“Quiet,” he ordered softly, and the others immediately fell silent. “Do not turn yet, but I think we are not alone.”
“Explain,” Gilmour said, his voice as low as Ramsay’s.
“Where?” Lachlan asked.
“To our left and a little ahead.” Ramsay paused, not allowing Gryfon to turn his hirsute head and warn the rider that he had been spotted. “Do you see it?”
“Aye. A warrior,” Lachlan replied. “Goodly sized. Black mail and ventail astride a dark horse. A stallion, I think. Mayhap a five year old—”
“Christ, man,” Gilmour groaned. “We do not need to know the steed’s name. Is he alone?”
There was a moment’s delay, but not the slightest movement of Lachlan’s head. “I see no others.”
“Are you certain?”
For the first time in several hours, Lachlan grinned. “We’ll know when we confront him.”
“Confront him!” Gilmour scoffed. “You know what that means, don’t you, Ram?”
“Aye,” Ramsay said, and shifted his shoulders ever so slightly to feel the pleasant weight of his claymore against his back. “It means that our wee brother’s spoiling for a fight.”
“And you know how disagreeable he gets when he does not get his way,” Gilmour said, still watching the road ahead.
“There is nothing worse than a disagreeable brother,” Ramsay said, and with that, spun Gryfon toward the left. Had Lachlan not done the same they would have collided. Instead, they lunged in unison into the trees.
For one heart pounding instant the dark shadow stayed where it was, then it turned with the speed of light and leapt away. They charged after like hounds behind their prey, but in a matter of minutes they knew they had failed.
“Where the devil did he go?” Ramsay growled.
Lachlan glowered into the distance. “I do not care for this.”
“I rather dislike it meself when people disappear into nothingness,” Gilmour agreed, steadying his steed.
“If he wished us no harm, why did he not declare himself?” Lachlan wondered.
“Mayhap my reputation as a swordsman preceded me,” Gilmour said.
“And mayhap he was following someone,” Ramsay countered, and cued the bay to the left. Gryfon ground his teeth and irritably flicked his tail as he turned.
The other brothers urged their taller horses alongside. “Tracks,” Gilmour said. “Two sets. Heading breakneck toward the burn.”
“Aye, and the second is the warrior’s.”
“Are you certain?” Gilmour asked, but Lachlan didn’t deign to answer. “So he was following someone. But was he friend or foe?”
“Foe,” Ramsay answered, moving his green plaid aside to slip a short blade from inside his bull hide boot. “But he lost his quarry. Thus he returned to their tracks to find him.”
Pulling his own blade from its sheath, Lachlan dismounted and turned to face downhill. ” ‘Tis only right, then, that we find him first.”
The rain made the trail difficult to follow, but the brothers were in their element. Lachlan crouched low over the uncertain trail while Ramsay rode to his left and Gilmour to his right. A MacGowan did not grow to manhood without learning to protect his own.
Never were their eyes still as they wended their way through the misty rain, only to turn back and try again and again.
A log lay across their trail. They skirted it, wary of everything, for the sound of the water below drowned all else. But soon they were at the bank of the burn, and there the hoofprints halted.
Gilmour glanced once more to his right, making certain no one watched them. “What now?”
“We guess which way. Right or left,” Lachlan said, gazing over the rumbling water, but Ramsay was already turning his mount downstream.
‘Tis left,” he said. “‘Twas where the warrior came from.”
“A good thought.”
“Aye. He is estimably wise,” Gilmour agreed. “What a pity Lorna ruined him so when—”
“Do not start up—” Ramsay began, but stopped in an instant, for he’d noticed green velvet just visible beneath a scattering of twigs and leaves.
“What is it?” Gilmour asked as Lachlan drew his dirk.
“The quarry,” Ramsay said, nodding toward the figure nearly hidden between a fallen log and bending bracken. “It seems we have found him.”
Spinning his mount about, Gilmour galloped toward the body. Lachlan followed, but Ramsay remained where he was, scanning the woods for any hidden danger. When none presented itself, he kneed his cantankerous steed back up the hill, stopping just as his brothers knelt before the fallen rider.
Silence filled the woods. Tension cranked his gut tight.
“Tell me,” he said finally, unable to see for himself. “Is he dead?”
Lachlan was silent as he checked for a pulse, but finally his voice broke the quiet. “Nay. The lad yet lives. There’s a bump on the back of his head, but no blood that I can see and—”
“The
lad.”
Gilmour’s tone was disbelieving as he gently turned the body over. “Bloody hell, brother, ‘tis little wonder Agnes showed you no interest. You’re slow as a skewered turnip.”
“What’s amiss?” Ramsay asked.
Gilmour glanced up at his elder brother with a grin. “Either I am mistaken, and I never am, or …
he
is a
she.”
Ramsay was afoot in a second, beside his brothers in an instant.
“Nay. He’s—” Lachlan argued and swiped aside the plaid tam that covered the victim’s head. A tangle of flaxen curls tumbled across his brother’s arm. “A lassie!” he hissed.
“Aye,” Gilmour said and ran his fingers gently across a smudged cheekbone. “And as bonny as the sunrise.”
“A
lassie,”
Lachlan repeated.
“With a warrior on her trail,” Gilmour said.
“The warrior!” Lachlan rose slowly to his feet, shoulders bunched forward like an angry bull. “He did this to her.”
“But why?” Gilmour rose beside him to peer into the woods.
“And where is he now?”
“Gone. And we’d best be, too.”
“Aye.” Lachlan tightened his fists and gazed down at the unconscious form. “Fetch me mount, Mour, and hand her to me when I am astride.”
“You?” Gilmour scoffed. “Were she a side of mutton, I would consider allowing you to take her home. But she’s a lassie, and I am undoubtedly the man for the job.”
“You jest,” Lachlan said.
“You mistook her for a lad, brother.”
“Which has naught to do with me ability to carry her.”
“What if you mistake her for a stone or a twig or a … an apple core and discard her along the way?”
“You’ll be keeping your wayward hands to yourself, Gilmour, or by the saints, I’ll—”
“Sweet Almighty!” Ramsay said, and pushing his brothers impatiently aside, lifted the girl into his arms, and strode for his horse.
“The warrior, was he a Munro?” Flanna asked.
The brothers were closeted in the solar with their parents, the notorious laird and lady of Dun Ard.
“I know not,” Lachlan answered. “We gave chase without delay.” Ramsay watched him pace across the woven carpet and onto rough timber. “But he eluded us.”
“Eluded how?” ‘Twas their father who spoke, christened Roderic but generally called the Rogue by those who knew him well.
Lachlan shrugged, giving a single lift to his heavy shoulders. He had inherited their grandfather’s bulk, while Ramsay had inherited … what? His mother’s cautious skepticism, perhaps. He glanced at her and almost smiled. She was known as the Flame of the MacGowans—and the only woman able to keep the Rogue on a leash.
“I know not,” Lachlan was saying. “One moment he was there, and the next …” He blew out a sharp exhalation. “Gone.”
“Gone?” said the laird and lady in unison.
“I know you think our Lachlan has lost his wits,” Gilmour said, one hip cocked against a tall leather trunk. “And in the light of the news that he could not tell that yonder sleeping beauty was a lassie, well …” He shook his head, candlelight shining off his wheat toned hair. “I can understand your feelings, but truly the warrior did seem to vanish into—”
“Were it not for me, you would never have left Dun Ard at the outset and the lassie would still be lying out there alone and unsheltered,” Lachlan said.
“And were it not for me, you would be calling her Angus and challenging her to a wrestling—”
“We’d best learn where she belongs soon,” Flanna interrupted. “Before ‘tis too late.”
The room went silent with her unsaid words.
“She’ll come to,” Lachlan said. “Surely she will.”
“I pray you are right,” Flanna said. “But until then, we would be well advised to inform her clansmen of her whereabouts.”
“How do we find her kin?”
“Surely someone has missed her,” Roderic said. “She is a bonny lass, and …” His words faded to a halt as he glanced toward the Flame. “So I am told.”
His bride of near thirty years raised a single brow at him. “You have not noticed for yourself, then?”
“Of course not, me love,” he said and grinned as he took her hand. ” ‘Tis Gilmour who has brought me reports.”
“I see. So you think her comely, Mour?” Flanna asked.
“Aye.” His smile matched his father’s almost to perfection. “But not half so bonny as you, Mother.”
She chuckled, as though she’d heard a hundred such lies and was not inclined to believe a single one of them.
“But nearly as pretty as Gilmour,” Lachlan said.
Flanna laughed aloud, and though Gilmour sent a scathing glare in his elder brother’s direction, humor lit his eyes.
“And what of you, Ramsay?” Roderic asked. “You have been unusually quiet. Do you not find her comely?”
Ramsay shrugged. He would rather listen to the others banter than to join in himself. Since returning from Edinburgh some months ago, he found Dun Ard changed somehow … and yet he knew that it had not changed at all. It was only his perception that had been altered. His parents had always been devout and loyal leaders of the clan MacGowan. His brothers had always bickered. The Flame had always adored the Rogue and had that adoration returned a hundred fold, but perhaps Ramsay had not appreciated it before, had not realized how rare and precious a thing they shared. Not until Lorna, he thought, and turned his mind aside, careful to keep his expression impassive.
“I suspect she is bonny enough,” he said.
“Bonny enough?” Lachlan snorted.
“She has the face of an angel,” Gilmour argued. “Me Mary is the very embodiment of purity and grace. ‘Tis simply that Ram—”
“Mary?” said three voices in unison.
Gilmour canted a grin at them. “The lass needs a name; I have come to call her Mary.”
“Whyever—” Lachlan began, but Ramsay interrupted.
“As in the sainted mother of God,” he said, and rose irritably to his feet.
The solar went silent.
“Something peeves you, Ramsay?” Flanna asked.
He shot her a glance. They had a connection, he and his mother, and he had no wish to lie to her. But if the truth be told, something did bother him, though he did not know exactly what it was.
“Nay, nothing peeves me, Mother,” he said. ” ‘Tis simply that …” He paced, following much the same course Lachlan had, past the rarely used gittern and lute. While the Flame of the MacGowans was adept with a bow and downright devilish with a dirk, she was unexceptional in the more ladylike arts. Mayhap that accounted for her lack of coquettish behavior. Ramsay had expected to find that same forthright quality in other women, and been disappointed.
“Simply what?” she asked now.
“We know nothing of the woman,” he said. “True, she may be as saintly as me brothers suspect, but perhaps she is the opposite.”
“You’re daft!” said Lachlan.
“He is,” Gilmour agreed casually. “He is daft.”
“And what, pray tell, has made you decide that, brothers?” he asked, keeping his tone level. “The fact that I think a bonny face might hide an evil heart? What if she were old and crotchety with a wart on her nose and a balding pate? Then might she be evil?”
“Certainly,” Gilmour said.
“Of course,” agreed Lachlan.
Ramsay glowered, though he tried not to. “Mother, talk to them.”
But she was smiling and the Rogue was chuckling out loud.
“Me thinks ‘tis a bit early to decide whether she be sinner or saint,” Flanna said. “Mayhap we could wait until she awakens, at least. Don’t you agree, me sons?”
“Aye,” Lachlan said.
“I’m willing to wait forever for her to awaken, if need be,” Gilmour replied.
“And you?” Flanna asked, looking at Ramsay.
Having shoved his emotions neatly back out of sight, he shrugged. “It matters little to me what her temperament proves to be. I only hope that she is not a spy.”
“A spy!” For a moment he thought Lachlan might actually launch himself across the room at him. Lachlan, after all, had always been prone to sharp flashes of temper. He remained as he was, however, though his square hands ground to fists. “Your time at court has turned your brain soft. The lass could no more be a spy than I could be a … a … rotting parsnip.”
“I’ve oft wondered about the similarities,” Gilmour murmured, straightening from the trunk.
“And why not?” Ramsay asked, ignoring him. “With sentiment turning against the French every day, there may be any sort of trouble brewing against us. Remember, brothers, Norman blood does flow through our veins.”
“She is no spy,” Lachlan said and Ramsay shrugged.
“Then perhaps she’s—”
“Hold!” Flanna’s voice rang against the stone wall, her eyes gleaming nearly as bright as her auburn hair in the light of the nearby candles. ” ‘Tis not our place to determine what she is just yet. Not until we learn
who
she is.”
“She is no—” Lachlan began, but Flanna raised her hand for silence.
“Gilmour, I’ve a mission for you. You will travel to Braeburn and ask if perchance they are missing one flaxen haired maid.”
He nodded. “Aye, Mother, though I am loath to leave the fox to guard the hen house.”
She stared at him quizzically for a moment, then turned to her husband. “He is your son,” she said, asking for an explanation.
“Methinks he refers to Lachlan as the fox,” Roderic said.
“Ahh.” She turned back toward her third born son with a raised brow. “Never have I heard my ancestral home called a hen house before, Mour. But rest assured, I’ve a task for your brother as well.