“Bennett.” Torin explained to him what he had inadvertently realized tonight. “Braya—Miss Hetherington agrees.”
Adams nodded. “It makes sense that he would want to keep the Hetheringtons under control, especially after all that has happened. How do we prove it?”
Torin didn’t care about proving it. Bennett, the defender, would be on his knees soon enough. “We?”
“Aye,” Adams challenged. “We. I have not trusted him for many years.”
“Then why work for him?” Torin asked in a low, gravelly voice.
“’Twas either this or become a reiver like the rest of my family,” Adams answered.
Torin turned to set his eyes on him in the dim light. “What do you mean? Are you a Hetherington?”
“My mother was a Hetherington,” Adams told him. “My father is a Forster. Bennett does not allow reivers to become guards so I changed my name, left my family, and came here many years ago.”
Adams’ family were reivers. That explained why he helped them. Why they considered each other friends, and why Adams had felt slighted by their attack.
Still, Torin would not be tempted to trust him with too much.
“You said Braya saved your life. What did she do?”
“She convinced me to forgive myself for something I did once.”
Torin smiled. “And that saved your life?”
“Aye. What I did was quite terrible. I was ready to end my life over the guilt of it.”
“Aye, I understand guilt,” Torin agreed quietly.
They sat for a little while without speaking. That was fine with Torin.
“I’m half-Scot,” Adams finally said, and then smiled at Torin’s look of stunned disbelief. “My father, the Forster, is a Scot.”
“Does Rowley know that?”
“He does,” Adams laughed. “’Tis only Scot soldiers he hates.”
Torin nodded. “Aye, I had forgotten.”
What would Adams do if Torin told him the truth? He could use an ally on this side of the wall. The Scots weren’t coming to harm the reivers. Mayhap he could help keep the Hetheringtons from fighting. “You have an interesting story, Adams.”
“What about you, Gray? You said you hail from Bamburgh, aye?”
Torin thought about telling him the truth. He was a Scot. He was here to take down the stronghold. Either Adams joined him or he died. “Aye. Bamburgh.”
“What of your family?”
Torin was prepared for these questions. He had to be. He had to have a past, else people wouldn’t trust him and would turn on him. He didn’t want to tell his own, so he had many made up and ready to tell. “My father was a blacksmith.” He lifted his fingers and drew them faintly over the moth brooch pinned to his léine beneath his mantle. “My mother was as good as any mother, I would imagine.”
“Oh?” the older—and proving to be wiser—man put to him. “Was she taken from you at a young age?”
Torin nodded his head. He hadn’t mentioned anything about her dying, had he? “Aye, she was,” he said, before he could stop himself. “As was everyone in my family, all taken from me in a moment.”
“Oh, hell, Gray, my apologies.” Adams’ stricken voice echoed through the trees, across the water. “I had no idea.”
“No apologies are necessary,” Torin assured him quietly, glad that they were done speaking of it.
“How did it happen?”
