Inside the hall at Kinnesswood, Alastair Gordon grabbed a couple of ale tankards from a passing server and sat down next to Glenna at a table away from the others. She was petting a scrawny-looking gray cat that had followed her inside. He shoved one tankard at Elgin and took a long swig of the other. “For someone who has just been rescued from a locked tower you look fairly glum.”

“What?” Glenna asked distractedly, then smiled up at him. She touched his hand and El’s. “I’m glad you are here.”

“I, too,” Alastair said. “Now what is wrong?”

“Is that blood on your tunic?” she asked.

He looked down at his leather tunic. It was ripped and slashed, covered with soot and dirt, splattered and stained with blood and mud. He smiled.

“Aye,” Elgin said before he could answer. “Alastair, Lyall, and I used a ruse to pass through the gates. Here to sell mounts to Frasyr’s sergeant. But once inside, we overpowered the gate guards and the sergeant. Al fought like the greatest of knights. He managed the guards on the east and south walls by himself.” He paused. “Father would have been proud.”

Those words were invaluable to Alastair, as he remembered the scrawny lad he’d been when he father spent mornings teaching him to wield a sword or mace until his shoulders ached, his arms were numb, and his ears rang with the sound of metal clanging against metal. At El’s words, Alastair tried to not wear his pride too obviously and give himself away, but Glenna was never one to miss much.

He’d once had a dream, too, to be as his father had been, a knight, a man of substance and pledged to a king, with duties of a grand scale, to earn his spurs on the battlefield as had his father before him. But his promise to his father on his deathbed to care for Glenna and El made those dreams impossible. His fate had been decided and his duty was to his sister and brother. He shifted the tankard in his hand and looked at Glenna. “You have changed the subject, sister. Twice.”

She sighed heavily, so he slipped a comforting arm around her. Time had not passed well, and the days without her had not gone by easily or without guilt. To have her lean on his shoulder like she had for years made him feel whole again. For so long he’d had a purpose—seeing Glenna raised and safe—and when it was done and she had gone with Robertson, his life felt hollow, and each day echoed her absence. “Tell me, goose, what is bothering you.”

“Oh, Al….” She shook her head, staring into a full goblet of watered wine. “Everything …nothing…I don’t know.” Her voice trailed off. She glanced across the hall looking distant.

He exchanged a worried look with El, who was watching her and frowning.

“Yes, I do know!” Suddenly Glenna slammed her fist on the table top and the cat shrieked and leapt down, then moved to curl in and out of a server's legs, causing him to drop a platter before it scurried safely into the kitchens beyond.

Alastair turned back just as Glenna faced them both. “Lyall needs me. I trust him, and I believe in him. No one else does. Look!” She gestured angrily over in a corner of the hall where Baron Montrose looked to be verbally hammering Robertson with words.

Alastair watched them for a moment. Robertson stood stoically, his profile immobile as stone and letting the baron’s angry words sluice off of him, while he acted as if he cared not a whit for what he had done. He showed no emotion, no reaction. But Alastair suspected he cared deeply, and all was an act for his stepfather, a way to shield the rage coming at him and what turmoil he felt inside. ‘Twas a man’s way to hide his shame and anger, a technique he’d used when faced with his own father’s wrath.

“He’s a good man,” she said.

“Aye. He saved my life,” Elgin said, then told her how close he’d come to death and how Lyall’s quick skill with the bow meant El was there with her again and not buried in the ground somewhere.

“He’s brave,” Glenna said knowingly. “And he doesn’t realize it.”

“He surely realizes what he’d done and how he feels about you. But I’m not certain that is a good thing,” he pointed out to her.

“How can loving someone be a bad thing?”

“I somehow doubt this love is good, Glenna, and none of that matters much because you have others to answer to.”

“My father?” she said. “Bah! A pox on him.”

“Glenna!” Elgin hissed. “He is the king. To speak such is treason!”

“What is he going to do, hang me? Believe me when I say he will wish to hang me the moment we meet face to face, so what I say and how often I curse him does not matter one whit to me.”

“You cannot change your circumstances, or your birthright,” Alastair told her.

She dropped her chin into her hand and stared sourly at the tabletop, then said quietly. “I know.” She glanced up and looked off at Lyall again. “Baron Montrose believes our marriage is questionable. Another reason to not be the daughter of a king,” she muttered. “It seems a handfast could be declared unbinding. Royal marriages need to be witnessed.”

“So you did wed him?” Elgin asked. “At Beauly, Ruari and one of the monks both claimed you were wed. I did not believe it. We thought he had forced you or was lying, but—“

She stood up suddenly. “The abbey!” She grabbed Alastair’s tunic and half pulled him up off the bench. “The prior has a document. I had forgotten! They witnessed our claim as man and wife, though it was not true then, but that does not matter,” she said with a wave of her hand. “What matters is there is witnessed proof.” She laughed. “Writ, signed, and sealed. Oh, who now shall win this battle!” She looked up at him, a plea in her desperate expression. “You have to go. You have to get the proof, Al. I need proof so they cannot dissolve the marriage. I beg you.”

The determined and anxious look in his sister’s eyes was one he knew well. She would have Robertson no matter what obstacles were in her way. She was not one to give up. “You are certain this is want you want?”

“I want no other than Lyall,” she said firmly, and her attention went across the hall to him again, still standing with Montrose. “I love him,” she said with quiet sincerity.

“We can fetch the proof,” Elgin said firmly and rose to quickly come around the table. “We must go there to check with the healer to see if---

Alastair kicked his brother in the shin before he spilled the truth.

El flinched but stopped talking. Al had already warned him not to tell Glenna they had found Fergus and taken him to the abbey, even though Glenna had told them when they reunited about losing him, about the arrow, and her heartache, and her anger at Lyall’s refusal to search for him.

Would she have felt better knowing they had found him, only to be told he had later died?

Alastair had spent his life protecting his sister, and his instinct to protect her had not waned. He would not take the chance of telling her, only to make her mourn the loss of Fergus all over again. Until he knew if the dog lived or died, he did not want to tell her they had found him, particularly when the monk doubted Fergus would make it.

“Swear you will help me,” she said.

He nodded. “We will ride to the abbey.”

“And you will bring back the proof to the baron’s keep?” Glenna said, more of an order than a question.

“Aye. We will bring you your proof.”

She threw her arms about him as she used to, covering his bearded cheeks with silly kisses. “Bless you, Alastair, my dear brother. I know you will not fail me. You never have.”

He kissed the top of her head and stepped back, feeling as if he were suddenly taller, and still her brother. “Come El, we must help prove our sister is wed to that horse’s ass.”

“Alastair!” she said, but she was laughing.

“The horse’s ass with whom you fought side by side?” Elgin said.

“Aye.”

“The horse’s ass who saved my life and that of our sister’s?” Elgin grinned.

“Aye. The horse’s ass who started this whole thing.” Alastair clapped his arm around El’s shoulders as they left together.

And Glenna’s quiet voice carried back to them. “Remember, that horse’s ass is your brother. He should fit in well.”

* * *

The inn where they had put up for the night was too small for the contingent of Ramsey troops now escorting them back to Rossi. Lyall lay on a straw pallet on the floor of the taproom, surrounded by sleeping men. His stepfather was taking no chance of losing Glenna.

Whilst still at Kinnesswood, Ramsey had called in more of his men from other nearby positions. Soon after, they left Frasyr and his keep under guard by two of Ramsey’s most trusted knights and their retainer troops, amounting to enough men to hold off a siege on a land-locked castle, much less Kinnesswood with its lake-midst position. Even Argyll would not dare try to free his cousin.

The night felt long and Lyall folded his hands behind his head and stared up at the dark roof beams, listening to snoring men. He caught a movement from the corner of his eye and raised up slightly to look. The guards stood quietly posted at the door. One leaned against the jamb and the other shifted his weight from one foot to the other, but their eyes remained sharp.

He lay back down. There would be more men outside. His stepfather was thorough. Others stood at watch by the kitchens, and the stairs leading up to the rooms where Glenna was safely sequestered, and where his stepfather holed up for the night, likely dreaming of vile punishments for him. The rage between them and their words haunted his thoughts.

“Sweet Mother Mary and Joseph!” Ramsey had raged. “She is ruined! Even if we can find a way to annul this union, you have ruined her. What have you done? Where was your head, man? She is the daughter of a king!”

“And I am the son of a traitor.”

“I did not say that.”

“You didn’t have to.” Lyall knew what he was.

His stepfather’s piercing look was almost more than he could bear, knowing Ramsey, his mentor and more, was a man of honor and his word was his life, something Lyall had almost believed in, back in halcyon days of naïve youth when he thought it was possible to live down his name. “I rode ahead of you by days,” Lyall answered without emotion. “And I convinced Glenna and her brothers I was you and there on your mission. ‘Twas simple to take your weapons from the armory, one of your shields, the message and proof of the king’s demand sent you by Sutherland.”

“I know what you did. But I would know why,” he’d paused and his spoke with less rancor. “I cannot believe it was only for Dunkeldon. Tell me, son.”

But Lyall knew he was not Ramsey’s son. The name of Ramsey carried no shame. He could barely remain standing from the monstrous wave of bitterness that came over him, battling with the shame he carried in the black cold impregnable place where hope had once, long, long ago, lived and breathed within him. Long moments passed as his stepfather waited. “What does it matter?” Lyall said coldly. “Neither of us can change what I have done.”

“I do not like your tone.”

I cannot speak and still hide what I feel. So he stood before his stepfather, stonily quiet, refusing to speak again because there was nothing he could say, and speaking from his heart was not an option. He had no defense to make.

Even now, in the middle of the night as he lay in thought amidst the Ramsey men, words and reason escaped him, even sleep alluded him. He stared overhead. The coals in the waning fire beyond turned everything red as if limned by hell. Nearby, a man sighed and shifted, and another snorted and mumbled a curse before he quieted. The fire snapped and popped…a log fell. Again something flashed in his periphery, and he looked the side window, where Glenna’s head suddenly popped into view for barely a heartbeat before it disappeared.

What was she about? How in the name of all the saints did she get outside?

He was on his feet and feigned stumbling drunkenly over to door. Bracing a hand on the wall, his head down, he growled, “I have to piss.”

The guard let him pass, and a few steps away he found her waving him over as she huddled behind some barrels beneath the window. He squatted down. “What are you doing?” he hissed. “How did you get out of that room.”

“Quiet! Not here.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him down at the sound of voices from beyond and behind the inn.

She was mad as he was.

They huddled together behind the large barrels, bodies close and still, her breast resting softly against his wrist, their breathing so shallow it was like holding a breath. Some of Ramsey’s trusted guards crossed the path near the inn’s back kitchen, their boots crunching on the rock, their voices muted, until one of them laughed quietly.

Glenna was still as a rock. His heart pounded in his ears. The men circled past the barrels to the front of the inn, and stopped at the corner to talk. He knew there were men sleeping outside, and others in the stables. How foolish was this!

In time, a hundred heartbeats, a thousand? The men disappeared.

“Quickly,” she whispered and stood, forcing him to follow her to the east side of the kitchen shed, where she shoved him through a door and down into a cold room dug into the ground. The scent of brined meat, dairy and onions filled his nose, and the temperature dropped to that of a mid-winter day. She closed the door behind him and threw her arms around his neck. “Kiss me,” she said.

He grabbed her wrists firmly and pulled her arms from around his neck, setting her back from him. “We are surrounded by guards.”

She grinned and bit her lower lip, then admitted with a wicked gleam in her eye, “I know. Makes the idea of what we are about to do all the more keen, does it not?”

His head filled with the image of them swivving against the wall whilst guards walked by, stood at doors unknowingly, and slept soundly overhead.

Lyall groaned her name.

“Do not make the grand risk I have taken all for naught. Kiss me, Lyall. I want you to kiss me.”

He came back to reality, took a long breath and said evenly, “First I will have an answer from you. How did you get out?”

“Maggie,” she paused. When his mouth had barely formed the word who, she added, “The maid. I told her the horrid, long and trying tale of how we were being kept apart by our cruel, cruel fathers. She was terribly sympathetic.”

He shook his head and could only imagine her vivid words of their great and troubled romantic history. “I imagine with your glib tongue she was sympathetic.” Most likely whipped up into a state of tears, he thought.

“She showed me a hidden staircase from my room down to just above here.” She pointed to the dirt ceiling. “Now I would kiss you with this glib tongue.”

“Glenna….”

She slid her hands flat against his chest and rubbed him, murmuring his name.

Looking down at her was his perdition, for she looked up at him dreamily, still innocent yet seductress. Her heart was clearly his and she understood her power—he had taught her well. She was all dark eyes that sparkled and beckoned as did the stars over the River Tay, lashes long, with black tips like marten fur, lips moist and dark and sweet as the flesh of a ripe plum at summer’s end. There was nothing in the world he wanted more…and he wondered at the God whose hand ruled the fates of men.

A strong and honorable man would have had a hard time turning away from her when she begged for exactly what he wanted…and more, when she offered herself to him so readily, so easily. Could something he desired in his treacherous and stormy life truly be his so simply?

Her body was against him, all softness and woman, so different from his, the fullness of her breasts in his hands, the tightness of the small tips when he ran his thumbs over her, her palms flat on his chest, and so hot was her touch he had the insane thought he could feel Eve’s temptation in the outline of her fingers.

He slid his hands down to press flatly against the softness of her bottom, to bring her against him. His mouth and tongue ravaged hers and he walked her back, pinned her to the wall and held her up with his thigh between her legs. Their hands moved over each other. Sweat began beading on his brow and down his back despite the temperature in the cold room. He was on fire for her, burning hotly from the inside out.

“Take me, Lyall, take me and we will truly be wed. My oath before, sworn to the baron that we had been lovers at Dunkeldon will no longer be a lie.”

From somewhere far away he caught her words, and their meaning. His stepfather’s accusation came charging back to him clearly and as if he were there shouting into Lyall’s ear. You have ruined her! The thought was like being doused with a bucket of melted snow. He pulled away, trying to gain some sense of control. The air he needed had disappeared and he panted, searching for the breath he needed to cool him down, another dousing. His body throbbed from his cock to his head.

“Lyall?”

He held up a hand to warn her, the other clutched into a tight fist and the urge to pound the wall hit him hard. The ability to speak escaped him. He did not move. He couldn’t look at her. Somehow he would do this. “Leave.”

“Nay. I will not.”

“I said leave!” he hissed in barely controlled anger, facing her.

She did not back away, but she was shaken.

“Go,” he said in a low rasp and pushed her toward the door. “Go! Get out! I swear on all that is holy in this world, Glenna, I will call out to the guards if you do not leave now.”

She shook her head.

He picked her up and she fought him, silently, but kicking and pounding him with her fists. She connected with his eye as he shoved her out and closed the door, leaning against it as he felt her hit it with her fist. Through the door she spat his name as if it were a vile curse, then wished him an eternity in hell.

He was already there. His back blocking the door, he stayed that way, breathing hard, head thrown back, eyes tightly closed, his teeth clenched and his hands shaking. He fought her; he fought himself; he struggled, while the last flicker of hope—that his life was not lost--died inside of him.