“Where is he?” she asked Reagan.
“Now? I just saw him headed toward the armory.”
The armory? A harper?
“I maun go,” she said distractedly. She had to run Finlay to ground. Reassure herself that he would be here as long as she needed him.
And how selfish was that? Was that what she had become in her determination to direct her own life? Selfish?
“Katrin.” Reagan seized her arm. He touched her so seldom, save when they were at practice, that it made her narrow her eyes at him. “Did the harper not persuade ye to stay back from the mustering?”
“Is that what ye thought he meant to do?”
“Let us say I still had some hope.”
She lifted her head. “Finlay knows me for a woman who possesses a mind o’ her own. That is no’ likely to change.”
Reagan let go of her and gave a careless shrug. “Mayhap that is why he is planning to leave. Not much reason for him to stay here, with ye gone.”
And why should a man not stay and wait for a woman? How many women, over the scores upon scores of years, had done just that?
She glared at him. “No call for ye to speculate over the harper’s decisions.”
“Nay, none at all. I just thought it odd, and supposed ye would want to know.”
So she did, and mayhap she should thank him.
Instead, she ran from the room, out of the keep proper and down the stone stairs to the bailey. When had it become so late in the afternoon? The light had already begun to fade, and if she was to be with Finlay this night, they needed to get the matter settled.
The bailey, overflowing with Gallowglass warriors and Da’s men at practice, hindered her progress. She kept trying to see past heads and shoulders for a dark-red mane of hair or the edges of a green cloak. Men there were out here in plenty. None that was the harper.
Katrin went suddenly breathless, as if a weight had descended upon her. As if a number of heavy clouds weighted by grief had come down. What if she could not find him? What if he had already gone? Off across the hills and glens. Away from her.
He would not do so, not without telling her. Not after last night.
She ducked around the side of the keep and headed for the armory.
*
Finlay could notthink of a good excuse for a bard to go seeking a sword.
The bailey was overflowing with men. Many of those who would be required to march out at their chief’s command seemed to have flooded in, perhaps from outlying places, perhaps to get their orders and weapons. Some had brought their women, or probably more accurately their women had come along, eager to learn how risky this venture would be. Women worried for their men, as ever. Just as men worried for their women.
It was, as he had learned over the many, many years, one of the prices of love.
He had been shaken to his core by what passed between him and Katrin last night. Holding her in his arms again, tasting her sweetness, claiming her for his own just as in the long-ago. But he did not fool himself—she was not yet his own, at least not in this life. Succumbing to passion did not mean she remembered all they had been to one another. All they were.
He stood for a while outside the crowded armory, lurking in a manner unbefitting a bard. No one paid much attention to him, not even Chief MacMurtray, who was very much in evidence, talking to his clansmen and lending any who wanted it a patient ear. A good chief, was Anders MacMurtray, and worthy of his name.
The chief of his guard, Robran, seemed to be in charge of passing out weapons. Quite evidently, there were not enough to go around. Men were showing up with implements of their own, everything from hoes to scythes, and many did not seem to want to trade them for more traditional arms. Perhaps the tools with which they were familiar felt more comfortable in their hands, and no question a scythecould make a formidable weapon.
But against a mounted English knight, if that was what King David’s army would ultimately face?
Finlay might argue that far less than these others did he warrant a sword in his hand. But if Katrin thought he would let her march off without him, she was very much mistaken.
“Here ye be! Och, I ha’ been all over the place, high and low, looking for ye.”
He whirled to find Katrin behind him, looking harried and clearly out of breath. Finlay suffered an immediate flashback to last night, and the sight of her sinking to her knees in front of him. The glorious sensations that had come after.
