She saw a muscle twitch in her husband’s jaw. “Very well, then, I’m not sorry,” he growled.
They caught up to Niall and rode three abreast, the men in an obstinate standoff on either side of Kendra. The blowing of the horses failed to drown out their alternating huffs. She felt like Zeus in the Trojan War, stuck between the battling gods, wanting to stay neutral but suspecting she couldn’t.
The gates of Falkland loomed ahead, and still neither of them softened. They were most definitely brothers, one as pigheaded as the other. As they entered the town, a few people waved to Niall, calling out greetings and condolences. He nodded his acknowledgments without uttering a word.
They rode past Falkland Palace, two long ranges of gray stone with a charming turreted gatehouse and slanting, moss-covered slate roofs. Kendra turned to her brother-in-law and forced a jaunty tone. “From how Hamish described the banquet, I expected the town of Falkland would be larger. Busier.”
She’d known he wouldn’t ignore her. “At one time it was more important,” he told her, looking straight ahead. Heaven forbid he should inadvertently meet his brother’s eyes. “But Falkland today is naught but a small market town, populated mostly by weavers who keep indoors practicing their craft. You can blame the Union of the Crowns for that.”
“Why would that make a difference?” she asked brightly. “Trick, you know a lot of history.”
“Not of Falkland.” She’d never heard him sound quite so peeved, not even when he was fixing to murder Duncan. “For heaven’s sake, I haven’t lived here in eighteen years.”
As her efforts at conversation ground to a halt, she heaved an internal sigh. The clip-clop of their horses’ hooves on the cobblestones seemed loud as thunder against the men’s willful silence. As they rounded the market cross, a dray cart coming from the other direction forced them to the side of the narrow street nearer the houses.
“The lintels are all carved,” she remarked, prattling on like a featherbrained nincompoop. She pointed to the nearest door, the stone beam above it engraved with letters and numbers. “What do they mean?”
“They’re marriage lintels—” Trick began.
“Look there,” Niall interrupted. “Two lovers’ initials, and 1610, the year they were wed—the year their household was established. And other markings indicate their occupations. See, the crossed mells of a stonemason. And there, a shoemaker’s knife.”
As they rode past a few more, Kendra started to make sense of the symbols. “I see a butcher’s cleaver. But the big ‘4’ with three little x’s…what does that mean?”
Niall opened his mouth then clamped it shut when his brother rushed to answer before him. “A merchant—a burgess with trading privileges.”
The carvings were lovely, she thought, determined not to let their attitudes affect her appreciation. Lasting memorials to marriages begun in hope rather than deception. She turned to her surly husband. “These lintels are so romantic.”
Trick rolled his eyes, prompting Niall to nod—pleasantly, she would think, if she didn’t know it was mainly to make his brother look bad. “Some go back a hundred years or more,” Niall told her. “Watch for them as you ride.”
She peeked down the wynds as they went, but soon they were passing through West Port, the gate that marked Falkland’s boundary. Dense woodlands loomed ahead. “The trees are so near to the town,” she remarked, sounding inane to her own ears.
“Why wouldn’t they be?” Trick asked churlishly.
“Actually,” Niall said with a smug smile, “though nearly all of Fife was once covered in forest, the only large tracts remaining are here by Falkland. One of the reasons the Stuarts of old so valued their palace, a place to escape from affairs of state and spend some time hawking and hunting the wild boar.”
She half hoped to see a wild boar now—at least such a threat would put an end to this petty bickering. Here they had to ride single file, weaving through the trees, which looked much the same as trees in England. Finding nothing left to comment on, Kendra chewed the inside of her cheek, wondering why she’d bothered trying to get her husband and his brother to talk in the first place. Brothers would be brothers, that she knew—from entirely too much experience with her own.
They were both stubborn as mules, she decided, and they could hate each other for life for all she cared.
Suddenly Niall heaved a sigh and looked back, his gaze reaching past her to Trick. “Full brothers,” he said, calm as anything. “Bloody amazing, isn’t it?”
“Aye.” Aghast to hear Trick’s agreement, she twisted in the saddle to see a smile teasing at the corners of his wide mouth. “Bloody amazing.”
And just like that, they were best of friends once more.
Men. She wanted to spit.
She was still muttering to herself when they came to higher ground, a sparser wooded area that must once have been a clearing. It was peppered with stone ruins so thick and old, they could be of nothing else but a long-ruined castle. Overgrown with clinging plant life, low broken walls seemed to tumble over the uneven land, and the foundations of a round tower stood open to the sky, a few worn steps leading up to nowhere.
“We’re here,” Niall said.
They dismounted and tethered their horses. Pulling a heavy key from his pocket, Niall stepped into the circle of stone and reached through a layer of dirt and dead branches that seemed stuck to the hard-packed forest floor.
Not by a quirk of nature, though—by design. His fingers found a concealed padlock and fitted the key inside. It opened with a rustyclick, and he tugged it off, hefting a wooden trap door that lay hidden beneath.
“Go ahead,” he said.
After staring for a moment, Kendra followed Trick down a steep stone staircase, pausing when the trap door thudded shut and plunged the space into blackness.
