He was insisting she write to Sir Alexander, she thought, a flutter in her heart. She left the room, and unable to help herself, she paused in the hall. She didn’t intend to spy, but she knew they meant to discuss her, and she wanted to know what they were saying.
“Perhaps it is time to make amends, Godfrey. Fighting with Alana doesn’t help you, your father or any of us. It does not help Brodie. Not in a time of war,” Eleanor said.
“Tell her that!” he exclaimed. “She played me for a fool—she humiliated me in front of the earl and my father.”
“She is truly sorry. Surely you can see that.”
“I don’t trust her,” he said flatly. “And, Eleanor? She enjoys lying to me.”
Eleanor sighed. “But you treat her shamefully—as you know. You bully her constantly. I think it wise to end the bickering. I intend to tell Alana as much.”
There was silence. Alana turned around and walked back to the threshold of the room.
Godfrey looked at her. “She would love to see me stabbed in the back, because she thinks that one day, she can claim Brodie as her own.”
Eleanor did not see Alana, who stood facing her back. “You are wrong. Alana wishes ill will on no one.”
Alana hardly wished for Godfrey to be stabbed in the back, but she did yearn for his downfall, because she coveted Brodie.
“Then she will have to prove it—with a good vision. And she will pay dearly if she deceives us another time.” Godfrey faced Eleanor and smiled. “Mostly, I am hoping she is as loyal to Brodie as she claims.”
Alana had heard enough. She picked up the hem of her skirts and rushed away. Eleanor was brokering a truce. Her grandmother was right: this was no time for petty differences, ancient grudges and old grievances.
She went up to the chamber she shared with Eleanor and sat down at the small table between the beds. Sir Alexander’s handsome, golden image came to her mind’s eye, his features blurred and indistinct. The parchment and ink had yet to arrive, and she tried to think of what she would say to her father, when she hadn’t seen him in fifteen years.
A shudder racked her. Pain bubbled up in her chest.
Sir Alexander’s image was followed by Iain’s dark one.
Nairn was rubble now.
She wiped tears from her eyes. Crying would not solve anything—it would not change Iain into a different man.
She could not believe that, a few hours ago, she had been deliriously happy—she had even thought herself in love. Now she did not know what to think. Could she love a man who burned down farms and villages upon command?
Her heart hurt terribly, but it refused to tell her that she did not love Iain of Islay. And for one brief moment, she allowed herself to think about the night they had spent together.
More tears arose. Alana finally closed her eyes, afraid that she was in love with a ruthless warrior, one who had no honor, who did not think twice about destroying the lives of the innocent.
There was only one thing she was truly certain of—she was loyal to Brodie, and it must not suffer the same fate as Nairn.
“Mistress?” A soft voice spoke from the open doorway. “I have brought ye a quill, ink and parchment.”
Alana turned and smiled. “Thank you,” she said.
* * *
NEWSOFELGIN’Sattack came the next afternoon. It was snowing furiously when the messenger arrived.
Alana was mending a chemise, seated in a chair before the hearth. Eleanor sat beside her, embroidering. Godfrey was drinking wine at the table while throwing dice with one of his men, when one of his soldiers led a boy of fourteen or fifteen inside. Snow clung to his wool cloak and dusted his red hair.
Godfrey leaped to his feet, Alana ceased sewing, and Eleanor set her embroidery down. They all stared at the boy.
“What news do you have?” Godfrey cried.
“I come from Duncan, my lord. Elgin has been attacked and the Earl of Buchan is determined to defend it,” he said.
For a moment, a silence fell as they all continued to stare at him.
