Highland Steel (Guardians of the Stone Book 2) (40 page)

His breath catching, he started over, re-reading the letter in its entirety:

To Dougal MacLaren, heir to Keppenach, Dunloppe and lesser manors, your father gives ye greeting.

Here and now I deliver ye a child goes by the name of Kenna. She comes by way of Maddog, your bastard brother. As I once held affection for the child’s mother, I bid ye keep her well until my safe return. And if therein I should fail, you being my sole heir, and your sons thereafter, I entreat upon ye to regard the child as kin, giving her all that is due her as a child of my blood.

Subscribed and sealed on this eleventh day of September by me, Donnal MacLaren, forebear of Domnall mac Ailpín, brother to Kenneth, and laird of Keppenach, Dunloppe and lesser manors.

“Kenna,” he whispered, and almost as though he had conjured her, she appeared in the doorway, fiddling with a pendant on a chain about her neck.

“My laird?”

Jaime’s gaze narrowed on the pendant, and his heart skipped another beat. He crossed the room and ripped the pendant from her neck.

“My laird!” she protested. “It belonged to my mother!”

“It’s not possible!” Jaime whispered. He
saw
her body charred upon the ground.
A child. Burnt. Tangled limbs.
His fingers flew to his temples, doubting his very sanity. Could this be a dream?

He peered up at the girl standing before him. Her eyes were steely blue. Her nose… was very much like the sister’s he recalled, but she was a woman grown. The image of the pendant in the palm of his hand swam before his eyes.

Three hearts intertwined and in their center a blooming thistle—the sigil of his house—a house forsaken by its last remaining son.

Jaime shook his head, peering into his sister’s eyes. “I know you,” he said with burning eyes. He swallowed, hard.

“Yes, my laird,” she said, clearly mistaking him. “I spoke for Bowyn when ye let him go. And for that I thank ye, but I have no’ come to ye for that just now. I came because I saw my lady go into the tunnels with a mon she ought not trust; I know him only too well.”

Jaime shook his head, trying to clear his fogged brain and understand what it was she was saying. He wanted so much to embrace her and never let her go. “You saw Lael go down into the gaols?”

His sister was alive. And not merely alive, she was a woman grown, lovely as a rose.

He wanted to know everything—who brought her here? How did she come? Did she remember aught of her life before? The last time Jaime set eyes on her, she was but a wee bairn.

Kenna nodded. “Aye, my laird. I should ha’ said so when ye inquired below in the kitchen, though I dinna wish to cause ye any woe. My lady promised to come quickly and show me how to make a pottage but she has yet to return.”

Lael was in the donjon tunnels.

Kenna was alive.

Torn, confused, Jaime’s initial response was anger that his wife would defy him even after he’d dared to trust her. “Who took her there?”

“Maddog, my laird.”

“Maddog?”

Did the girl realize she spoke against her own blood?

Jaime’s head swam. What a twisted turn of fate, for the lass standing before him—after so many years—was his sister, the daughter of the man who’d stolen his patrimony and who Jaime burned alive for his treachery.

Did Maddog realize?

Whatever the truth, Maddog had abetted Lael in disobeying him. His sudden burst of fury was tempered only by the look of fear on Kenna’s face. But he had a sudden sense something was terribly wrong.

He’d entrusted the blacksmith to Maddog.

The blacksmith was now dead.

He peered into his sister’s blue eyes and knew it was true; Lael was in danger.

Now was not the time for reunions. Later he would tell Kenna the truth. He would tell her everything. But right now there was no time. He pressed the pendant into Kenna’s hands and rushed past her, leaving her alone in the tower room and taking the steps two at a time.

Although the MacKinnon’s men took pains to conceal their smoke, Aidan spied the chieftain’s campfire long before the MacKinnon realized he had come.

No matter that Aidan had arrived with but thirty men, he might have dealt the resting army a mighty blow and felled at least a third of their warriors before anyone realized what was happening. But Aidan approached with his hands extended, far from his bow and his sword. His men followed his lead, all of them cantering into the midst of an army more than four hundred strong with hands raised. Even so, Aidan knew they made a frightful sight, painted in woad and swathed in furs, looking every bit like their ancestors would have appeared, ghosts from Scotia’s past.

The MacKinnon emerged from his tent to greet them, and behind him came more men Aidan recognized, including Gavin Mac Brodie, who’d wed his sister Cat. Behind Gavin followed his two brothers, both removing their hands from their hilts the instant they realized who it was they faced.

“Hail friend, well met,” MacKinnon said in greeting.

Aidan climbed down from his mare. “Well met,” he agreed. “But I dinna come in peace, MacKinnon. I’ve come to free my sister Lael.”

“And we have come for Broc,” MacKinnon revealed. “Belatedly, yet here we are nevertheless.”

Aidan eyed the man with some reproach. “Broc Ceannfhionn claimed ye fought at his side, and ye let him face the enemy alone—along with my sister.”

The chieftain had the good graces to confess a nod, but he did not cow to Aidan. They had met but once before, and Aidan held him in high regard, but he was angered that they had compelled his sister to fight under false pretenses.

“It could not be helped,” Gavin said, stepping forward. With canny blue eyes, his sister’s husband held Aidan’s gaze. “They were waiting for me, and I could not leave whilst my wife was so near her labor.”

Aidan’s heart gave a leap. Betraying himself, his hand flew to his chest. “My sister Cat bore ye a wee bairn?”

Gavin nodded. “A son. His name is Conall.”

Aidan held Gavin mac Brodie’s gaze. “After my father,” he said, choked by the knowledge. He wished he had a chair. “What of Cat—is she?”

Gavin smiled. “Verra well, indeed,
bràthair-cèile
.”
Brother-by-law.

“As pawky as ever,” Gavin’s brother Leith added with a grin. “And her bairn has the lungs of a savage!”

“Sons of bastards!” Aidan exclaimed, but without any heat to his words. He clapped Gavin on the shoulder, momentarily distracted from the business of his sister Lael.
He had a nephew now—a boy. A son for Cat!

“Were it not for the child, Cat would have insisted upon coming along,” Gavin swore. “Thank God for the boy! As it was, we had to leave before the sunrise lest Cat rouse herself and change her mind.”

Aidan grinned. That would be his sister, in truth. All of them were she-wolves, and he had done naught to temper even one.

“As for Lael,” MacKinnon offered. “Ye have my regrets, Aidan, although we will do all we can to return her to your vale.”

Aidan nodded and then clapped the Mackinnon on the shoulder as well. He motioned for his men to dismount, remembering them all at once. He motioned for Lachlann to bring the man Kieran forward on his horse. Hands bound, the man cut his eyes at each of them, one by one.

“You have more than enough men,” Aidan reassured the Mackinnon, ignoring the Sassenach’s ire. “But we have the Butcher’s captain.”

Forced to ride before Maddog with a knife at her back and her hands bound before her, Lael bided her time.

If ever there were the wrong woman to anger, she was that one.

They rode deeper into the woodlands, and up the rise of a hill, stopping to water the horses at a small burn at the foothills of the
Am Monadh Ruadh
.

Rising from Inverness to the north, Aberdeen to the east and Dundee to the south, the plateaus were capped with snow even in July and August. But now, they were majestic and blanketed in white. Shaped by avalanches, windstorms and floods, the over-deepened valleys and misty crags could be a bitter foe, lest a man become at one with the land. Lael knew precisely how to do that, but she doubted her Sassenach-loving wastrels knew what that meant. Dressed as she was, like some proper lady, she thought perhaps they’d forgotten who she was.

I am a child of old Albion, a sister to the wind and a daughter of the forest,
she reminded herself.

Snickering, Maddog pushed her off the horse once they came near to a halt. Lael was nearly trampled by his horse’s hooves, save that she rolled to avoid it. However, she smashed her elbow on a stone and closed her eyes to ward away the excruciating pain.

By the sacred bloody stone, she planned to see Maddog dead before the day was done!

She said not a word. She let them laugh together whilst she lay there gritting her teeth against the pain, and then she sat, trying to massage her elbow against her side.

If only she could reach her knife.

Her gaze fell to find the knife revealed and she quickly lay back down to keep it from their sight. Her cloak caught on the trappings of his saddle and Maddog pushed it off, laughing still. “Feckin’ bitch,” he said.

“Why dinna ye leave her here?” one of the guardsmen asked.

“Because. If that Butcher bastard thinks to come after us, I’ll cut her throat while he watches.”

“He may no’ care.”

“Bollocks, I’ve seen the way he watches her.”

Lael furrowed her brow.
What way?
She couldn’t say. She’d spent far too much time being angry with him and trying to get away. And then, later, she was afraid to look too closely lest she lose her will to leave.

Repositioning herself so her knife was no longer visible, she sat, wiggling the bindings on her wrists. Poor dumb clods. Didn’t they realize how easy it was to free such a flimsy restraint? Clearly, they didn’t even know enough to tie her hands at her back.

But then again, they had dismissed her as a woman, despite the fact that she’d killed more of their men that first night than any of her brethren. Whilst the two continued talking, she continued to wriggle her wrists within the bindings, loosening the rope more and more. The ropes chafed her flesh but she didn’t care. She’d endured far worse pain at the end of Una’s staff. The auld woman was forever wont to bash her over the head. She sorely missed the old hag.

Little by little, she loosed the restraints without their notice, taking immense pleasure in the tip of her blade biting into her thigh. The dirk protruding from its sheathe was simply a reminder that she was soon to turn the tables, and these three fools would rue this day.

From where Lael sat, she could still spy Keppenach’s tower rising in the distance, despite that the hill had swallowed the curtain wall behind its rise. They hadn’t gone far, but soon enough they would be out of Jaime’s reach.

However, her captors clearly underestimated her.

One stood pissing into the burn. The other removed a flask from his saddle and stood drinking from the container until the contents were entirely gone. He shook the flask to empty every last drop and then afterward, he bent to fill it again with water from the burn.

Maddog, for his part, was lured by the gleam of silver in the form of a sword attached to a scabbard on his saddle. He slid his prize out to admire it under the waning sun. Lael recognized the sword of the
Righ Art
, with its inscribed blade. He turned the king sword within his hand and it gleamed furiously, sending a clear signal for leagues. No doubt anyone searching for them could spy the glimmer and send men running at once.

Witless men.

Her people would not have survived so long in the Mounth without knowing how to defend themselves. This would be child’s play, she decided, and it was better not to tarry. She had no love for bloodshed, despite her affinity for knives. Every soul was sacred, even those attached to fools. May Sluag show them mercy in the next life, because she would not do so right now.

Whilst they were busy being stupid, she revealed the tip of her blade—thanking God for her husband’s gift—and sawed quickly through one of the loops. Realizing there wasn’t much time, she freed her hands and rose to her feet, cursing her silly gown for swishing about her ankles. And still they did not hear her approach over the sound of piss and laughter. Maddog, himself, stood staring at the king sword as though entranced, brushing his fat, greasy fingers over the inscription.