Page 94 of Rebellion's Fire

It was as they went into the hall to join Somerled’s raucous following that Fergus’s messenger arrived, inviting them to Whithorn to finalize arrangements including the position of Malcolm mac Aed, their father.

Over the messenger’s head, Adam met Donald’s gaze. Somerled sent the messenger into the hall, while they followed more slowly.

“We have to go,” Donald said urgently.

“With no following?” Adam returned.

“You said yourself—”

“I never said we should walk into a trap.”

Donald cast his eyes upward. “He needs us! Why would he lay a trap for us? If he’s to release our father, is this not worth the risk?”

Adam considered. Every instinct was crying out against it. His vision of Fergus with a rope twined around Donald was hard to ignore. And yet… “However many men we take into Galloway, it would never be enough if Fergus wished us ill. We should suggest a different meeting place and a time of our own choosing, and go home to wait for his answer.”

Somerled slapped him on the back, hard enough to make him glad he wasn’t already eating. “Ha! Desperate to get home to his new—”

“Discretion, my uncle,” Donald murmured. “And Adam, there is no point in going home when we’re already on this side of the country.”

Again, Adam could see his point. But this long-awaited and necessary meeting with Somerled seemed only to make him long for Cairistiona all the more. He wanted to see her face at his first homecoming, read in her eyes if she’d missed him, and was glad of his return. For himself, her presence in his hall and in his bed had become a necessity very quickly. Frighteningly quickly. And if he were honest, this feeling was at least partially responsible for his opposition to going farther south now to Galloway.

But Donald was restless, discontented, and as they sat down to feast and drink with Somerled, Adam could understand that, too. In the beginning of their rising against the king, their raiding had been full of hope and excitement. And again, when Adam had returned from Somerled in the spring, it had been fun to plan and attack more daring targets together. Even today, they’d still been buoyed up by their success. But where Adam looked forward to his home and his wife, Donald wanted more adventure.

There was, Adam supposed, watching his brother’s antics with the pretty serving girl, a certain frustrating sameness to what they were doing. Raid, fight, cause havoc, withdraw. And still, their father wasn’t released. No messenger from the king to offer terms had ever been sent. A sense of futility was understandable.

“How long are you in Kintyre?” Adam asked his uncle suddenly.

Somerled leaned forward to talk past Donald and the serving girl. “We rest until next week, all being well. Then I return to Man. Why?”

“What if we invite Fergus here?”

Donald pushed the girl to one side, though he didn’t let go of her. He looked thoughtful. “You’re prepared to wait?”

Adam shook his head. “One of us is enough.” And Somerled’s protection was far more useful than his own.

Donald grinned and pulled the girl back onto his lap. “I’ll send the messenger home in the morning.”

Somerled winked. “We’ll keep Donald entertained here.”

Remembering his own entertainment in Somerled’s camps, Adam had no doubt of it.

When he parted from Somerled at dawn the following day, his hand clung to his uncle’s in an echo of the same tug of regret he’d felt in the spring.

“Want to stay?” Somerled asked, only half joking.

“Yes,” Adam admitted. Another season campaigning with Somerled was a beguiling prospect in many ways. “Just not enough.”

Somerled let out a crack of laughter. “Away and tell my sister to teach you the art of the white lie. Kiss your bride for me, and I’ll be up in Ross very soon, hopefully with your father beside me! Do you want me to rouse your brother from whoever’s bed he ended up in?”

“No, just kick him when he wakes.”

Reluctantly, Adam released his uncle’s hand and threw himself into the saddle. He remembered to wave and hoot to the islesmen as he rode through the camp, but his mind, his whole being, was already turning north and east to Ross. To Cairistiona.

*

Henry, his woundshealed, seemed to have become a different person, or at least more of the person Christian had occasionally glimpsed. He walked jauntily up the length of the hall toward the big table where she sat with her women, sewing by the brilliant summer sunlight streaming in the open shutters.

“Might I have a word, lady?” he asked.

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