Page 27 of The Wrong Bride
Dermot’s dark eyebrows rose. “A scamp? Are not all little lads?”
“So he was like other boys?”
His expression clouded with the memories, and they didn’t all seem to be good ones.
“As many lads are wont to do,” he said, “Hugh played the occasional prank on the farmers, leading astray cattle so that it looked like we’d been raided. No true harm was done.”
But she sensed the disapproval that even youthful Dermot had felt. She got the impression that he and McCallum had never gotten along well, and that could prove to her advantage. He might be eager to help her convince McCallum that he’d made a mistake kidnapping her.
“Often he’d disappear into the hills for a day or two, upsetting his mother, but not his—” Dermot broke off.
“But not his father?” she finished for him.
McCallum was suddenly beside them, a frown darkening his brow. “My father little cared what I did, Lady Catriona. Did Dermot mention that?” He eyed his cousin coldly.
“I was simply asking what you were like as a boy,” Riona said, knowing she’d made a mistake being so curious where he could overhear.
Dermot crossed his arms over his chest and said nothing. The brooch pinning his plaid matched McCallum’s, and she couldn’t help wondering if clan loyalty was all they’d ever had in common. For although they seemed like two serious men now, she sensed their youths had been vastly different.
“If we’re exposing past sins,” McCallum continued, his voice practical but cool, “did ye tell Lady Catriona about our encounter with the redcoats?”
Dermot’s eyes were now like ice as he stared at his cousin. “I did not.”
McCallum’s expression was pleasant, as if hewere about to relate an amusing story, but there was nothing amusing about the tension that crackled between the two men.
“We were bold that day, the three of us, weren’t we, Dermot?”
When Dermot said nothing, Riona asked, “Who was the third?”
“My foster brother, Alasdair,” McCallum said. “For a year or so we were raised in each other’s houses, a tradition among our people. But when we were all twelve or thirteen, we spied a party of redcoats across the hills, and for a lark, we followed them.” He glanced at his cousin. “Dermot was against it, of course, because being elder by a year, he’d decided it was his duty to look out for us.”
“Someone had to,” Dermot said impassively.
And now Dermot had been looking after the clan for McCallum, Riona thought, echoing a time in their lives when the boys had obviously been at odds.
“What happened next?” she asked, more intrigued than she wanted to admit.
“We followed them for a day,” McCallum continued, “and when they made camp, we lured away their guard, slipped in, and stole their muskets.”
Riona gasped. “You weren’t caught?”
She glanced at Dermot, who spoke without emotion. “Nay, they were not. I remained as lookout, and did not go into the camp myself.”
“Which helped him in the end. Being the son of the chief helped me,” McCallum added, bitterness beginning to thread through his voice.
“I don’t understand,” she admitted.
“When my father found out what we’d done—”
Dermot interrupted, “Ye couldn’t help bragging to the other boys.”
“Aye, I didn’t always think things through in those days. Word got back to my father. Many ghillies—”
“Ghillies?” she interrupted.
“Regular clansmen,” McCallum clarified for her. “Well, they boasted to each other how mere boys had outwitted British soldiers, and of course, someone finally congratulated Himself on our daring. My father claimed—rightly so—that we could have led the redcoats right back to Larig Castle and caused major problems between the clan and Fort William to the north. He ordered a whipping to teach us a lesson.”
She winced. “A harsh punishment.”
