“Why would there be need to speak for my good? What have I done to warrant speaking for me at all? I should be inside with the others, in my rightful place. What’s that bastard said?”
“Naught,” Marcas said. “You’ve done naught, and the Englishman’s said naught against you. I swear it,” Marcas insisted, the disbelief obviously clear on Lachlan’s face. “You’ll have nae grudge against Lucan Montague.”
As if summoned, the dark knight ducked through the doorway and passed between Marcas and Lachlan.
“Pardon,” Montague murmured, and Lachlan’s glare followed the man as he walked swiftly toward the narrow run-in leaning against Archibald Blair’s longhouse.
“Go home,” Marcas repeated, “and wait for me there.”
Lachlan continued to track the knight to the stable. “Aye, Marcas.”
“Lach—”
“I said aye, Marcas!” Lachlan barked. He was still the Blair’s grandson.
Marcas’s mouth pressed into a grim line, but he gave Lachlan a single nod and turned to duck back into the longhouse.
A moment later, Lucan Montague rode onto the green atop his fine, black mount. He reined the horse to a dancing halt and stared boldly across the chilling twilight at Lachlan as if waiting for him, as if giving Lachlan the opportunity to decide to accompany him, assumedly to the town of the Blair’s blood enemies, and the last place to which Lachlan would voluntarily journey: the Carsons.
Lachlan stared back. He thought of the hatchet at his side, the blade in his boot, and wondered if he should use them despite Marcas’s warning. Lachlan didn’t understand it, but he knew that this man—this interloper—had somehow ripped the orderly fabric of the town upon his arrival. Perhaps he had even disordered Lachlan’s own life, although he couldn’t see how that was possible. As the Blair’s grandson, there was no one more powerful than he, set to take control of the town in only days—the youngest chief in all the highlands.
And yet, a voice whispered to him,here you stand outside your own fine.
Lucan Montague waited a moment longer, holding Lachlan’s gaze, and then he gave a single nod and turned his mount’s head west out of the village, chasing the sun that had already disappeared over the trees. Lachlan watched him go, the muffled hoof falls soon leaving a cold void that the early spring peepers rushed to fill with their enthusiastic calls.
The green was empty now. Lachlan was alone.
He loosened his shawl and rearranged it over his head and shoulders, tucking both ends into the front of his belt, then he, too, started westward across the green.
Chapter 2
“I’ve thought you a pome,” Eachann Todde said, a smile in his voice. Finley could feel his gaze on the side of her face, as if he’d licked her, and the stench and moisture were evaporating in the cooling updraft of the falls.
“A what?” she said, turning her head to reluctantly look at him. They were both standing on the bridge with their forearms braced on the railing overlooking the deep, rippling river some ten feet below. She only needed give the awkward man another quarter of an hour, and then her parents—and the fine—should be satisfied.
His skull seemed misshapen beneath the thick, pockmarked skin of his face, his nose and upper jaw protruding while his brow and forehead sloped sharply into a bright orange hairline that didn’t begin properly until past his crown. His eyelashes and brows disappeared against the fish belly color of his complexion, bracketed by ears that stuck from the sides of his head like scallop shells.
Finley thought he looked like a sea monster, if ever they existed. A prosperous and eligible sea monster who boasted the highest number of sheep in the town, but he smelled of brine all the same.
“Apome,” Eachann said again, with what must have been meant as an indulgent grin. “A verse of song, you ken?”
“Ah,” Finley said with a nod, and turned her gaze back to the water lest she visibly shudder. “Apoem.”
“Aye,” he said. “A pome.”
Finley watched the river roil and swirl, wondering if a quarter of an hour had yet gone. Perhaps she should carry a glass with her in the future. A small one, that might fit in her pouch and could be looked at surreptitiously to—
“Do you wish to hear it?”
Finley started. “What?”
“Do you wish to hear the pome?”
“Oh,” she said with a forced smile. “Why not?” She turned her face away toward the south and muttered, “Perhaps it will pass the time.”
“What’s that, love?” Eachann asked.
“I said, does it happen to rhyme?”
