“Then tell me what I dinnae know.” Callum strode away from the bonfire, farther down the sandy beach, knowing his cousin would follow. “And I’ll tell you,” he went on the instant Grim paced alongside him, “I’m no’ taking off for Stirling again. The King and his clan of Stewart madmen can wriggle out of their own problems this time. I’ve enough to-”
“The matter concerns a lady.” Grim stepped around before him, his great bulk limned by moonlight. “She’s in dire need, and great peril. Mortal danger.”
“My regrets.” Callum ignored the way his chest tightened, the fiery stitch in his side, there one moment, gone the next. “I’m no’ the man to aid damsels in distress. I’m a pirate and treasure seeker, no’ a gallant knight on a white charger.”
“I ken exactly who and what you are,” Grim reminded him.
“So do I.” Callum frowned. “Heir to a hall of ghosts. A place filled with nothing but roosting seabirds and cold, dank air.
“Draugar Hall…” Callum strode a few paces, then whirled back around. “Even the name means home of phantoms.”
“’Tis yours all the same,” Grim said, not surprisingly, right before him. “Nae man can outrun his fate.”
“Why do you think I do what I do? And…” Callum paused, narrowed his eyes. “How can you move about so quietly? Big and ugly as you are?”
“Certain training sits in the bones.” Grim didn’t smile. “This isn’t a family visit. I was sent here because you can aid this poor lassie. You and no other, for she must be escorted from her home and kept safe until certain souls have seen to those who would harm her.”
Callum nodded, only too aware his cousin meant bold, oath-sworn men who served the Scottish Crown, executing the most urgent and secretive biddings.
“She is to be brought to Skerray?” Callum guessed.
“So it is desired.”
“Why not your own Nought, or Archie’s Duncreag? Both are secure strongholds.”
Grim shook his head, his damnable beard rings clacking again. “They are distant. Such a long journey is too great a risk.”
“What does the lady think of this?”
“She doesn’t know,” Grim said, looking fine with that.
Callum frowned again. “I dinnae like this.”
“Alerting her could see her speak of the plan to the wrong person.” Grim fell silent as a drunken Skerrayman and one of the Aberdeen harbor lasses lurched past them, on their way to the soft grasses high on the dunes. “She daren’t suspect what’s happening,” he finished when the couple were far enough away. “Only so can we be sure of keeping her safe.”
“You want her kidnapped.” Callum felt his nape catch fire. “I’ll no’ do that.”
“You dinnae have a choice.” Grim looked out at the choppy sea, then back to him. “King’s orders.”
“Any Skerrayman can fetch her,” Callum argued. “I’m no’ good with ladies.”
“The maid is Lady Alanna Grant,” Grim told him, ignoring his objections. “She is the last of her line, a lass some say is cursed for many in her family, or around her, meet an untimely end.”
Callum’s brows shot up. “Are you wanting rid of me?”
“What I want is to return home to my wife,” Grim said, his fierce face softening for a beat. “But I am a man of honor, and will ne’er look away from a woman in need.”
“Humph.” Callum wished he hadn’t asked.
Feeling guilt he was sure he didn’t deserve, he glanced down the beach toward Blackie’s bonfire, the bright red flames staining the sky. Shouts and laughter came on the wind, the joyous carouse seeming as distant as the moon. He should’ve gone to the revels, knocked back enough mead to be snoring loudly about now, oblivious to his cousin’s arrival – and demands.
Instead…
He swallowed, fought a burgeoning sense of kinship with Lady Alanna Grant even as Grim’s tale repelled him.
He knew something of cursed families – leastwise luckless ones.
“Tell me more,” he said, ready to listen if nothing else.
