“A witch?” She slanted a look at him, her lips tight, eyes narrowed. “You’d be in trouble if I was. I’m not a fairy either, though I believe they exist.
“The truth is, folk hereabout talk of the MacCulloch farm,” she told him – as if he didn’t know fine what such tales claimed. “It’s been empty for more than a hundred years, the farmer and his family disappearing without a trace.”
Aye, ’tis said the farmer’s son loved the family’s laundress, but his father refused to let them wed. Furious, the high-spirited lass poisoned their dinner, thinking her love would be away that night. He wasn’t, and perished with his kin.
Grief-stricken when she learned of the young man’s demise, and horrified she’d be found out, the laundress dragged them all to the sea, pushing the bodies one by one over the cliffs.
Callum didn’t recount the tale.
Lady Winter clearly knew.
“Your friend’s horse will sense the spirits there,” she said, reaching forward to stroke Storm’s frost-dusted mane. “He won’t be happy, he-”
“He’ll be fine,” Callum said, wondering why the faintest smile tugged at his lips. “My friend and others will be the only souls at that farmhouse and their spirits will be fiery Highland ones we’ll enjoy before we set sail.”
She straightened, stiffening. “To Dublin and its slave mart?”
“So I said.”
“I will tell your friends,” she argued. “There will surely be one with enough honor to help me.”
“My friends already know where you’re going.”
She gasped, and then seemed to deflate. “I don’t believe you. I will beg aid if need be.”
“You’re wasting your breath, lassie,” Callum told her. “My friends won’t take you home. Truth is, this was their idea.”
“Then I am doomed.” She released a long, audible sigh.
And her timing was perfect for just then the old farmhouse came into view, perched near the edge of a jutting headland, there for as long as fate and weather allowed.
Candlelight spilled from the windows and someone was just lighting torches thrust into the snow.
Grim and his men had been busy.
Still wishing the meeting place could’ve been elsewhere, Callum spurred across the remaining stretch of moorland, glad for once to see his cousin. The great ring-bearded lump was just stepping out of the farmhouse, his Nought Mackintoshes quickly joining him, and a handful of the King’s wild Stewarts.
Lady Winter’s misery was indeed about to end.
Regrettably, he feared his own was just beginning.
* * *
“You’re the guisers!”
Alanna stared at the men gathered around her, recognizing some of them – even though they’d looked like denizens from hell the last time she’d seen them.
“Please…” She slipped from the saddle before anyone could help her, beseeched every man present. “You must help me,” she pleaded, clutching Gubbie to her breast. “This man” – she threw a glance at her captor – “keeps me against my will. He means to take me to Ireland, to sell me as a slave. I am Lady Alanna Grant as you know, mistress of Seacliffe Castle and-”
“We ken who you are, lassie.” The largest man of the group, a hard-faced brute with Norse armbands and beard rings, inclined his head slightly, as if they were at court, exchanging niceties. “Why do you think we were at your Yule feast? We were there to fetch you. Nae man here will take you back to Seacliffe.
“You must sail away with us,” he finished, his refusal to help her icing her soul. “We’ll be leaving anon, down yon cliff-path and across the sea.”
“Nae!” Alanna shook her head, her blasted eyes stinging anew. “This is a terrible mistake. You cannae do this!” She glanced round again, horrified to see that one of the men, one she didn’t recognize, was already leading the horse toward a water trough and a half-barrel of what she supposed were oats.
They were truly doing this, stealing her away to a nightmare worse than all her troubles combined.
“Nae, please,” she tried again, her mind racing. “I will pay you. I have silver enough, and my mother’s jewels.” She didn’t tell them her mother had misplaced the jewels years ago, putting them in the wrong hiding place when her mind began to fail her. She’d search Seacliffe from its dungeon to the battlements to find every last gemstone if only these men would help her. “You will be rich, I promise you. Just help me, and-”
