“What’s that, my lady?” Ewan asked, not quite able to summon enough politeness to hide the weariness in his tone.
Kirsty beamed at the laird, either unaware of his mood or unbothered by it.
“Ye started a new production today,” she chirped. “And when ye start a new batch of whisky, yemustdrink to your success. If ye fail to do so, you willnae find that the drink comes out smooth. Come along, then,” she chided, raising her cup and waving it around until some others began to cautiously copy her. “Raise a glass. Come on.”
They all murmured a toast. Ciaran even heard a couple of amused chuckles when Kirsty made a show of throwing back her entire glass.
“Ach, that’s more like it,” she said, putting her cup down with an audible clink, like she was a feudal lord of old. “Why, I remember the revels we used to have when the Gunns turned out a good batch of our whisky. The men would spar and they’d be quite brave about it after they’d had a few drams in them, so it would be quite a show. I remember the young ladies betting wee tokens—hair ribbons, sweet meats, whatever we had on hand—that the lads that we each fancied would come out on top.” Kirsty shot an outrageous wink at Vaila McGregor. “And I’m nae ashamed to say that when it was my sweetheart—well, whoeverI liked best at the time; I confess to a fickle heart—who came out on top, I would reward him with a tender favor.”
She pursed her lips in a sketch of a kiss, making it impossible not to understand what kind oftender favorshe meant.
Vaila shook her head, laughing slightly.
“Incorrigible,” she commented, the word sounding like praise.
Kirsty took it as such. “Why thank ye, Mistress McGregor. I was quite a bonny wee thing in my day, and we would all dance until dawn, until we could scarcely feel our feet from all the stomping and twirling about.”
“You’re still bonny!” This came from a man on the side of the room who had to have been eighty if he was a day. A ruddy-faced woman who looked to be his daughter swatted at him while everyone around him laughed.
Kirsty blew a kiss in his direction this time.
“And don’t ye forget it!” she commanded pertly.
The atmosphere in the room was noticeably lighter, and Ciaran paused to reflect on why he loved his aunt, even when she spent most of her time driving him mad. Kirsty might be frequently absurd, an inveterate flirt, and a shameless matchmaker. But she did know how to make people smile.
Hell, even he was tempted by the memories of the scenes she described. He could recall being a wee lad himself, holding his father’s sword. He hadn’t even been able to lift the thing at the time, but his father had perched Ciaran on his knee and helped him hold the blade while he’d explained to his son all the strategies that the sparring men were using.
He’d whisper advice in Ciaran’s ear,“This man ought to have done this; och, that will cost him the battle, don’t you see,mo graidh?”
Ciaran had hung onto his father’s every word, certain that there was no fiercer warrior in the world than Laird Gunn, beaming with pride that he was this man’s son.
“Did ye compete, Ciaran?” Mairi Buchanan’s question drew him out of his reverie, and he saw the woman leaning eagerly towards him, her eyes alight.
Kirsty, seated several people away from Mairi, gave Ciaran a suggestive—and completely obvious—eyebrow waggle, but somehow Ciaran gathered that Mairi was more interested in the story in general than she was intrigued by him in particular.
“Nay,” he said, shaking his head. “The times that my aunt recalls, I was too young to compete myself, though I can remember watching from my father’s side.”
And by the time he was old enough to play at battle, he had been shipped off to war to shed blood for his clan’s honor, not that he’d been terribly successful.
Mairi seemed unwilling to let his silence linger, though.
“But surely ye have some grand tales to tell,” she prodded. “Ye arenae famed for nothing. Please. Regale us.”
He almost refused, but some foolish pride that still lingered within him urged him to speak. He wanted them—wanted Eilidh, even though he still did not dare so much as look at her—to know that he was capable. Or that he had been, once.
“I warn ye,” he began, all too aware of the many ears hanging on his every word. “It isnae the kind of tale that reminds ye of the pride of Scotland. We were honorable men, those of us who took up arms against the tyranny of the English, but our work was inglorious more often than not.”
He shook his head, the memories coming back to him as they always did—in crushing waves that made him feel as though he might blink and realize that every moment of the years since he’d marched with the Jacobites was no more than a dream,that he was actually still there, broadsword clenched in his hand, facing down what was likely certain death.
Facing down the British army, whichhadbrought death to so many of the men he’d called friends and comrades.
“We saw near every patch of mud in Scotland as we marched to face the English,” he said. He could almost smell it, that damp, earthy smell that wasn’t unpleasant until you considered that it clung to everything. “I recall the marches more than the battles, in truth. The battles were fast, brutal. Ye fought and ye survived, or ye fought and ye died. That was all there was to it. But the marches were bloody eternal.”
Nobody spoke when he paused. Nobody so much as breathed.
“We were proud, we men of the Black Watch,” he said. “We knew we were likely to die. Most of us did die. But webelieved, and that… it was no small thing.”
This time, when he found himself unable to summon more words to describe it, that strange and meaningful time in his life, Ewan offered his piece.
