Page 46 of Rebellion's Fire

The listening men guffawed with delight.

Beside Christian, Eua smiled faintly. “They’re just stories,” she said. “We hear them all the time.”

“I thought he was probably dead,” Christian said carelessly.

“I believe the Lady of Ross gives you the credit that he isn’t.”

Christian moved quickly to meet the wine merchant, who was approaching her with a friendly greeting. She didn’t want to think about Adam anymore. Despite the killing of her men and her own abduction, which had somehow faded into the warmer memories of their later encounters, the half story of the MacHeth raid somehow made their violence more real than ever before. Their dispute with the king, their cause, wasn’t just a point of law or tradition. It was a war of pillaging, stealing,killing.

If he had captured the king, what would he have done with the boy?

Her blood ran cold. Stupidly. He would have exchanged him, of course, for Malcolm MacHeth.

Returning from market, their boat loaded with supplies, they were greeted by the Ross servants on the shore with some delight and excitement. Apparently, several unknown cattle had appeared on Tirebeck land. The general view was they’d wandered off from Donald MacHeth’s train of plundered beasts.

Christian’s first, haughty instinct to send them back to the MacHeths was hardly sensible. Who knew where they’d come from originally? Besides, William actually smiled sourly when he heard the tale and made it clear he regarded the animals as legitimate plunder from the outlawed MacHeths. If nothing else, the extra cattle could feed them over the winter.

*

When they’d unloadedthe galleys, Adam sent Findlaech home with the men and the plunder.

Inevitably, Findlaech objected. “The lady will want to see you, make sure you’re still well.”

“You can reassure her,” Adam said patiently. His wound ached, and he wanted to be alone to heal in his own way.

“They’ll want to hear what really happened, too, not just the tall tales. And the drinking, Adam! Think of the drinking.”

“Iamthinking of the drinking.”

Findlaech grinned but lowered his voice. “The men like it when you’re there. It doesn’t seem right going home and celebrating without you.”

Adam turned away. “Findlaech, just go. Donald will be there. And I’ll be back in a day or so.”

“It’ll be worse when you do,” Findlaech warned, not without sympathy.

“I know.”

And it was, although after two days and nights alone in a snug fisherman’s hut, doing nothing but sleeping and eating, he was capable of dealing with it, even his mother’s anxiety, all the more intense for being unspoken.

Chapter Thirteen

The prisoner ofRoxburgh Castle paced his cell.

Beyond the walls surrounding him, the wind howled, sometimes whistling through the slit window high above his head. He strained his ears for footsteps on the stairs, but all he could hear was the rain lashing against the outer walls of his prison, hurled there by the gale.

She wouldn’t come in such weather.

He paused, tilting his head toward the door. Footsteps on the stairs, two sets, one heavy, the other light. The prisoner smiled with relief and stood still, listening to the scrape and clunk of the key, and then the door opened.

The soldier grinned. “Visitor, my lord,” he said, and stood aside for the woman.

She was a mess. He didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone so bedraggled. The wind had played havoc with her bright red hair, which had lost whatever flimsy covering she might have used. The rain had plastered it to her head, soaked her thin, garish clothes through to her skin, and made the paint on her face run. Tall and willowy, she normally came to him looking like a whore with a difference, full of life and character and a peculiar elegance which easily explained why he asked for her by name.

His lips twitched.

“Beggars can’t be choosers, my lord,” she said cheerfully, barging past him. “You got a fire in here?”

The soldier snorted with laughter and closed the door on them, locking it with the same unrelenting clank as he’d opened it. They listened to his laughter and his footsteps fading downstairs to the dry warmth below.

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