Chapter One #2
Iona McKenzie was Laird of this clan in her own right, and she had not run anywhere in Alexandra’s memory.
She was straight-backed and quick and proud as a hawk on a fist, and she had given Alexandra the chestnut hair and the hands and not one ounce of the patience.
She came across that courtyard with her skirts in both fists and her hair coming out of its pins, and Alexandra got one leg over the saddle and half fell the rest of the way, and her mother’s arms shut around her and did not open.
“Oh, me lamb. Me brave, brave lass.” Iona had a hand on the back of her head, pressing her face into her shoulder the way she had when Alexandra was small and thunder came over the hills.
Her whole body shook with it. “Ye’re home.
It’s all I asked for, and I’ll nae ask another thing as long as I live. ”
Alexandra stood in a courtyard full of soldiers with her mother’s hands in her hair and shook, and could not have stopped it for any price she owned.
Over Iona’s shoulder stood her father.
Finn McKenzie stood at the foot of the keep steps and did not come down them.
He was a big, black-haired man, heavy through the shoulder, and anybody who had ever seen Rory knew exactly what Finn had looked like as a lad; and it was Finn’s blue eyes that Alexandra carried in her own head, and Finn’s way of setting a chin against the world.
Grief had done a thing to his face that she had never seen there and hoped never to see again.
It had not softened him anywhere. It had cut everything soft away and left the rest of him standing.
At his shoulder stood a young woman in mail, dark hair cropped short at the jaw, hand resting on her sword hilt out of habit.
Catriona. Two years older than Rory, one of the finest blades in the clan, and his closest friend since the pair of them were small enough to be caught stealing apples.
Her eyes met Alexandra’s across the courtyard and went away again, and Alexandra watched her throat move.
“Take her inside,” Finn ordered.
“Da—”
“Inside. Now.” He did not raise his voice at all, and two guards came off the wall at once. “Ye’ll go tae yer room, and ye’ll eat, and ye’ll sleep, and we’ll speak in the mornin’ when I can look at ye without wantin’ tae break somethin’.”
She had grown up in this castle; she knew the sound of a gate being shut whether or not there was a gate in the room.
Once she was through those doors she was not coming back out of them.
She also knew what would happen if she fought him here, in the open, in front of thirty of his men, on the night his son came home in a saddlebag.
She let her mother take her arm.
They had gone six steps toward the keep when her father’s head came round.
Arran had ridden in at the tail of the column and dismounted just inside the gate. He stood holding his reins with the torchlight catching the Kincaid green at his shoulder, waiting to be noticed.
Finn noticed.
“What,” he said, “is a Kincaid doin’ in me courtyard?”
The yard went quiet in a way that a yard full of men very rarely does.
Arran let the reins drop and came forward three paces and went down on one knee on the wet stone, which Alexandra had not expected, and which from her father’s face he had not expected either.
“Me laird. I brought yer daughter tae yer gate and I’ll trouble ye nae further than that.
” His voice carried. It did not shake. “I’m sorry for Rory.
I’m sorrier than I’ve the words for. And I’m sorry that Alexandra was ever in a place where such a thing could reach her, and that was mine tae prevent, and I didnae prevent it. ”
“Get up.” Finn came down two steps. “Did ye think that would help ye? Get up off me stones. I’ll nae have ye kneelin’ at me as though it costs ye somethin’.”
Arran rose.
“I put me children intae yer hands.” Finn’s voice began to climb, and along the wall the men stopped pretending they were not listening.
“The pair of them! I let them ride south tae the Murray keep, tae a weddin’ and a grand alliance, because Seamus Murray gave me his word on it and yer own laird gave me his, and I’m the fool that took them at it.
And me son is dead in a Campbell field.” His hand came up and stabbed at the air.
“And we never brought him home! D’ye hear what I’m sayin’ tae ye, Kincaid?
There’s nae grave. There’s nae stone. His mother has nowhere tae stand. ”
Iona made a small sound beside her, and Alexandra felt it go through her mother’s whole body and into her own arm.
“And ye can tell me this, since ye’re here,” Finn went on. “Christopher Kincaid. Alistair Campbell’s own son, full brother tae the man that ran me boy through, sittin’ at the Murray table with Morag Caindach on his arm and every one of ye callin’ him family. Is he walkin’ free this night?”
“Da, that isnae—”
“Be quiet.”
“Christopher put a sword tae Ian tae save me!” She pulled her arm out of her mother’s hand. “He got us out of that castle. He put us both on that horse and he bled for it, and he’s the only reason I’m standin’ in yer courtyard at all, and if ye’d let me speak for one—”
“I said be QUIET!”
The roar came off the walls like a thrown stone. She flinched, and hated herself for flinching, and saw her father see it.
When he spoke again he had brought his voice down to something a great deal worse than shouting.
“Ye were a prisoner in that man’s dungeons. Ye’ll forgive me if I dinnae take yer word on who’s tae be trusted.”
The blood went out of her face so fast that the torches swam, and her hands started shaking where the whole yard could watch them do it. She pushed them down into her skirts.
“Enough.” Iona’s voice came across the courtyard low and flat and absolutely final. “Finn. That is yer daughter.”
Finn’s jaw worked. He did not apologize. He turned all of it on Arran instead.
“Ye came here tae offer me somethin’. I can see it sittin’ on ye. Say it and be done.”
“Me sword,” Arran said. “Me loyalty. Meself, for as long as this takes, under yer command and nae under mine. Kincaid will answer if I ask it, and McGregor with them, and Lord Blackwood will send me every soldier he can put on a horse, because his mother was a Scot and he has never once let anyone forget it. I’m nae askin’ ye tae like me, me laird. I’m askin’ ye tae use me.”
“I want none of it.” Finn spat into the mud.
“None of yer regret, none of yer loyalty, none of yer clans and none of yer English lord. Ye stood on Seamus Murray’s steps and let the pair of them ride intae the north with a handful of men at their backs, and ye kent yer scouts had gone missin’ up there, and ye let them go regardless—”
“Aye,” Arran said. “I did. Would ye have me lie tae ye about it?”
It stopped Finn mid-breath. He had set himself against an argument and there was not one coming.
“I kent the scouts were overdue.” Arran had gone very pale.
His hands hung open at his sides and he did not look away from her father once.
“I said it tae her face and then I let the matter drop, because she told me nae tae fuss and I wanted her tae think well of me. I should have put fifty men on that road. I should have gone meself. That’s mine, me laird.
I’ll carry it every day I’ve got left, and there isnae a thing ye can say tae me tonight that I havenae already said tae meself in the dark. ”
Alexandra stood in the middle of the courtyard with her mother’s hand on her arm and her father’s guards at her back and found that she could not get a breath in.
Finn looked at him a long moment.
“Get off me land,” he said. “Ye’ll avenge nothin’ here. I’ll do it meself, with me own men, and I’ll have no Kincaid at me shoulder while I do it.” He turned his back. “Iona. Bring her in.”
Arran didn’t move. He stood in the torchlight and took it, and there was nothing on his face but a kind of terrible patience, as though he had been handed no more than he had come expecting.
Alexandra took her arm out of her mother’s hand.
She said nothing at all. She walked three steps back down into the courtyard, where every man on that wall could see precisely who she had chosen to stand beside, and she stopped there and looked at her father until he turned round and saw her do it.
Finn’s mouth opened. Then it closed again.
“Inside,” he said, and this time it came out of him tired.
She went, because tonight she had nothing better to give than three steps and a look. But she had not gone the first time he said it, and both of them knew that too.
Then the doors of her father’s keep closed between them.