Chapter Five
“Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.”
“Let’s find Iain to discuss the Council of the Isles,” Rory said as he strode next to Cyrus across the courtyard. It was late morning, and still Cyrus hadn’t been able to escape Tuath Tower to follow Laria Macqueen’s tracks.
“Daingead,” Cyrus cursed, glancing out at the dark clouds off the coast. “First there’d been a meal, then Grace demanding I see the stables and the white charger Iain gifted her. I was then ordered to inspect Iain’s warriors as they strutted on the training field. Now it looks like it will storm.”
“A perfect time to be indoors strategizing about peace and making the Isle of Skye strong. ’Tis the priority, Cy.”
Of course he knew that. He was the one who’d taken Tierney’s plans for the council and created the contracts to make it happen.
Cyrus glanced down the path running through Staffin, where the villagers were going about their day. For the high number of inhabitants, about which Iain boasted, the path was fairly vacant. “Ye can start the talk with him. I have something I must see done before the rain.”
“Anxious to track a mad siren with a penchant for tying tight knots?” Rory asked. His friend would never let Cyrus live down the embarrassing position he’d been found in that morn.
“I have some answers to extract from her.” After he’d extracted her moans and climaxes from her the night before, she owed him some explanations.
Why had she drugged him, tied him up, and then held a blade to his throat?
It certainly wasn’t because he’d not satisfied her.
If she felt anything like he had last night, she’d been the most satisfied woman on the isle, maybe in all of Scotland.
He’d felt her body contracting, the flush across her skin, the wild thudding of her heart. ’Twas no act.
“I’d better accompany ye,” Rory said. “Since I’m married, I won’t be seduced like a poor hapless bachelor.
” He exhaled a long breath. “But then we must get back for the negotiations. Iain signed the contract of alliance with Clan Mackinnon, but he still needs to understand the importance of the Council of the Isles.”
They increased their stride up the path in the direction the footprints had indicated.
Outside a thatched cottage surrounded by a stone wall, a woman was beating a woven rug thrown over a line.
Dust flew up with each whack. Two children were playing in the yard, but when the mother saw Cyrus and Rory, she hustled the boy into the house.
The girl stood with their mother, watching them pass with wide eyes.
If a mother feared two fierce warriors, she usually hid her daughter, not her son.
Did she fear they’d take him away to join the ranks of warriors at the tender age of five?
Up ahead, a young woman glanced over her shoulder as she helped an old woman into their cottage, panic evident in her pretty features. She shut the door quickly before they passed, pressing her back to it to watch them.
“Seems the villagers fear strangers,” Cyrus said.
“They’ve been raised to fear and hate the other clans on Skye,” Rory said. He nodded to an old man who’d paused in his whittling beside his cottage. He shrank back into the shadows.
“Looks like rain,” Cyrus said to him, but the man just stared. There was concern in his rheumy eyes.
“Da,” said one of the Macqueen warriors that Cyrus had seen working earlier on the training field, “ye need to be inside.”
“I can’t whittle in the house.”
The man helped his father rise from his bench, wood shavings falling from his plaid.
’Twas then that Cyrus noticed the man only had one leg.
He shoved a polished crutch under his armpit and let his son help him into the cottage.
The warrior glanced at Cyrus and Rory, his lips drawn tight, and followed his father inside.
“He seemed friendly enough on the field,” Rory said, his voice low.
“But he definitely didn’t want us to meet his father.”
Any other people who’d been about had disappeared into their cottages, the doors and windows closed. “So,” Rory said, “do they not want to see us, or do they not want us to see them?”
“From the fear in their gazes, I’d say the latter.”
They walked to the outskirts of Staffin Village, Cyrus scanning the loam on either side of the main path for breaks in the vegetation.
“There,” Rory said, pointing to a broken limb on a sapling.
“Her prints around the tower showed she left by the path leading south out of the village. Unless she departed by jumping over the stone walls and cutting through yards, she’d have been funneled out this end of town into the woods. ”
Cyrus nodded, glancing behind them. “If she’d gone north, she’d have been out on the open moorland and training fields.
Fleeing to the woods seems like a better choice.
” His gaze studied the cottages. “Although someone could be hiding her in the village.” He exhaled.
Despite the broken branch, he’d need some heavenly intervention to help him find Laria Macqueen.
As if in answer, the wind shifted, bringing the fresh smell of rain. A storm cloud split open, and a deluge of fat, hard drops fell. “Bloody hell,” Cyrus said. Even God wanted him to return to negotiating instead of trying to find his would-be assassin.
“This is miserable,” Rory said, grabbing Cyrus’s arm. “Let’s talk to Iain about peace and the Council and go out after the storm passes.”
Cyrus gave the broken sapling one last look. I will find you, Laria Macqueen.
…
Dirt stuck to the sweat on Laria’s arms, making her feel sticky.
She hadn’t had a chance to wash after her night with Cyrus Mackinnon, and a morning of moving her people had rendered her grimy.
Could her grandmother detect him on her, smell their mixed scent?
Unlikely. Sophie Cameron Macqueen didn’t think of such things now.
The elderly woman smiled and comforted any and all who needed it, but her mind slipped over details.
It had been terrible before Laria had led her out of Tuath Tower that morning, away from Iain’s scheming stare.
But the fresh air of the forest seemed to be helping her grandmother’s mind.
Sophie’s white hair was swept up in a simple bun.
Silvery strands that had come loose teased her cheeks.
Her gentle smile remained, making her wrinkles more distinct around her kind eyes.
She settled in the back of the newly discovered cave on a nest of blankets that would serve as a bed until Laria could gather more pine limbs for cushioning.
Laria crouched before her, clasping her cold hands. She leaned forward and blew on them for warmth. “I need to go wash, Grandmama. Reid will start a fire for you,” Laria said. Hopefully she’d moved her small troop of outcasts far enough away from their last camp to make fires safe.
“Go stand in the rain,” Sophie said, nodding to the opening of the cave. “Then we can chat about plans for Samhain.”
Samhain wasn’t for another month and a half, but it was a good topic.
Except that Laria had no idea where’d they be at the end of October.
The cold would be bearing down on them with promises of icy nights and snowy mornings.
Laria had dreamed they’d be in Tuath Tower again, or a cozy cottage with glass windows, but now that wasn’t possible.
Not with Iain cutting off all aid and Jasper given free rein to hunt her.
Come October, her group would probably be hiding in trees, slowly freezing and starving to death.
All because I couldn’t kill one man. Some protector she was turning out to be.
Laria kissed Sophie’s forehead like the woman used to do to her as a child.
How strange it was that their roles had reversed.
When Laria’s mother had died of an infection in her lungs when Laria was eleven years old, Sophie had swooped in to take over mothering the orphaned child.
Her father was a great clan chief with little time for a daughter.
Laria grabbed a lump of sweet-smelling soap and stepped out into the heavy downpour. “I will stay close.” The rain was even fresher than the lake and not as cold.
Reid Lewis, the bard who’d arrived at Tuath Tower over the summer, stood under another rock overhang, surveying the rain. “There’s adequate room to stay dry,” he said and nodded from his relatively dry place.
He glanced over at his sister, Winnie, who had been Iain’s mistress before he’d sent her packing the day before his bride arrived. She was in exile, too.
“This is not adequate,” Winnie said, scowling.
“I’m wet, cold, and dirty.” When she smiled, her blond hair falling in waves of gold, she was quite pretty.
Her teasing smile had caught Iain’s eye as soon as she’d arrived in Staffin Village a year ago, and he’d invited her into the tower without a care for what his mother or grandmother thought.
She apparently hadn’t cared, either, and had acted like the tower was her domain.
But then she’d been cast out, exiled like the others.
“You can move on,” Laria called over the increasing rain, but the woman ignored her.
She took her brother’s arm, and he stretched his wool blanket to drape over the two of them.
It was hard for Laria to comprehend that they were siblings.
Reid was somewhat timid and kind, whereas Winnie was a hellion given to hysterics when she didn’t get her way.
They’d been raised separately. Perhaps that’s where the differences stemmed.
She was raised by another family and thus used their surname.
Reid said she’d had a difficult childhood, and it had sown a seed of discontent that grew thornier each year.
“I will move on,” she called back, “as soon as I figure out where to go on this godforsaken land.”
“Back to Dunscaith?” Reid asked.