Geordie looked down at his offered hand, the wide-gapped teeth of the bridge planks burring in and out of focus beneath his palm. The water from the loud, loud falls misted around them, the ash whirled on the soot-scented wind.
Geordie had first laid eyes on Tommy on this very bridge.
“I doona trust you, Harrell.”
“Och, now.” Harrell Blair smiled. “Maybe yer nae so dumb after all.”
And then Geordie was falling through the mist, turning, turning. The water was cold, but only for an instant, and then the top of his head was very hot. But it didn’t matter that he was wet because he was going to sleep.
* * * *
Neither Finley nor Lachlan said anything as they made their way to the lower chamber of the old house’s storeroom. Lachlan descended first and then reached up to take the lamp and her cloak, and then guided Finley down as she slid over the rounded, sandy lip on her stomach. She couldn’t help the awareness of his strong fingers pressing into her waist in the moment before he released her and turned away to resurrect the fire.
Finley sat on the edge of Lachlan’s pallet in the flickering shadows of the lamp and pulled her cloak up over her legs and to her chin, watching him stoke the blaze. Her mind whirled with the disjointed bits Geordie Blair had just told them. If any of it was even partly true…
The fire grew taller, warming the small storeroom and giving it a cozy glow that Finley very much needed. Lachlan turned on one knee and then sat back on his foot, resting an arm across his stomach. He was staring through the flames, but Finley didn’t think he really saw her. He was lost in thoughts, perhaps of the past. Perhaps of the future.
And Finley reckoned she didn’t play into either one of those circumstances. For Lachlan, Finley was only his inconvenient present.
She pushed herself farther back on the pallet and pulled up her feet beneath the cloak. It was surprisingly pleasant to lean against the cliff wall and watch Lachlan watching the fire with his furrowed brow, his smell wafting up from his blankets all around her, like the fragrance of summer from warm sand. Her muscles were already stiffening from the climb and the shock of nearly falling to her death, and the sight of him with the glow of the fire flickering over the planes and angles of his handsome face soothed her, pushed the troublesome worries of her own future from her mind.
There were two other people in the old house this night who had burdens far heavier than hers.
“I have to take him back,” Lachlan half-muttered.
“Geordie?” Finley whispered, and then glanced up at the passageway to the upper chamber as if he might overhear their conversation. “He’s frightened to death of Harrell, Lachlan. He’ll nae go. Or worse, he’ll run off, and then where would you be? I canna believe he survived the falls in the first place, never mind all these years alone on his own. What that must do to a person…”
Lachlan’s generous mouth pressed into a line. “There’s no one else who knows what he does. No one else who can confront Harrell before the fine with the truth.”
“Do you think it will matter if he does?” Finley pressed, even as an uncomfortable feeling sank into her middle. “The man’s clearly…I mean, he’s been alone for such a long time. Perhaps it’s affected his thinking—his memories, even.”
“Perhaps it has,” Lachlan agreed. “I’ve heard Geordie’s name mentioned, although it’s been years now. But never by Harrell or my grandfather. Everyone at Town Blair has thought him dead, all these years.” He stared at the fire again. “I’ve got to find someone to corroborate his tale, and Murdoch’s been avoiding me.” His brows lowered even further.
“Aye, Murdoch does tend to disappear now and again. There’s my father, though he didn’t return to Carson Town until—” Finley broke off as Lachlan bolted to his feet and rushed toward the pallet, plunging his hands beneath the makeshift mattress and causing Finley to skitter back against the cliff wall.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“Not someoneto corroborate the tale,” he muttered as he rummaged beneath the lumpy cushion. “Something.” He withdrew his arm, and there was a long, cloth-wrapped object in his hand. Lachlan got to his feet only long enough to turn and perch on the edge of the pallet, and Finley pulled herself next to him as he unwrapped the mysterious item.
“What is it?” she asked as the dull metal of a sheath was revealed.
Lachlan tossed the cloth aside and held the dagger point up across his chest. “Carson steel,” he said, and then reached up with his right forefinger and tapped the brooch on his shawl.
Finley leaned forward to examine both pieces and gasped as she recognized the identical pattern. Then she reached up and slid the dagger from his hand. Lachlan let it go easily, and this time it was he who moved closer to look over her shoulder as Finley settled back on her hip and turned over the sheath in her hand.
“Did it come from the cache?” she asked.
“Nay; Dand brought it to me the first day we took the sheep up to graze,” Lachlan answered, and his breath was warm on her neck, his low voice tickling her eardrum with its deep resonance. “He came upon Harrell tearing apart Archibald’s house, searching for something. Dand later found this, hidden in a wall.”
Finley turned her head and was nearly nose to nose with Lachlan. “Thomas Annesley’s, you think.”
“Possibly. Where did my brooch come from?”
Finley felt her brows raise in surprise. “It was my mother’s, of course. Received on her own wedding day. But neither she nor my da’s ever said anything about it having a twin in a dagger.”
“Hmm.” He was lost in thought again, and Finley could see every pore and line and dark hair on his face. Such a combination of rough and smooth. She wondered what it would be like to slide her hand along his jaw…
“I’ll show it to Murdoch tomorrow,” he muttered. “If I can find him. He must know something.” Then he blinked, bringing his thoughts back to the present and meeting Finley’s gaze once more.
