“Twice your—I’m not yet a score and ten!” he argued, but Finley had started up the path once more, a smile returning to her face.
“Och, that’s unfortunate, then,” she lamented over her shoulder. “There’s nae shame in living a hard life, Lachlan Blair. Not all of us can be plump youths.”
He caught up with her in two strides. “You didn’t seem to mind my dottiness in the barn this morning.”
“I’m surprised you remember this morning, pap.”
Now it was Lachlan Blair’s turn to laugh up into the bright afternoon sunlight. He stood to the side of the dark, arched opening of the old house and swept into a bow while Finley passed with a smug smile.
* * * *
Lachlan watched Finley Carson closely as she stood in the center of the main room of the old house, probably meant as a sort of reception hall, as it contained crumbling hearth openings in opposing exterior walls. Her red hair was once more tamed into a long plait that reached even farther down her slim back as she tipped her head up to the sky and wheeling seabirds in the open ceiling, and Lachlan was reminded of how her scalp had smelled the day he’d held her against him near the bridge—like flowers washed with sea air and sunshine. She dropped her head and looked around.
She was ten and nine. Slender and blazing bright, confrontational and unapologetic. A more opposite woman from Searrach Lachlan could not even form in his mind.
“I’ve not been here in years,” she said musingly, glancing at him as she crossed the rubble-strewn floor toward the pair of short, darkened archways in the rear of the room. She caught herself on the edges of one of the doorways and leaned in slightly, looking up and around at the interior of the cavelike storeroom that still smelled faintly of dried fish.
“As children, we would dare each other to bring back a stone or some such trophy to prove our bravery.” Her words echoed slightly as she hung in the doorway, and then she pushed back, turning as a gust of wind blasted through the ruin, and the skittering sounds of pebbles tumbling down the body of the cliff punctuated her reminiscences. Small stones bounced down into the center of the room and rolled away in scattered directions, little more than tiny bits of gravel, but they hopped among evidence of much larger stony dislocations, proof that the old house was still very much in the process of decomposing around their heads.
“Seems a dangerous place for children’s play.”
“Aye. Many of us felt the thickness of our fathers’ belts for it,” she acknowledged.
“You speak from experience?”
Somehow her grins seemed that she always kept a secret. “Perhaps.” She stepped through the field of rubble toward him. “What is it you wanted to show me?”
“It’s up there,” Lachlan said, nodding toward the stone steps carved from the cliff itself into the left-angled wall of the room.
Finley turned, and her eyes went up to the switchback staircase, each flight becoming narrower by half from the ascendant floor. Where the stairs finished at the top, they appeared to be no wider than a single foothold. She looked back to him with a wary expression.
“There’s nothing up there. Literally. The floors are gone.”
Lachlan walked toward the stairs. “You can’t see it from down here.”
“Sure,” Finley called out. “Last night you couldn’t stand being in the same room as me, and today you wish me to follow you to the top of a deadly precipice, under the guise of making our marriage go away. One slip and a romantic stroll becomes a tragic accident, leaving behind an eligible widower. I’m not stupid, Blair.”
“You think I want to kill you?” he said on a laugh as he turned and looked back at her, standing with her hands on her hips, her head tilted distrustfully. He had to admit, were their roles reversed, Lachlan wouldn’t follow her up there either.
No wonder none of the village lads dared take her on. Most men didn’t want a wife who would argue with them at all, let alone be right about it when she did.
“Fine. Wait here, then,” he said, and bounded up the stairs, slowing his pace as he neared the top. It would do neither clan any good if he fell to his own death.
Lachlan paused on the narrow landing before the final flight of steps, drawing his dagger from its sheath and lying flat on his stomach. He inched toward the end of the rectangular slab, reaching out across the abyss while shadows of seabirds rippled over the walls and the breeze sent sheets of pebbles and sand trickling into the void. Once his blade was loaded, he drew it back carefully and stood, supporting the blade with his left hand and retracing his steps into the main room.
Finley didn’t look any more convinced the closer he got.
“Hold out your hand,” he said. Once she had, Lachlan tipped the blade out into her cupped palm.
She frowned down at the orange-black, damp crumbling mass and then looked up at him. “Dirt?”
Lachlan shook his head. “Rust.” He used the tip of his dagger to smooth aside the middle of the pile in her palm, uncovering a small half-moon of dark metal. He looked up to meet her gaze.
Finley’s eyes narrowed, but rather than suspicion, her look conveyed curiosity. Her hand closed over the crumbly mess and she walked toward the steps. Lachlan turned to follow her progress with his eyes, but remained in the receiving room as Finley gained the topmost landing.
“There’s a mound of it,” she called out. “The wall’s stained where it’s run down.” Finley looked down into the room at him. “What is it?”
“Chain mail, I think,” he replied. “English armor.”
