“A lady!” Brodie snorted to their right. “Why, Maggie is as much a hellion as her Devil brother.”
Jamie’s expression grew serious instantly. He gave his mount’s flanks a hard kick that delivered him directly in front of Brodie. “I take offense to that! She is as innocent as a newly born lamb.”
Brodie merely looked heavenward, and then at Kate. “The wee hellion’s protector. Some think she’s a bit simple, what wi’ all them years o’ pain, but I tell ye, cross her and she’s got a tongue as sharp as m’ blade.”
“Off yer horse!” Kate heard Jamie’s demand and Brodie’s subsequent laughter as she turned to follow Callum when he passed her.
The laird had cantered to the top of the low summit and was looking out over the landscape when Kate reached him. She came up slowly, mesmerized by the perfect image of some battle-hardened king of old returning home to his kingdom.
“Your sister has a champion.”
Callum smiled, bemused by her fanciful notions and determined to rid her of them as he turned to look over his shoulder at Jamie. “’Tis his duty to guard her, nothing more.”
Och, but was he so consumed with one thing that he failed to see something as large as one of his men in love with his sister? Or could he simply no longer recognize love at all?
“Does my uncle know where your home is?” she asked as they climbed the next pass.
“We dinna hide. If Argyll wants to find me, ’tis easy enough.”
“And you hope that he will. Because of me.” When he nodded, she drew out a wistful sigh. “Pity, it would be enjoyable here without him.” She cocked her brow at him when he cast her a bewildered look. “What?”
“Ye possess a way about ye that makes significant things seem . . . no’ important at all.”
“You mean our names?” She dismissed his impression of her with a shrug. “They are only as important as others make them. I refuse to waste another moment being afraid of the consequences of associating with you. You will find that I don’t frighten easily.”
Beside her, Callum smiled, already knowing her declaration to be true.
“Take you, for instance. My uncle tried desperately to make me fear the terrible Devil MacGregor, but I barely spared you a thought.”
“No’ a thought?” He flashed her a winsome grin that made her senses reel. Nothing she had seen thus far matched its beauty.
“Barely one.” She did her best to keep her composure and offered him a teasing smile of her own. “Of course, I did not know it was you at the time.”
“And now that ye know me, d’ye find me worthy of more than a passin’ thought?”
She blushed, hating herself for doing it. “I think of you from time to time, I admit.”
His grin softened into a smile so intimate, so shockingly sensual her mouth went dry. She licked her lips to keep them from sticking together. His eyes followed the path of her tongue. His expression darkened with desire. He wanted to kiss her, and she wanted him to. Dear God, she knew she would go willingly to him if he but spoke the request, hanging be damned! She wanted to taste his mouth, his breath. She wanted to be in his arms again, to feel his hardness against her breasts, his skillful hands holding her, exploring her, caressing her while he told her . . .
“Are there many people in Camlochlin?” she asked, forcing from her mind the foolish notion that he would ever care for her.
“There are enough.” He watched her guide her horse up another steep incline, making certain her mount did not slip. “There are more of us in Rannoch.”
But Kate did not hear him. From the top, her gaze spread over the breathtaking panorama of a world set apart from the rest. Black mountain ranges, their jagged peaks swathed in silver mist, cut across an endless horizon as if painted there by a mad artist bent on intimidating visitors. She could have been looking at the sacred isle of Arthur Pendragon’s burial place, for Skye appeared timeless, ancient, untouched.
“It is Heaven,” she spoke on a shallow breath, not wanting to move from her spot, wanting never to leave this place.
“Nae, but ’tis as close as I’ll ever come to it.”
She turned to him, disquiet marring her brow. “Can you not forget what haunts you, even here?”
He shook his head and continued onward. “’Tis here where I remember.”
They traveled for the rest of the day in silence, save for Angus’s gravelly voice filling the braes with old Highland ballads and Brodie’s intermittent groaning.
As they passed through the small village of Torrin, the black mountain range—or the Cuillins, as Jamie had called them—loomed closer in the distance, a force of nature as harsh and unyielding as the warrior chieftain riding toward them. They skirted round Loch Slapin and followed a path that brought them directly below the mountain brae.
Kate doubted any view could be more splendid than the one she had seen at Glen Arroch. But she was wrong. The road they traveled rose above a sun-dappled loch toward the honeycombed cliffs of Elgol. Every step was more treacherous than the one before it, but the view alone was worth every heart-stopping turn. Following closely behind Callum, they winded around another curve, at whose edge Kate was forced to stop. She was certain they had arrived at the end of the world or the beginning of time, for the brutal grandeur that unfolded before her stilled her breath. The entire horizon was a chiseled masterpiece of jagged, shadowy mountaintops and white, swirling mist. Her heart wrenched at the intense loneliness of such a savage landscape. Who could survive here, and who could survive without it once they had seen it?
