“You want me to go inside?” she asked in a creaky voice. “Alone?”
Andrew’s eyes went wide. “Well, I hope you doona think me to accompany you, missus—the Buchanan, och, he’s vicious!”
Evelyn thought she might faint. But Andrew took quick note of her distress and rushed with a laugh.
“I jest, missus! Ah, Jesus, forgive me for the fool I am.” He laid a comforting arm across Evelyn’s shoulders and turned her toward the doorway. “Go on,” he said, gently this time. “He is anxious to meet you. Have nae fear.”
Evelyn took a hesitant step toward the portal and then stopped and spun back to Andrew. “Bonnie! I need—where is my sheep, sir?”
Andrew turned this way and that, calling in his native tongue. A pair of young children—a boy and a girl—stepped forward, one holding Bonnie’s tether and the other clutching a recently liberated Robert. They held forth their charges with spindly, outstretched arms and dazzling smiles.
“Me ladee,” the girl piped.
Evelyn huffed a bemused laugh and took hold of Bonnie’s tether and scooped Robert over her forearm.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Thank you,” the children mimicked in unison and then giggled.
With a squawk, Sebastian landed on the roof of the Buchanan’s house, drawing delighted shrieks and gasps from the gathered townsfolk. Evelyn let her eyes flick over them once more before turning and ducking inside the doorway.
It took a moment for Evelyn’s eyes to adjust to the interior gloom, so she paused a few steps into the home, blinking in time with her pounding heart. The sound of the door scraping shut with a final sounding thud caused Evelyn to start and look around with a gasp.
“You fear me, lass?” came the gravelly, melodious question from deeper in the room and Evelyn turned once more to seek the speaker.
He was seated in an armed, tall-backed wooden chair just beyond the wide fire pit full of glowing peat, and it struck Evelyn that Angus Buchanan was very, very old. ’Twas quite comfortable inside the longhouse, but the clan chief appeared to be dressed for a blizzard: long-sleeved, shin-length wool tunic with an undershirt peeking out at the neck, sheep’s wool vest laced tightly to either end, a long plaid thrown over his knees and across one shoulder. Thick leather boots encased his legs. His hair was long, snowy white, and looked soft as dandelion fluff where it lay across his breast. His pate was bare, shiny, veined and spotted with age over sparse white eyebrows that overhung sunken blue eyes. He wore a long, full beard, more wiry looking than the rest of his hair, but the same glowing alabaster.
Evelyn had the strange notion that she looked upon an old Celtic nature god, or the mountains standing sentry over Loch Lomond in human form, or time itself. Ancient and strong and wise and…forever.
He was smiling at her, and Evelyn realized she had not answered the old chief’s question.
“I do not fear you,” she replied and was proud that her voice held no tremble. “But I do fear that you will deny me respite.”
Angus’s shoulders hitched as if he chuckled to himself. “What is your name, child?”
She swallowed. “Evelyn.”
The chief’s eyebrows rose only slightly, as if it was too much effort to move the blanket of wrinkles on his forehead higher. “Evelyn…?” His question dangled.
She knew what he was asking of her, but had no immediate reply. Did she give him her maiden name, Godewin? Did the name MacKerrick still apply to her, or had it been revoked with Conall’s promises? In truth, she wanted to give the old man all three names: Godewin Buchanan MacKerrick, for it was the moniker she’d lived under since coming to Scotland.
But she could truthfully give him none of them.
Her chin tilted. “I know not, sir. Forgive me.”
“Hmm.” Angus nodded thoughtfully. “You are she, then. The prophesy fulfilled.”
“I—I beg your pardon?”
“‘A woman of no home will come, two of herself, in raiments of old,’” Angus said. “‘Her heart revealed by the beasts she commands, and she brings with her a great and humbling peace.’”
The chief looked at her from head to toe. “Your cloak—I would know that rag amongst a hundred others. ’Tis me own sister’s, is it nae? Minerva Buchanan. She is dead now, likely.”
Evelyn nodded. “I’m sorry.”
Angus’s rheumy eyes glistened with sadness, yet he pushed on. “‘Two of herself’—either you are with child, or a terrible glutton.”
Evelyn found herself smiling.
