“An agreement. For peace.”
“A treaty. For peace, aye. Ha’ we no’, the two o’ our clans, existed here for generations? If ye as chief, and Moira along wi’ me strike an agreement to divide our holdings fairly at the loch and leave off wi’ killing one another… D’ye no’ see?”
Leith did. It fair made him dizzy. “Would this council ye keep banging on about agree?”
“If we can offer them peace? I think so.” Again, Farlan slapped Leith’s knee. “You and I are as good as brothers. Joined by love o’ Ainsley, we were. And the best o’ friends. Ye be no’ a man for war.”
No, Leith was not a man for war. He preferred laughter and feasting. Games and singing. If they managed to strike a peace…
What was to say he could not then convince Rhian MacBeith to come to MacLeod and live with him?
As his wife.
Och, and only listen to him! A man such as he, thinking about marriage. Yet she lay already inside him, deep inside. What else was there but to put all his trust in that, even as he placed it in her? To forge earthly bonds to match those of spirit that already held him to her.
Farlan was a reasonable man. So was he. Two reasonable men should be able to come to some sort of agreement that might benefit everyone.
He did not want to be chief, nay. But if it meant Rhian MacBeith might be his for all time…
“Aye,” he said softly. “Aye, Farlan. Let us, you, me, and your lady, come to an agreement.”
“Ye be willing?”
“I be willing.”
And so it seemed the future rested on whether or not his cousin, chief, and best friend in all the world was dead.
Chapter Thirty-Five
As it sooften did, the wind on the height blew strong, making Rhian feel almost as if she might take flight.
Now it gusted the gloaming into the glen. The sky never truly grew dark at this time of year, but the hills cast shadows and the shushing of the wind made them seem alive, as if they breathed. Great, crouching, shaggy beasts, she used to think the hills were when she was young. Da had laughed about it.
Da.
His grave lay just behind her, the great cairn raised by the hands of his people. Each stone laid with honor and love. She herself had laid many of them, and with every one had relived a memory.
They should not be up here alone in the creeping dark, the three sisters MacBeith. Not without a guard, anyway. Still, Moira wore her sword, Saerla carried a dirk in her boot, and Rhian, as always, had a wee sgian-dubh hidden in her pocket.
No woman, not even a healer, should go without a weapon. Shewasa healer, though—to her bones a peacemaker and a soother of troubled waters. Could she use her sgian-dubh, if a horde of ugly MacLeod warriors came screaming up the rise?
To defend her sisters? Och, aye. Not all MacLeod warriors, though, were ugly.
She remembered Leith MacLeod lying against the bolsters of her bed, looking at her with eyes the color of the gray-blue distances on a dreamy morning. She recalled—relived—unfastening the front of her dress for him. The warm tug of his lips at her breast. Claiming her soul.
She wanted to be with him again so much she ached. She was here with her sisters instead.
They stood in a row, hands linked, with Saerla at their center facing the glen. Saerla had requested Rhian and Moira’s presence, insisted they would help strengthen her as she sought to use her Sight. Her previous attempts to See whether or not Rory MacLeod still lived had been inconclusive. So she’d brought them here, the holiest spot on MacBeith land.
Rhian had no idea how Saerla did what she did. In the past, her dreamy-eyed younger sister had tried to explain it to her.
’Tis a bit like chasing the remnants o’ a dream right after ye’ve awakened. The harder ye try, the more it slips awa’ from ye.
The Sight could not be forced. It came when it chose, often without warning, or not at all. But with courage, it might be sought.
As Saerla now aimed to do.
She stood with her eyes closed against the pull of the wind, her expression intent. Rhian held her right hand and Moira her left. Through the connection made by their fingers, Rhian could feel…
