The morning light blurred before his eyes as he contemplated how he would have her. There, in her own bed? Out here on the hillside, a willing sacrifice made to this place and Geordie’s memory? Aye, that would be sweet.
He was already up and hard beneath his kilt just thinking about it, so beguiled he almost missed the movement along the floor of the glen below.
Instinct honed over many seasons in the field corrected his error. He blinked, and his surroundings came back into focus.
A party of men on horseback, a patrol. Searching for him. Aye, and the hounds were abroad early this day, hoping to catch him unawares, no doubt.
He stuffed the cut yarrow into his pouch, turned, and, very like a deer, loped up the hillside. The search party headed toward Jeannie’s cottage, but even as he gained greater height and crouched down to watch they veered westward and away. He breathed a bit more easily. Four riders; he knew he could take them with his sword, but he would prefer to avoid such an encounter if he could.
He stood still as a rock and watched them wind away and disappear into the mist. Then he murmured another prayer beneath his breath, for protection this time, and started down.
He had almost reached the cottage when a bird fluttered near his shoulder and away again. He paused, looked for and found it perched on a prickle bush. A highland grouse—Geordie’s bird. Geordie had always favored it for its courage and ability to conceal itself, and had one tattooed on his cheek.
“Hello, old friend,” Finnan said softly. “Have you come to visit with me?”
No exaggeration to think the spirits of those on the other side came in the guise of birds. Had Finnan not seen crows take the souls of many after a battle? The crane was said to bear the task of carrying souls to the next world, but Finnan knew different. For fighting men it was the crow.
The grouse fixed him with a beady eye that held all Geordie’s sadness and vulnerability.
“Do not worry; I will settle her,” Finnan promised.
The bird ruffled its wings in distress.
“You always did have a soft heart,” Finnan told it. “No one knows that better than I. And no doubt where you are now some of the pain she caused you has faded away. But I ha’ taken a vow of vengeance on your behalf, and you know I never leave go of my vows.”
The bird opened its beak; Finnan almost expected Geordie’s voice, low and deep, to issue forth.
“There is but one thing,” Finnan confided. “I shall need to plunder her in order to see her set right. I hope you will not mind that, where you are.”
The bird gave a wild cry and flew away. Finnan took it for permission.
****
“They turned away to the west,” Finnan said softly to Jeannie even as he packed the yarrow into Danny’s wound. He did not want the maid, who seemed an excitable creature, to overhear. He did not need her fretting and greeting.
Give Jeannie MacWherter her due; she did not seem the sort to greet. He sensed strength beneath all her beautiful softness.
She turned those clear, blue eyes on him but said nothing. Her head, bent over the basin she held, nearly touched his.
He went on, “I do not doubt they made to cross the burn at the rock ford not far from here, to search the other side of the glen. That should remove the threat a wee while.”
She nodded. “And as you said, why should they come here, when they have just been?”
“Aye, and they have no cause to believe you would succor me. It might be safest if you put about the tale, through your maid, perhaps, that you fear and despise me.”
Her steady gaze did not waver from his. “What makes you think that would be a tale?”
“Ah.” He allowed one corner of his mouth to twitch upward. “So you are still holding those letters against me.”
“They were hard and vicious.”
I am hard, whenever I am near you, Finnan thought ruefully.
“And frightening to a woman with nowhere else to go.”
“I regret that.” He let his eyes caress her face, allowed his admiration to show. “I had not met you then. I had only what Geordie wrote to me by which to judge.”
“He never said he wrote you letters.”
