De Hay at Kinnesswood?That was Frasyr's keep and Frasyr was Argyll’s cousin. But the castle was solid and impossible to attack without tenfold his current number of men. If Glenna Canmore was there she would be in the hands of the king's opponents.
“There is more,” the rider said seriously and he pointed down into the glen. “Look there.”
Two riders were crossing Beauly glen, heading south and west. Ramsey watched them long enough to recognized them by the mounts they rode. The stride of the horses was swift and nimble, bred from the finest of Arab bloods, distinctive in their size, color, and motion.
“The Gordons,” Ramsey said.
“They have been asking their own questions, my lord, and had left just before I heard about Argyll’s messenger.”
There was no doubt what they were about. The Gordon brothers were looking for Glenna. “Mount up!” Ramsey said, wincing slightly as he followed his own orders and his legs and hindside ached sharply when they hit the saddle. He gathered the reins and held up a hand. “Wait… Let them go over that next hill and then we will follow. I suspect we are headed toward the same destination.”
His sharp eyes followed the black outlines of the Gordon brothers riding in the distance, heading south and west toward Loch Lisson, where Kinnesswood stood towering over the water from a solid rock island in its center, a castle in a key position and impregnable to attack.
“Ride!” Ramsey ordered and they took off, heading toward a quest that appeared to be impossible.
Clouds rolledin on gust of strong wind and the dark sky overhead seemed unpredictable. There was no bright shining moon in the night sky, no trout cooking on an open fire, or starlight over the ruins of a burnt castle, just the high clouds over the black darkness of a loch and distant silhouette of a rock island in the middle of the loch, and above it, the staggered shadows of a castle tower and wall.
Glenna pulled her woolen cloak more tightly about her as she sat in the boat while Montrose rowed them across a lake toward their swiftly approaching destination. What was inside that castle ahead of them? Along its crown were the jagged crenels, looking like a demon’s bite. She closed her eyes and sought some sense of courage she doubted she had left; but she needed some strength of heart for the unknown she was about to face.
Montrose was silent. For the whole day he had withdrawn again, erected a stone wall around himself, and nothing she could say would break through to him. That hardness, that silence, carried into the night.
The night air went suddenly still, as if someone swallowed the wind and left only silence that was pierced only by the rhythmic slap of oars as Montrose drew them through into the water.
‘Twas odd. She looked around her.
The brush lining the shore was thick and dark and still. Her mind was mad, her instincts affected by her fears. The trees and bushes had no eyes.
She faced forward, calling herself silly. Her heart was affecting her head.
Behind Montrose, the image of the castle was growing larger and more imposing, and with each oarstroke her hands began to shake more. The wind picked up again, a small gust, then another, bigger and higher. She could hear a tree bend, the rustling of leaves. Hair pulled from her braid to cut across her mouth and whip into her eyes, for a moment obliterating what was ahead.
When she tucked her hair back, before her was their destination and the knowledge she was one step closer to the moment she would face her father, her fate, her failure and whatever horrible humiliation her future would bring. At that moment she would have given anything to be a crofter, a milkmaid, a goat girl…anything but the daughter of a king.
She tried to quell the rising tide of her fears. Montrose’s lack of speech became too much for her. “Will my father be there?”
“I was told to bring you here. Whether it is to await his arrival, or to meet him, I do not know.” His deep voice sounded cold and tight, his words sharp. He’d had a hard time looking her in the eye since he’d left her standing alone by the strange old tree, confused and feeling adrift.
“I merely wondered if perhaps he had come back undercover for his safety, rather than arriving from a ship like before to face his enemies and their arrows.”
If Montrose had heard her, she would never know. He chose to remain stonily silent, but she could not. “I do not know what he expects of me.”
There. She had spoken her fears aloud. She admitted what she was afraid of.
I wonder if he knows that I trust him enough to tell him this.Then she asked herself why that mattered.
The oar locks creaked as he increased his rowing speed, and she could hear the cutting of the water, the draw of the oar and the ripple of the water on the surface, and then his breathing. Not a word from him. There was only an occasional gust of wind over the land and trees.
“Talk to me, Montrose. Please…” Her voice caught a little and sounded as pitiful as she felt and she hated that.
“You are his daughter,” he said heavily after a moment. “No doubt when you do finally meet he will expect to see a young woman.”
“When we do finally meet?” she repeated, almost leapingupon his words. “You know something! You know he is not there.”
“I know nothing,” he said sharply, continuing to row.
“Then why did you say when we finally meet?” She could feel his tension and hear a slight strangle when he said her name aloud. “What is wrong,” she asked.
He shook his head and looked out at the water. His voice was emotionless when he said, “From what I remember of him, you have his looks.”
