Chapter Two
The trio made their way quietly out of the village, leaving one by one.
Arran, his guise of a farmer resumed; Kenna, in her heavy cloak; and Katrina, as the innocent market-goer pleased with the wares she’d acquired.
They met at a nearby posting inn, the kind of place where nobody knew where anyone was coming or going.
Between the market and the proximity to a road that connected several clans, the inn was a bustle of people, all too concerned with their own journeys to pay much attention to three strangers who sat in a shadowy corner, bowls of stew and pints of ale on the table before them.
The food was fragrant and fresh, and Katrina had departed so early in the morning that she hadn’t had any breakfast, but her curiosity was far more powerful than her appetite.
“I understand why ye couldnae say much in your letter,” Katrina said, glancing between Arran and Kenna, who already had that easy way of long-married couples between them.
“Ye couldnae trust that it would arrive without other eyes looking upon it. But I daresay that I deserve the truth, after everything.”
After years of worry.
After years of secrets.
After years of pretending she didn’t know the horrors Kenna was living.
After sneaking away from her keep and her clan for this meeting, something that did not sit well with her, not when those were the people to whom she owed her loyalty, no matter how fond she might be of Kenna.
“I assume ye ken the stories,” Arran began, taking a slow sip of his ale. “How, the night of the attacks, the whole of the Lennox family was home. When Lennox Keep exploded, the family died, and the clan fell apart after their loss.”
“Aye,” Katrina agreed.
Everyone in Scotland knew the stories, everyone in the Highlands had been affected by that night, even if the Lennoxes had suffered the worst by far.
Even MacAllan still bore some scars, even though they hadn’t lost any lives and had only borne a few injuries.
Their worst loss that night had been in the outbuildings where they created and stored medicines, some of which took months or even years to prepare properly.
When the medicine had burned, the whole of the Highlands had suffered, for the MacAllans had long supplied herbal remedies to nearly a dozen clans.
Most of the stores had been replenished by now, a decade after the fires raged. But there was some knowledge that would be forever lost, as too many irreplaceable records had burned, as well.
“Most of it was true,” Arran allowed. “My family—” He cleared his throat briefly. “They did all die in the explosion. As well as dozens of my clansmen.”
“But nae ye,” Katrina said.
“Nae me,” Arran agreed. “I had snuck out that night to go to the fire festival at MacBrae. I was—” He cast an awkward sidelong glance at his wife—“there with a lass.”
“Oh, dinnae say it’s so,” Makenna said, voice entirely deadpan. “I thought ye came to me an untried virgin, pure as the driven snow. Whatever shall I do with the knowledge that ye looked askance at another woman before me?”
Arran scowled, but there was no heat in it. Katrina snickered.
She still thought Kenna was perfectly daft for putting her trust in a man, but Katrina could see that Arran clearly loved his wife, at least. That mattered.
“I buried my family,” Arran went on, “and posed as a guard in Clan Callahan. I became friends with the laird’s nephew. Declan.”
A flash of grief had crossed Arran’s face when he’d spoken of his family, but his look of loss now was fresher, less scabbed over than the other.
“I heard that Declan Callahan passed,” Katrina said quietly. “I am sorry to hear that it was a loss for ye.”
Kenna’s voice was tight when she spoke. “What ye may not have heard was that he sacrificed himself to help us get away,” she said, blinking rapidly, clearly fighting tears. “It is a debt we willnae forget.”
Katrina sucked in a breath. No, she had not heard any such thing, though she supposed that wasn’t surprising.
The clans had all become very closed-mouthed to outsiders in the wake of Arran’s return.
Everyone was cautious, watchful. They all wanted to see where the lines would be drawn in the coming war before revealing too much of themselves.
“Nor will I forget,” Katrina vowed. “I didnae ken Declan myself, but I am grateful to him for safeguarding ye, Kenna.”
Kenna reached out and briefly squeezed Katrina’s hand.
“There’s more,” she warned.
“We discovered that MacBrae was behind the attacks,” Arran explained, his voice slightly hoarse from emotion. “MacBrae and Ashbourne, conspiring together. MacBrae wanted to take as many Lennox lands as he could, and Ashbourne—”
“Wanted coin and a wife he could brutalize without repercussions,” Kenna said flatly, though there was a tightness around her eyes that was not apparent in her voice. On the table, Arran’s hand clenched into a fist so tightly that his knuckles went stark white.
“I… see,” Katrina said, though truly, her mind was still reeling from this information.
Rumors had been circulating about what had happened at Callahan Keep when the Alliance had gone to meet, but for every story that named Arran the villain, there was one that blamed MacBrae.
Some even lay it all at the feet of the late Laird Lennox.
Many blamed the dead Englishman. But nobody, not even the people who had been at the Alliance meeting, seemed to have all the details straight.
But Arran and Kenna… Katrina believed them. She knew that they spoke true.
It all made an awful kind of sense, really.
She knew that MacBrae was the kind of man who would send his daughter to suffer for his own gain.
And if he would do that, why wouldn’t he murder his neighbors, as well?
At least they weren’t his own flesh and blood.
And she knew from Kenna that Ashbourne had been the worst kind of man.
But more than the logic, there was the weariness in Arran’s and Kenna’s faces as they talked about the plot. The heaviness that came from bearing witness to tragedy.
“So,” she asked when her thoughts had stopped racing quite so dramatically. “What do ye plan to do, then? Will it be war?”
This was the question that all of the Highlands wanted to know…even if everyone feared that they already knew the answer.
“Aye,” Arran said somberly but with conviction.
“MacBrae cannae be allowed to go unpunished for what he has done—to my family, to my wife.” He paused, giving Kenna a look of such tenderness that even Katrina’s unromantic heart fluttered a little.
“It is a sin that he has gone so long reaping the benefits of his treachery. He must be stopped.”
Katrina nodded her agreement. “So why have ye not made his misdeeds public?” she asked. “Nearly everyone recalls someone who was killed that night. If ye told everyone that it was MacBrae, do ye nae think that the whole of the Highlands would rise up against him?”
Arran and Kenna exchanged a look, one that Katrina did not like one bit.
“We dinnae have proof,” Kenna admitted. “There were letters, but Ashbourne burned them.”
Well, that was a problem, but surely…
“And we dinnae ken who else may have been involved,” Arran said with the swiftness of someone yanking a thorn loose from his hand—a quick, brutal pull that didn’t hurt less, but at least didn’t hurt for as long. “We dinnae ken if the conspiracy went beyond MacBrae and Ashbourne.”
Katrina felt her eyes go wide at this, then a horrible thought occurred to her.
“Did ye come here to accuse my clan?” she demanded, only keeping her voice down because she knew they needed privacy. “If that is what ye think of me, Makenna, I—”
“Nay, nay,” Kenna assured her, holding out her hands in a gesture of supplication. “We’ve come to ye for the exact opposite reason. I swear to ye, Katrina. We’ve come because we think that MacAllan is the most likely clan to be innocent.”
Katrina nodded, though she understood that this would be a practical assumption at least as much as a question of loyalty.
Kenna didn’t have to know Katrina personally to know of MacAllan’s reputation as healers, not fighters.
Not to mention that MacAllan hadn’t gained much in the way of power in the years following the attacks.
They hadn’t lost as much as many other clans, but they hadn’t come out clear victors, either.
“Then what is it that ye want?” she asked warily. They hadn’t come here just to catch up. If they were planning a war, everything they did would be strategic.
Another look passed between the couple.
“We need shelter,” Kenna said after a moment. “And allies.”
“We dinnae ken who we can trust,” Arran added, “but Kenna trusts ye—I ken that ye were there for her as ye could be when she was—” He grimaced—“wed to Ashbourne. Ye will never ken how grateful I am for ye for that. But we must ask ye for another favor, I fear. Arrange a meeting with your father. Convince him to help us.”
He spoke so earnestly, with such gentle exhortation, that a part of Katrina wanted to agree.
But a larger part of her—the part that had been brought up to guard her clan against all threats, even ones that did not intend harm—was already shaking her head.
“Nay,” she said. “Nay, I cannae. It is too big a risk.”
Kenna’s expression went stricken, but Arran’s went thunderous.
“Ye cannae just brush this aside, Lady Katrina,” he said, forcing his voice down to a low growl as he said her name. “Ye cannae imagine the kind of devastation that MacBrae is capable of.”
She tried to remind herself, as she struggled not to bristle, that he had lost his entire family.
“Just because we didnae lose more people,” she told him tersely, “doesnae mean that we dinnae ken loss. Medicine was our livelihood—it still is. We nearly starved in the years after those attacks. And aye, I ken that it isnae the same. I wouldnae ever say it was the same. But we are a small clan. We dinnae have the power of Lennox—or MacBrae,” she added with a glance at Kenna.
“We dance on the edge of a knife always. And this blade, the one that ye are offering?” She shook her head. “It’s sharper than most.”
Arran opened his mouth, clearly intending to argue more, but Kenna laid a hand on his arm. He let out the breath that he’d drawn to speak on a shaky sigh.
Katrina wouldn’t say she liked him. She had already been inclined against him, for having dragged her friend into a dangerous adventure, no matter how noble, and then he had insulted her clan, but… she liked the way he listened to Kenna.
Reluctantly. Begrudgingly. But she liked it.
It made her soften her words.
“It’s nae that I amnae sympathetic,” she said. “But I cannae drag my people into what may verra well turn into a bloodbath.”
“Please,” Kenna said. “We need help. We cannae do this alone, and we cannae let it stand. Just… think about it, aye?” she added when Katrina started shaking her head again.
“I can offer herbs,” Katrina said. “Medicine. Supplies. But we cannae risk the soldiers we have. There arenae enough of us.”
Kenna pressed her lips into a thin line.
“We arenae leaving tonight,” she said after a long moment. “In case ye change your mind.”
Katrina nodded, but it was a concession. She wasn’t going to change her mind.
“Be safe,” she said. “Let me know if ye need supplies, aye?”
Their parting was much less joyous than their reunion.
Katrina looked back over her shoulder as she wove through the crowds of the inn.
Kenna and Arran had turned toward one another, curling together without necessarily touching, like the way a plant reached for the sun.
They were murmuring, worried expressions on their faces.
Katrina made herself turn away once more. Her decision had been the right one.
Her people always came first.
Even so, there was a pervasive sense of unease that hung over her as she rode hard back toward MacAllan Keep.
She found herself checking behind her time and again, although there was nobody on the narrow, packed-dirt road that led back to her home, at least not anyone aside from the errant crofter tending to a patch of garden or chopping logs.
It was the kind of thing she’d seen all her life—the people she had seen all her life. But something felt wrong.
She hoped that the feeling would dissipate as she rode through the familiar walls of the keep, but her dread only intensified.
She returned the mare to the stables, quickly brushing down the horse and hanging the tack in its dedicated place.
Something still felt off, but if she could get up to her chambers and don her apron, she could ask questions with her excuse for not knowing fixed.
This would only be the thousandth time or more that she disappeared into her workroom for hours.
People would see what they expected to see, but not if they saw her wearing a traveling cloak instead of a stained linen apron.
She headed up the back staircase toward her room, trying to be stealthy. She was disappointed in this quest when her elder brother, Edward, appeared in the corridor in front of her.
She and her brother had a good relationship; she was immensely fond of him, even if he had snuck up behind her countless times when she was a child and dipped her plait into whatever medicine she was learning how to brew.
Even so, it was surprising when he swept her up into a fierce embrace.
“Katrina,” he murmured into her hair. “M’eudail. Ye are well. Ye are fine.”
This hug was going on for a remarkably long time. Katrina batted at her brother’s embrace until he released her.
“Of course I’m fine, ye numpty. What’s going on?”
He didn’t answer her question, instead returning his hands to her shoulders, patting down her arms as if checking her for injury.
“Where the hell have ye been? I thought ye were dead!”
“What?” Katrina demanded. She hadn’t wanted anyone to notice she was gone, but she hadn’t thought that her absence would result in such a catastrophic response. “Why would ye—”
The words died in her throat as her brother pushed open the door to her chamber; she hadn’t even noticed that it was ajar.
Inside, sprawled in a pool of blood, was the body of a chestnut-haired lass.
Wearing Katrina’s dress.