Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
The track back to Ben Cruachan ran along the lower ridge, where the hills opened briefly before the thick pine tree line closed in again.
The castle came into view, its massive stone walls catching what remained of the dying afternoon light. Thin plumes of grey smoke drifted from the kitchen chimneys, curling against the dark sky.
Magnus looked at the stone walls. His eyes ran along the battlements, checking the shape of the granite, the alignment of the timber. He knew he was responsible for keeping everything alive. He noted what had changed, what held, what needed immediate attention.
Thirteen years of this, and the constant checking had not become a habit so much as a raw reflex. It happened in his blood before thought could even intercept it.
Elspeth had gone quiet since the lower field.
He remembered her sharp questions during the inspection.
He had noted the way she had spoken to Dougal about the grazing boundaries with that practical, calculating mind of hers; the way she had said something small to Violet about the yellow door, her voice softening just enough to make the widow’s guarded face open like a window.
And then, her laugh in the lower field. The unbridled sound that had broken out of her delicate lips.
He kept his eyes fixed on the muddy track.
Old Tam was waiting at the boundary gate where the lower track met the castle road. He was leaning heavily against the oak post, his weathered woolen cap held tightly in his hands.
Magnus saw him from a distance, and something in the man’s posture registered instantly.
“Hold a moment,” he said, his voice a low rumble.
Elspeth stilled in front of him, her spine straightening. He brought his great horse to a smooth stop and dismounted in a single motion. She did not ask why, which he noted with quiet appreciation.
Tam straightened when Magnus approached, but he did not put his cap back on his head. Instead, his thick, calloused fingers turned the wool slowly.
“Me Laird.” Tam looked down at the cap, then up into Magnus’s eyes. “A word, if ye’ll permit.”
Magnus turned back to look at the horse. Elspeth was watching them from the saddle, her expression one of cool patience. She met his gaze, then deliberately turned her head to look at the distant hills to the west, gracefully removing herself from the conversation without moving an inch.
Magnus turned back to the old shepherd. “Aye,” he said flatly. “Walk with me.”
They moved a few yards further up the track, placing the massive body of the stallion between their conversation and the road. Tam’s cap continued its slow, agonizing rotation.
Magnus simply waited. He had learned years ago that when a Highland man was working up to something heavy, waiting was far faster than prompting.
“Dawn this morning,” Tam began, his voice low. “I was doing the east fence. Lower section where it runs along the ridge.” He stopped, his throat working. “There was a rider.”
Magnus froze.
“On the far ridge. The one above the Brennan boundary, where ye can clearly see the castle road.” Tam turned his cap once more, his knuckles white. “At first, I thought it was a traveler, someone from the valley. The light was still thin, hard to judge the distance.”
He released a sharp, rattling breath into the cold air. “But he didnae move, me Laird. His horse stood like a stone, and the man sat on it, and he looked. I could see him looking. At the castle. At the road.”
A heavy, suffocating pause. “I watched him for near on a quarter hour. He never moved. Never came closer. When the light changed, he just went back over the ridge.”
The dusk air grew thick around them, the wind dropping to a dead whisper.
“His face,” Magnus said.
“Hooded.” Tam met his eyes for the first time, his gaze dead serious. “Dark cloak, dark horse, hood pulled far forward. I couldnae see more than that.”
“Did he see ye?”
“I was deep in the trees. Daenae think so.” Tam stopped turning the cap, his fingers clamping down on the wool. “I daenae like it, me Laird. I’ve been on these grounds for thirty years, and I daenae like the look of it.”
“Ye were right to tell me.” Magnus kept his voice even. “Ye’ll say nothing to the others until ye hear from me. No detail, no speculation.”
“Aye, me Laird.”
“Good man.”
Magnus walked back to the horse.
Elspeth looked down at him the moment his heavy boot hit the stirrup, and then she looked straight ahead again. She did not ask a single thing.
His large arm settled back across her waist, his hand gathered the leather reins, and the horse moved forward.
The castle road was familiar beneath the horse’s hooves, every twist and turn of the stone identical to every other return he had made, but the landscape had fundamentally changed.
The high ridge above the Brennan boundary was visible for the next quarter mile. A sharp, dark line carved against the grey sky, the skeletal pine trees standing along its spine like sentinels.
He looked at it once. A single, cold glance. Then he turned his eyes to the heavy timber of the castle gates and kept his gaze fixed right there.
O’Brien.
The name did not enter his mind with fury; it had been far too long for this. Thirteen years was long enough that what remained in his chest was not anger or the all-consuming hate that had nearly destroyed him. It was something much older, quieter, and considerably more dangerous.
A certainty.
He had rebuilt Ben Cruachan stone by stone, and Ewan O’Brien had watched him do so from the shadows. He had negotiated the trade routes, restored the empty granaries, repaired every single cracked wall, and trained every man who could hold a weapon, and O’Brien had watched that too.
And then, Magnus had ridden to an auction and brought home a betrothed. Something in that action, a permanent shift in the shape of Ben Cruachan’s future, had finally moved the man off the ridge he had been standing on for thirteen years.
Good. Let him move.
The stable lad caught the horse’s bridle at the gate. Magnus dismounted and reached up, his large hands finding Elspeth’s waist to help her down.
Her small hands gripped his forearms for balance.
When her boots hit the ground, he immediately looked past her to the gate, then to the courtyard, then up at the high stone walls.
He ran the same survey he always did, but this time he cataloged every guard’s position and found the defense insufficient.
“Thank ye,” Elspeth said softly. She gathered the heavy wool of her shawl closer around her shoulders and made her way inside.
Magnus stood alone in the damp courtyard for a long while, watching the door long after it had closed behind her. The brown dress had suited her, as he had suspected it would, deepening the color of her eyes to something closer to bark than moss.
He had not meant to notice that when he chose it.
He scowled at the door, as though it had done something to deserve his displeasure, and then went on to find Duncan.
His cousin was waiting in the dim corridor outside the study. It meant some tension had already reached him through the air.
Duncan read the truth in his face before Magnus could even speak a syllable, and the casual lightness that usually draped him like a loose cloak dropped away cleanly.
“Come in,” Magnus said, throwing open the heavy oak door.
He told him about Tam. All of it, in precise order, without a single embellishment. Duncan listened with his arms folded tight across his chest, his face hardening as he built the problem internally, cataloging the details, arranging the defenses. He did not interrupt once.
When Magnus finished speaking, the room was dead quiet.
“The southern ridge,” Duncan said, his voice flat. “The tracks we found from before.”
“Aye.”
“So, he’s been watching longer than we thought.”
“He’s always been watching.” Magnus walked to the narrow stone window.
The courtyard below was going about its usual evening business: the hounds wandering, the stable lad carrying a sloshing wooden bucket, Mrs. McAulay crossing to the kitchen with her shawl pulled tight around her against the rising wind.
“He waited until there was something to watch more closely.”
Duncan stared at the floorboards. “The betrothal.”
“The betrothal.” Magnus turned away from the window. “He waited thirteen years for Ben Cruachan to collapse on its own. It didnae collapse. Now it has a future, and the bastard cannae stand it.”
Duncan released a sharp breath through his nose. “What do ye need?”
“The southern ridge. Three men, trusted, rotating on watch. Nobody who talks.” Magnus stepped to his heavy desk.
“The gate guard doubles from tomorrow morning. I want two men on the north approach as well; it’s been too light since summer.
Nobody rides that river alone, and nobody rides after dusk without me explicitly kenning. ”
“Aye.”
Magnus opened the top desk drawer. Jinny lay inside, the heavy iron blade he had carried since he was sixteen years old, the one he had pulled from his father’s ruined study in the bloody days following his death.
It was the only thing that had survived the fire intact.
He had needed something that had survived intact.
He lifted the weapon by its worn leather handle. It felt as familiar to him as his own hand. He felt the razor edge, a mindless habit of his thumb, and found it sufficient. He threaded the heavy leather belt loop and settled the familiar weight against his right hip.
The weight was right. It had always been right.
“Duncan.” His cousin was watching him from the doorway, his arms hanging loose at his sides.
“The guards at the gate, make sure they understand that Lady Elspeth doesnae go beyond the stone walls without an escort. She doesnae ride unless she is with me or one of our kin. Ye tell them it is a routine precaution. Nothing that rouses her concern.”
Duncan’s eyes narrowed. “And if it’s more than watching?”