“Wait there. I’ll go atop the rise and search for somewhere safe to sleep.”
She didn’t answer, just laid her head on her crooked arm and, he guessed, fell asleep.
At the bottom of the hill, Iain glanced back. Abigail was a lump of brown on the brown grassy field. With her not moving, she looked like a clump of dead grass from a distance.
Voices rose up in the air behind the hill. Iain fell to his stomach and shimmied up the crest until he saw over the rise. Horses and a cart slowly rolled down the road.
Iain immediately recognized the MacDonald colors in the men’s kilts and the women’s shawls. The MacLarens and the MacDonalds had never been friendly, and while the last battle they’d fought raged in the fifteenth century, they would never become allies.
Iain squirmed down the hill and once he figured he was out of sight, he stood up and ran back to Abigail.
“Quickly, get up,” he said as he pulled on her arm to make her stand.
She groaned and tried to roll over. He placed his arms around her waist and yanked her up onto her feet.
“Wake up, lass.”
She stood there swaying in his arms, her eyes still shut. He shook her. “Wake up!”
Her eyes snapped open, though she stared as if not seeing. He gave her another shake. “Wake up.”
Recognition slowly came to her eyes. “Stop shaking me. I’m awake.” She brushed his hands off her. “What?”
“Hurry.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her along behind him, hoping the MacDonalds had not moved past.
She yanked her hand away. “I can walk myself.”
Iain shrugged and kept going.
“Where are we going, anyway?”
They were at the hill. “Be quiet and keep down.”
He dropped onto his hands and knees, and crawling up the rise, he turned to her and gave her an expression that said to do the same. She looked down at her mud-encrusted skirt, shook her head, and, bending low, followed him.
Once at the top, Iain fell onto his stomach again and waved her down. She flattened her body out beside him.
As the horses and wagon passed by, he swore in Gaelic. Surely these men fought side by side with him on the moor? With closer inspection, Iain dismissed that idea. These people were landsmen, not warriors.
Hoping he was doing the right thing, he stood up, ran to the road, and called out, “Stop.”
Three men turned their horses around and stopped. A small lad, a young man, and an older man. They might welcome another sword.
One with a wild blond mane said coldly, “Why might a MacLaren waylay us?”
Iain’s hopes fell. Some MacDonalds still harbored ill-will toward the MacLarens.
A curly brown-haired man moved his horse forward a step. His face was lined with age, but he held himself with strength. “Whit are ye doing here, MacLaren? Have ye misplaced yer clan?”
The fair-haired man laughed.
Iain ignored him and held the older man’s gaze. He indicated Abigail should move to his side. She did, andputting his arm around her shoulders, he pulled her close into his uninjured side. “This is ma wife. Our croft was burned, and we need help to reach the coast.”
The older man raised his brows. “The English are scouring all of Scotland for Jacobites. Might ye be one?”
Iain didn’t want to lie, but he had no way of knowing if the men were English loyalists. Although the Jacobite MacDonalds were on the battlefield fighting beside him and the other Jacobites, Iain wasn’t certain that all members of that clan thought the same. “Nay, we lost everything in the fire and need to return to family.”
The three men exchanged looks, and the older man leaned forward slightly. “We have naught to offer.”
