“Giving you a fright?” Jamie looked at him. “You mean the bogle?”
Munro snorted. “Nay, lad, I meant almost losing you. My only remaining son.” His face darkened. “And dinna go asking me to explain myself. I’ve already said more than your flapping ears deserve to know!”
Jamie blinked, trying to make sense of his da’s agitation. Not that he really needed to make the effort. The fierceness of the old man’s grip on his shoulder and the tears shimmering in his rheumy blue eyes spoke louder than any explanations his father might have given him.
It meant enough to make Jamie’s heart slam against his aching ribs.
The love shining in his bride’s eyes as she smothered him with kisses meant even more. He caught her hand and pressed a kiss in her palm. “Have I told you how much I love you?”
She shook her head and a tear dropped onto his cheek. “Nay, you haven’t—but I know.” Leaning close, she whispered in his ear, “As soon as we’re alone again I will show you exactly how much I love you, too.”
“Ach, lass.” Jamie kissed her fingertips. He would’ve grinned like a fool, but the words hazel stick kept circling back to taunt him, weaving in and out of his mind.
Bedeviling and irritating him.
But his head pounded too fiercely to concentrate on why. Even drawing breath was becoming an agony, each hard-won gasp sending new bursts of pain flashing across his ribs, new spurts of dread flitting across his memory.
Ghastly images he couldn’t forget.
The dizzying blur of black cliffs and jagged rocks. Flying spray and the thunder of the falls, the roar of his own blood in his ears. The fiery numbing pain when he’d plunged into the icy surging water.
Water that might well have reclaimed him had Beardie not come along when he had, scooping him into his arms and then heaving him onto his horse. He led the beast all the way back to Baldreagan at a snail’s pace—to keep from jarring Jamie’s cracked ribs, the big lump had said.
And half the torturous journey, Jamie had expected to be dirked in the back.
Guilt squeezing him, he swiveled his head to look at his cousin, not surprised to see the loon had retrieved his rusty Viking helmet and jammed the fool thing on his head.
Something Beardie did whenever he felt … in need.
Jamie frowned and drew as deep a breath as his sore ribs would allow.
“What were you doing there?” he rasped, shamed at having suspected Beardie of being the figure. “Skulking about in the mist at such an ungodly hour?”
Beardie flushed and looked at the floor.
“Does it matter?” Aveline leaned down and kissed him, then reached for one of his hands, rubbing warmth into his still-freezing fingers. “You are here, and alive.” She paused, sliding a sidelong glance at Munro. “Hearts have been found and mended. Naught else is of importance.”
But she erred.
The hazel walking stick was of dire importance.
Jamie was certain of it.
Every inch of his heart and soul screamed it at him.
“… a sweet lassie,” Beardie was saying, his broad face glowing a brighter red than a harvest moon. “She’s a tanner’s daughter in the next glen and she even likes my bairns.” He looked up again, his chest swelling with pleasure. “I’ve asked her to marry me and she’s agreed.”
He reached up to adjust his Viking helmet, using the pause to clear his throat. “The way to her glen runs past the Rough Waters and I was coming from her da’s cottage when I saw what happened.”
Jamie frowned, his cousin’s words only reminding him of another cottage.
Namely Hughie’s.
And his need to go there.
A need so urgent, he sat up, doing his best to ignore the fire blazing in his chest, the old and gnarled female hands trying to bind his ribs with a length of suffocatingly tight linen.
Or maybe it wasn’t Morag at all, but his faery’s arms squeezing him so tightly.
But no, she was leaning into him and smoothing his brow again, touching him as if there’d be no tomorrow and lighting so many soft, sweet kisses across his face that he couldn’t well see who was crowding around him, stroking, prodding, kissing, and fussing.
Shedding tears and loudly blowing noses.
Crying out names he ne’er expected to hear again.
Jamie’s heart froze and he cursed his light-headedness. The dizziness making it difficult to stand, to see as well as he would’ve wished. But he did see the gaping, open-mouthed stares some of his kinsmen were aiming toward the far side of the hall.
Jamie’s pulse began to race.
He started grinning. Even if he was having a bit of trouble keeping on his feet, there was nothing wrong with his ears.
“Holy St. Columba!” his da cried, proving his ears were working as well.
His tears spilling freely now, the old man threw back his head and whooped.
Grabbing Jamie by the shoulders, he hugged him so fiercely he almost crushed him. “A day o’ wonders,” he cried, whirling to Aveline and throwing his arms around her in a quick, joyous squeeze before he took off running.
Others ran, too, pounding in the same direction until a great swelling uproar filled the hall. The shouts and calls came from all around, the cries rising to the rafters, shaking the smoke-blackened walls.
The noise was deafening.
Everywhere, men fell over themselves to hasten to the hall’s shadowed entry arch, the center of the ruckus.
Men were loosing their swords and waving them in the air, stamping feet and slapping backs. Shouting, jesting, and laughing with glee, wiping streaming tears from grinning, bearded faces.
And then, still making his way across the hall, Jamie saw why.
It was the hazel walking stick.
Hughie Mac’s newly whittled crummock.
Only it was the tall, broad-shouldered man gripping the crummock’s bone handle that stole Jamie’s breath and sent his heart to thundering. A tall, auburn-haired man who could have been Jamie himself, save that he was a number of years older.
His brother Neill.
Looking as hale and fit as the day Jamie had last seen him, excepting a slight limp and the fine long hazel walking stick clutched tightly in his hand.
“’Tis Neill! I dinna believe it!” Jamie stared, tears choking him, blinding him.
He grabbed his faery, lifting her in the air and twirling her before dragging her tight against him, aching ribs or no. “’Tis Neill,” he said again, kissing her soundly. “Neill, and he’s no’ ghost, sure as we’re standing here!”
“And look! There’s Kendrick!” She pointed as they ran, knocking into trestle tables and benches in their haste. “He’s here, too! With Hughie!”
And he was.
There could be no mistaking him.
Just as Jamie knew him, his roguish, laughing-eyed brother stood in the very midst of the chaos, grinning broadly and looking more rakish than ever with a jaunty bandage wrapped around his head.
Hughie Mac was grinning, too.
He stood a bit apart, his arms folded. “’Tis a long tale,” he said, his eyes twinkling when Jamie and Aveline drew up beside him. “Word spreads quickly in these parts and when we heard what happened at the Garbh Uisge, we knew it was time for Neill and Kendrick to come out o’ hiding and return home.”
Looking pleased with himself, he glanced around. “Truth is, so many folk hereabouts have seen the lads, we wouldn’t have been able to keep them secret much longer.”
“And just where have they been?” Munro’s deep voice boomed beside them. “They were dead—I saw their bodies lowered into the ground. Saw the cairn stones piled on top of them with my own two eyes.”
He folded his arms over his bedrobe, his narrow-eyed stare latching onto his two returned sons. “Dinna tell me you were sleeping under those stones all this time, for I know full well you aren’t bogles! Ghosts don’t wear bandages and walk with limps.”
Kendrick and Neill looked at each other.
“Och, we slept beneath them long enough,” Neill owned, leaning on the crummock. “Two nights, to be sure.”
Kendrick moved to stand beside Hughie, sliding an arm around the little man’s shoulders. “Hughie dug us out,” he explained, flashing a grin at the old man. “Single-handedly, though he did have some wee assistance.”
“‘Wee assistance’?” Jamie lifted a hand to the back of his neck, rubbing—before the prickling could start. He glanced at Hughie. “What kind of assistance?”
Hughie lifted his chin. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he said, shaking his head. “Sometimes I wonder if I imagined it myself.”
“I would believe you,” Aveline spoke up, her soft voice encouraging. “I’ve always believed in Highland magic.”
Munro grunted, but his gaze whipped to Jamie. “I’ll no be denying it either,” he said, his expression softening. “My own father swore there’s wonder in these hills.”
“That’s what it must’ve been,” Hughie agreed, nodding vigorously. “See you,” he began, lowering his voice, “not three days after we’d laid the brothers to rest, I couldn’t sleep because of a pesky scratching at my door. Yet whene’er I went to open it, no one was there.”
“No one?” Jamie reached for Aveline, drawing her close.
Hughie looked down, nudging his boot into the floor rushes. “Och, no one save a wee red fox,” he finally admitted, his cheeks coloring. “I ignored the creature, but he kept coming back, always scratching at my door and running away when I opened it. After a while I decided to follow him.”
“The fox led Hughie to the cairns,” Kendrick finished for him. “Neill and I wakened, finding ourselves beneath the stones, alive, but unable to work our way free. We did call out, but no one heard.”
“Except the fox?” Aveline smiled.
A chill slipped down Jamie’s spine.
Kendrick shrugged. “Who knows? We only know the creature alerted Hughie to our plight.” He looked at his da, shaking his head. “A pity it took longer to rout Sorcha.”
“Ahhh, but we knew foulness was afoot,” Hughie said, taking his two charges by the arm and leading them deeper into the hall, toward their old places at the high table. “We just didn’t know who it was or if there were any accomplices.”
“That’s why we stayed at Hughie’s, watching and waiting,” Kendrick explained, reaching down to rub Cuillin’s ears when the dog nudged his arm. “For all we knew, there was a traitor within Baldreagan’s walls and we didn’t want to risk endangering the rest of you if word of our survival enraged the bogle.”
“Nor did we want to attract attention to Hughie,” Neill put in. “Not when we were staying beneath his roof to recover, and us too weak and injured to lift an eating dirk much less swing a brand had trouble come calling at Hughie’s door.”
“So that’s why the place was locked and barred the other night?” Jamie asked, glancing at Aveline.
She blushed and looked aside.
Hughie nodded. “We weren’t yet ready, lad,” he said. “No one e’er meant to deceive or fash you. Too much was at stake to risk letting out our secret too soon.”
But much later, after a restorative meal of beef and marrow fritters, stewed eel, and more honey cakes and spiced wine than was wise, Jamie still had questions.
Setting down his wine cup, he cleared his throat. “If Sorcha was behind all this—how did she get in and out of here so easily? And always unseen?” He slid a glance at his da. “You said the secret passages were made unusable.”
“And so they were,” Munro insisted. “Unless someone reopened one.”
At that, Kendrick stood. “I’ll just be visiting the priv—”
“Och, nay.” Neill shot out an arm and grabbed him, pulling him back onto the bench. “You’ll be staying put and telling everyone what you told Hughie and I not an hour ago.”
To Jamie’s surprise, Kendrick looked uncomfortable. But he sat back down and took a long sip of wine. “You’ve been using my bedchamber, I hear?” he asked, glancing at Jamie and Aveline. “Did you e’er see the little hole recessed in the side of one of the window arches?”
Jamie and Aveline exchanged glances.
Jamie nodded, remembering how he’d noticed the hole the night Hughie had regaled everyone with the tradition of the MacKenzie Marriage Stone and its ceremony.
He’d thought the hole was caused by fallen masonry.
“Aye, we noticed it,” he admitted, waiting.
Kendrick hesitated, then tossed down the remainder of his wine. “Ach, see you, there’s a wee lever inside that hole in the window arch,” he said, the color in his cheeks deepening. “I discovered it by accident a few years ago and quickly found out that it triggers the door to a secret passage Da and everyone else must’ve overlooked.”
Munro half rose from his laird’s chair. “And you ne’er told me?” He narrowed his eyes on his son as he sank back into his seat. “Dinna tell me the passage opens into my bedchamber?”
Kendrick shook his head. “Nay, it opens into the little anteroom between your bedchamber and mine.” He looked down, running a finger around the rim of his wine cup rather than meet his father’s eye. “The other end exits next to Mother’s tomb, right inside St. Maelrubha’s.”
He glanced up, his flush an even brighter red. “I would’ve mentioned it as soon as we learned of the bogle goings-on, but”—he touched his bandaged head—“I haven’t been conscious all the while since … since the Garbh Uisge. Once the pains in my head started lessening, I remembered the passage.”
Munro arched a brow, looking anything but an auld done man. “And why did you not tell me before the Garbh Uisge?”
Kendrick squirmed on the trestle bench. “I kept it secret for my own purposes.”
Neill laughed and clapped him on the back. “Soft, warm, and accommodating purposes,” he said, wriggling his brows as he glanced round the table. “The sort Kendrick didn’t want attracting Morag’s attention when they passed through the hall on their way to his bedchamber!”
“That’s enough, you.” Kendrick tossed his older brother a warning look, but Neill only laughed all the more and slapped the table.
“Och, aye, Kendrick used the secret passage to entertain the ladies,” he went on, his eyes dancing with mirth. “Accommodating ladies. Including one fair damsel twice his age!”
Kendrick flushed scarlet. “She was five summers older than me,” he blurted, his eyes shooting daggers at Neill. “Not a day more.”
“Ah, well, whate’er you say.” Neill let it go.
Kendrick pressed his lips together. “My business is my own,” he finally said, looking relieved when Morag appeared with a platter of fresh honey cakes.
Grabbing the largest one, he plunked it onto Neill’s trencher. “Eat and quit telling tales no one wishes to hear.”
“But it’s a tale that explains how Sorcha managed her way in and out of here,” Neill couldn’t resist adding as he reached for a honey cake. “She must’ve seen you sneak in one of your lady loves. Some might say you showed her the way.”
“And I’ll show you the edge of my blade once we’re fully mended,” Kendrick shot back at him. “Mayhap my fist in your nose as well.”
“Pigs will fly that day,” Neill returned, and bit into a honey cake.
“I’m wondering how we could have e’er missed such bickering,” Morag declared suddenly, though the twinkle in her eyes and the wobble in her voice took quite a bit of the sting out of her words.
“And I’m wondering about your lady love,” Munro announced, cocking a brow at Neill. “An Ulster lass if we caught the rights of it?”
This time Neill looked discomfited. “I meant to tell you,” he said. “The day the footbridge … ach, you know what happened. She is Oonagh, daughter of O’Cahan of Derry. I met her at Lough Foyle and—”
“You’ll be bringing her here, to wed.” Munro pushed to his feet, looking around as if to dare anyone present to contradict him. “Like
as not as soon as you’re fit enough to cross the Irish Sea?” he added, eyeing the great hazel walking stick propped so noticeably against the trestle bench.
Neill nodded. “That is what I’ve planned, aye. Kendrick agreed to go with me. Though”—he shot a glance at his brother— “I’m no longer sure I desire his company.”
Munro hooted. “You’ll both go and be glad of the journeying. And your mission,” he declared, starting to grin. “’Tis time our house is put to rights.’
“Put to rights?” Neill stared at him.
Everyone did.
Something in his tone and the glint in his eye caused breaths to catch and hearts to still.
Aware of the stares, Munro glared around the high table. “Dinna gawp at me like a bunch o’ dimwitted muckle sumphs! I’ve walked an ill path these years and now”—he paused to look at Jamie—“now, by God, I mean to set things aright.”
Jamie swallowed.
Ne’er had he expected an apology from his da. He’d only hoped for acceptance. And mayhap someday, his love. Sliding an arm around Aveline, he drew her close. “He’s overwrought by the day’s doings,” he said, speaking low. “He—” He broke off, his eyes widening when Munro stepped away from the table and turned to the Horn of Days, the clan’s sacred relic, e’er watching o’er the hall from beneath a swath of ancient Macpherson plaid.
An heirloom Munro now lifted off the dais wall.
He held it high, letting all see and admire the elegant curve of the ivory drinking horn, the gleaming jewels embedded in its finely carved sides.
It was truly lovely.
A wonder to behold.
And proof that Jamie had misunderstood. His da hadn’t meant to make peace with him at all. Something inside Jamie broke and tightened. A hot, stabbing flash of pain, but one he knew and was well used to squelching. Doing that now, he took Aveline’s hand in his, lacing their fingers.
Needing her warmth.
“He is about to laird Neill,” he told her, his voice discreetly low. Pleased, too, for Neill deserved the honor.
But no Clan Macpherson lairding vows rang out at the high table.
Indeed, a thick silence fell as all eyes turned on Jamie. Wide, awe-filled eyes boring into him until he, too, noticed that Munro had stopped behind him and not Neill.
Bride for a Knight Page 27