Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The map had been on the desk since morning. Anthony's gaze was fixed on the vellum, his brow furrowed in a deep, permanent line.
He stood with both hands flat on the table, weight forward, eyes on the northern ridge markings Fergus had added in the small hours.
The wood of the desk creaked under the sudden pressure of his palms. Fresh ink, still slightly raised if you ran your thumb across it, which he had done three times already without registering he was doing it.
He felt the slight, tacky resistance against his skin, a tactile reminder of the border that refused to stay quiet.
"How many riders?" he said. His voice was a low, gravelly sound that seemed to come from the back of his throat.
"Six seen. Could be more beyond the tree line.
" Fergus stood opposite, arms at his sides, the stance he used when he was delivering information he didn't like and had decided to deliver straight regardless.
Fergus's shoulders were square, his face a mask of disciplined neutrality.
"They stayed north of the boundary marker. Didnae cross."
"They never cross." Anthony straightened, his spine popping with the movement. "They watch. MacLeod has been watchin' this ridge for two years. It's a message, nae an incursion." He felt a cold, familiar tightness in his chest at the mention of the name.
"Aye." Fergus looked at the map. Then at Anthony. The older man's eyes searched Anthony's face, looking for the reaction he knew was coming. "The message has a new rider this time."
Anthony waited. He went perfectly still, his breath hitching in his lungs.
Fergus's jaw shifted once. The silence in the room became brittle. "Folk say Moira, Lady MacLeod, rides with them now."
The fire in the grate popped. A log settled. The sudden noise made Anthony flinch, though he hid it by looking away.
Anthony looked at the map. The lines blurred for a moment before his vision snapped back into a hard, cold focus.
The northern ridge. The tree line. The boundary marker that had stood since his grandfather's time, the stone column carved with the McArthur mark that meant here and no further.
She is watchin' that line.
He could almost feel the phantom weight of the cold stone against his back.
He had stood at that marker at twenty years old with his father beside him and been told what it meant to hold a border. Not just with walls and men, but with the weight of the name behind it, the accumulated fact of everyone who had held it before you.
He remembered the pride that had swelled in him then. It had felt like certainty. It had felt like enough.
It had nae been enough.
He had believed that, then. Now, the memory tasted like ash in the back of his mouth.
He looked at the ridge line on the map. At the notation Fergus had made in small, careful script: six riders, dawn, north face. Then beneath it, in smaller letters still, as if Fergus had debated whether to write it at all: one woman. dark horse.
Six years.
He'd thought that particular door was closed.
His heart hammered a slow, heavy rhythm against his ribs. He put his thumb over the second notation. The ink was dry now, but he pressed down as if he could smudge the words out of existence.
"Folk say many things," he said. He tried to keep his voice level, but a sharp edge of bitterness cut through the tone.
Fergus nodded once. He didn't miss the tension in the Laird's hand. "Shall I send men to the ridge?"
"Keep the current patrol rotation. Daenae change the pattern." Anthony moved his thumb from the notation, revealing the words again. "If she wants to watch the boundary, let her watch. The boundary hasnae moved."
"And if she crosses it?" Fergus asked, his voice quiet but persistent.
Anthony looked at the door. His eyes were dark, a storm brewing behind the iris. "She willnae."
The certainty in it came out harder than he intended and landed in the room with a weight that had nothing to do with border patrol. He felt his jaw lock, the muscle jumping rhythmically.
Fergus heard it. He always heard it. He had the good sense to say nothing. The man simply lowered his head, acknowledging the command.
Anthony folded the map slowly. Corners aligned.
Crease pressed flat. His movements were precise, mechanical, as if he were trying to fold his own emotions into the paper.
The ridge line disappeared into the fold, and then the fold disappeared under his palm, and he set the whole thing at the corner of the desk and looked at the fire.
Six years. The number felt like a sentence.
She had been Lady MacLeod for six years, and she had stayed on her side of the boundary for six years.
Whatever she was doing riding the northern ridge now, she was doing it deliberately, which meant she wanted him to know, which meant she wanted something.
Not his concern. Had never been his concern. She'd made certain of that.
He felt a surge of old, tired anger rise in his throat, not the kind that burned, the kind that settled.
The kind a man carried long enough that it stopped feeling like anger and started feeling like weather. And whatever she wanted was not his concern and had not been his concern since the autumn she'd sent word of difficulties and complications.
He had read the letter once. Set it down. He had not needed to read it twice to understand that difficulties meant him. That complications meant what was left of his face.
Nae loss. That was the important thing. Nae grief. Pride, only. Wounded and old and nae worth examinin'.
He had not replied. He did not close his eyes. He looked at the map instead, at the notation in Fergus's hand, and kept his expression exactly as it was.
"Out," Anthony said. The word was sharp, a command intended for a soldier, not a beast.
Fox blinked. Slowly. The blink of an animal that had heard the word, considered it, and declined. Anthony felt his face flush with a mix of disbelief and annoyance.
Behind him, Fergus coughed. It was a dry, amused sound that Anthony chose to ignore.
Anthony pointed at the door. "Out. Now." He stepped forward, his shadow falling over the desk.
Fox looked at the pointed finger. Then at Anthony's face. Then, with the deliberateness of a decision being made, he leaned forward and closed his teeth around the rolled dispatch. Anthony's eyes widened as the fox's jaw snapped shut on the paper.
He was off the desk and through the door before Anthony had finished pushing back from the table. The speed of the animal left a vacuum of silence in its wake.
"That animal," Anthony said. “That beast will be stew before winter.” He was already turning, his movements jerky with a new, frantic energy.
He was already moving. His boots thudded against the stone, the sound echoing in the corridor.
He was chasing a fox through his own keep. This was his life now.
Fox knew the keep better than half the men who lived in it.
That was the only explanation for the route he took. Not the direct corridor, not the obvious stairwell. But the narrow service passage beside the kitchen that emerged into the east corridor at the precise angle that required a pursuing man to slow his stride or catch his shoulder on the stone.
Anthony felt the rough stone scrape against his shoulder, a sharp sting that only fueled his pace.
Which cost him three seconds, which was apparently exactly the margin Fox had calculated.
The animal had run the service passage deliberately. He was certain of it.
He let out a low, frustrated growl through gritted teeth.
He caught sight of red fur at the base of the main stairwell. Gone by the time he reached it. The tail vanished around the corner like a flicker of flame.
Fergus was behind him somewhere, he could hear the particular rhythm of Fergus not quite keeping up and not quite willing to say so. The heavy thumping of boots followed him, a relentless reminder of the ridiculousness of the chase.
He was going to hear about this until spring.
The stool at the top of the first landing was on its side. Anthony stepped over it, his breath beginning to hitch in his chest.
A kitchen maid flattened herself against the wall as he passed. He nodded once. She stared. He saw her eyes go wide, her mouth dropping open as the Laird of the keep charged past her after a fox.
He did not slow down.
A flicker of red at the far end of the upper corridor, moving fast, low to the ground, the dispatch still clamped in its mouth like a prize. The fox's ears were back, its body a low, sleek line of focused intent.
The herb room door was ajar.
Anthony put his hand on it and pushed. The wood slammed against the interior wall with a loud, ringing crack.
Fox was already there, sitting beside Catriona's worktable with the dispatch in his mouth. Tail curled neatly around his paws, looking up at her with the expression of a creature delivering something important to the correct person.
Of course. Of course he'd brought it to her.
Catriona looked at the dispatch. Then at Fox. Then at Anthony in the doorway, one hand on the frame, breathing slightly harder than he intended.
Her eyes swept over him, noting the disarray with a slow, rising amusement. Mud from the courtyard still on his left boot, and a fine coating of plaster dust on his right shoulder from the service passage wall.
She pressed her lips together. A small, telltale dimple appeared at the corner of her mouth as she fought a smile.
"He has somethin' of mine," Anthony said. He tried to sound authoritative, but his voice was thin from the run.
"Aye." She looked at Fox. "Drop it." Her voice was soft, a calm contrast to Anthony's frantic arrival.
Fox set the dispatch down on the floor beside her feet with the care of an animal placing an offering at a shrine. He looked up at her. His tail moved once, a single sweep, a creature satisfied with his morning's work. The animal then looked toward Anthony, its eyes gleaming.