Selene glanced over at Callum, her brows drawn in an anxious frown.
“I take it there was nothing from the Isle of Raasay?”
He shook his head. “Nay, milady. The sea is still too rough fer any messenger. And there are more storms tae come.”
Kenneth sucked in a deep breath unsure whether to be relieved there was no letter from Halvard. Still nothing to verify Selene’s identity. Only storms piling on storms.
And somewhere out there, if his suspicious were correct, Aidan continued moving pieces on the board.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Aidan’s Camp.
Not far from Duntulm…
The encampment was quiet, save for the crackle of low-burning fires and the restless shifting of horses tied beneath the dripping pines. The rain hadn’t stopped for days, turning the ground into black sucking mud. But Aidan barely noticed the cold seeping through his boots. The heat of his unabated hatred kept him warm.
He paced the narrow stretch between the fire and the shadowed trees, his boots squelching in the mud, his hands clenched so tightly that his fingernails cut half-moons into his palms.
Only half his plan had succeeded. His men had, as planned, stopped Halvard’s men from reaching Duntulm Castle. Without the letter that was meant for Laird Kenneth, the ongoing enmity between Halvard and Kenneth would continue unabated, justas he wished. But what an unholy debacle his entire plan had turned out to be.
Instead of his men leaving nothing behind but corpses and then melting into the mist, Kenneth had appeared, seemingly out of nowhere and put paid to Aidan’s plan. Instead of his crew leaving Halvard to place the blame on Kenneth for the death of his men, his own crew been slaughtered. Even worse, the lass had somehow slipped through his clutches and been taken to the castle at Duntulm.
Selene.
A soft English ornament who had no business in Highland affairs, who should have been intercepted, delayed, or, preferably,removedlong before reaching Kenneth’s cursed lands. Her death would have been the very thing to stir up trouble between Kenneth and Halvard. Yet here she was, alive and apparently thriving under the protection of the one man Aidan wanted—more than anything—to see broken.
The thought curdled in his throat like bile.
“She was sighted,” one of his men said as he approached, rubbing rain from his beard. “In the village to the west. She helped with the flood.” His tone suggested disbelief – as if English ladies weren’t meant to smear themselves in mud and muck like the rest of the world. “Looked right at home, they said.”
Aidan stopped pacing. “Athome?”
The man hesitated. “Well… they said she didnae appear afraid. Or bothered. And she rode with him. Shared his saddle.” A pause. “It seems she is close tae Kenneth.”
The fire popped sharply. Aidan’s skin prickled with heat and cold all at once.
“And?” he said, although he was already tasting poison.
“And they stayed together in the night. He kept her close in a tumbledown ruin of a cottage.” Another nervous pause. “They seemed…cozy.”
Cozy.
Aidan would have laughed if he was used to laughter. Instead, he wheezed like a trapped rat.
So, the English girl, with her soft voice and softer face, had nestled under Kenneth’s wing. Fate, it seemed, had a delightful sense of cruelty.
He stared past the fire toward the direction of the distant castle. From where he sat it was barely a shadow in the rain-soaked darkness. It was close enough. He’d chosen this place to set his camp for its vantage point, for the ability to watch the comings and goings on his enemy’s land. He hadn’t expected the sight ofherriding in days ago to twist his gut like a hook.
“She shouldnae have reached him,” he said quietly.
The man shifted. The heat rising from Aidan was far more dangerous than the flames. “We did what we could, me laird.”
“Clearly that wasnae sufficient tae meet me commands,” Aidan snapped, though his voice stayed low and menacing. Measured. “She was meant tae be a message. A complication. Halvard’s little English trinket, his sister-in-law. She was nothing and nobody.”
But Eilidh hadn’t beennothing.
She had not been a complication.
