Chapter 27
A PALE DAWN rose over Duart.
It wasn’t mist that drifted over the hillside though, but smoke.
Limping heavily, leaning upon a stick now, for his leg throbbed with every step, Greig moved through the ruins of the village.
Half the roofs were gone—collapsed into blackened ribs.
Timber could be cut again.
The dead couldn’t be revived though.
Greig halted, his gaze sweeping to where men, women, and children slowly emerged through the wreathing smoke; those who’d fled and come back at dawn to see the damage that had been wrought.
With any luck, Brìghde and her kin would return shortly too. Fortunately, their bothy had been spared, for it was on the outskirts.
He told himself it was relief he felt, nothing more.
It was a lie.
A woman’s wail split the morning. She collapsed beside a man’s body—shaking him, as if he might still rise.
Greig’s throat tightened, for he recognized him. Carr Maclean, a stout-hearted farmer who had stayed behind to defend his village and died as a result.
A few locals had fallen the night before, including some of the Duart Guard. But they’d beaten the MacDonalds in the end.
Turning, Greig limped his way back out of the village and toward the hillside before the castle, to where the ring of braziers still smoked.
Sprawled corpses littered the trampled grass.
What had been a scene of celebration and revelry had turned into a battlefield.
It had been clear from the first moments of the attack what the MacDonalds’ plan was: catch the clan-chief unawares and kill him.
Callum MacDonald wasn’t playing. He’d decided that to weaken the Macleans, he had to cut the head off the man who led them.
But he’d underestimated his foe.
Loch had been enjoying the evening, sitting with his wife and watching his clansmen make merry.
But he wasn’t a man to let his guard down. Ever.
On the eastern side of the field, he spied his father and Finn MacDonald. The Captain of the Guard had taken an injury to his shoulder. It had been hastily bandaged. He’d need proper attention from Donn shortly, but right now, his focus was elsewhere.
As Greig made his way across the field toward them, two familiar figures approached—Davy and Ailean.
Fortunately, his guests from Ardnacross had retired to the castle before the attack. However, Ailean had rushed from his bed, grabbed a weapon, and joined them as soon as he heard the ruckus, leaving Fiona locked in with their daughter inside their chamber in the tower house.
Ailean usually carried a carefree air about him, but this morning, a deep furrow cut between his auburn eyebrows. He favored Greig with a brusque nod, as he and Davy also made their way to where Loch and Finn stood over one of the fallen warriors.
“That’s Callum MacDonald’s son, Fergus,” Ailean said as he halted next to the clan-chief and the Captain of the Guard. “I recognize him. He visited Dounarwyse with his father last year.”
“I thought as much,” Loch rumbled. His face was haggard and bloodied in the grey dawn light, yet his gaze was flinty.
“I thought he might be someone special,” Finn added, his voice husky with pain. “He’s better dressed than most and wears a MacDonald signet ring … his father must have sent him to prove himself.”
Loch snorted. “He proved himself all right. I’m cutting the bastard’s head off and sending it back to Skye as a wee present.”
No one argued.
Greig’s lips thinned. A grisly gift, but an appropriate one. He’d have done the same in his father’s place. They’d show Callum MacDonald what happened to those who crossed the Macleans of Duart.
They were truly enemies now. This would never be forgotten.
“We’ve five MacDonalds still breathing,” Davy said, folding his arms across his chest. “What are we going to do with them?” A shallow cut oozed blood on his temple, but apart from that, he’d emerged largely unscathed from the fight.
Likewise, Greig had too. A blade had nicked his chest, ripping his lèine and inflicting a shallow cut. It could have been much worse though. An inch or two more, and that blade would have slid between his ribs.
They all knew how close death had stalked that night and how near they’d come to tragedy.
“We’ll send them home with Fergus’s head,” Loch growled. He then shot his son a mirthless smile. “Someone has to carry the message.”
Davy nodded before his gaze cut to Fergus MacDonald. “So, Moy was just a ruse?”
“Aye,” Greig murmured. While they’d been talking, his gaze had shifted a few yards away before his attention settled on a face he recognized. He jerked his chin toward the fallen warrior. “Remember him?”
Frowning, Davy moved across to the corpse, his gaze dropping to the dead man’s face.
Thick straw-colored hair. Staring blue eyes.
He then muttered a curse. “Cods. That’s Seumas … the merchant we met in Oban.”
“He said he was a Macleod,” Greig replied, “but since he’s wearing a MacDonald sash, I’d say he lied. He singled us out deliberately.”
His brother’s features tightened, his gaze shadowing. “Shite … we shouldn’t have taken him at his word.”
“Neither of ye are at fault here, lads,” Loch replied gruffly. “The man seemed honest. How were ye to know the treachery the MacDonalds would stoop to in order to bring me down?”
Greig turned to face his father.
Loch’s face was still dark with anger, yet he saw the fierce pride shining in the man’s eyes.
Their gazes held for a long moment before warmth ignited under Greig’s ribs. His father didn’t need to praise him, didn’t need to tell him he’d done well in defending their mother, in defending their home.
One look said it all.
Greig might be leaning on a stick now, trying to ignore the pulse of pain in his thigh, yet last night, he’d been a warrior, just like the rest of them.
He’d proven that he could defend his home just as well as any other man.
“This was a dark day for our clan,” his father said after a pause, “but we have ensured it was an even blacker day for the MacDonalds.”
Brìghde walked into the heart of the village, a load of wattle in her arms.
A cluster of women worked by the well, hands moving fast despite their exhaustion, as they made new doors for the bothies that had been burned a few days earlier. It was just one of the many tasks needed. Everyone in the village was pitching in.
Brìghde and Eòghan had downed tools in the forge and joined them.
Today, her shoulders ached from hauling wattle since dawn.
One of the women flashed her a tired smile. “Thank ye, lass … keep them coming.”
“I’ll be back with more later,” Brìghde assured her, dumping the wattle and brushing off her hands.
And she would.
However, first she had a visit to make—one she didn’t want to put off any longer.
Returning to her family’s bothy, she found her mother was sitting on the doorstep, tying wattle together to make a fresh door for one of her neighbors. Moving past her, she set about picking two small posies—marigolds and daisies—from the garden.
They’d brighten up the grey day.
In the aftermath of the attack, the weather had turned cold and sunless, almost as if it mourned what had happened. They all did, though. For years, everyone here had believed Duart was untouchable, but the MacDonalds’ attack had proven that it wasn’t.
If one enemy could strike here, others might get the same idea.
No doubt, the clan-chief was already hard at work shoring up the defenses.
But even so, tension remained.
“Where are ye off to, lass?” her mother asked, glancing up from her work.
“The graveyard,” Brìghde replied with a half-smile. “Just paying my respects to Ian … he saved our lives, after all.”
Ada’s lips curved, her gaze shadowing. “He did.”
Brìghde left then, taking the well-worn path through the village toward the graveyard, where the yew trees rose darkly against the pale sky.
On the way, she passed the blackened, charred remains of the pyre where they’d burned the MacDonalds.
There had been no prayers for them. No ceremony. They didn’t deserve one.
Her pulse stuttered then. How close they’d come to being slaughtered. Everyone in the village, including her, had been on edge ever since. More than once, she caught herself glancing east, as if expecting to see a horde of MacDonalds spill over the cliffs and come racing toward the village.
It would be a while before anyone here would relax again.
The day after the attack, Father Malcolm had buried the Macleans who had fallen. Ten of them: three village men and seven of the men-at-arms.
All of them deeply mourned.
A woman was there by one of the fresh graves, kneeling and weeping for her lost love.
Brìghde’s chest constricted. She recognized the lass. In a place of this size, that wasn’t unusual. She was Gàraidh, wife of one of the Guard, and tragically, she’d recently given birth to a bairn. The infant was swaddled against her heart in a sling.
Gàraidh knelt there, lost in her grief, oblivious to the rest of the world.
Brìghde knew better than to intrude. Instead, she walked to the end of the row of fresh graves. Her skin prickled. The graveyard was a somber place at the best of times, but today, it unnerved her.
She stopped before the last mound of dirt, where a wooden cross poked out of the ground.
Ian’s grave.
Brìghde halted, stooped, and laid one of her posies down. “I never liked ye much,” she murmured. “And I would never have become yer wife … but still—ye came for me. What ye did was brave … and I will never forget it.”
And she wouldn’t.
The irony wasn’t lost on her. The man she didn’t want had died defending Brìghde and her family, while the man she loved—
Stop it, she cut herself off viciously. Don’t think about him.
No. She would not let her thoughts turn that way.
Straightening up, she moved on, making her way to the heart of the graveyard, where the Macleans of Duart were interred.
There, under the sheltering yews, she knelt and laid her second posy upon Alistair Maclean’s grave.
Rising to her feet, she shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Warmth bloomed across her chest then. She’d wanted to make this gesture, but now that she stood before Alistair’s grave, she felt a little foolish.
Clearing her throat, she brushed at her skirts. “I had no idea ye liked me … I wish I’d known.” She paused then, heat creeping up her neck now. “Not that it would have made a difference anyway, I suppose.”
Aye, she’d learned the hard way that their ranks were like oil and water—they didn’t mix.
“I don’t know whether Greig has visited ye of late,” she said then, her belly hardening as it did every time she thought of the man, “but ye should know that he completed every item on yer list … including the last one.” She paused there, her throat tightening.
“I don’t know if ye truly meant for him to win me …
or if he twisted it into something else. It doesn’t matter now, does it?”
She halted then, as a raven perched in the nearby yew croaked.
“Rest easy, Alistair,” she said after a heavy pause, stepping back from the grave.
“I just wanted to stop by and pay my respects … and to tell ye I’m sorry yer time was cut short.
” Her throat grew tight. “A man like ye deserved to live to a great age.”
“He did.”
Brìghde jolted—her gaze cutting left to where a tall man with wavy black hair and a close-cropped dark beard approached.