After a long moment, he ran a hand through his singed hair and sighed again. “See them home, my friend, see them home,” he said, once more, as so often in his life, following his heart rather than prudence.
“Gather what raiments the lot of you can spare them, then escort them to the border,” he added, capping his own men’s welling disapproval with a stern, warning glance.
Then, before prudence could seize him after all, he gave the guardsman a light shove toward the waiting captives. “Go now,” he said. “Off with you, off with them.”
“And I say, off with us!” Sir Alec declared as he vaulted into his saddle.
The other Highlanders chorused hearty agreement. As one, they mounted their steeds and reined round, putting the burning pyre of Kinraven swiftly behind them.
Only Marmaduke hesitated.
With a heavy heart and a disturbing tightness in his throat, he watched the young English knights swallow their pride and don whatever bits of clothing the Keith men tossed to them.
Then, before the Keith guardsmen could begin herding them south, Marmaduke turned his back on the ragtag group, on his own long-ago past, and swung up onto his saddle.
“Aye, Alec,” he agreed, the moment he caught up with the Highlanders. “It is time to go home.”
And not a man who heard him had to guess which home he meant.
* * *
Caterine came awakethe instant Leo hopped from her lap and streaked to the door. His mistress forgotten, he plopped onto his rump, his golden-brown head cocked to the side, his floppy ears lifted in rapt attention.
Even from behind, from the cushioned confines of the window embrasure where she sat, Caterine knew his round eyes stared unblinking at the door’s heavy oaken panels.
Knew they brimmed with adoration.
Expectancy.
As did hers, no doubt, for Leo’s behavior could only indicate one thing: Marmaduke had returned at last and would soon stride through her door.
Blinking the gritty weariness from her own eyes, she strained her ears but heard only the deafening crush of silence. Even the endless pounding of the sea against the rocks below seemed hushed.
Her heart hammering nonetheless, she pushed to her feet and scanned the dimly lit bedchamber. Blue-violet shadows stretched across the rushes, darkening the corners and proving she’d slept long and deep.
Even the wall torches and hanging cresset lamp had extinguished themselves, leaving only the orange-glowing hearth embers to illuminate the silent chamber.
The interminable night and the endless hours of the day had slipped behind her. Vanishing without her notice, whisked away as if by some enchantment during her exhausted slumber.
And somehow, some great and mysterious secret that had hovered so near as she’d dozed, escaped her as well. A slight frown knitted her brow as she grasped for whatever it was, and failed.
Conceding defeat, she pressed her hands to the small of her back and stretched. Sleeping in the relatively small area of the narrow window seat, had taken its toll.
Just as the quiet unraveled her calm.
Tilting her head to the side, she listened hard, but again, heard only silence. No familiar footfalls, confident and proud, approached her door. No muffled stirrings sounded from the great hall below.
A glance at the unshuttered windows as well as the bite of the icy air pouring through them, revealed the reason for the eerie stillness. Sometime during the night, it’d begun to snow.
Whirling curtains of fast-falling snow slanted past the arch-topped windows, and a fair dusting already mounded along the window’s outer ledge.
Then a noise did intrude on the silence.
Just the creak of a floorboard, and a distant one from the sound of it, but loud enough to set her pulse racing and persuade Leo to give up his patient vigil.
With a shrill yap of joy, he launched himself at the closed door, his tail wagging, his button nose sniffing at its seam – leastways, as high as the limitations of his size allowed.
Trembling, her fingers shaking nearly as furiously as Leo’s wagging tail, she looked about for something to do. Anything to occupy herself so, if the approaching footsteps were his, he wouldn’t immediately see she’d fretted through every moment of his absence.
