Chapter 21
T he innkeeper barely glanced at them when they stepped into the dim common room—just two more road-worn travelers among many. The fire roared, mugs clinked, a fiddle scratched in the corner.
“Room for the night,” Harris said, dropping a few coins onto the counter. “For me and my wife.”
Fiona nearly inhaled her own tongue.
But he didn’t look at her. Didn’t falter.
Just slid the coins like he’d done it a hundred times.
The innkeeper eyed the money, then them, then shrugged. “Only one wee bed left,” he said. “We’re full wi’ merchants an’ the like.”
Harris didn’t miss a beat. “One’ll do.”
A key slid across the wood.
Upstairs, the room was small but clean—one narrow bed, a washstand, a chair with a threadbare cushion, and a single mullioned window overlooking the dark line of trees.
Fiona stared at the bed, then at him. “You expect me to share that with you?”
Harris gave her a pensive look. “Don’t flatter yerself.”
Her mouth dropped open.
He tossed his pack down by the door, shrugged out of his damp cloak, and rolled it into a makeshift pillow. “I’ll sleep here,” he said, nodding toward the floorboards. “If anyone tries to come in, they trip ‘ower me first.”
She blinked. “…How very considerate of you.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “Married men guard their wives.”
Her stomach did an undignified flip. “We’re not—”
“Aye,” he said—quiet, not sharp. “We’re not.”
Something flickered between them. Warmth, maybe, before he looked away.
“We’ll eat,” he said. “Then sleep. Dawn start.”
She didn’t trust her voice enough to argue.
They tucked themselves into a shadowed corner of the tavern, backs to the wall, sightlines on the door. Fiona ordered stew; Harris added whisky with the weary certainty of a man who’d earned it.
For once, he didn’t sit like a blade ready to be drawn. He sagged a fraction, elbows braced on the table, the lines of exhaustion etched more visibly in the firelight.
Steam curled between them.
“Ye nearly drowned today,” she said, more statement than accusation.
“Aye.” He took a sip of whisky.
“Ye walked into the loch like it was bathwater.”
“Aye.”
“And ye still won’t tell me why you had to check something that could pull you under.”
Another sip. “Also aye.”
She set her spoon down with a clack. “Are you a man or a very large, very irritating parrot?”
One corner of his mouth twitched. “Depends who’s askin’.”
“I am,” she said, leaning in. “Tell me why you went into that water, Mackenzie.”
He studied the fire for a long moment, shadows moving across his face. The tavern noise faded to a dull blur around them.
“It matters for what comes next,” he said finally. “That’s all ye need to ken.”
“That’s no’ an answer,” she shot back. “If I’m to ride beside ye—or behind ye, as ye prefer—I deserve truth, not riddles.”
His gaze cut back to her. There was something raw in it this time, reluctant and unguarded.
“Fiona…” he began, voice rough.
“What?” she pressed. “What are you really runnin’ with? Why would the Prince trust you with it?”
His jaw worked as he set his cup down.
“Because what I’m carryin’ can topple men as easy as muskets can,” he said quietly. “And because if ye ken too much, you’ll swing for it same as me.”
She met that head-on. “I sat back while my brothers and kinsmen died on that cursed moor,” she said. “You think I’m afraid of the consequences?”
“No. Bit I think you’re na?ve enough not tae understand the difference between a lost battle and a hunted life.”
Silence settled—a taut, humming thing.
Before she could frame a reply, the tavern door opened. Cold air spilled in, carrying a faint breath of rain.
A young man stepped inside—sixteen at most, clothes travel-stained, cheeks windburned. His eyes swept the crowded room, sharp and searching.
“Mackenzie?” he murmured as he reached their corner, barely moving his lips. “Harris Mackenzie?”
Harris went motionless. Not rigid, just still, in a way that made every hair on Fiona’s arms rise.
“Aye,” he said warily.
“Message, sir.” The boy fumbled in his coat and produced a folded packet sealed in wax.
The wax bore a longship stamped deep into the red: an old sigil whispered about in Jacobite circles. Used for secret correspondence. Messages not meant for generals or clans… but for ghosts in the field.
Fiona had never seen the mark.
Harris, on the other hand, had.
He took the letter, passed the boy a coin without glancing at it. “You saw no one,” he said.
The lad nodded and vanished back into the press of bodies.
Harris turned the packet in his fingers once, thumb tracing the longship before breaking the seal.
His eyes flicked over the page. Then his whole expression changed—not dramatically, just a tightening around the mouth, the faintest hitch of breath.
Fiona didn’t wait to be invited. She plucked the letter from his fingers.
He let her.
The paper crackled under her hands. Good stock, careful script, but the words themselves…
She frowned. “This isn’t… Gaelic.”
The letters looked wrong. Harsh angles, unfamiliar pairings. Some lines ran almost like poetry.
Her gaze snagged on a repeated phrase, the rhythm tugging at her memory though she’d never seen the language before.
“Is that… Norse?” she asked slowly.
“Aye,” he said. “Old tongue. The Prince has a fondness for old songs and older codes.”
“Of course he does,” she muttered. “Princes are never simple.”
She squinted, lips moving as she sounded out a line. “‘Galleys with good oars… sail tae distant shores…’”
She stopped, skin prickling.
“It’s a verse,” Harris said quietly. “An auld one. Means more than it says.”
“To who?” she demanded.
“To the man readin’ it,” he said. “To ‘H.M.’”
He tapped the initials at the bottom of the page, scrawled in the same hand as the rest.
Her breath caught. “That’s you.”
He didn’t deny it.
“What does it mean then?” she asked, voice steady now. “Beyond the riddles.”
Harris read the message again, thumb pressed hard against the crease.
“It means,” he said at last, “the Prince is headin’ for the sea. For Skye.”
Her heartbeat kicked up. “Skye.”
“Aye. I’ll go on west through Arisaig. Then across.”
She nodded once. Decisive.
“Good. I’ll pack the horse.”
Harris stilled.
“Fiona…”
Warning. Weariness. Something else?
She arched a brow. “What? Ye think I came this far to turn back now?”
“That’s not what I—”
“I followed ye from Inverness,” she cut in. “Tracked ye through the Highlands, stitched ye up and dragged your heavy carcass out o’ that cursed loch. I’m not done.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it again.
She could almost see the arguments forming, dying, reforming behind his eyes.
Then:
“It’ll be dangerous,” he said quietly. “Worse than today. Worse than the English in the woods.”
“I’m a Cameron,” she said simply. “Danger’s my kin.”
His jaw tightened.
He looked at her as if he was seeing all of her now: not a nuisance, not a burden, but a force.
Finally, he exhaled, low and rough.
“Alright, then.”
A beat.
“We go to Skye.”
She tilted her head in disbelief. “We?”
“Aye,” he muttered, a reluctant surrender and a vow tangled together. “We.”
Fiona’s lips twitched. “About damn time, Mackenzie.”
He huffed a laugh, shaking his head like she was a storm he’d accidentally invited inside.
“Pushy wife,” he murmured.
“Grumpy husband,” she returned.
“ Temporary husband,” he warned.
“Och, aye,” she said with a wicked little smile. “Ye can be sure of that.”
Harris folded the letter and tucked it into his coat—not next to his weapons, but close to his ribs.
A choice.
A shift.
A thread pulled tighter between them.
Skye awaited.
Back upstairs, the room felt smaller with decision sitting between them.
Harris spread his cloak on the floor by the door without ceremony, one hand automatically going to the dagger at his belt, as if his body had learned vigilance more deeply than it had ever learned rest.
Fiona stood by the tiny window, watching the dark press close around the inn. Somewhere out there, the Prince was hiding. Somewhere beyond that, ships waited.
“Sleep,” Harris said eventually, voice low. “We ride hard tomorrow.”
She glanced back at him. “You need rest, too.”
“I’ll sleep when I can,” he said with a shrug. “That’ll do.”
She hesitated, something akin to gratitude snagging her tongue. “Harris?”
“Aye?”
“Thank you,” she said. “For comin’ back. In the forest. For… not lettin’ them touch me.”
He shifted, the movement small, as if the words landed heavier than any blow.
“Dinna thank me for that,” he said. “Any man worth breathin’ should do as much.”
“Well,” she said, climbing onto the narrow bed and pulling the blanket over her. “It’s a pity how few of ye there are, then.”
He huffed a laugh.
The candle sputtered down to an ember.
Fiona lay on her side, the wall at her back, the creak of the inn and murmur of voices below slowly thinning into quiet.
She listened to the even drag of Harris’s breathing by the door, the soft scrape when he shifted his weight, and the occasional restless exhale of a man who’d seen too much to sleep deeply.
Somewhere between one breath and the next, she realized she was matching her breathing to his without meaning to—an unconscious truce in the dark.