‘Aye,’ he called back. ‘Come,’ he said to Saraid, ‘let me walk you back inside.’ She looked at his outstretched arm for a moment. ‘If you are ready to return?’
She placed her hand on his arm with the grace of a lady allowing a laird to assist her. Something niggled at him as he watched her walk at his side. She walked liked someone noble-born. As a woman trained to the gentle manners and bearing of a lady. One born and raised in the keep and not the village.
She stumbled then and Alan reached out to steady her once more with his other hand on hers, forgetting about the strange impressions he was having about her. Jamie stood by the door, holding a lantern to light their way now. When they reached him, Jamie studied Clara’s cousin closely.
‘Are you well, Saraid?’ he asked.
‘I am well, now, Jamie.’ She lifted her hand from Alan’s arm and nodded at him. ‘My thanks for coming to my aid.’
Alan did not reply, but instead watched her enter the cottage. Clara waited there for her. When the door closed, Alan turned to his friend and spoke before Jamie could say anything about what he must have seen there in the moonlight. ‘Dougal?’ he asked.
‘’Twas quite a surprise to me, as well,’ Jamie said. ‘The boy has more courage than I suspected.’
‘He has not taken notice of anyone since Fia left, has he?’
Strange that. Both Dougal and he had offered marriage to Fia Mackintosh for different reasons and both had been turned down. Dougal had been taken with the lass and had offered out of true love. Alan had been responsible, in part, for Fia’s loss of honour and had offered in an attempt to help her. After all, they’d been friends since meeting in the camp of exiled Mackintoshes during the schism in the clan.
Sent by Brodie to track her when she’d been kidnapped during an attack on their village, Alan had failed her—finding her, but not freeing her soon enough. Her ruination had been caused and redeemed by her current husband, Lord Niall Corbett, the man who had claimed her heart when neither he nor Dougal could.
Now, a few years later and both Alan and Dougal found themselves circling another woman...again. Dougal, though, had already expressed his interest openly, while Alan had been trying to convince himself there was nothing there. In spite of it being the worst time to be distracted by a woman he could not have, he was.
No matter how enticing and tempting the widow MacPherson was, it did not mean he would act on that attraction. He would not. Too many things were happening around him, in his clan and in the Mackintoshes, to allow an attachment to interfere with his concentration on the rising danger.
‘Nay, he has not, but I suspect he realises it’s time to seek a wife and make his own life. Though, I doubt he will get far with Saraid,’ Jamie admitted. ‘She is allowing herself time to grieve her loss before travelling on.’
Somehow that news, the part about Dougal not getting anywhere with the widow MacPherson, cheered Alan.
‘So what brings you here at this time of night?’ Jamie asked.
‘I was restless after my journey and thought to share a cup of ale with you,’ he said. Jamie was a good friend. He truly needed no excuse to come to see him.
‘I can have one cup before Clara puts you on your way back to the keep,’ he said, laughing. ‘Are you sure you did not come for a glimpse of Clara’s cousin?’
Alan would deny it, even if it were the truth.
Because, if it were true, it held the promise of trouble. If he was interested in her, nothing could come of it.
‘Nay, I think I will leave the wooing to Dougal,’ Alan said, deciding that was the best he could say. Jamie answered with an incredulous frown. Alan would need to divert his friend’s attention to this growing fascination. ‘Well, let us have our one cup before your wife chases me away.’
Jamie went inside and brought out two cups of ale. They walked back around to the bench, keeping their voices down now that most of the village had settled for the night.
‘So, if not to see Saraid, then what brings you here...this night, when we could speak on the morrow?’ Jamie asked.
‘My father.’
‘Ah.’ Alan looked at Jamie when he spoke that one word. One word that carried so much within it when pronounced as Jamie had.
‘When Uncle Euan died and the high seat was open, do you remember any talk here about why my father did not make his claim?’
‘It troubles you now, does it?’
‘Aye. More and more with each encounter and each conversation.’
‘And with each of Gilbert’s marriages.’
Very, very few people could bring that topic up without Alan taking action, but Jamie could and did so now.
‘Observant, are you now?’ he said. ‘Aye. ’twould seem that does cause me to think on those matters. About what Clan Cameron would be like if my father was chief.’
