LITMIR.BIZ

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twenty-three years of it. Lord, it seemed like so much more.

      James. He didn’t suit the name, she thought. Too proper for a man who looked as he did. Too very orthodox and prim. She wished he might wake up so that they could talk again out here in the night alone with the rain to shelter their words from the others, but the day had exhausted him and she was glad that he lay in the arms of rest.

      She couldn’t sleep because there were too many thoughts in her head, too many memories dredged up: her mother’s sadness and her father’s fury when he realised that his wife had escaped through one of the sea caves under Ceann Gronna. He had ranted and raved on the high battlements for all of the hours of the storm and when Isobel had gone to him to try to help he had pushed her away, screaming his hatred. Such recollections made her melancholy, a small child blamed for all the self-absorption and egotism of her parents.

      She needed some space away from this stranger with all his questions inciting unwanted confidences she had never told another soul. Ian would not hurt them unduly for she had made sure he had understood the consequences should he fail to protect them.

      Careful not to wake anyone as she packed up her things, she lifted a branch and disappeared like a ghost into the thickness of the forest.

       Chapter Three

      Isobel Dalceann was gone when he awoke next, the headache he had felt coming in the night now a pounding curse.

      Simon looked about as bad as he felt, the shaking the boatman from Le Havre had been consumed by touching him now, and the red in his eyes as bright as blood.

      The two Scotsmen sat by the fire, warming their hands across flame.

      ‘Is there water?’ Marc’s question was directed at the younger man.

      ‘It depends who’d be a-wanting it,’ the one called Ian answered, his arm coming up to hold the other back from the task of offering succour. Angus, he remembered Isobel Dalceann had called him. The lad looked remarkably like Ian. Perhaps they were kin?

      ‘My friend is hot …’

      ‘Then a swim in the cool of the ocean might do him good.’ He rose now and sauntered towards them, malice drawn into the long bones of his body.

      ‘I noticed a stream on the way here yesterday. That might do even better.’

      Scowling, Ian changed the subject altogether. ‘The insignia on the bracelet we took from you—what does it mean?’

      ‘I picked the piece up in a trading city in the north of France. Perhaps it denotes a family connection or the acknowledgement of some property.’

      ‘Or perhaps ye are here to spy for the king?’

      ‘Philip the Sixth of France is too busy with his own problems to be burdened with those of Scotland as well.’

      ‘I was speaking of David of the Scots.’

      ‘As a purveyor of fine cloth newly come in from Brittany, I leave politics to the domain of those who understand them.’ Marc made his accent subtly stronger and shrugged his shoulders to underline the point. Indifference held its own defence. It was the intricate little gestures that made a person believe in a ruse rather than the large ones. How long had he known that? With difficulty he stood.

      ‘Cloth like that of your surcoat?’ Angus’s question implied interest.

      ‘Indeed.’ The scarlet velvet was rich in the morning light as he looked around.

      ‘Where is the woman?’ Trying to take any interest from the query, Marc knew he had failed when the other struck him full in the face. Reeling, he regained his footing, a trail of blood dripping across his left eyebrow turning the world red as the soldier’s instinct in him surfaced.

      ‘Isobel Dalceann is nothing to you, understand, for I saw the way you looked at her with the firelight in your eyes and want in your belly.’

      The Scotsman drew a knife as he spat out the words; kicking out, Marc upended him, using the moment’s uncertainty to kick harder. Long years of practice made the task so easy he could have done it in his sleep. When the man lay still, he turned to find the younger one gone, the water pouch abandoned on the track. Laying his bound palms across the smooth earth of the pathway, Marc listened to movements fading into silence. He made for their keep probably. Isobel Dalceann had already told him it was within walking distance of less than two days west.

      Edinburgh lay in the very same direction, on a fortified inner bay of the Forth, at least four days’ hard walk and Simon in no fit state to do any of it.

      Grabbing Ian’s knife, he held the blade against the rope at his wrist, sliding back and forth in order to break the bonds. When he was free he cut the ropes binding Simon. His arm hurt like hell at the movement and bright red spread across the bandage, dripping off his fingers in a slimy viscosity. Wiping them against velvet, he looked around. A crossbow had been left and a blanket. Beckoning Simon to collect them while he knotted the discarded ropes into a longer length, he bound Ian to a hefty trunk of tree.

      Not dead.

      Part of him knew he should pull back his neck and slit his throat here in the quiet of the glade and out of the sight of others, but Isobel Dalceann had smiled at this Scotsman in the way of a friend and there was some hesitation in him that was disturbing, some unfamiliar notion to please.

      Simon was coughing in an alarming manner, the breath he took shallow and fast.

      ‘I a-am f-freezing.’

      Marc knew the opposite was the truth for he had felt the hot flush of skin as he had untied him. He stripped his tunic and the blanket away, then they made for the stream crossed yesterday back at the headland off the beach. His friend’s shaking had worsened, the slight tremors giving way to an uncontrolled jerkiness which lessened a bit as Marc dumped him into the water and held him there. Resistance faded as cold ran across heat.

      ‘God,’ he muttered as the red in his own arm spread into the stream and Simon began to cry.

      Biting down on her bottom lip, Isobel thought of the moment her life had changed, from one thing to the other and no chance of turning it different. Her hand lifted to her face and traced the edge of scar into the hairline just below her left ear as consequences settled across her like a stone. If she could go back two years she would have and if she could have gone back another five then all the better again.

      So many damn years of war! They were etched into her face as hard lines of age. Alisdair dying by her father’s hands, yet even as he had left this world her husband had incited mercy and pardon until blood dribbled down the side of his mouth, taking away words. Her father had always been unstable and she had spent much of her youth avoiding his heavy right arm. He hated her because James had gone and she was left, a daughter who looked too much like his ‘treacherous wife’.

      The anger that congealed inside her sometimes stymied breath and, stopping beside a tree, she hung her head across her knees, fighting terror.

      It always happened like this, unexpectedly vicious, the regrets of a lifetime channelled to that one horrific moment with never any solace.

      Fingering the silver ring on her finger, she was glad for it. Inside the band Alisdair had engraved the word BELIEF. She had wondered if he meant belief in God or in him at the time he had given it to her. Now she used the word to mark her life. Belief in what she was doing was just. Belief in protecting those still left at Ceann Gronna. Belief in the old rights of land law and clan.

      She looked to the west. Clouds darkened the horizon and the rain was falling harder than it had in the night. The pathways home would be muddy and difficult and the time it took to get back to the keep would double in such conditions.

      She had been gone for four hours already and the sun was up. She needed to get back to make certain that the strangers were shepherded out of the Dalceann lands. With grim determination she turned to walk against the wind.

      She saw the green-eyed

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