The other two sisters, Davina wearing a long, shallow scratch on one arm, followed suit.
Well, that was quite enough, Ewan decided. He kept his sword unsheathed in his hand as he approached.
“I would thank you to unhand my wife,” he told the stranger.
The man was not visibly bothered by the violence suggested by Ewan’s tone and stance. Instead, he looked down at Ailsa.
“I assume that’s you?” he asked. She nodded, her arms still wrapped tightly around the man. Ewan wanted to stab him. “It sounds as though you have quite a lot to explain, little sister.”
Little… sister?
Ailsa gave the man—her brother—a fierce frown. “Ihave a lot to explain? You weredead.”
He grimaced in a way that suggested that he considered death little more than a mild inconvenience.
“Yes, well, there is a long story behind that. First, though, allow me to greet my oldest friend.” He untangled himself fromthe Donaghey sisters, coming forward to clasp Ewan’s hand in his own. It was a working man’s hand, rough with calluses and smeared with the dirt of long hours in the saddle. So different from the young lad Ewan used to run down the hills together.
“Ewan,” Graham said. “Thank you for protecting my sisters and my home. I owe you a great debt.”
EPILOGUE
“What in thefresh hell is going on here?” James asked Ewan quietly as Buchanan Keep came into sight. The long ride home had been mostly silent, though not full of grief—thank all the saints, Ewan thought. The Buchanan men had not suffered any losses, though young Ian Stewart had gotten a nasty cut on the leg. He was cheerful at the prospect that this would show his bravery off to the lasses, however.
Ewan hadn’t even gotten a proper chance to talk to his wife because she refused to be parted from her brother—his friend, the one who was still in possession of all his limbs.
Graham Donaghey had wanted to stay back at Castle Dubh-Gheal. Ewan would have put his foot down over this issue, but Ailsa beat him to it.
“No,” she said flatly. “You owe us an explanation, and there might be more guards inside.”
Donaghey had frowned down at her. “So, stay here,” he said. “It’s your home.”
“It’s not,” Ailsa corrected him.
That amendment had kept Ewan company for the long journey, reminding him that while he might be tempted to stealhis wife away, to hold her to him and make sure that she was well and truly safe, that he could afford to wait.
Her home was with him, now, after all. They had time. He could afford to be patient. They knew they left Castle Dubh-Gheal open, but they would take it back well and truly soon.
“I haven’t the faintest goddamned idea,” Ewan admitted to his closest friend wearily. “But if I don’t find out soon, somebody is going to have to answer for it.”
James shot a poisonous look back at Donaghey, making it clear whom he thought should bear the brunt of this punishment. Apparently the Captain of the Guard didn’t like the worshipful way Vaila had been gazing at her warrior brother. Even though, they used to friends with Graham, Ewan felt also very possessive over Ailsa. Graham was most certainly not the same lad Ewan had known long ago.
As the group rode into the Keep, they were met with more than a few curious looks, and Ewan was forced to reflect again on what a tumultuous start he’d given his people during his short tenure as their laird.
He would do better. He had to.
And he would do it with his wife at his side, damn it.
As soon as the Donagheys, Ailsa and Ewan, and James found themselves in a parlor that was as private as one could get in the clan’s Keep, Ailsa crossed her arms. She had taken on a regal posture as soon as they’d entered the Buchanan holdings, and now she stood, every inch the lady of the keep.
“Explain” she ordered her brother flatly.
If Donaghey was put out by his eldest sister’s irritated tone, he didn’t let on. Instead, he leaned with deceptive casualness against a wall, though Ewan’s trained eye could see that he was still attuned to any potential danger, was ready to strike if necessary.
Now that he was pausing to really look, Ewan could see how Graham and Ailsa had grown so similar. They both had that same dark hair, though Ailsa’s eyes were hazel to Graham’s blue. They had the same nose, too, and a similar way of tilting their mouths. Somehow, as adults, they resembled more of each other.
But Donaghey, for all that he was only a year or so older than Ailsa, looked as though he carried the weight of many more years. Ewan wondered what had happened to the lad he used to know to put that hardened, world-weary look on his face.
“Do ye recall the attack against me as a youth?” he asked, tone purposefully idle, as though he was discussing the weather.
