Highland Song (7 page)

She was still watching him with furrowed brows and his cheeks warmed.

Gavin shook away the carnal images that were cavorting through his head. Damn, but this was his home—not hers. Even if she had helped him complete it. Anyway, the thoughts going through his head were the most ridiculous notions he had ever entertained, because the lass hadn’t asked to be his wife. She had simply given him the gift of a roof, impossible though it seemed.

He looked at her suspiciously. “What do you want?”

Again she furrowed her brows and repeated, as though she hadn’t understood, “Want?”

“
Aye,” he said. “No one does this sort of work for naught. What payment are ye looking for, lass—because there isna much I have to give,” he hurriedly added.

She peered down at the sack he had brought from home. It was full of a day’s supply of victuals. “Mayhap just a bite to eat,” she suggested. “If you have enough to share?”

He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “If ye’ve a bit o’ faerie magik seems to me you’d conjure up your own brekkie,” he said irascibly. His tone was rife with sarcasm. “Forsooth, wench, ye can raise a hefty roof, but ye canna fill your tiny belly?”

Her hands went to her hips and her green eyes glinted suddenly with green fire. “I need nothing from an ungrateful knave!” she swore, and turned and walked out of the house, marching toward the forest.

Gavin followed her out, experiencing an instant of fear at the thought of her disappearing yet again. “Wait!”

In truth, he had brought more than plenty, which only made him wonder that he must have expected—or even hoped—to encounter the lass again. And that precisely was at the heart of his suddenly sour mood, because for the first time in his life he craved something he, in truth, had never hoped to have.

Something about the girl made him yearn for things he could not name.

She stopped and peered over her shoulder, her green eyes full of uncertainty.

Gavin nodded, lifting the sack between them. “Indeed, I do have plenty,” he assured. “Come back. Ye’re right. I’m an ungrateful arse and ye ha’e my deepest thanks.”

Still, she hesitated.

“
I’m sorry,” he said. “Dinna go, lass.” He lifted up the sack higher, offering it to her. “I have bread and cheese and oatcakes.”

“
Oatcakes?” The tiniest smile returned to her lips and she hurried back. Gavin felt something like sparrows take flight in his breast.

“
What’s your name, lass?” he asked as he watched her approach, his skin tingling strangely at the sight of her lovely legs hurrying toward him.

“
My friends call me Cat,” she said, and Gavin arched a brow.

 

Piers de Montgomerie stood in front of his barn, scratching his head as he contemplated the missing thatch. The cart certainly appeared as though it had once been filled with bundles of straw, but it was sitting exactly where they had left it, empty but for a few short sprigs.

They had been preparing to put a new roof on the little church his wife had constructed for her brother, but the material was gone now. Meggie was bound to believe it was simply another delay, but it wasn’t. And yet building a church for her youngest brother to spout sermons that Piers didn’t want to hear, admittedly, was far less of a priority, than say, rebuilding a barn, or repairing the damned fence her brothers had destroyed during the course of their feud.

And then, of course, Gavin hardly seemed interested in sermons of late. Piers couldn’t recall the last time the lad had even visited. He’d taken to brooding, and kept mostly to himself now.

“
It was all right here,” Baldwin swore. “And then it was gone. I swear it, Lyon!”

Piers shook his head—not entirely because of the self-evident statement. He had hoped his long time friend would eventually stop using that silly epitaph. He’d been given the name by his men after a particularly bloody battle when they’d said he’d appeared to them coming off the battlefield, with his long, gilt mane of hair and bloodied face, like a lion fresh after its kill. It wasn’t an honor he was particularly proud of—especially now that all he aspired to be was a husband and farmer. He had grown quite accustomed to a quiet life and had no stomach for fighting any longer.

Baldwin tilted him a look. “If I didn’t know better, I’d wonder if the Brodies were back to their thievin’.”

Again Piers shook his head. “Meghan would have their arses. They might not fear any reprisal from me, but they wouldn’t cross their sister for any booty.”

Baldwin chuckled at that, knowing it for truth. Even Piers cowered in the face of his wife’s temper, for Meghan had a tongue far sharper than most blades and a wit twice as keen. “What now?” he asked.

Piers blew out a sigh, wondering the same.

In truth, he had never expected to find himself a laird and he was learning as he went how to deal with these canny Scots. He had come to truly admire them for they fought their battles by some strange code of honor that appealed to him. They stole your goat; you stole their sheep; and so on and so on—all of it done openly, as though thieving your good neighbor were the most natural and honorable thing to do. However, never accuse one without proof, he’d learned, for they defended kith and kin unto their dying breath. But the Brodie brothers had already come to accept him and he didn’t believe they would resort to thieving anymore—particularly since this particular booty was intended to benefit the youngest of the brood.

Nay, something else was amiss here.

Scratching his head, he turned and walked out of the barn, into the bright sunshine, only to find riders approaching in the distance. He squinted to see the banner, and spied the bright gold with the royal blood red lion rampant at its center. King David—and despite his poor reputation in these parts, he rode with only a handful of men.

Baldwin offered him a look that was full of trepidation for despite Piers’ friendship with David, they both knew that David’s presence here meant trouble.

Together they waited in the open field until the riders reined in before them.

Piers noted the scowls upon his mens’ faces. “What brings you to these parts again so soon?” he asked.

Unsettled, like its rider, David’s horse protested his weight and the anxious king dismounted and stood before Piers, hands upon his hips. His men remained mounted, sour faced and sweating. “We brought a prisoner from the Mounth,” he said without preamble. “A woman.”

Piers frowned, as there were no women amongst them now.

“
We lost her,” David said irritably, evidently guessing at Piers’ thoughts. “The canny wench unbound herself when no one was looking and smacked Dùghall straight in the head.” He inclined his head toward one of the men who sat, tense in his saddle, with a lump on his forehead the size of a man’s bollocks.

“
Christ,” Piers said, though more as a response to the size of the lump on the man’s noggin. “Who was she?” She had to be a hefty woman to leave a mark like that.

“
The sister of a northern rebel chieftain. She was to become a ward of the English court until she was old enough to wed. Alas, she escaped before we could reach
Chreagach Mhor
!”

Piers was genuinely taken aback. “MacKinnon agreed to such a thing?” The MacKinnon laird he knew would no more be a part of such a scheme than he would have allowed his own son to remain a political pawn. He had, in fact, gone to great lengths to secure the return of his son—including stealing the daughter of his foe to barter for his son’s return. That he had made amends with David afterward was simply a testament to his temperament—and the simple fact that he’d fallen deeply in love with his English bride. But his good nature only went so far, and Piers was shocked that David would take such a risk again, when, King or not, his rule was not favored in these parts.

David’s look darkened. Friends they might be, but he didn’t like his edicts questioned. “We have yet to tell him who she is,” he confessed. And suddenly realizing Piers would wonder why he’d risked Iain’s wrath when Piers was his strongest ally in these regions, he added. “
Chreagach Mhor
was the only stronghold we trusted to hold the girl until an escort arrived from London.”

Piers knew better than to laugh. “You need a fortress to contain the girl?” He glanced again at the lump on Dùghall’s forehead and came to his own conclusions, wisely holding his tongue.

David’s furry brows collided. “I take it you have not seen her?”

Piers shook his head. “Nary a hair on her head.”

“
Damn! We have searched everywhere! Though I cannot believe she would have ventured this way.”

Clearly, since they were alone, MacKinnon did not feel obligated to aid David search. Piers considered the wisdom in offering his own aid, but felt obliged to offer his liege a place to stay at least.

“
Alas, we cannot,” David refused. “Should we find the lass we’ll be needing the MacKinnon’s gaol.” He turned to calm his mount, stroking its withers. “I’ll be picking hairs from betwixt my teeth with all the arse licking I must do—damned troublesome wench!”

Piers thought about Meghan’s brothers, and how they had fought so desperately to bring their sister home. He wondered of the missing woman’s family. Despite that it had worked out for him, he could no longer condone such heavy handed tactics as stealing a girl from her folk as these were flesh and blood people, not pawns on a chess board. “I’ll keep an eye out for her,” he promised as David mounted his steed. But he sincerely hoped he would not see her.

David shook his head once he was mounted, and said again, “Damned troublesome wench!” And giving his men a signal to depart, they hied away, leaving both Piers and Baldwin staring after them.

“
I hate to say it,” Baldwin ventured, knowing he could speak freely with Piers. “He might have bitten off more than he could chew when he claimed Scotia’s throne. Peace between the clans will not come easily.”

Piers watched his friend and liege disappear into the horizon and sighed heavily. “I don’t know,” he said, torn. “The land I hold was once the most precarious clearing of all, and yet we now have peace amongst the most querulous of the lot.” He didn’t have to condone it to admit, the fact. “His strategy is quite brilliant, in fact. If he can marry them off, he won’t ever have to lift a sword against a one.”

“
True,” Baldwin agreed.

“
Although,” Piers added soberly, “I pray he knows to tread softly as he goes as these are not the men to anger.”

 

Cat.

The name lifted Gavin’s brows.

But it was just a coincidence, he reasoned. Simply because she had appeared from nowhere, looking for all the world like a graceful feline herself, didn’t mean she was any sort of fair folk, changed from a cat.

And simply because she had raised his roof faster than any man he knew might have done it didn’t mean she had done so with any sort of magik—nor did she spin the thatch that had appeared as mysteriously as she had.

She wasn’t a faerie.

Gavin didn’t believe in such things. He had a hard enough time lately keeping his own faith.

At any rate, fair folk didn’t eat the way she did—enough for a man twice her size.

At least he didn’t think they would.

Seated together upon the same log, he shared his lunch with the girl... or rather, he nibbled upon a single piece of cheese while he watched her gobble her food. He had spread his sack upon the ground and laid the contents out upon it for both of them to sup upon. However, considering that he had already eaten this morn and it was not yet nones, he wasn’t very hungry. Cat, on the other hand, appeared as though she hadn’t eaten for days. She sat, stuffing her gob faster than she could pluck the foodstuffs from the linen sack. Not since he had been a child with two brothers and a greedy sire at the table had he witnessed such a rush for every morsel.

“
If I ate like that,” Gavin told her, “I would be as big as this house.” Not that it was a complaint. He was simply shocked, and having lived with two brothers and a very outspoken sister, he wasn’t accustomed to holding his tongue.