He gave a bark of laughter. “Well, then. What possessed ye to take a very wee boat and the harper and go out for a row?”
“He is teaching me to play the harp.”
“Is he, then?”
“Aye, just as ye are teaching me at arms.”
“And that must be done out on the water?”
“Do no’ be a fool.”
“Och, what a blinding contrast between the harp and the sword! Me, I love irony.”
She smiled reluctantly. “Me too. But”—she fixed him with a challenging stare—“there is naught between me and ye, is there? Why should there be anything between me and the harper?”
“I shall tell ye, shall I?” Reagan twirled his sword in the air. “It is in the looks ye steal at him when ye think no one can see. And the stillness that comes to yer face when he plays.”
“Stillness?”
“Like—like ye be hearing something holy. Now, I will admit, the man has a rare talent, but, well, personally I have only ever put that sort o’ look on a woman’s face after I—”
“Pray, say no more.”’
“And so, what has Finlay giving ye lessons at the harp to do with ye taking him out in a wee boat?”
“I wanted to thank him by showing him somewhat of the settlement. ’Twas a treat.”
“A treat,” Reagan repeated. Then suddenly he guffawed. “I should call that by another name also!”
Och, men,Katrin thought in exasperation. An age-old cry. “He has never seen Murtray fro’ the sea.”
“D’ye say so? And can ye be certain? He is a wandering minstrel. He will have been all up and down these coasts by boat.”
“That is no’ the point.”
“Nay, it is not.” Reagan took a step closer to her and a wry smile twitched his mustaches. “I should rather say the point is, ye wanted to be alone wi’ him.”
Katrin lifted a brow, emulating him. “And this concerns ye—how?”
“Naught at all, mistress. Does he know ye fancy him?”
Katrin thought of that kiss, the one she had bestowed upon Finlay. He knew. He must.
“’Tis neither here nor there,” she told the Gallowglass. “Up wi’ your sword.”
She fought well that night. She would say even Reagan would admit so, for she caught him a few times very nearly off his guard. A great energy flowed through her, and her muscles hummed, her reflexes sang.
“Ye grow fearfully good,” Reagan noted when they parted. “Ye, Katrin MacMurtray, be a woman in a thousand.”
“I am certain there are women all over the Highlands willing to take up weapons to defend their families—and their land.”
“Aye, mistress, but not all are so terrible good at it.”
Chapter Twenty
Since the weatherremained fine the next day, Finlay carried his harp out to the gardens where he and Katrin often met for her lessons.Gardenswas a fairly inapt term for the place. The western coast of Scotland was not hospitable to much more than sturdy wildflowers. Even though a wall surrounded the place and trapped the sun, the season for flowers was short. But there was a kale yard and beds of herbs holding up their rangy heads and, of course, the rowans.
He felt a bit uneasy when he set up beneath one of the rowans within sight of the kitchen doorway. He’d been subject to dreams all last night. Or not so much dreams as snatches of scenes from the past, set on bedeviling him.
