Parris Afton Bonds (6 page)

He grinned. “—traveling companions. The trek to the village of Lochaber is a rather rough one. Much of the countryside is penetrable only on foot."

Her glance took in the indicated mounts. "Ponies?"

"They are sturdier, Lady Murdock. Bred for carrying deer off the hill after a successful kill in the stalking season. You’ll be quite safe in traversing the narrow mountain paths.”

She eyed the little animals. "I think I trust my own footing more."

"The mountain's quick weather changes bring sudden hill mists and strong, chilling winds or heavy snows.” He nodded toward the peak. "Buachaille Etive can be dangerous and the cause of many accidents, and warrants the use of Highland-bred horses.”

There was little of the Scottish brogue to his accent, but definitely a foreign lilt c
olored it. His eyes looked as if they revealed hurt easily. Nevertheless, she was prepared to dislike him. "My traveling companions and I are extremely grateful for your concern.”

At her acerbic tone, his bird-bright blue eyes crinkled. "Then we
’d best start. The eve promises a drizzle at best."

Gallantly, he helped her mount one of the little, shaggy white ponies. From behind, Duncan watched sullenly. His lanky legs dangled from his own mount.

Captain Knox bade her farewell. "Me bones belong on a boat, lass."

"Come snowmelt,”
Jamie Cameron told the peppery old man, "anchor in the loch again. By then Ranald will be ready to move out the reivers.”

She was sorry to see Captain Knox go. He was her last link with civilization.

The ever-present overcast sky lent little beauty to a glen carpeted with tall, dark-purple Scottish thistle. "We go by way of the Hidden Valley Trail," Jamie said in a most conversational voice. "A glen near there is famous. In '92 Campbell clansmen massacred the MacDonalds."

She knew he wa
s trying to distract her. "How very interesting,” she said dryly.

That charming grin again.

She ignored it and turned her attention toward maintaining her seat. She was a proficient horsewoman, but the pony’s gait was uneven. Eventually, she adjusted to its peculiar rhythm.

The torturous climb through the mountains proved to be a dizzying experience. Spiraling pine with their high red limbs contrasted with the plummeting depths of granite glens. Thickets of birch and fir began to close in on the single-file
party. At times, sheer walls of granite narrowed the pass. The air grew cooler.

Always, the jagged peak of Buachaille Etive spied upon them.

Nearer, a silvery stream tumbled over rocks and misted the area. Wild salmon leaped in the rushing water. Water, like whisky, flowed freely in the Highlands.

The cascade
’s thunderous echo made normal talk impossible. Not that anyone was talking by late afternoon. She hadn’t eaten since the wee hours of the morning, the last time Ranald Kincairn had come to the cabin to feed her. Her stomach rumbled almost as loudly as the falls.

"How much longer?" she shouted to the leader, Jamie Cameron.

He dropped back to ride beside her. “Not that much longer. We enter Lochaber by the back way, up from the loch. One of the attractive features of the village—’tis hard for an enemy of any size to get to in winter. Leastways with cannon."

"Any longer wait," Elspeth grumbled, “
and I will have calluses on me backside."

As hungry and tired as Enya was, she realized that the longer their jo
urney took, the better. Duncan, Elspeth, Mary Laurie—they had been treated humanely enough and expected the treatment to continue.

For her, arrival could only mean further misfortune.

The steep, pinecone-strewn path entered into a dark forest, dripping with lichen-covered pines. The place had a melancholy air. At her side, Jamie said, “The romance of the road is enhanced by tales of a hidden hoard of Jacobite gold.” She slid him a sidewise glance. "You are my appointed entertainment for the journey?”

In the
sunlight-siphoned gloom, his eyes twinkled like distant blue stars. “My cousin would never forgive me for being boorish.”

"Your cousin?”

"Ranald. Ranald Kincairn.”

"Him? That
—that blackguard."

"He really isn
’t so bad. He’s a good shot, a master of the claymore, and an accomplished golfer.”

She sniffed. "He
’s inhuman."

Jamie grinned. "I assure you, he
’s mortal. As boys, we hunted and fished and studied together, whenever I came home from school on holidays.”

"Where were you
educated?"

"In London
—at Winchester. From the time I was four, I spent more time in England than I did in Scotland. Ranald, now, is—”

“—
is an ignorant lout."

“
True, Ranald didn’t finish examinations, but he is intelligent, I assure you. Clan chiefs are cosmopolitan. Most of our Jacobite leaders were polished men.”

"I
’d hardly call Ranald Kincairn polished."

"You have to understand that Ranald
’s the eighth child of a feckless father and was tutored by the village dominie."

“
Oh, then Ranald Kincairn is most truly cosmopolitan." Her praise was quenched with a sneer.

"Well, he did attend Winchester in London with me for a year. I continued my studies alone at the University of Aberdeen. Without him, it wasn
’t the same."

That explained Jamie
’s accent. Several centuries earlier, Flemish wool merchants had settled Scotland’s east coast near Aberdeen, which was within as easy traveling distance of Norway and Sweden as it was London. The resulting new nobility spoke French. In France, the Scots aristocrats were accepted as equals.

Except the Cameron chieftain could hardly be called aristocratic. His manner was coarse and threatening. She recalled his volley of hot Gaelic oaths when she had literally bit the hand that had fed her. He was hardly comparable to his courtl
y cousin.

“
You speak French?" she asked.

"Aye, French comes easily for me. As a randy young man, I loved my way through France, but grew bored and returned to the Cameron clan. What was left of it."

As they rode past crofts, Enya reviewed the surroundings. Small tenant farms were bordered by stone fences and hedges, and closer to the village were clusters of pink half-timbered houses, roofed with bluish slates and latticed by gardens and arbors. Smoke eddied from the chimney of a quaint tile-roofed, conical kiln.

"Your cousin
—Ranald Kincairn,” she said, seeking as much information as she could from Jamie, "is really a laird, then?"

"Actually, my father is hereditary chief, but he canna ride well anymore; arthritis. A man who canna ride a horse well canna be
regarded as a true leader."

She nodded. "I understand, but why your cousin and not you? Are you not next in line?"

"Oh, I do not have the disposition toward warfare that Ranald does. Ahead is Lochaber. Its castle is just beyond where the road forks. The branch to the left is the main approach to Lochaber from the countryside below."

She saw an old dame glance up, startled, from the water she was drawing at a moss-laced mill standing beside a rushing spring-fed burn. It fed a loch bordered with red clover an
d blue bells and yellow wild irises.

A herd of hardy Highland cows trotted across the old wooden bridge leading into the village itself. The head cow man tugged at his forelock in deference to Jamie, who hailed him by name.

She spotted an iron forger, bellows in hand, who came out to watch the procession of riders, as did patrons of an alehouse, a linen shop, and a butcher’s stall. The pungent odor of fried herring drifted from the low open doorway of a shuttered house. Over the narrow, winding street, upper windows opened, and inhabitants gazed down with curiosity upon the captives.

The first drops of rain began to beat at the shop signs. Jamie gave a signal, and the horses were spurred ahead. Enya
’s pony’s pace quickened, also. Steam rose from its smelly flanks.

At the marketplace, the road divided. The lead horses turned right sharply to ascend a precipitous incline and clattered across a drawbridge lowered over a moat. Hoisted iron portcullises that were badly rusted allowed access to twin gatehouses and
the bailey.

Sudden sunlight shafted through the scudded clouds. Enya glanced up. Serrated parapets, slim pepperpot turrets, and spires of silver granite embedded with mica chips glinted like a million
mirrors. Tall, lancet windows slitted the lower portion of the castle, while larger bowed ones looked out from above.

Gargoyles snarled in silent menace from the battlements. Fluttering from the highest spire was the standard of an arm in armor holding a
black dagger with the Gaelic words
Skean Dhu
inscribed at the bottom.

"A suitable place for ghosts and evil spirits," Duncan commented drily.

In the bailey below, stone rubble was piled as if the place were an ancient ruin. A blackened, skeletal wing of the castle’s twelve-foot apron walls revealed that cannon bombardment had gutted it long ago, probably during the first Jacobite Rebellion of 1715.

So, this was the Cameron
’s temporary stronghold. Did Ranald Kincairn really think to rid Scotland of the English? Then the brute was truly ignorant.

Enya felt a frisson of excitement. The prospect of dealing with the man offered unanticipated diversion. Surely she could keep the Highland chieftain at bay with her wits until she found a means of escape or help arri
ved. The clanking chains of the drawbridge rising behind her were not reassuring.

Within the keep, stablehands scurried to take the weary horses. The outbuildings were in shadow. Jamie came to assist her in dismounting, but she put out a halting palm. She
would not present herself as some weak-kneed lassie, however tired, wet, and miserable she was.

With her maidservants and Duncan in tow, she followed Jamie up a flight of crumbling stone steps built into the wall. The cavernous hall was already lit with ru
sh torches against the encroaching darkness. Shafts of dying sunlight sifted through the high window slits. Between the windows were hung weapons and shields. In the ceiling’s exposed jousts, spoked beams radiating from a center post, nested birds twittered noisily.

A huge fireplace beckoned her to warm her hands, but noisy conversations from the room
’s far end drew her attention, as did the savory smell of food. She noted the greasy rushes strewn on the floor had not been changed in months. Probably not since Kincairn took possession of the castle.

Weaving his way through servants bearing trays and coming-and-going diners, Jamie advanced toward the head of the lengths of tables that formed a T-shape. Several men sat along the width of that table section. He
r breath held, Enya waited to see who Jamie approached.

Incredibly, he stopped before a man who had to be as old as or older than her own father. Both the man
’s hair and beard were grizzled with gray. The stern set of his mouth betokened a man accustomed to authority. As Jamie talked, she felt, rather than saw, the older man’s eyes shift to her. With a curl of his finger, he beckoned her.

Ire rose like sour mash in her mouth. Who was he to summon her like a servant girl? Still, the better choice was to comp
ly, at least, for the moment.

Picking up her skirts, she walked down the long aisle between the tables. A frowsy-looking servant girl in brown kersey cap and gown darted her a glance of curiosity before turning her attention back to the trencher of bread s
he set on one of the tables.

Head high, Enya paused beside Jamie, who introduced her. "Father, this is Lady Murdock. Ranald
’s . . . guest. Lady Murdock, my father, Ian Cameron.”

Closer, she could see the deep furrows across the bridge of the man
’s nose and high forehead. His lids were lowered, as if he perpetually squinted against sunlight. His bird-claw hands clutched a haunch of venison.

“
I trust you will find comfort here at Lochaber Castle," he said, his gravelly voice betraying a weariness that echoed her own.

She used a tone of authority reserved for minions. "How long am I to be held hostage?"

The brows rose like ladder rungs on his forehead. "My nephew hasn’t informed you?"

She wasn
’t certain who was in high command here. She hedged. "Ranald Kincairn discussed the, uhh, terms, not the length of my . . . stay."

He flicked a questioning glance at Jamie, who said, "Ranald took three men with him to scout out Fort William. He hasn
’t returned yet?”

Ian Cameron shook his head. "Ye hear no bagpipes, do ye?”
He rubbed his temple with grotesquely gnarled fingers. "I could sorely use the comfort tonight."

“
I’ll install Lady Murdock in the undamaged wing."