Page 41 of A Constant Blaze

“For whom?”

“For Adam MacHeth.” His gaze flickered over her as if he couldn’t help looking. In all fairness, the lamplight probably showed more than was comfortable through the fine linen of her chemise. She refused to care.

“And what do you know of the fearsome MacHeths?” she mocked.

Her visitor only smiled, a lazy, rather charming smile. “More than you’d think. I taught three of them to play the harp.”

She blinked. “That was you?” she blurted. “Playing outside? I thought you’d run away!”

“No, that was for the sentries’ benefit, to give me peace to climb up unobserved while they chased a decoy. It was my accomplice who ran away.”

“Who was your accomplice?” she asked, feeling as if the whole situation was finally out of her control.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. Are you in trouble, lady?”

“I certainly am now. I have a strange man in my bedchamber in dead of night, and I’m wearing no more than a chemise.”

“It could be worse. I could be singing you love songs.”

“You got that part over with earlier, as I recall.”

“I wanted to attract your attention,” he confessed. “So that I wouldn’t startle you by climbing in your window.”

“Only partial success,” she murmured. “How did you know which window is mine?”

“Observation. Yours was the only one shuttered all day. Besides, it moved every so often, as if someone were battering at it.”

“The wretched thing would not budge.”

“It’s been barred from the outside with a thick plank of wood. I nearly fell just lifting it.”

She regarded him, trying to work out who and what he was. He had gone to a lot of trouble to get in here, and, more to the point, he’d given her a way out. He had the ring she’d sent to Adam.

“Where is John?” she asked abruptly.

“In Ross.”

Finally, she lowered the lamp and clearly surprised him by sitting down on the floor opposite him. “Who sent you? It wasn’t Adam MacHeth, was it?”

“No. But I have come to rescue you.”

She rested her chin in her hand and smiled at him. “How?”

*

It was along time since Halla had enjoyed herself quite so much. She was glad that she’d always walked a good deal and kept herself fit, but since running hell for leather was far beneath the dignity of the Lady of Ross, there was both joy and acute pain in the exertion. Pounding through the grassy, muddy ground in Muiredach’s spare clothes, doing her best to avoid obstacles and pitfalls in the darkness, she would have laughed aloud if only she could breathe.

By the time she reached the cover of the forest, her legs ached and trembled. She almost collapsed against the first tree in her path. For some time, she could hear only the thundering of her own heart and the sound of her panting, almost sobbing breath. And yet she grinned because it had been thrilling and fun.

Of course, now she had to worry about Muiredach. She’d heard no cries of discovery as he’d climbed up the castle wall like a cat, so she assumed he’d made it to Mairead’s bedchamber. A day listening to local gossip had told them she was locked in there by her lord, although not why. Sympathy seemed to be with the bright, exotic lady who always smiled at them, rather than with her dour husband, although none seemed eager to go against him.

Gradually, as Halla’s breath quietened, she became aware of other sounds, of creatures scuttling through the undergrowth, rustling leaves and snapping twigs and, surely, a human-voiced murmur.

Hell and damnation to them, they must have sent men after her. Was that not excessive zeal against an insolent musician? Unless they suspected more. Unless Mairead’s imprisonment was the trap they’d always known it could be. In which case, Muiredach could be taken even now.

There was nothing to be done except follow the plan and lead any pursuit well away from the small camp where Astrid and the men waited with her baggage and the horses. Halla crept through the trees to the path, where she deliberately stumbled, and then fled back toward the castle. In a little, when she judged the sounds that might have been pursuit were faint enough, she veered back in the direction she needed to be—as well as she could judge with moon and stars so well covered by clouds.

The trouble was, in the darkness and this unfamiliar area of the wood, she could no longer find the path to orient herself. She had to guess and hurry before the Kingowan men realized she’d changed direction once more. She wished they’d give up and go home. What if they returned just in time to see Muiredach shinning down the castle wall?

---