Page 8 of The Rogue's Bride
Glancing around the table, she saw that Alban and Darron looked unperturbed, while Boyd MacDonald wore a slightly bored expression. Maybe she was imagining things.
“I noticed on the way in that the Cleatburn Bridge is in a poor state, Alban.” Alasdair turned his attention back to the steward. “Why is that?”
Alban’s brow furrowed. “We had heavy rains in late autumn, milord. It did some damage.”
Alasdair met the steward’s eye, and Caitrin saw his jaw firm, his dark gaze glint. “Then, we need to repair it.”
Chapter Four
Trouble Sleeping
AN ICY WIND gusted in from the north-east, tugging at Alasdair’s fur mantle and stinging his exposed cheeks. He hadn’t forgotten how cold the wind got up here, on Skye’s exposed northern tip. It could cut to the bone. Around him the last of the light was draining from the western sky, deepening the chill. He’d come straight here after supper, even though night had almost fallen.
Pulling up the collar of his mantle, Alasdair stepped forward, his gaze settling upon the headstone in the center of the windswept kirkyard.
All that remained of his elder brother.
Alasdair studied the grave. In the fading light, he could barely make out Baltair’s name etched there. The stone had only been in the ground nearly eight moons, and already moss was starting to creep up its sides. After all that had happened, it felt as if his brother had been dead years, not months.
It had taken a while for news of Baltair’s death to reach him on the mainland. Alasdair had been in Inbhir Nis when it arrived. He’d felt numb as he’d read the words sent from Malcolm MacLeod. Baltair had fallen in a skirmish against Clan-chief MacLeod’s foes, the Frasers of Skye.
Once the shock faded, grief had surfaced. However, it was a sensation mixed with guilt. After his elder brother wed Caitrin, Alasdair had bitterly resented him. Everything fell into Baltair’s arms. He’d been good looking and charismatic—and he ruled northern Skye. Caitrin hadn’t been the only woman upon the isle who’d wanted to wed him.
Alasdair’s mouth thinned. Women were so predictable. They didn’t see past the veneer. Unlike them, he wasn’t blind to his brother’s faults. Baltair could be insufferably arrogant and had a cruel edge that Alasdair, two years his junior, had often borne the brunt of when they’d been bairns.
But still, he was his brother. The only kin he’d had left.
Alasdair stood there for a while, letting the dark curtain of night settle over the world. He was alone in the kirkyard save a pair of ravens perched on a nearby gravestone. They watched him with cold beady eyes.
He ignored the birds, pulling his cloak tighter as a particularly hefty gust of wind ripped across the hillside.
It was time to go. He’d expected to feel something other than an odd emptiness upon visiting his brother’s grave. But he shouldn’t have been surprised really, for he wasn’t himself these days.
Alasdair sighed, his breath steaming before him in the gelid air, turned from the grave, and strode out of the kirkyard.
At the entrance he found Boyd waiting for him.
His friend had accompanied him here, but had then hung back while Alasdair visited his brother’s grave.
Boyd nodded as Alasdair approached before falling into step with him. For once, his cousin didn’t rib him or offer a flippant comment; something Alasdair felt grateful for. Wordlessly, the two men made their way through the village, down an unpaved street flanked with low stone cottages. The aroma of roasting fowl wafted out from one of the homes and within another a woman started singing.
“It’s a nice place this,” Boyd commented, breaking the silence. “I can see why ye were keen to come home.”
Alasdair cast him a sidelong look. “Ye will stay on then?”
Boyd wasn’t a close relative, but they’d struck up a friendship over the past few months. Boyd hadn’t seemed in a hurry to return to Glencoe after the war, and so Alasdair had invited him back to Duntulm.
Boyd grinned. “Aye, if ye will let me.”
“Ye can remain under my roof … as long as ye earn yer keep.”
Boyd rolled his eyes. “Ye are going to put me to work?”
“Aye … the Duntulm Guard is looking a bit sparse. Talk to Captain MacNichol in the morning, and he’ll get ye kitted out.”
The two men left the village and took the path that wound up the hill toward the keep. Fires burned upon the walls, staining the pitted rock a deep gold.
“It’s good to be here,” Boyd said finally, his voice uncharacterically serious. “Ye could almost think that disaster at Durham never happened … that the English didn’t whip our arses.”
