when he dipped and rinsed the cloth once more.
Then, summoning her boldest self, she deliberately eased her knee just a tiny bit farther to the side.
“My sister once saw such a creature,” she blurted, hoping to disguise her wickedness. “Deep in Glenelg, though it was an enchanted stag, not a bull.”
“Say you?” He arched a brow, his attention still on her cut.
She nodded . . . and moved her leg just a teeny bit more.
A muscle jerked in his jaw and he straightened, tossing aside the bloodied cloth.
“And what did your sister do?” He was still looking down at her, his gaze now focused a little higher. “Was she — Arabella, I believe? — injured?”
“O-o-oh, nae.” Gelis shook her head, excitement making her heart pound.
Soon she would have him.
She shivered, tossed her hair back over her shoulder. She was beginning to burn. Heat and tingles coiled through her, igniting her passion and making it hard to concentrate on anything but her wish that he’d seize her.
Grab her swiftly, and kiss her senseless, finally making her his own.
Instead, he angled his head and — she was sure of it — his gaze went a bit predatory.
She moistened her lips.
“Your sister was fortunate then,” he said, his voice now as dark as his eyes. Heat and sensuality shimmered off him, warming and exciting her. “Perhaps the Old Ones do look after MacKenzie women.”
“Arabella doesn’t need their help. Nothing ever happens to her.” She heard the huskiness in her voice and shivered. “She could walk through a blizzard and emerge without a hair out of place.”
“And the bespelled stag?” The Raven cocked a brow again. “He left her be?”
“He just stood there, watching her.” She could scarce speak.
He was looking at her.
She could feel the flames of his stare licking at her.
“Then he could no’ have been all that formidable.” His gaze grew even hotter, so intense she was beginning to sizzle.
For sure, that part of her was melting.
She moistened her lips again.
“Ah, but he was a fearsome beast,” she chattered on, the heat between her legs making her wriggle. “Like our bull, he had eyes of fire and blood-red ears. To be sure, he would have attacked her, but Arabella recognized him for what he was and threw a silver coin at him.”
“A silver coin?”
“Just that.” She nodded. “We’d been to the market fair earlier that morning and she still had a small cache of coins with her.”
“You weren’t with her?”
“I hid away when it was time to leave the fair.” She shifted on the bed, keenly aware of the dampness beginning to mist her inner thighs. “Some of the local chieftains were looking for young warriors of particular fighting strength. I wanted to watch their competitions.”
“And your sister did not?”
“She was tired and only wanted to return to Eilean Creag,” Gelis remembered, leaving out how Arabella had rolled her eyes when she’d suggested they stay longer to watch the strength trials. “She’d spent hours searching for colored thread and bone needles but couldn’t find any to please her. That’s why she still had coins later.”
The Raven stepped closer. Something in his gaze made her think he was scarce listening to her, only looking at her. He reached to smooth the hair from her cheek. His touch, when it came, was slow and deliberate, claiming.
It made her breath catch.
“I have heard of throwing silver coins at such beasts,” he said, still holding one of her curls, rubbing the strands between his thumb and his fingers. “But I have ne’er met anyone who had tried the like.”
“Such beasts always turn away from silver.” She could hardly hear her own voice above the thundering of her heart. “Be it a silver-barbed arrow, a silvered dagger, or even just a simple coin.”
She flicked a glance at her sgian dubh, still thrust beneath his sword-belt.
“See there” — she indicated the hilt — “silver inlays. That’s why I threw it even though I knew I could never pierce a bull’s hide, no matter how good my aim.”
“But if you struck him or —”
“Or,” she cut him off, “if my blade fell before him, I knew he’d turn and run. He would never have been able to cross it, not such a creature.”
“Perhaps you should have tossed the blade in my path.” He let go of her curl, stepping back as if it’d turned into a snake and bitten him. “You might have been better served.”
Ronan regretted the words as soon as they leaped off his tongue. But his ribs were flaming again, the pain worse than ever. And he was quite certain the toes of his left foot had swollen to such a degree that he might never get his boot off.
“Forgive me, lass,” he began, “ but —” he broke off, a glitter of green atop a strongbox catching his eye.
The siren bauble.
At once, all knightly restraint left him.
He sucked in a great breath, more aware of the ache in his loins than any other. In three great strides, he crossed to the strongbox and snatched up the golden chain, waving it so that its sparkling gemstone swung before him.
“I am no eunuch, see you!” He dropped the thing betwixt her still-parted thighs. “I’ve only meant to protect you. Save you from the curse that plagues me. The blackness that claims any and everyone I’ve e’er cared for! But you . . .”
He thrust both hands in his hair and shut his eyes.
When he opened them, she stood before him, her siren’s chain dangling from her hand. “You err, my lord,” she said, so close her breasts brushed his chest. “I do not need saving. I am the woman meant to save you.”
“Humph.” He started to back away, but she leaned into him, the hot thrust of her nipples almost taking his breath. “By the Rood, lass, you dinna know what you’re —”
“Och, but I do!”
Lifting up on her toes, she slung her chain around his neck, using the golden links to pull his head down to hers. Then her lips touched his and his heart stopped beating.
The world split, spinning away until nothing remained but her lushness against him, the silky-hot sweetness of her lips, and a heady, thought-numbing whirl of rose perfume.
“Ach, saints!” He whipped an arm around her, dragging her even closer. “I am lost . . .”
He thrust his free hand into her hair, twining his fingers in the cool, glossy curls. “Lost, I say you,” he breathed against her lips, and then he could speak no more.
His heart thundering, he slanted his mouth over hers, kissing her fast, hard, and deep. Plundering and ravishing, he claimed her lips, at last giving in to the fire inside him. She clung to him, returning his kisses with equal heat, her tongue swirling around his, slipping and sliding, their breaths mingling, warm and honey-sweet.
He swept his hand down her back and around to her breasts, cupping and kneading them. His fingers circled and toyed with her nipples, each sweet tug and pinch making them draw ever tighter until his own tightness threatened to spill.
His need almost desperate, he broke the kiss.
“Nae, don’t stop.” She clutched at him, smothering his face with tiny kisses, licks, and nips, murmuring words that should have made him blush.
Instead, they hardened him even more.
“Ach, God!” He grasped her by the shoulders, setting her from him, some still-coherent part of him pleased to see that her own breath was coming as fast and shallow as his. Pleased, too, to see the telltale flush of arousal staining her magnificent breasts.
His heart knocking wildly, he plucked her dagger from his belt and threw it aside. Not taking his eyes off her, he reached to undo the heavy clasp of his sword-belt.
He needed, wanted, to be naked with her.
He had to make her his. Dare, Maldred, and all the world’s curses be damned.
It was time.
The knocking in his chest grew louder, a thunderous hammering in his blood, his ears.
“Sweet lass, I —”
“I heard tell the lass had been injured.” A ringing female voice came from the doorway.
Auld Meg, Dare’s hen wife.
Ronan spun around, his unbuckled sword-belt flying from his hands.
Behind him, Gelis gasped and an overloud metallic clink-clinkety-clink revealed that she’d dropped her bauble-chain as well.
Auld Meg’s gaze snapped to both, lingering especially on the glittering golden links.
The great green gemstone, winking wickedly from the innocent floor rushes.
“It would seem I was misinformed.” She shifted the basket of healing goods clutched against her hip.
“It would seem you have forgotten to knock!” Ronan jammed his hands on his hips and glared at her.
“And I say you have bog cotton in your ears.” Auld Meg huffed, all bristling indignation. “I’ve been pounding my knuckles raw a-waiting for your by-leave, thinking your lady in peril all the while.”
“I erred.”
“So I see.” She glowered back at him.
Still standing in the open threshold, her stout frame silhouetted against the light from a wall torch, she looked nearly as broad as she was tall, especially when she mimicked him by bracing a pudgy hand against her own more than generous hips.
“Be that as it may,” she began, eyeing him shrewdly, “if the lady has no need of my sphagnum moss dressings, mayhap you can make use of my special goldenrod ointment!”
“Me?” Ronan lifted a brow, not at all surprised when she marched into the room and plunked her healing basket onto the table.
“Aye, you,” she announced, clucking as she plucked a fat earthen jar from the basket and thrust it into Gelis’s hands. “And what I’ve brought is far better than Hugh MacHugh’s selfheal ointment. ’Tis my own fine unguent of Saint-John’ s-wort, germander, speedwell, and goldenrod that you’ll be needing, I’m thinking. Blended with butter and grease, it will soothe your cracked ribs before the next sun rises.”
Ronan’s brow furrowed. “My cracked ribs?”
Auld Meg waved a hand. “Dinna do me the insult o’ doubting my own good eye. I can see what ails you, right enough! It’s there in every step you take.” Coming closer, she wagged a finger in his face. “The unguent will soothe your smashed toes as well.”
Ronan humphed.
His lady spoke up at last. “I’ll see to it,” she said, clutching the little jar of ointment. “And I . . . thank you.”
This time Auld Meg grunted.
But her eyes brightened, some of the sternness slipping from her face.
“You do that, lassie.” She looked Gelis up and down, her voice taking on a confidential tone. “ ’Tis long past time the lad has a maid what kens how to handle him!”
“Dinna even think it,” Ronan protested the moment the grizzle-headed old bat swept from the room, closing the door soundly behind her.
He snatched the fat little jar from his lady’s hands and set it on the table.
Experience had taught him that the unguent’s noxious smell clung to one’s skin for days.
Sometimes even a whole fortnight.
Gelis frowned, her gaze on the jar. “But she did seem to know —”
Ronan snorted. “There is naught wrong with my ribs and, with surety, no’ with my toes!”
“You are sure?”
“I am certain.”
“Then prove it by kissing me again.”
“Lass, I will kiss you until the hills blush.” He yanked his tunic over his head, reaching for her before it hit the rushes. “Now, this night, the morrow’s morn, and all the days thereafter.”
The words spoken, he caught her to him, pulling her close against his naked chest. He captured her lips, kissing her deeply. He swept his tongue against hers, claiming and demanding, needing her all.
She leaned into him, their hot breath and the wild tangle of their tongues seeming to spur her on. His own desire breaking, he ran his hands down her back and over her hips, finally clutching and squeezing her buttocks, drawing her flush against him.
She sighed, her mouth opening wider beneath his. “Yes,” she breathed, slinging her arms tightly around him, her hips beginning to rock and press against his.
Her full, heavy breasts were crushed to him, the shifting of her thighs against his a sweet torture beyond bearing. A great shudder raced through him and he tightened his arms around her, digging his fingers into the lush curves of her hips, the sweet, plump rounds of her luscious bottom.
Ne’er had he burned with a greater passion.
And ne’er had a mere tapping at the door made him more furious.
He jerked around to glare at the door. “Be gone, old woman! You can continue your meddling on the morrow.”
“ ’Tis me, sir.” Young Hector, his voice hesitant.
“Be gone with you, too, lad.” Ronan ran a hand through his hair, almost panting. “I’ll no’ be disturbed now.”
A pause.
But the kind that pulsed with someone’s presence.
With surety, no light footfalls could be heard padding away from the door.
“ ’Tis your grandfather, my lord,” the boy called. “He wishes to see you in his privy quarters.”
Ronan sighed. “Now?”
“At once, sir,” came the reply.
“Hells bells and damnation.” Ronan strode across the room and yanked open the door. “Whate’er bothers him that he canna sleep on it?” he demanded, trying his best not to glower at the lad.
Hector swallowed, his cheeks flaming bright as his carroty hair. “He wants to speak to you about the man who was here earlier. He says —”
Ronan’s eyes widened. “A visitor?”
Hector bobbed his bright head. “A courier, sir,” he embellished, his chest swelling a bit. “From the Black Stag, he was, come not long before the gloaming and bringing a letter for you.”
“Indeed?”
“So it was, aye,” the boy confirmed. “I saw the man meself, sir.”
“Did you now?” Ronan lifted a brow. “And you’re sure he was a MacKenzie?”
Once more Hector nodded.
“Then run down to my grandfather and tell him I’ll be there forthwith,” Ronan said, reaching to pat Hector’s shoulder.
But when the boy turned and dashed away down the torchlit corridor, he frowned.
By gloaming every MacKenzie in Kintail save his bride would have been huddled round Eilean Creag’s hearth fire gnawing well-roasted beef ribs and quaffing the finest of ales. Some, perhaps, with a plump, full-breasted laundress warming their laps.
Of that he was certain.
The visitor couldn’t have been a MacKenzie.
Likewise, whoe’er the mysterious courier had been, Ronan was sure he was up to no good.