Chapter 9
“All right, lads. Let’s go, then.”
There was a roar of protest as Ewan Buchanan pulled a big iron key from his belt and prepared to fit it into the door of the new distillery.
“Nay!”
“My Laird, ye have to give it more than that!”
Even Arran McPherson was shaking his head somberly, as if even he was disappointed by this display of unimpressive pragmatism.
“Ye have to say sommat,” he advised out of the corner of his mouth. “Make it special, ye ken.”
Ewan glanced over at the men who were—from the youngest lad, who couldn’t be more than fourteen where he stood, looking eager at his father’s side, to the eldest, most grizzled man of the lot—nodding vehemently.
“We need a speech!” one called from the back.
Ewan raised his eyes heavenward, either seeking patience or divine inspiration.
“Fine,” he said. “How about this: Gordon is a bastard, but he cannae keep us down. Now, let’s go make some damned fine whisky and then make sure that the scunner never gets to taste a drop.”
This speech, simple, and a touch bloodthirsty though it might have been, was met with raucous approval.
“That’s the stuff there, m’laird!” a middle-aged man hooted. “That’s what Buchanans are made of!”
Ewan shook his head, but he was grinning as he turned back to the door—pausing pointedly to see if there were any more objections—and opened the distillery to the workers.
Many of the men, particularly the older ones, paused to clap their laird on the shoulder as they passed through the door one by one until only Arran, Ciaran, James, and Ewan were still outside.
“Have ye considered being less well-liked, brathair?” Arran teased as he followed Ewan into the distillery, which still smelled of fresh-cut wood and the polish that had made the floorboards gleam. “It might save ye a great deal of time.”
“Not bothering with ye would save me a great deal of time,” Ewan retorted, though there was a true fraternal affection in his expression as he took in Arran.
Ciaran felt the oddest surge of envy to see how friendly and familiar they were with one another.
“What are ye even doing here, anyway? Ye dinnae ken how to distill, unless ye have some secret life that ye havenae yet shared with the rest of us.”
Arran’s smile turned a touch melancholy, and he gazed out to where the men were hurrying to their different tasks or listening keenly to an elder who knew the art of whisky.
“Nay, I dinnae ken much of the business myself,” Arran confessed. “But Caden… He always said that Buchanan whisky was the best to be had.”
Ciaran’s attention had been caught by the familiar sights and smells of the workspace, as well as by his envy over the impeccable facilities that the Buchanans had built on the ashes of their tragedy.
At Arran’s reference to his elder brother, Caden, however, his mind snapped back to the conversation.
This was a chance to get an answer to one of the questions that had been bothering him—without arousing undue suspicion.
“I dinnae mean to pry,” he said, even though he intended to do precisely that. “But your brother… I heard tell that the McPhersons had sided with Gordon, and yet I find ye here, wed to a Donaghey.”
Arran clenched his jaw, though he didn’t look offended by the question. James reached over and laid a hand on Arran’s shoulder, the gesture a clear sign of commiseration.
“My father has chosen the wrong side in the conflict, aye,” Arran said, his gaze far-off and bleak.
He looked suddenly older than he had even moments ago, a heaviness weighing upon his shoulders.
“My brother… He was a tool in my father’s schemes, but he helped me save Davina from what could have been a dreadful fate, and for that, I will always be grateful to him. ”
There was a fierceness to his tone when he spoke about his wife, but Ciaran noticed that this did not precisely answer the question about his brother. He decided to press, just a little.
“Your brother remained with your father, then? And ye have no news of how things fare at McPherson Keep?”
Ewan shot Ciaran a look, but it wasn’t suspicious—it merely chided Ciaran for his insensitivity. All Arran did, however, was offer a grim shake of his head.
“My brother was unable to escape with us,” he said which, once more, did not quite answer Ciaran’s question. But perhaps even Arran was uncertain about his brother’s true loyalties. “And my father wouldnae permit his heir to consort with a traitor like myself.”
There was bitter irony in his words.
“I will see them freed, though,” he muttered, almost to himself. “I willnae leave my clan to suffer under Gordon’s rule.”
That comment struck Ciaran directly in the chest, leaving him almost breathless with its force.
“’Twas an ugly scene,” James commiserated. “But at least ye found your bride out of it, aye?”
This distraction did dispel some of the angry clouds that floated behind Arran’s eyes.
“Aye,” he agreed easily. “And she is worth any trouble a thousand times over.”
“Dinnae let her hear you say that,” James joked. “Those Donaghey girls take that as a challenge.”
Ciaran got halfway to opening his mouth to comment that Eilidh had to be the most troublesome of the lot before remembering that he was not part of this conversation. This was for the men who had actually married the sisters, not for the lying coward who had mauled her in the armory.
“All right, enough havering,” Ewan commanded, hands on his hips as he looked out over the distillery. “I dinnae bring ye here to blether on and on. Ye are here to work. So. Gunn.”
Ciaran tilted his chin in acknowledgment. In another life, in another set of circumstances, he would have liked knowing Ewan Buchanan. He was honorable and hardworking, and clearly not afraid to roll up his sleeves and labor alongside his men.
“Aye?”
“The Gunns were masters of distilling, not so long ago. What do ye think of what we’ve built here?”
It was clearly a test. But some instinct made Ciaran suspect that what was really being challenged wasn’t his knowledge of whisky alone.
“It will garner attention,” he said after a moment’s consideration. “Gordon… he hates anything that makes a clan stronger. He destroys legacies—horse breeding, distilling.”
He paused, glancing around at the men, who had not lost any of their good cheer for starting their labors.
“But I dinnae think that ye were wrong to stick to your craft,” he said. “I wish my father and brothers had stayed true to theirs, instead of meddling in politics and feuds that didnae concern them. Now, they’re gone. My family’s legacy is gone.”
This was perhaps more than Ciaran ought to have admitted, but Christ if it didn’t feel good to say it out loud.
“Why did ye never go back to it?” Ewan asked. This, too, was a challenge—Ewan Buchanan was a laird down to his bones—but it was not one devoid of sympathy.
“As ye ken the King forbade it,” Ciaran said, shrugging his shoulder with a nonchalance that he certainly didn’t feel. “After my father’s role in the uprising, the Gunns were to be punished. Perhaps we might have found our feet again eventually, but now another war has come to the Highlands.”
Ewan’s gaze was as incisive as a blade. “But that doesnae mean that we give up hope,” he said.
It felt like a command.
Ciaran nodded, though inwardly he felt such an ache in his chest that it took concentrated effort not to reach up and rub it away.
It was impossible not to look around at this place and remember that he was the one who had been sent here to destroy it—that, as he’d said, Gordon wanted to destroy the Buchanan legacy, and that he had forced Ciaran to become his left hand in doing so.
The role had been wretched enough when Ciaran was just playing the snake amongst these honorable people. But now, looking at the barrels, the copper stills—the tools of the craft that had once been his birthright?
It was unbearable. But he had to bear it. Because there was nobody else left to fight for the Gunns. He had to do it. Even if it killed him.
Ciaran was trying to ignore the itch in his fingers that urged him to plunge into the distilling work alongside the Buchanan clansmen when a cry split the air.
Ciaran—along with half the assembled men—jerked around to see one of the younger lads frantically slapping at a fire that threatened to spark a nearby pile of wood.
What in the hell? Why was there a fire in the new distillery?
Ciaran scarcely had time to formulate the thought before the rest of the flaming arrows plunged down from atop a hill in the distance.
Ewan cursed in the old language, dropping the empty barrel he’d been hauling to lunge for his sword.
James, a grim set to his mouth, began barking orders, and the men all seized whatever they could grab in terms of weapons and began charging for the line of archers perched upon the hill, fury in their gazes.
These men were not about to let Gordon destroy their hard work and livelihoods—not again.
Ciaran searched frantically around for anything he could use to fight.
He was still the unknown element in Buchanan Keep, so, of course, nobody had given him any proper weapons.
But he could bludgeon a man perfectly well with one of the long-handled rakes used to turn the mash as it fermented, so he seized one and followed the other men up the hill.
He’d nearly made it to where the quick and bloody skirmish was taking place, the unprepared and underarmed Buchanan men far outnumbering the archers, when a blade thudded to the ground mere inches from Ciaran’s feet.
He stumbled back, catching himself before he could lose his balance, and looked up at his assailant.
It was the same man who had held a knife to his throat in the armory, the same mercenary who worked for Ruairidh Black. He raised his sword at Ciaran in a kind of mocking salute, then turned and fled with the rest of the cowards who had attacked from afar.
A spear of ice went through Ciaran when he looked down at the blade embedded in the dirt and saw that the mercenary had tied a scrap of Gunn tartan, crusted with blood, around the hilt.
A message. A warning. Ciaran would need to produce something that Gordon could use quickly, or else his people would be the ones to pay the price.
He snatched up the blade and its gory promise, hiding it in the folds of his borrowed plaid before anyone else could see it. He didn’t need any of the Buchanans asking questions about why he was receiving personal messages from Gordon’s soldiers.
The fight was over as quickly as it started, and by the time Ciaran resumed his progress up the hill, the last of the enemies were gone. None of the Buchanan men had been killed, to Ciaran’s relief, though one man limped heavily from a slash he’d taken to the thigh.
Ciaran forced himself to approach Ewan, James, and Arran where they stood over the body of one of the archers.
Ciaran knew without looking that nothing in the man’s possession would give any clue to his identity; the black garb he wore said everything that needed to be said.
He had come here because Gordon had paid him to do so.
“They’re playing with us,” Ewan said, sounding as furious as Ciaran had ever heard him. “These bloody games. First they attack my wife, then this?” He spat into the dirt. “Cowardice. Dishonor. Like a cat playing with a mouse.”
James McGregor looked just as angry as his friend. There was a streak of blood on his shirt, but it didn’t appear to be his own.
“We are no helpless wee mice, though,” he said fiercely.
“Nay,” Ewan agreed. “We are not. It is time that we strike back.”