Chapter 6
Freya MacLeod, the timid, docile MacLeod sister, the one Hamish had promised wouldn’t cause them a moment’s trouble, had just ignored him.
For one moment it had looked as if she was going to give up this nonsense and return to the house.
She’d paused when he shouted her name, but instead of scurrying back up the drive like the biddable chit she was meant to be, she’d whirled around and vanished into the trees in a swirl of dark green skirts.
“She’s a bit slippery for such a quiet, unassuming young lady, isn’t she?”
Callum glanced at Keir, who was grinning like a fool at the empty space at the edge of the woods where Freya had been standing only moments before. “I don’t know what you’re grinning about. Don’t tell me you find this amusing.”
Keir shrugged. “Nothing wrong with a lass with a little spirit, eh?”
Nothing at all, provided he wasn’t the one who’d been tasked with guarding her.
He should have known she wasn’t as tame as she appeared.
It was always the quiet ones who caused the most trouble.
At least with the youngest sister, he knew better than to expect her to do anything other than whatever she pleased, but this middle sister …
just when he’d decided he could put her out of his mind, she’d gone feral.
It would only be a temporary burst of defiance, however. He’d known ladies like Freya MacLeod before, and their fits of independence never lasted long. If the girl was foolish enough to head into the village, they’d soon chase her back out again.
She’d be back before long, but it wouldn’t be soon enough. They’d have to go after her. Hamish had made it clear that permitting either of the sisters to leave the castle unattended was as risky as poking at a hornet’s nest with a sharp stick.
The last thing they needed was a swarm of enraged villagers descending on the castle.
He turned to Keir, one eyebrow aloft. “We’ll see if you’re as impressed with her spirit after a chase through the woods.”
A chase, and a drenching. No sooner had the girl vanished into the trees than it began to rain. Not a gentle, soothing rain, either, but a cold, heavy Scottish drizzle that was threatening to turn into a downpour before it burned itself out.
“Stealthy little thing, isn’t she? I never saw her slip out the door.”
“Stealthy? Is that what we’re calling it?”
She was sly, yes. Cunning, certainly. A schemer, and a liar? Yes, she was those too, with that feigned stumble of hers, and her imaginary twisted ankle. For all her sweet face and soft voice, Freya MacLeod was as much of a menace as her younger sister.
The only difference between them was Freya was sneakier about it.
“Dunvegan’s a quiet village.” Keir followed him as Callum marched down the drive. “What could be so urgent she felt the need to go charging off into the dark like some sort of avenging angel?”
Angel? Freya MacLeod was no angel. A green-eyed demon was lurking behind that sweet smile.
Damned if he knew why she’d run off, and he cared even less. Her reasons didn’t interest him. All that mattered was that they got her back. Once they did, he’d see to it she didn’t escape a second time, even if it meant locking her in her bedchamber. “We’ll find out soon enough.”
She was long gone by the time they reached the woods, but the ground was already damp from the rain, and there was a clear set of footprints in the middle of the pathway.
Such tiny footprints could only belong to one person, and it looked as if … he squatted down to get a better look at them. “Is she wearing slippers?” Had the girl lost her wits? It was October in the Highlands, for God’s sake. Her feet would be soaked in an instant.
Keir crouched down beside him to study the prints.
“It looks like it. She must have run right out the front door after I passed her in the hallway, without taking the time to change into boots.” Keir rose to his feet, his expression grim.
“I don’t like this, Callum. Something feels off. We’d better hurry.”
They tracked her footprints until they lost them among the fallen leaves covering the forest floor, but by then it was clear she was headed toward the village.
One day. He and Keir had been here for a single day, and already both MacLeod chits had run off to the only place in Dunvegan they’d been warned not to go.
But there was no sign of her when they emerged onto the High Street. “Now what? From here, she could have gone anywhere.”
“There’s a pub.” Keir nodded at a small wooden building on the opposite side of the street. It was a ramshackle place, the peeling white-washed outer walls stained with mud. A lopsided sign hanging on a pole outside the door proclaimed it to be Baird’s Pub.
It was no place for a lady. “She wouldn’t go in there.” He couldn’t make much sense of Freya MacLeod. She didn’t seem reckless, nor would he have said she was a fool, but perhaps he was giving her too much credit.
She’d fled the castle alone, at night, just as a storm was coming, hadn’t she?
Keir looked at him as if he’d lost his wits. “Of course not, but you can be sure if she came down the High Street, every single man in that pub would have noticed her. She’s not the sort of young lady a man overlooks.”
“I didn’t notice.” He hadn’t noticed that cloud of red-gold hair, either, or the almost-dimples at the corners of her lips. “I didn’t come to Dunvegan to gawk at Freya MacLeod’s face.”
Her face, or any other part of her. And if it took him more effort than he’d anticipated to keep his eyes to himself, he wasn’t going to admit it to Keir.
He’d never hear the bloody end of it if he did.
Keir snorted. “Bollocks. You’re as susceptible to a lovely face as the rest of us.”
“I hardly even looked at her face.” Her eyes, though. For one unguarded instant, he’d gazed directly into those startling green eyes, and now every time he closed his own eyes he saw hers again, as if they’d been burned into his eyelids.
He couldn’t get them out of his head.
Maybe the MacLeod sisters were witches, just as the rumors claimed. Maybe Freya MacLeod had bewitched him, entranced him with her green eyes.
It was reason enough not to look at her again.
“You’re a hard-hearted, ill-tempered sort, Callum, but you’re not blind, and neither are the men inside Baird’s Pub. Come, we’re wasting time.”
Callum followed Keir across the street and into the pub. The dozen or so men inside stared at them as they made their way toward the barkeep, who was running a filthy cloth over the scarred wooden bar top.
“Did you happen to see a lass pass by a short time ago?” Keir asked. “A young lady, with red hair?”
“Mayhap I did.” The barkeep looked between them, his eyes narrowing. “What do ye want with her?”
Keir held up his hands. “We’re not going to harm her. She’s, ah, a friend of a friend of ours. We’ve come to Dunvegan to keep an eye on her.”
“That so?” The barkeep looked them up and down again. “Yer doing a bloody poor job of it then, aren’t ye?”
A sharp retort leapt to Callum’s lips, but Keir cast him a quelling look, and he bit it back. It was best to leave it to Keir. He was far more persuasive.
“As I said, we don’t mean her any harm.” Keir nodded toward the front window, which offered a clear view of the High Street. “Did you see her?”
The barkeep hesitated, but Keir had one of those reassuring faces that made people confide in him.
“I’m not sure which way she went.” He leaned over the bar, lowering his voice.
“But the other sister—the wild one, Sorcha? I saw her making her way toward Clyde Stewart’s farm earlier this afternoon.
Mayhap her sister’s gone after her. Wouldn’t be the first time. ”
“Stewart’s farm,” Callum repeated. Uneasiness flared in the pit of his stomach. Hamish hadn’t mentioned anything about Clyde Stewart, or his farm. “Who is he?”
“Widower who lives to the west of the village, over the next hill. He’s been alone out there since his wife died some ten years ago. Keeps to himself, does Stewart.”
A widower, living alone on a remote farm? What kind of business could Sorcha MacLeod have with some lonely old widower? Damn it, he didn’t like this. He didn’t like it at all, and judging by the hard expression on Keir’s face, he didn’t, either.
“I don’t like it,” the barkeep said, as if he’d read Callum’s mind. “There’s no call for those MacLeod girls to be out there. Stewart’s a strange one, ye ken? Not trustable, like.”
“We ken.” Keir’s voice was grim. He dug into his pocket and tossed a few coins onto the bar top. “For your trouble, friend.”
“Ye’d best hurry. The youngest sister, Sorcha has been out there for some time.”
Callum glanced at Keir. “How long?”
“Two hours or so. Maybe more.” The barkeep slapped a hand over the coins, slid them across the bar top, and in a flash, they disappeared into his apron pocket. “Ye mark my words, friends. No good ever came of Sorcha MacLeod lingering anyplace. No good at all.”
Neither he nor Keir spoke as they made their way out of the pub and onto the High Street, but as soon as they were out of earshot, Callum turned to Keir. “What the devil are those two chits up to? Hamish never said anything about Clyde Stew art, or—”
“Callum.” Keir pointed at the sky over the western edge of Dunvegan. “Look. Just there.”
The rain pelted Callum’s face as he raised his head and squinted into the dark sky above. “What? I don’t see—”
But then, in the next instant, he did.
A thin cloud of gray smoke, nearly indistinguishable from the gloomy sky above could be seen over the tops of the buildings lining the High Street. As they watched, the wisps grew thicker, until dark puffs were billowing into the sky above the tree line.
There could be only one explanation for a cloud of smoke that size.
Something was on fire.
The hills that lay between Dunvegan and Clyde Stewart’s farm were a wilderness of jagged rock and thorny gorse. It took Freya nearly an hour to stumble across it, and she lied to herself the entire way.