Ronan harrumphed.
“His pleasure in the day will circle round to bite him when he wakens on the morrow and canna stand.” He looked down at her, ignoring how right her hand felt on his arm. “I’m sure you meant no ill, but allowing such an aged beast to run all the way from Dare to —”
She laughed, a pleasing, flirtatious sound, bright and lively, that warmed the chill air. Truth be told, her laughter could have even warmedhimif the reason for it weren’t so objectionable.
Ronan frowned.
For sure, he’d judged her wrongly if she found humor in poor Buckie’s plight.
“You mistake — I see it all o’er you.” She slanted a mischievous glance at him as she tugged him forward, leading him through the trees to the clearing with its dark-watered lochan and her garish Viking tent. “Buckie’s presence here is another of my surprises. He didn’t walk a step of the way. He rode, and in great style!”
Ronan stopped short. “He rode?”
Another ripple of laughter and a sharper tug on his arm was all the answer she gave.
Until she marched right through the slithering mist snakes beginning to wind here and there across the leafy ground and pulled him into the clearing.
“There! See for yourself how Buckie got here.” She pointed triumphantly at an empty wicker creel.
Large, hung about with ropes and what looked to be the willow banding used to hoop his grandfather’s wine barrels, the large basket was clearly an onion creel.
The thing sat beside the lochan’s boulder-strewn shore, its telltale reek carried on the wind.
Ronan stared.
A suspicion — something — snapped tight somewhere deep in his chest.
He swallowed hard.
Then he blinked, unaccustomed heat pricking his eyes when he spotted one of Dare’s horses chomping grass not far from the creel.
Someone had placed the beast’s saddle on a nearby boulder and it was at the saddle that Ronan now stared. A rope dangled from the high-armed cantle at the back of the saddle, the rope’s purpose squeezing Ronan’s heart.
His gaze flicked to the onion creel then back to the saddle, not that he could really see it now, blurry as his vision had gone.
He cleared his throat, squaring his shoulders before he risked turning back toher.
“Dinna tell me you rigged a carrying basket for Buckie?”
“I did!” She smiled. “Hugh MacHugh and Hector helped me. We put Buckie in the basket at Dare and his feet didn’t touch the ground until he got here.”
She blinked herself then and swiped a hand across her cheek. “I vow he enjoyed the ride!”
“And where did you get such an idea?” Ronan could still scarce believe it.
“From Jamie Macpherson,” she returned, the answer making no sense at all. “James the Small of Baldreagan, though his real style is James of the Heather.”
“I ne’er heard tell of him.” Ronan tried not to sound annoyed.
Truth was, the very way she’d said the man’s numerous by- names perturbed him.
“Jamie has an old dog, Cuillin,” she twittered on, her eyes sparkling. “He crafted a riding basket for him, and when my father saw it, he had similar carriers made for his own aged hounds, Telve and Troddan.”
She tossed her hair over her shoulder, as if that explained everything. “The dogs accompany Father everywhere, though he didn’t bring them along to Dare.”
Ronan almost snorted.
The Black Stag would have known why he left his beloved canines at home.
