Chapter 2
“You are the most perfect, perfect little creature in the entire world,” Eilidh crooned to her new nephew from where he slept peacefully in Davina’s arms, while an exhausted Ailsa looked on happily from her place on the bed. Her labor had been long, but there hadn’t been any unusual complications.
And now, there was this boy. This wonderful, tiny little boy who, as Eilidh watched, stretched his wee mouth wide and waved around his miniature fist.
“Look at him,” Ewan said, sounding completely awestruck. He was sitting beside Ailsa, clutching her hand, which he’d only let go when he was holding the babe. “A wee warrior already. My son.”
“Mayhap let’s wait until he’s two or three days old before ye put a spear in his hand, aye?” Ailsa chuckled at her husband.
Ewan looked at his wife, affronted.
“I’m nae going to start him with a spear, Ailsa. We’ll begin with daggers, of course.”
“Ah.” Ailsa leaned her head back against the veritable stack of pillows holding her up and let her eyes drift closed. “Well, in that case, please. He’s obviously ready for such things.”
“And those are your parents, sweet boy,” Davina murmured to the bundle in her arms. “Dinnae fret, though. Ye have several highly sensible aunties to care for ye, too.”
“I am the Laird here,” Ewan commented without turning his attention away from where he was fussing with Ailsa’s blankets. “I could have ye exiled for such slander.”
“She used to be such a sweet girl,” Ailsa teased without opening her eyes. “But now she’s all married and happy and saucy.” She peeked one eye at Eilidh. “And there was never any hope for Vaila, but at least we still have our wee Eilidh.”
“Och, aye,” Eilidh said, making a grabbing motion until Davina reluctantly let her younger sister take a turn at holding the child. “Now that I have seen this sweet face, I shall remain a spinster forever just so that I dinnae ever have to leave him behind.”
Her family all laughed, as she had intended, but Eilidh felt a pang at the idea of remaining at Buchanan Keep for the rest of her days.
It wasn’t as though it wasn’t a nice enough place.
It was. The surrounding countryside was lovely, and the people had accepted the Donagheys with more kindness than they could have expected, given all the strife that had come on the heels of the girls’ arrival.
But it wasn’t home.
The cliffs of Castle Dubh-Gheal still flashed behind her eyes whenever she thought of home, but strangely, the quip about remaining unmarried didn’t quite feel right any longer, either.
The baby let out a sleepy yawn, and Eilidh’s attention was wholly stolen by the action.
“What are ye going to call him?” Davina asked as she stroked a finger over the sparse, downy hair that covered the boy’s head.
Ailsa raised her head to answer this question, as though she could not bear to look anywhere besides at her son as she answered the question.
“We are going to call him James Alasdair Buchanan,” she said, love evident in her tone. “Though I reckon we’ll mostly call him Jamie.”
“Wee Jamie,” Davina said, her voice thick with emotion.
“And Alasdair, for Father,” Eilidh said. She needed to wipe her eyes and nose, but she was holding the baby, so she was satisfied with sniffing loudly.
“We willnae be telling my husband that the baby’s name is for him,” Vaila said, looking at Ewan sternly, as if she believed the Laird liable to succumb to any such sentimentalism. “He will be insufferable.”
“He’s my closest friend. I daresay he’ll figure it out,” Ewan said, gesturing to Eilidh that it was his turn to hold wee Jamie.
“I’m going to tell him that ye are named after the last proper King of Scotland,” Vaila said, ducking her head to let the child grab her finger in one chubby fist. “Just to torment him. It’s best to do that to husbands, just to keep them on their toes.”
“Dinnae be teaching my son such things, ye wee devil,” Ailsa said, trying to push herself up, her struggles marked as she fought against the soreness that followed childbed. “Give him here.”
Ewan clutched the boy to his chest. “Ye have had him to yourself for months.”
“He was inside my body!”
“Besides,” Ewan continued without reacting to his wife’s protestation, bending low over the baby and pressing a kiss to his forehead. “The midwife said that ye must rest.”
Ailsa harrumphed, but she didn’t argue. She leaned her head back once more and let her eyes flutter shut, her posture one of clear exhaustion.
Davina caught Eilidh’s eye and tilted her head toward the door; Vaila was already carefully rising from the edge of Ailsa’s bed. It was time they left the new family of three to spend time together without any visitors.
“We’ll come see ye later,” Vaila whispered as Davina bent to press a kiss on their eldest sister’s cheek. “Ye rest for now.”
“Ye did well, Ailsa,” Eilidh praised when it was her turn. She moved to leave but was surprised when an impressive grip held onto her wrist. She looked down to see Ailsa peering up at her with keen eyes.
“That’s blood on your dress,” she said, peering at Eilidh’s bodice.
“Um.” Eilidh looked down and indeed, there was a splotch she hadn’t seen, tucked on the side of her ribs and half-hidden by her arm. Half hidden was not hidden enough, however, not for her whip-smart sister.
“Whose is it?” Ailsa demanded.
She really did have an astonishing hold on Eilidh’s arm. It really seemed that she ought to be too tired from her ordeal to cling so tightly.
“Nobody?” Eilidh hazarded.
Ailsa squeezed tighter. Ow.
Ewan sighed. He really did have the exasperated father look down pat already.
“There’s a stranger in the Keep,” he told his wife. “We dinnae ken who he is, but he’s nae a threat at the moment. He was nearly dead when he rode into the training yard.”
“And nobody recognized him?” Ailsa asked. “He’s not from nearby?”
She shot an anxious look at her son at the mention of the villain, as if remembering for the first time that the outside world could harm her precious new babe.
Ewan’s mouth was a grim line. “We dinnae ken just yet. Odd thing, though—he was riding a Donaghey horse.”
Ailsa frowned. “Someone from Dunnet then? One of the villagers? Or someone who has aught to do with Gordon?”
Davina and Vaila had almost been out of the room, but now they, like Ailsa, whipped around to stare at Eilidh. James, too, was there in the open doorway; he’d been waiting outside to give Ailsa privacy, as she was not yet fully dressed following giving birth.
Eilidh winced at the weight of so many curious eyes.
“Aye, I recognized the mount,” she confirmed for her sisters. “But he did tell me his name—Ciaran Gunn.”
James swore in Gaelic, and Ewan’s expression grew even harder.
“Saints above,” he murmured, careful not to wake wee Jamie, even in his dismay. “That’s a name I havenae heard in an age.”
Eilidh had found the name familiar, but she hadn’t been able to place it.
“Ye know him then?” she prodded.
She’d pushed aside the thought for the time she’d spent cradling her nephew, but now mention of the stranger had roused her hunger to know about him anew.
“I ken the name,” he clarified. “I’ve nae met the man before today. But he’s a famed warrior, for all that he’s young for such renown.”
Ailsa looked thoughtful. “I may have met him once,” she reflected. “When we were both children, before the rebellion. Graham would have a clearer memory of it, but the Gunns came to trade with the Donagheys. Our families had dealings with one another for years.”
“Aye,” James contributed, as if suddenly recalling something. “That would be how he got the horse, would it nae? The beast itself is known, too. Shadowbane. Gunn rode that mount through the Jacobite fires and came out the other side.”
“The Gunns are known for having old blood,” Ailsa said by way of agreement. “Old and strong.”
Eilidh knew they would no doubt tease her for being so romantic about things, but she couldn’t help clasping her hands together.
“That sounds like something out of a legend,” she said.
Oh, she could just see it. The legendary hero who fought for his country against the tyranny of the English, devastated by the turmoil in the homeland he’d fought so hard to defend.
He would have gone for a long ride on his trusty steed, certain that he could figure out a way to make things better for the people of the Highlands.
Only he’d been waylaid by dastardly bandits and barely escaped with his life.
But fate—and Shadowbane’s instinctive connection to the family that had raised his dam and granddam for too many generations to count—had brought him here, to Eilidh, no matter that she wasn’t in her ancestral home any longer.
“Or,” Vaila interjected sourly, “it’s a trap. I wouldnae put it past Gordon to find some sneaky way to turn an old ally against us.”
Eilidh felt a sudden flash of anger as her romantic vision of Ciaran atop Shadowbane, mane and cloak rippling in the wind as he looked broodingly out over the moors, disappeared. Her sister’s dour expression was much less pleasant.
“It’s nae a trap,” she insisted, crossing her arms. “If ye had seen him, ye would know that. Nobody gets themself beaten within an inch of their life just to set up a trap.”
Vaila mimicked Eilidh’s posture. “Unless it’s a very good trap,” she countered. “One designed to trick gullible wee lassies like yourself.”
Eilidh scoffed. “I’m nae gullible. Just because I am nae suspicious of everyone, like ye.”
“Girls!” Ailsa snapped the word and, for a moment, she sounded so much like their late mother that Eilidh was practically transported back in time. Lord above, she even looked like their mother, all frowning and stern, when Eilidh and Vaila looked sheepishly in her direction.
“We are not going to fight amongst ourselves,” she said in her best Lady of the Keep tone. “That’s the kind of thing that Gordon wants. We willnae give it to him. Besides.”
She reached out her arms for wee Jamie, and this time Ewan handed him directly over. The baby immediately nuzzled his face toward his mother’s breast, evidently hungry.
Ailsa regarded her son with an expression that was so tender that it shattered Eilidh’s ire like a hammer brought down sharply on glass.
“We have more important things to protect now,” she said, a smile on her lips as she looked at the babe. “There is too much to lose for us to risk losing ourselves.”
When Ailsa looked up, Eilidh knew that her cheeks were burning with shame at being so childish when Ailsa had just gone through one of the most challenging days of her life.
“We’ll write to Graham,” their eldest sister decreed. “He will know what to do.”
“Aye,” Vaila agreed, looking just as sheepish as Eilidh felt. “That’s a grand idea. I’ll write the letter; dinnae fash, Ailsa.”
Vaila and James went off to write the report to Graham, and Davina wandered off to find her husband, Arran McPherson, who was scheduled to return from a scouting trip at any moment. This left Eilidh at odds, as she often had been ever since Davina’s marriage.
She resolved to go down and check on Ciaran merely for something to do, though she found him asleep, as she’d expected.
Eilidh briefly watched the gentle rise and fall of his chest, reassuring herself that he was still alive, then turned out toward the stables to check on his legendary horse.
She was happy for her sisters and their grand love matches. She truly was. But, as she wandered out across the yard, seeking Shadowbane, she couldn’t help but reflect on how different things had become between the four of them in the past year.
A year ago, they’d all lived at Castle Dubh-Gheal with their parents.
Yes, Graham had been missing, and Eilidh knew that if she lost him now, she would be devastated.
But before Gordon had come into their lives, her long-lost brother had been little more than a wisp of memory to her, as she’d been so young when their father had conspired to fake his death.
She hadn’t known what she was missing then, but she knew what she was missing now.
She missed her mother’s perfect hugs and the way her father would wink sidelong at her as he snuck her treats. She missed life when things felt simple and safe. When she knew her place in the world.
Now, her sisters had new places with their husbands.
But Eilidh… She was the one left behind.
Except, goodness gracious, that sounded dramatic even to her own ears, and she had a very high tolerance for such things.
Eilidh pushed those thoughts aside as she entered the stables and headed straight for Shadowbane.
In the chaos of Ciaran’s arrival, all Eilidh had noticed about the horse was his dark coat and white star, the telltale markers that had made her recognize his lineage.
But now, with the knowledge of his prowess as a warhorse guiding her, she saw the marks of battle.
Scars on his flanks and sides. A patch where the hair was different, the clear signal that he’d been burned there, and it had healed imperfectly.
There were even small scratches from the most recent flight, though Eilidh was pleased to see that the Buchanan grooms had already cleaned and applied healing salve to each one.
“Ye really are quite the hero, are ye nae?” she asked the steed, who tossed his head in pleasure as if he understood every syllable of this praise. Regally, he lowered his nose for her to pat, making it clear that this was a serious honor, indeed.
Eilidh regarded it as such.
“Thank ye for bringing him to me,” she said quietly, pressing her own brow to that white, shining star between Shadowbane’s eyes.
“It is wondrous that ye managed it. No doubt ye are the cleverest of horses.” Shadowbane snorted in agreement.
“But I dinnae ken how ye could have known to find us here, even so.”
There, alone with the horse, she spoke aloud the words that she’d been feeling, the thing she had been just self-aware enough not to say in front of her sisters.
“It has to be fate,” she confided in Shadowbane. “And ye willnae catch me ignoring the hands of fate.”