by Gwyn Cready
“Aye, well, I’m not one of those damned traitors,” he growled.
“Dinna let me find ye eavesdropping on me again, MacHarg.”
“Send me back and you’ll not have to worry. Or have you forgotten that it was you and that witch’s magic that brought me here?”
Undine swept into the small clearing, appraising the scene with cool detachment. Unlike Abby, she’d taken the time to dry off and dress. “Did I hear my name?”
Duncan blanched. He knew little of witches but he doubted they enjoyed being referred to in the tone he’d just used.
“I only want to go home,” he said as explanation.
“And I should like to send him there,” Abby added angrily. “Undine, ’tis time to clean up your mess. I’ve had enough.”
“My mess?” Undine’s eyes flashed. She walked in a circle, regarding him and Abby as a teacher might regard misbehaving pupils. “Mr. MacHarg, did ye, in the moments preceding your unfortunate transfer, express some sort of deeply felt sentiment—perhaps involving your sword?”
Abby snorted a second time, and Duncan tugged at the wooden hilt angrily. “I most certainly did not.” Then it hit him. Undine saw the change on his face and eyed him sharply.
“I might have said something about loving a battle,” he admitted.
Undine silenced Abby’s guffaw with a look and said to Duncan, “I had the pleasure of standing beside Lady Kerr in the moments preceding your transfer, so my understanding in this instance is more precise. Abby, ye professed a keen interest in acquiring something you considered very important. Do ye happen to recall what that was?”
She gazed at her friend, tight-lipped. “Peace in the borderlands.”
“Oh, come now,” Undine said. “Your objective was a bit more personal than that. Ye wanted a man.”
Duncan raised his brows, and Abby said fiercely, “What I wanted was a strong arm. And may I add, I’m still waiting.”
Undine crossed her arms. “So last night’s kiss was something neither of ye desired?”
Abby cut her gaze to Duncan, her eyes filled with fiery accusation.
“Don’t look at me,” he said. “I certainly didn’t say anything. Blame the witch. She knows things.”
“Mr. MacHarg, if ye call me that again, I shall slip a tonic in your wine that will cause your stones to shrivel to the size of field peas. While this would undoubtedly curb certain impolite habits, I dinna think it is something ye would much desire.” She straightened her skirts and carried on. “I am not denying my role in this. I merely point out that ye two share in the responsibility. But let us not wallow in regret and blame. There is but one way for MacHarg to free himself of Abby and Abby of MacHarg.”
“How?” they demanded in unison.
“’Tis a simple matter—in theory at least. The objective of the spell must be fulfilled. In short, MacHarg must serve Abby as a strong arm. And Abby must truly be served.”
“But he is hardly more than a simpleton!” Abby cried.
“I have been friends with you a long time, Abby. Ye have never given yourself to a man who could be described as a simpleton, even by the most ungenerous observer.”
Abby nearly choked. “I did not give myself to him!”
Undine cut her gaze to Duncan, and his grin died instantly. “And ye, my friend, need to make yourself useful. Ye are a pathetic reprobate who has apparently spent his life getting by on bluster and what one might loosely describe as charm. Learn to serve the chieftess properly. She will teach ye what ye need to know.”
“I will not,” Abby said hotly.
“Ye will if ye wish to be rid of him. Once he has fulfilled your objective, the spell will be broken. Do ye understand?”
Duncan gave the tree root a sullen kick. “Aye.”
Undine turned to Abby.
Abby’s look could have burned holes in steel. Duncan was grateful that, for once, he wasn’t on the receiving end of it.
Undine pulled a twist of orange paper from her pocket.
“Not another of those,” Abby said.
“This one is for his return.” She handed it to Duncan. “When you have fulfilled your purpose, the herbs will warm. That is how you’ll know when you can return. Abby, you must do everything you can to help him.”
Abby said, “Tell me again why I shouldna just abandon him to the buzzards on the slopes of Craignaw?”
“Well, my dear, I am hardly an expert on your religion, but I should say your priests might view this with an unfavorable eye. More to the point, however, Craignaw is a two-day ride, and ye canna afford the time.”
Duncan, who had grown tired of the swipes at his character, slipped the paper in his sporran. “Or you might consider the cost to your fortunes of having Sir Alan arrive only to find his stalwart fishing guide left for dead in the Grampian Mountains.”
“Sir Alan is as unlikely to return to Castle Kerr as I am to cross the Alps on an elephant.”
“Wrong, Lady Kerr. He will be here Thursday.”
Abby swung around. “What?!”
“That was the reason I came to find you, ye ken? I ran into him this morning on his morning walk. Naturally, our talk turned to fishing—”
“Naturally.”
“—and while he couldn’t stay longer now—he has business in Cumbria—I did convince him to join me for a fishing party at my hunting lodge on the River Esk upon his return.”
“You have a hunting lodge on the Esk?” Abby said, incredulous.
“Well, no. But I assumed you did.”
Abby made an aggrieved huff, but Duncan knew he’d nailed his first assignment. Hell, it hadn’t even been an assignment. He was like the applicant who’d arrived for his interview at Duncan’s firm with fifteen pizzas and revised business strategies for the firm’s three biggest clients. Everyone rolled their eyes, but a year later the guy was Duncan’s second in command.
He waited for Abby to acknowledge his triumph. She chewed the inside of her mouth as if considering the digestibility of a particularly tough piece of mutton. “Well done,” she said at last.
Undine let out a laugh, then caught herself.
“What?” he demanded.
“That’s what she says to Grendel.”
Thirteen
“You’ll need to walk faster if you intend to keep up.”
Abby strode through the thick yellow gorse as if it were fog. Duncan’s bare knees seemed to be scraped by thorns at every turn. “I am doing the best I can. I’m not as familiar with the path as you are.”
She turned sharply enough to rattle the arrows in her quiver. “Your best may be good enough in Edinburgh, where buckled slippers and fancy assembly-room swords stand in for experience, but it willna be good enough here, ye ken? Here, ye need rough boots and rougher arms—or you may find yourself dead.”
Duncan had watched Abby slip her shapely calves into a pair of well-worn knee boots after Undine had left the clearing. The rowels were tarnished, the shafts were dusty, and when she pulled them on, clods of dried mud tumbled from the soles to the ground. Nonetheless, the dead self-assurance with which she tugged on the thick leather, on top of the unanswered erection, had just about driven him mad with desire.
“Dead from thorns?” he inquired. “I believe even I might survive that. Ow! Dammit!”
She shook her head and resumed walking. “I suppose I shall have to provide you with a pair of boots too.”
“I’m sorry I no longer have access to my own wardrobe.” In which, he declined to add, she would find no boots.
“Ye seemed to have no trouble availing yourself of the wardrobe in your room last night. You may as well have taken Bran’s boots too.”
She turned away abruptly, and Duncan could tell she regretted mentioning her brother.
“I considered it,” he said softly, “but I could tell
I’d upset you last night. It’s enough to mourn a dead brother. You shouldna have to watch an interloper stumble about in his boots.”
She said nothing, just continued walking.
“I didna have a brother, nor a sister,” he went on. “It was just me, my mum, and my grand-da. I canna imagine what it would have been like to lose a sibling.”
She veered right to avoid a fallen tree. He gave up trying to have a conversation and concentrated on just keeping his footing. The path, such as it was, had grown steeper and the rocks strewn across it larger.
“What about your da?”
Duncan looked up. It was the first thing she’d said in many minutes.
“I didn’t have one.”
She gave him a sidelong glance and climbed onto a wide boulder.
“Well, I mean, I did. But he left when I was a bairn. He skipped out on a list of debts as long as my arm too. He was not a popular man in our neighborhood. I don’t think there were many who missed him.”
She hesitated before hopping to the ground. “You?”
Duncan shrugged. “Maybe. A bit. But it was more the idea than the man.”
She pointed to a break in the ridge ahead of them. Duncan returned his attention to his feet.
“Bran was the most popular man in the clan,” she said.
Duncan cringed. The death of a popular heir must have made her transition to chief even harder. “We never know how the losses we’ve survived will end up guiding us. My da’s debts were the reason I went into finance. I used to think—” He stopped. How much did he want her to know of his life in the twenty-first century?
“What?”
He shook his head. “Not important. But he’s the reason.”
Her eyes, which had momentarily brightened, returned to their guarded blue-purple. Duncan felt as if a bank of clouds had passed between him and the sun.
As they reached the top of the hill and began down the other side, he considered the situation from her perspective. Though he’d told her he was from Edinburgh, she had to know he wasn’t from the Edinburgh of 1705 or 1706. If he were, he’d have simply said “Later, lass” after the end of the skirmish and hopped the first coach back to the city. And yet, she didn’t seem fazed by him either. Annoyed, yes. Deeply annoyed. But she didn’t display either the repulsion or fascination he’d expect from a person who’d just met someone from another century. His best guess was that she thought Undine’s magic had transported him either from a place in the present time that was hard to get back to, say the East Indies, or from the borderlands in a year near but not identical to her own. It was probably better for both of them if she continued to believe that.
The slope began to angle downward again, and they followed the curve of the hill.
“Here we are,” she said. “Langholm Abbey. Well, all that remains.”
Before them, at the foot of the hill, perched on the near side of a dramatic bend in the river, stood an ancient stone-built chapel, whose narrow, vaulted window slits pointed unashamedly at its roofless top. No doors hung in the wide doorway, and the blankets of pink flowers that grew in heaps along the hillside. He tried to think if he remembered such a site near his grand-da’s home, but neither the river bend nor the ruins seemed familiar.
“A bit down on her luck, is she not?”
“I dinna ken why people assume things like abbeys and ships and carriages are shes.”
“Because they possess a certain transcendent beauty?” he offered.
“Because they can be commanded by men, more like.” She trotted toward the structure.
“I canna argue with you on ships,” he said, following quickly. “But abbeys? They are not exactly commandable.”
“Perhaps you should make an inquiry of Edward VIII, who commanded this one be turned to rubble.”
“Why are we here?” he said when they’d reached the front.
“This is your hunting lodge, my friend. Certainly, the only thing on a river I can muster for you. The fortune of the Kerrs is tied entirely to Castle Kerr. We do not maintain a host of lodges throughout the borderlands.”
“I think Sir Alan may notice the lack of ceiling in his room. Perhaps, though, if we arrived after dark? And provided him a canopied bedstand?”
She gave him a dry look. “My men will be able to manage a new floor and reed roof by the end of the week. ’Twill be up to you, however, to convince our guest of the charms of rusticity.”
As if eighteenth-century Scotland weren’t rustic enough. “And what do you want me to tell him of the canal?”
“MacHarg, I appreciate the opportunity you have arranged with Sir Alan. Truly I do. However, I dinna plan to rely on the persuasive abilities of a man I hardly know, who stumbled into the borderlands with neither wits nor weapon at hand, and who may be as happy to see my clan fail as succeed. I will sit down with him myself, after you have delighted him with the pleasures of fishing the Esk.”
He was the opening act, not the headliner. An irrational disappointment overcame him. He was good at negotiation—very good. Bridges, roads, canals—they all needed financing. He could do so much more for her if she would just let him.
The sound of thumping hooves rose beyond the ridge. Abby stiffened. “Hide yourself.”
“I’m your strong arm, remember?”
“A strong arm obeys. Hide.”
The edge in her voice told him more than the words. He opened his mouth to argue—
“MacHarg.”
With a sigh, he relented. He topped the chapel steps in two strides and tucked himself behind the largest intact wall.
“Abby, if it’s dangerous, shouldn’t you—”
“I didn’t say it was dangerous. Be quiet.”
He could see her but not the path. If the person on the horse threatened her, Duncan didn’t care what his “orders” were. His sword might be wooden, but it still packed a wallop. And his fists worked just fine.
The hoofbeats grew louder and louder till they stopped just outside the chapel. Abby maintained her hold on the bow but didn’t raise it. Duncan tightened his grip on his hilt.
“’Tis an odd place to find the head of Clan Kerr,” a male voice said.
“I find a long walk clears the head.”
“I’ll never understand the risks ye take,” said the voice, considerably softer and, as such, at once familiar. “I should hate for something to happen to ye.”
Duncan gritted his teeth. He’d been exiled to the ruins not to keep from unnerving a potential threat. He’d been exiled to the ruins to keep from unnerving Rosston. Bloody hell.
“Nothing will happen to me in these hills, Rossie. I’ve been walking them since I was a lass. Besides, I have my bow.”
“And a pistol, I see. Good for you. Would you like a companion for the rest of your journey?”
Oh, great.
“I would,” she said. “But I can tell from your packs you’re on your way somewhere. I have no wish to detain you. I know you have business you need to address.”
“I wish it were otherwise. My men are here, at your command. I shall return tonight or tomorrow morn at the latest. Perhaps then we can sit down as we have talked about and decide what is best for us…and for the clans.”
Duncan waited for the ax to fall. She would decide, not him. Tell him, Abby, tell him.
“Aye,” she said, weariness in her voice. “Perhaps it is time at that. By tomorrow, I shall know my mind.”
Duncan nearly lost his footing. Abby gave him a tiny sideways glare.
“Tomorrow, then,” Rosston said.
“Wait,” she said and moved out of Duncan’s sight. Closer to Rosston. Next to him, no doubt. Duncan tortured himself for an instant, imagining the scene.
“Will ye give me a proper good-bye?” Rosston asked.
His voice had grown husky. Dunca
n wished to be any other place on earth.
A muffled “mm” from Rosston that would be branded in Duncan’s memory forever, then, from Abby: “Godspeed.”
“Go back to the castle,” Rosston said. “For me.” A plea, not a command. Perhaps he was trainable, after all.
The horse trotted off. Abby appeared again in Duncan’s view, offering him a nodded “all clear.”
He bounded out, stung by the double lashes of incompetence and jealousy.
“I don’t want to hide again,” he said, not caring if he sounded like a sullen child. “I want my pistol back.”
Abby readjusted the strap of her quiver, tactfully choosing not to point out the situation that just passed was not one that had required a weapon. “Is that really what ye want?”
“Yes. I don’t want to be hearing hooves and wondering whether I’ll be massacred in the next minute. I need to be able to protect myself.” And you hung in the air, though he knew her amusement would kill him if he said it.
To her credit, Abby didn’t even smile. “I know what it is to long for the power to protect oneself, MacHarg. And I will give ye your pistol. But if you are to be my strong arm, you will need more than that.” She handed him her bow, and reached for the buckle on her belt.
“I don’t think I would make much of an archer,” he said uncomfortably.
“Good. Since I don’t have a year to teach you the skills.” She tossed the belt and quiver on the ground and retrieved the bow. “Did I not hear ye say ye knew how to wield a sword?”
“Yes.” Duncan had aced two years of fencing classes and considered himself if not quite an expert then certainly the most skilled of his reenactor friends. He had a beautiful lunge.
“Show me.”
He squirmed a bit. It was one thing to back his instructor into a corner in the heat of an encounter. Doing his moves with a wooden sword while Abby appraised him felt very different. With some trepidation, he withdrew his blade and angled himself into the en garde position.