Yet Alastair bravely closed the distance between them. "Here." He held a small package wrapped in plain cloth.
"What is this, " Glenna asked. "I want no parting gifts from you."
"It is not a gift. I had forgotten about it until this morn. Thisis yours. When father brought you home, you were wrapped in this infant coverlet. He told me your mother made it, and you were to have it someday."
She took the parcel, then turned away to put it in her pack.
“For me also, Glenna, you will forever be my sister." He reached out to her as if to touch her cheek, then caught himself. The two of them stared at each other, looking for answers. Alastair glanced away, as if searching for courage to say the words. When he turned back he said, “I will treasure all those years we had, and never will I forget the way you looked up to me. I will always, in my heart, be your elder brother. I will never forget when you were small and you sat in my lap every night begging me for another tale, another ancient fable. Remember this. I was naught but a green lad back then. Raising you and El alone…that was what made me into a man.”
Her face fell slightly and her dark, almost black eyes grew moist. She straightened and held her head even higher.
“Those stories I told you at night were not true, either, but you thrived with the knowing of them, and I thrived from the telling. I care naught about the lies I had to tell you or what I did. I care only that I hurt you. But know this, too, that you are alive and well and going home now. To protect your destiny was the task my father left me, and I did the best I could for you with so little knowledge of how I was supposed to go about it. I do love you dearly, my sister, and shall miss you every morn and every night until I die.”
Glenna did not look away from him, nor did she give him the burning, bitter glare from the night before. However there was great sadness and disappointment in her and Lyall thought he caught the glimmer of moisture in her dark eyes. She mounted astride the bay, settling into her seat, reins in hand, before she turned to him and said simply, “Goodbye, Alastair.”
From what Lyall had seen that morning, those were the first words she had spoken to Alastair Gordon since she had criedopenly the night before and called him a traitor. This time her words were not spoken in anger or with coldness.
She edged her mount over to Lyall’s side. “Fergus! Come!”
The hound trotted over from where he was sitting quietly with her brothers and he circled and plopped down next to her and her horse, waiting. Lyall looked at the dog in horror.
“I am ready, my lord.”
“The hound will stay.”
Her look was brittle.
“We will be riding hard,” he told her sternly. “I won’t have that hound hold us up.”
She laughed with little humor. “Fergus? I assure you he can keep up, my lord.”
The dog sat there, tongue lolling out, looking at him with a human look no dog should wear. He had been but a lad the last time a dog had looked at him like that. What happened long ago had naught to do with now, with her dog, or even with his choices. Somehow he knew Glenna was going to fight him more than he would like. His hands tightened on the reins. He did not want to bend to her will so soon.
“I do not go without him,” she said again, clearly understanding her power quickly.
Yes…she was the daughter of a king.
He did not speak but gave her a sharp nod and took the lead as they rode off together across the grassy knolls, Fergus loping easily alongside her. He rode without looking back, expecting her to learn to stay up with him, but was aware of the sound of her mount’s hooves. She rode alongside him. His mount took the hillside with vigor; they rode higher and farther, until he reached the very top of the rise.
“Montrose!” she called out. “Wait.”
He swore silently. He knew it. Already the dog was trouble. He reined in and turned, expecting to see the dog lagging behind. The dog was sitting next to him, grinning like a jesterwho had just performed his best trick. For one moment he wondered if the dog could juggle, too.
But Glenna had turned her mount around to face the half-hidden cottage well below, and the dark and distant figures of two young men left standing there.
They had not moved.
She stood in her stirrups and waved vigorously, looking like the child she must have once been. He was captivated, watching her. So he waited, arm resting on the pommel, giving her as much of a farewell as she needed, and wondering if she even knew she was smiling.
He knew the power of a woman’s smile, he had a mother and sister who also understood a woman’s power over a man, and he reminded himself he was in no position to relinquish anything to a woman. He had a single goal. He had a mission to complete. That was all. That was enough.
When she was done, she settled into the saddle and waited expectantly. The dog barked anxiously, ready to run. Lyall studied Glenna for some sign of female weakness, for the suggestion of tears or the tension of her strong pride, the things that would mask what she was feeling. After a long moment she cast a glance at him under the wide flat brim of her hat, her chin up. He had the insane thought that he would hear the king’s deep and commanding voice spill from her lips, so alike did they wear that same dark and imperious look.
“Come now,” she said mockingly. “For a man in such a hurry, Baron, you certainly dawdle for long, wasted moments.”
His own words thrown back at him.
Before he could speak, she turned her horse and took off down the other side, hound loping coltishly at her side.
