He crossed the yard, heading for that telltale glint of light, determined not to let whatever trouble it promised touch Eilidh—or any of these people who had so kindly taken him in, even when they’d had no reason to be anything other than suspicious.
As he slipped into the shadowy armory, though, and felt the kiss of steel against his throat, he couldn't deny that part of him regretted his choice.
“Do ye greet everyone this way?” Ciaran drawled, his unaffected tone a stark contrast to the way ice went through his veins as soon as he felt the touch of metal. “If so, I cannae reckon that ye have much in the way of friends.”
The line of fire that lit up on his throat as the hired blade dug his knife more firmly into Ciaran’s flesh was a far more pointed rebuke than the growl that came from behind him. Even so,Ciaran kept his eyes fixed ahead, on the shadows that he knew still obscured the true threat.
His body screamed at him to fight, to do something, but he knew that doing so would only end up with him reinjured. He was still not healed enough to move as he should, anyway.
“Really?” he asked when there was no immediate reply. “Are ye so bored that ye need to play games to pass the time?”
Ruaridh Black stepped from the shadows, shrouded in the black-on-black tartan of his merciless band of hired blades. He was sneering, but Ciaran had never seen him wearing any other expression, and not only because of the puckered scar on his cheek that caused his face to perpetually slope off to one side. He juggled a scrap of something shiny in his hand—a shard of looking glass, Ciaran realized after a moment. That’s what the gleam had been. Black had been flashing a mirror specifically to draw Ciaran’s attention.
“Ye have quite a mouth on ye for someone who is one wrong move away from having a new hole in him,” Black observed, sounding as slimy and smug as he ever did.
Christ, Ciaran hated him. He assumed that everyone hated Black, including his own men, but damn it all, Ciaranreallyhated him.
“If ye were going to kill me, ye wouldn’t be playing games,” Ciaran returned.
He might be unable to kill Black, no matter how much he fantasized about doing so, but he didn’t have to kowtow to the man. Hell, he’d rather get stabbed than act subservient to the likes of Black.
Black’s smirk grew more pronounced, and he took a step closer, clearly trying to menace Ciaran. But Ciaran remained distinctly unimpressed.
“It’s funny that ye say it like that,” Black sneered.
He really only did have the one way of being. It was the kind of thing that would make certain that he never rose above his current status. Black was a hammer, not a blade; he lacked finesse, which meant he would only ever manage to lead other crude tools.
But still a hammer could smash. It could cause a great deal of destruction, indeed.
“Because,” Black went on, clearly enjoying himself, “I was just about to tell ye that Laird Gordon doesnae take kindly to his toys ignoring his calls. Especially after they slip their leash when they were meant to stay put.”
The insult smarted; Ciaran flinched slightly with the force of his rage but was stopped by another little flicker of pain from the knife at his neck.
“I’m nobody’s toy—nor anyone’s dog,” he snapped. “And Gordon is nobody’s laird.”
The man behind Ciaran, responding to a nod from Black, moved his blade away from Ciaran’s throat to press lightly at the sensitive skin just below Ciaran’s eye. Ciaran found this to be considerably more threatening; Black might not kill him, not when Ciaran was still useful to Gordon, but he wouldn’t have any qualms about a little light maiming. The beating he’d let his men deliver had been sufficient evidence of that.
“That,” Black seethed, “is where ye are wrong. Yearea mutt to be brought to heel andLairdGordon is your master and commander.” His dark eyes were lit with malicious pleasure as he regarded Ciaran, who didn’t even dare tobreathedeeply, not with that blade so close to his eye. “That is, of course, unless ye wish to have the king’s justice brought down upon ye.”
Despite the peril he still faced, Ciaran felt his eyes drift shut at this. Because yes, Black was a hammer—and here was the hammer’s drop.
The Gunns had attracted the king’s attention once before, after the rebellion, and they’d been brutally punished for it. Ciaran had been one of the few men who had raised his blade alongside the Jacobites and lived to tell the tale, not only following the massacre at Culloden but also in the vicious wave that followed as the redcoats had swept through the Highlands, slaying anyone who dared stand in their path. However, the deaths had been just the beginning for the Gunns.
Because the king hadn’t just seen fit to order the slaughter of some of their best soldiers. He’d also forbidden them from distilling—the one way that the Gunns, with their limited farmland, had earned their coin for centuries. Losing that income had been a death blow for the clan.
So, Ciaran’s father, in his infinite wisdom, had played dutiful servant to the Crown right up until the king’s back was turned, and then had promptly done whatever he wanted. And it had worked, had kept the clan alive.
Right up until bloody Finlay Gordon had learned about the duplicity.
Because all it would take was one word from Gordon, and the king’s attention would promptly return to Clan Gunn. And George II was not known for his tender mercies.
The clan wouldn’t survive. They’d be obliterated, like so many other clans before them had been.
Which meant that Ciaran was stuck, caught between his duty to his people and his sense of honor.
But no matter how much he resisted the utter dishonor that was not fighting Gordon with everything in him…
His people came first. They had to come first.
