Sue-Ellen Welfonder Read online

  Struggling to douse his annoyance, he lifted Madeline to the ground. “Beardie? Douglas? They are here, too?”

  “They are ’round the other side of the old chapel tending the horses,” Gavin said, jerking his head toward the ruined stone wall behind the yew’s red-gleaming trunk. “MacNab sent along mounts for the ladies. Two fine garrons. I promised we’d return them on our journey back to Doon.”

  On your journey back to Doon.

  “Well met of him,” Iain said aloud. “Did he provide the raiment I requested as well?”

  Gavin inclined his head. “Aye, and a-plenty.”

  “He is a good friend,” Iain said, truly grateful. “He shall be repaid for his generosity… especially if he can raise men to help us retake this lady’s home.”

  Gavin’s bearded jaw dropped.

  A gasp of surprise issued from Nella’s lips. Her startled gaze flew to Madeline. “You told him?”

  “Aye,” Iain answered for her. “Who she is and why the two of you have been traipsing across the heather.”

  “So it is to Abercairn rather than St. Fillan’s Healing Pond and Dunkeld?” Gavin blurted, coloring as soon as the blunder left his lips.

  Iain’s gaze snapped back to MacFie. “I am done with bathing in sacred pools, and Dunkeld can wait for its relic and gifts.” He studied the other’s reddening face. “Madeline’s father may yet be alive, and if he is, time is crucial. But how did you know she hails from Abercairn?”

  This time Nella of the Marsh’s cheeks began to tinge. She turned to Madeline, the anxious look in her eyes more pronounced than ever. “Your pardon, lady, but I had to tell him. You ken I ne’er cared for—”

  “We must speak of Abercairn,” Gavin said, and slid a warning look at Nella.

  “And of MacNab,” Iain said, lifting a hand in greeting to Beardie and Douglas. The seamen were just emerging from behind the chapel ruin, questions on their faces.

  “The MacNab is a longtime friend and ally,” Iain began, and all eyes turned on him. He aimed a sharp gaze at MacFie. “He has enough men to provide a formidable host of fighting men. Do you think he will lend us their strength?”

  Gavin had the ill grace to scratch his beard.

  His brows drawing together, Iain turned to the seamen. “And you? What think you?”

  They looked from one to the other, uncertainly, but after a few moments of feet shuffling, Beardie cracked his knuckles, and declared, “Aye, sir, I vow he will. The MacNabs e’er relish a good fight. As do I.”

  Douglas bobbed his head in agreement.

  Iain gave them a curt nod, pleased. “Then I would that you ride hotfoot back to MacNab and bid his help. Tell him we will use a dual attack combined with a ruse,” he explained. “A small number of men will create a disturbance at the castle’s rear wall to distract the garrison, while a larger host simultaneously forces entry through the main gates.”

  Pausing, he reached for Madeline’s hand, squeezed it. “I do not believe MacNab will fail us.” To the seamen, he added, “Off with you now, and tell MacNab his men ought arrive at the main gatehouse—and with all haste.”

  “As you wish,” they chorused, already going for their mounts.

  They’d no sooner swung into their saddles and spurred away, riding fast southward across the rolling terrain of wooded knolls and broken pastureland, than Gavin clapped a hand on Iain’s shoulder.

  “MacNab will help,” he said, giving Iain the assurance he secretly craved. “I feel it in my bones. The only question is if they arrive on time.”

  “They must arrive on time.” Iain wouldn’t consider otherwise. “Logie will not give up Abercairn without a fierce fight.”

  “He’ll crave Abercairn’s riches,” Nella put in, stepping forward. “That will be his reason for seizing the castle. Not because its location and strength would benefit the Disinheriteds, but because of greed.”

  Iain drew a long breath. He glanced at Madeline and hated how tightly she clasped her hands—so fiercely her knuckles gleamed white. “Madeline told me Logie values gold above all else.”

  “It is true,” Madeline spoke up, her face pale as cream in the soft, gloaming light, her eyes mossy green, their gold flecks gone so dark that they were scarce visible.

  She went to stand beside the yew, idly tracing the fluted patterns of its flaky red bark as she spoke. “Abercairn has riches beyond gold,” she began, her voice troubled. “There is a secret cache of priceless jewels hidden in my father’s bedchamber. They are sealed deep within the posts of his bed.”

  Moistening her lips, she went on, “He collected them from the gem-studded armor and weapons of the fallen English chivalry after Bannockburn. He harvested them on the encouragement of Robert Bruce himself as war booty… the King’s appreciation for Drummond sword arms in the battle.”

  “So-o-o!” Iain looked up at the darkening sky and blew out a long breath. His heart dipped at the trust she’d displayed by naming the location of such a priceless treasure.

  It showed the depth of her regard for him, and that warmed him beyond measure.

  “That explains why Silver Leg sent his henchmen looking for you,” he said, glancing back at her, the two men’s faces flashing before his mind’s eye. Chilling his blood. “The dastard will suspect you know the where-abouts of any hiding places.”

  “And as you see, I do.” She leaned back against the yew’s massive trunk, adjusted her borrowed arisaid against the knifing wind. “I would have mentioned the jewels when you asked me for reasons Logie would seek me, but truth be told, I’d forgotten about them.”

  Iain’s brow lifted. “Forgotten? How can such wealth slip your mind, lass?”

  She shrugged, looked off to the side, across the low, whin-dotted ridges. “You must know my da to understand. See you, he is… was softhearted. A great romantic and a very sentimental man. He claimed Abercairn had enough riches to serve us well, and considered the Bannockburn jewels a treasure beyond material worth.”

  A tear spilled down her cheek, and she swiped at it. “Da loved the Bruce and valued the jewels in his honor. He felt we must safekeep them for the Bruce’s memory,” she said. “Da claimed that long past our own lifetimes, the Scottish nation would honor them as national treasures. So he hid them and we simply do… er… did as though they do not exist.”

  She looked at him, her eyes glittery with tears but her jaw set tight. “I feel as my da did about the jewels. That is why I didn’t speak of them… I’d truly forgotten their existence.”

  Iain swallowed against the tightness in his own throat. “Your father is a wise man and a good one,” he said, his voice rough.

  And hoping upon hope he’d used the correct tense.

  “If Logie has men scouring the land for her, her father is either dead or refusing to disclose the hiding place,” Gavin ventured, scratching at his red beard again.

  “The more reason not to delay,” Iain intoned, stifling the urge to throttle the bastard for his bluntness.

  “Let us assume it is the latter,” he added, allowing himself the satisfaction of leveling a glare at the loose-tongued bastard.

  Gavin surprised him by cracking a broad smile. “All will be well,” he said. “We will arrive timely and with men a-plenty. I’ve no doubt.”

  “Say you?”

  “I am certain. Do not forget, we have more help with us than the promise of MacNab’s men.” Gavin patted the leather satchel affixed to the back of his saddle. “The reliquary casket and its precious relic shed blessings on those who safeguard it, my friend.”

  Iain’s brows shot upward. “You think one bejeweled casket and a wee sliver of wood from the True Cross will guard us against a garrison of sword-wielding men-at-arms?”

  Gavin folded his arms. “Och, aye, I do believe,” he said, and flashed a brilliant smile at the lasses.

  A bolt of keenest envy shot through Iain upon seeing the smile.

  Had he e’er been able to smile so disarmingly?

  He doubted
it, and the thought made him scowl all the more.

  “You ought believe, too,” MacFie was saying. “We have already seen the relic perform scores of miracles. That, you cannot deny.”

  And Iain couldn’t. So he pressed his lips into a tight, hard line and held his peace.

  After all, he had recently vowed to no longer discount legends and magic. But he drew the line at MacFie’s boastful claims of descending from a Selkie woman.

  “You, my friend, are too much of a believer,” he allowed, doubly annoyed when the barb failed to rattle the other. “But I admit the reliquary is a true one,” he conceded, if a bit grudgingly.

  The lout was right anyway.

  The MacLeans’ prized reliquary was capable of working powerful miracles… uncomfortable as they’d e’er made him.

  He’d witnessed his share.

  Time and time again.

  And as far back as he could remember.

  And so long as he’d postponed the delivery of the relic to the Bishopric of Dunkeld until after settling the matter of Madeline Drummond and her castle, mayhap the relic’s magic would indeed smile upon them.

  He could only hope, and would.

  Secretly, he’d wondered if the relic had lessened his temper, for its fire certainly bit into his veins with less frequency of late.

  Truth be told, he suspected Madeline Drummond had more to do with that feat of amazement than a wee silver-and-gold enameled reliquary and its sacred contents.

  The lass ignited fires of an entirely different sort in him.

  And the most persistently annoying such fire began making itself known even now… just watching the rise and fall of her magnificent breasts as she leaned against the yew tree!

  Lifting a hand, he rubbed the tight knot pulsing at the back of his neck and glanced out across the miles of broom-and-whin-studded knolls stretching toward the horizon.

  The winding road they’d taken from the south had vanished beneath ever-lowering clouds and a pall of cold-looking, misty rain shrouded the rolling hills and deep corries.

  “Lest we wish a drenching, I deem it best we be on our way,” he said, signaling to Madeline as he spoke. “Think you we can reach your cousin’s keep before yon rain spills down on us?”

  “Hmmm…” Gavin mused, hoisting Nella onto the back of her shaggy-legged garron mare. He narrowed his eyes at the distant rain. “Cormac’s holding lies halfway between here and the Augustinian Priory of Strathfillan.”

  Swinging into his own saddle, he added, “If we make haste, we ought miss the worst of it… but not all.”

  “Then let us be gone from here.” Iain turned to assist Madeline onto her new mare, only to see she’d already clambered onto the beast.

  She held her back straight, but a nervous pulse beat rapidly at the base of her throat, and Iain’s heart twisted at how fiercely she clutched the reins, at the thin trace of white edging her clenched lips.

  But worst of all was the shimmer of tears in her eyes. He knew she hated to cry.

  Cursing beneath his breath, he mounted his own horse… and prayed he wouldn’t let her down. Nonetheless nigglings of cold-edged doubt crept up and down his spine. Some even had the cheek to plop down right atop the tight, achy knot of tension pulsing hotly at the back of his neck.

  Eager for the comforts of a fine-smoored peat fire, frothy ale, and a dry, warm place to rest his head, he dug his heels into the garron’s sides and hastened after the others.

  They’d already ridden a goodly distance.

  But then she drew rein. She glanced over her shoulder, clearly looking for him… waiting for him.

  Iain’s mouth curved in a smile that warmed him clear to his toes.

  Because she waited, but, too, because her doing so made him smile.

  A feeble excuse for a smile compared to MacFie’s toothy grin, but a smile all the same.

  A wash of Madeline’s sweet golden warmth spilled through him. He’d smiled more since having her at his side than he supposed he had in the whole of his life.

  Digging in his knees he urged the garron into a smooth canter… and smiled again when the beast complied.

  Nay, he could not fail Madeline Drummond.

  Couldn’t bear seeing her lose heart.

  But his fleeting smile faded as he closed the distance between them, wiped off his face by questions he couldn’t outrun.

  What if Abercairn truly was lost? Her father indeed dead, as she believed?

  And more unsettling still, what if his own impetuousness brought her an even worse sorrow?

  Would she cease looking on him as a valiant? View him differently?

  Would she be able to forgive him?

  And if indeed things went horribly wrong, would he be able to forgive himself?

  True to Gavin’s assertions, they reached Cormac Mac-Fie’s modest tower-house with only a light damping, having kept just ahead of the front edges of the pursuing rain clouds. The keep’s main door already stood wide in welcome, and as they dismounted, a great bear of a man pulled opened the iron-grilled yett and came long-strided to greet them, a smile to rival Gavin’s own spreading across his equally red-bearded face.

  “Friends, Cousin, I greet you!” he boomed, making straight for Iain. He thrust out his hand with a grand flourish. “You are welcome to my hearth,” he declared… and near crunched Iain’s fingerbones.

  The smell of peat smoke, roasted meats, and musty floor rushes wafted out from the hall’s opened entry, the most appetizing smell—a roasting boar—made Iain’s stomach growl loudly, his mouth water. And more than made up for the man’s pulverizing grip.

  “May the saints smile on you for your hospitality this night,” Iain found his voice once the giant released his hand.

  Gavin’s cousin more times over than Gavin himself could coherently defend, Cormac MacFie greeted the others. Gavin in particular received a ferocious hug that made Iain wince. He could almost hear Gavin’s ribs cracking.

  “I didn’t ken you’d taken a wife,” he said to Gavin, releasing him at last and waving them all into the damp-smelling ground floor, a low-vaulted storage area piled high with ale casks, sacks of grain, and a jumbled assortment of rusty-looking weapons.

  Iain noted the weapons, but Cormac bustled them so quickly through the dimly lit undercroft, there proved no time for a closer inspection.

  Pausing at the arched entrance to a narrow-winding turnpike stair, Cormac snatched a smallish resin torch from its iron bracket on the wall and led the way above-stairs… toward the delicious aromas calling to Iain’s watering taste buds and toward a warm and dry place to stretch his bones for the night.

  Of a certainty not the sumptuously lovely bed he’d shared with Madeline the previous night—a chaste sleep born of deepest exhaustion, even if they had slept hip to naked hip.

  Nay, Cormac’s guests would sleep on pallets, but comfortable and clean ones, Iain was sure.

  And he ached for his with a vengeance.

  Mayhap even more than he craved the savory-smelling roast boar… or even his lady’s embrace.

  Sleep called him, as did an insistent voice at his ear.

  An urgent tugging on his sleeve.

  “Sir! I crave a word with you.”

  Nella of the Marsh clutched a handful of his plaid and held fast. “Please.” She pulled him away from the curving stairs leading him ever deeper into the shadows of the undercroft. She paused at last near a wildly sputtering pitch-pine torch.

  The torch’s flickering light played across her comely face, revealing the same anxious look he’d noted back at Fortingall beneath the ancient yew.

  Iain cast a longing glance toward the stairwell, his stomach clenching at the delicious aromas wafting down the stair’s curving length.

  He drew a long breath. “I am sore tired and hungry, lady,” he said, turning back to her. “Can you not speak your mind abovestairs? In the comfort of the hall? We can share a cup of ale before the hearth if that would suit you?”

  �
�My pardon, sir, but nay,” she declined, shaking her head. “I would not risk having anyone else hear what I must tell you.”

  Something in her tone sent icy little shivers tripping down Iain’s spine. Her gaze kept flitting about, almost as if she feared someone—or something?—would leap out of the shadows and make a lunge for her throat.

  “You are troubled. What is amiss, lady?” Iain peered hard at her, and immediately wished he hadn’t.

  Her jittery nerves and darting eyes filled him with increasing ill ease.

  She wet her lips. “Do you believe in ghosts?”

  Iain’s brows shot heavenward. “Ghosts?” he echoed, incredulous.

  Now he really regretted remaining below with her.

  “Ghosts as in the spirits of the deceased?”

  She nodded. “I—” she began only to break off and glance away. After a long moment, she looked back at him and sucked in a great, quivering breath.

  “I live alone in a wee cottage. Little more than a cot-house really, but, sir, I am well content there and enjoy my solitude, you must understand,” she said, the words flowing fast and unchecked. “Because I have oft been harassed by those who do not understand me, I put about a bit of prattle that I receive visitations from the dead.”

  At Iain’s sharp intake of breath, she lighted a quick hand on his arm. “Please do not mis-take me, sir. I did what I did to ensure my privacy and for no other reason. I have ne’er been visited by a spectre and ne’er hoped to be.”

  Releasing her hold on his plaid, she began wringing her hands. “It was just a sham, you see? A ruse for my protection,” she explained. “Such rumors keep people from one’s door.”

  For truth!

  Iain slid another glance at the turnpike stair. Sakes, but they called to him!

  He folded his arms. “Why are you telling me this?” “Because… because I was visited by a ghost at Mac-

  Nab’s hall last night. A true one.” Iain’s jaw dropped. “And you want me to know?” What was it about him? MacFie and his selkies.

  Doon’s old cailleach trying to give him Fairy Fire Stones, and now this woman and ghosts at poor MacNab’s! “Shouldn’t you have told MacNab rather than me?” She shook her head, her eyes round as a full moon.