Lachlan pulled her to him once more. “You saved us,” he murmured into her hair.
“Lachlan, Murdoch is missing,” Finley said. “I think he’s—” She broke off, and her eyes grew even rounder as she looked past him, her pale lips parting.
Lachlan turned and recognized the loping gait of the man striding deliberately across the green. He wore an old leather skullcap, a long, old-fashioned tunic, and boots that had been made with inexpert hands. In his fist he wielded a blade not much larger than an eating knife. He reached the center of the green and stopped, looking all around him.
The explosions had ceased, leaving only the constant crackle of the flaming lower branches of the tree and the house beneath it. The only English soldiers left on the green were dead or dying. Blairs and Carsons alike stared at the strange old man, until Marcas walked out to meet him.
“Geordie?” Marcas called hesitantly. “Geordie, is that you?”
Harrell had been lying on the ground, sobbing into his arm, when he heard Marcas’s hailing. He raised his face, and his expression was that of one who beheld a specter.
“Aye, Marcas,” Geordie said. “’Tis me.” Geordie’s gaze roved the green until he found Lachlan and Finley. He gave his swooping nod. “Edna’s son.”
Lachlan nodded back. “Geordie.”
Marcas raised an upturned palm, then dropped it in a helpless motion. “Where’ve ye been, Geordie?”
And Lachlan was transported back to that day in the cache.Where’ve ye been, Tommy?
“Yer dead,” Harrell blurted out.
Geordie turned and looked down where Harrell lay. “Sure, and perhaps I’ve been ta hell. But I’m nae dead anymore, Harrell. Nae anymore, I’m nae.”
Harrell turned onto his back, looking around frantically, as if for someone to agree with him. “Yer dead,” he said again, his voice raising to a higher register. “Why are ye here? Why are ye here and none have saved my daughter? Searrach?Searrach!”
“Geordie,” Marcas said in a quiet voice. “Archibald died.”
“Aye.” Geordie continued staring at Harrell, who was becoming increasingly agitated, scooting himself backward in the dirt with his uninjured leg, leaving a trail of blood. “I’m glad o’ that, Marcas.”
“Nay,” Harrell said in a quavering voice, stopping short against the body of a fallen English guard. His hands groped beneath the corpse’s arm, pulling out a long, wooden object and swinging it around. It was a crossbow.
“Harrell, nay!” Lachlan shouted, holding Finley away and then running across the green. He knew he’d never get there in time. “Geordie, get down!”
Harrell struggled in fitting the foot of his unwounded leg in the stirrup, pulling back the crossbow, fumbling to set the arrow. But it was only a moment before he had pointed the weapon at the old man. “You should have stayed dead, Geordie-boy.”
* * * *
As soon as Lachlan pulled away from her, Finley sank to her knees in the soft, cool dirt of the green, the scene before her tilting, going blurry. It was too much to take in, and shock caused reality to twist: the cottages turned black, the outline of the treetops white. The cool night air became too sweltering to take in as breath.
Lachlan sprinting across the green, pushing fragile old Geordie to the ground. And then it was only Lachlan standing there.
The sound of the crossbow was as loud as cannon fire, and it deafened Finley, making the world silent, the arrow’s path graceful and slow.
She remembered her wedding day. Her wedding day on this green…
She would never be able to recall precisely from which direction Murdoch appeared. Some would later say that he ran in from the north, stepping in front of Lachlan at the last moment, and that could have been why Finley hadn’t seen him. And yet others would insist he had come from the west, from the path leading to the falls. No one could agree, and so it would remain a mystery, a legend in both towns from that day on, how Murdoch Carson appeared and stepped between the Blair and an arrow already fired from only twenty yards away.
Finley was glad she could not hear the sound of the bolt striking the Carson chief in the chest; could not hear the cries of the Carsons as they sprinted across the green; could not hear Lachlan shoutingMurdoch,Murdoch, although she could read his lips as he caught the man under his arms and Murdoch slid down, down…
Finley slid down, too, and her eyelids fluttered closed, shuttering the horrifying scene from her already overtaxed mind.
But hands were grasping her, pulling her back hatefully, shaking her without mercy.
“Fin! Finley!”
Her cheek was struck, and she cried out in indignation as she opened her eyes, her fingertips testing her jaw.
“Did you just hit me, Kirsten Carson?”
