Chapter 11 #2
Around them, locals looked on edge, shifting in their chairs, eyeing them with concern, as they sipped their stew and ale.
Isabel slowed her frenzy to watch, nervous when a man with a patch over one eye stood, slowly stalking toward their table.
The voices in the inn dimmed, and all she could hear now was the stew being consumed.
“My laird.” The man stared at Lachlan with his good eye, as though even at a table of a dozen, his command showed in the set of his shoulders. “Plenty of Sassenachs patrolling nearby.” The man tapped his eye. “A few of us have run into them personally.”
Lachlan took a long sip of his ale. “I bet whoever did that, lived to regret it.”
The man grinned, straightening. “Aye, he did. But your presence here… makes us a target. Will ye protect us if they attack tonight?”
Without hesitation, Lachlan nodded. “Aye. We are happy to protect all who need protection while we are here. We’ll no’ let any bloody English in tonight.”
The man pressed a fist over his heart and nodded. The small group in the inn cheered, raising their ale in the air, and the tension that had filled the room only moments before dissipated.
By the end of their meal, Roy, Mungo and a few others of Lachlan’s men were mingling with the locals. Isabel wanted the chance to get to know them too, but she could barely keep her eyes open. All she wanted to do was collapse onto a bed and sleep for one hundred years.
Lachlan saw her exhaustion, his eyes flicking to hers and at her wilting shoulders, as though her head and the table were two old friends that needed to meet.
Without a word he stood from the table and with more strength than before, probably from the hot meal, made his way over to the proprietor of the inn to procure her a room with Elsa.
He gestured for her to join him, and as she was sent upstairs she could hear several of his men approach, pulling him aside at the base of the stairs.
She slowed her pace, tugging on the back of Elsa’s gown to get her to slow as well.
“Someone just told me that English riders passed this way asking about the Bruce’s men traveling with a lass. But how would the English know where the Bruce’s forces were moving?”
Lachlan muttered a curse as she reached the top of the stairs. Isabel paused and pretended to adjust her boot lace. “’Tis someone close to the Bruce then.”
Someone close to her uncle. She swallowed. There could be any number of people in that circle. Lachlan turned then, “Everything all right, my lady?”
Caught. Isabel’s face heated and she shook her head. “My boot. All is well.” But the excuse sounded as weak as it was, and she hurried toward her rented room.
There was a spy among her uncle’s men who would be reporting everything that happened to the English.
Maybe even someone in Lachlan’s own camp.
Isabel knew not to trust easily, having the Bruce as an uncle, even during times of peace, was dangerous.
But to be wary about the men in his handpicked circles?
She began to sort those she knew into categories, from most likely to have something to gain from the English to least.
There were the Comyns who were too smart to bite the hand that fed them but also just as devious, the MacDougalls were too cowardly, but the Balliols… they were the worst combination of devious and cowardly, enough to attempt something like this.
Elsa opened the door of their shared room for her, and once they were both safely inside, Isabel pressed a thick wooden board into the iron rungs on the door, locking it in place.
A quarter of an hour later, she was seated beside the warmth of the hearth with Elsa brushing her hair. Her list of men was now over thirty strong, with far too many in the maybe an arsehole who betrayed her uncle category, when three knocks sounded on the door, rattling the board where it held.
Elsa stilled her brushing, and Isabel sat up straight. “Who do you think it could be?”
Elsa shrugged, looking skeptical and scared. Fingering the dagger she still had strapped to her arm, Isabel went to the door and called through it without opening.
“Who is it?”
“’Tis Lachlan,” he said.
Dressed in only her shift and a wrapper, the last thing she should do was open the door. “What is it?”
“May I come in? I’ve need to have a word.”
Isabel glanced at Elsa, who seemed to be wearing her new permanent expression of terror. With a sigh, Isabel lifted the bar and opened the door.
Lachlan leaned against the doorjamb, trying to look casual, but she knew he did so to take pressure off his injured leg.
The healer in her barely stopped Isabel from giving him a well placed shove to shatter his illusion.
She was tired of dishonesty, of secrets, even ones as small as him hiding the pain from his injuries.
He eyed her up and down from the very top of her head to the tips of her bare toes, a shiver following in the wake of his gaze. He lingered a moment too long on the end of her wrap, as though he had forgotten why he’d come.
Heat crept up Isabel’s neck and she curled her toes under the hem, suddenly aware of the bare skin at her throat. She clutched her wrapper closer, realizing just how inappropriate it was for her to have opened the door. Damn her own curiosity.
“I wanted to make sure that all was well with ye before I lie down for the night,” he said. “I’ll be sleeping out here in the hallway.”
Isabel’s mouth opened, incredulous. “Ye canna, with your wound. In fact, I forgot to change your dressing.”