“I never took you for a flatterer.”
“I’m not. Just honest. And you missed something off your list. Stubborn. Why else would we be riding to a place in the middle of nowhere despite my protests?”
Rose laughed. “Oh, definitely stubborn. It’s a family trait.”
A small smile quirked the corners of his mouth. “Damn it,” he said dryly. “Twostubborn women in my life. Managing one is hard enough. Have ye met my daughter, Catriona?”
Rose sucked her teeth. “Well, they say the apple never falls far from the tree. I wonder where she gets her stubbornness from?”
“Not from me, that’s for sure.”
“Oh?” Rose raised her eyebrows. “So you’re blaming her mother then?”
It was the wrong thing to say. The moment the words were out of her mouth, she knew it. Cailean’s expression, which had been relaxed and open, suddenly closed.
“Time is getting on,” he said. “Come, let’s pick up the pace.”
He nudged his horse into a trot, and Rose cursed herself inwardly. Why had she said that? Why had she brought up Cailean’s wife?
Idiot, she chided herself.Think before you speak!
They rode in silence, Cailean a glowering presence ahead of her, and he kept the pace such that it precluded any further conversation. Rose bumped along behind him, trying to remember her riding lessonsand find the rhythm of her mount. She wasn’t very successful. Snip might be a docile mount, but she still had a backbone like a saw and it felt like it was trying to snap Rose in half. Oh yes, she was definitely going to ache in the morning.
She could have cried with relief when they rounded a headland a long time later and Cailean announced that they’d arrived. He pulled his mount to a halt, and Rose let out a long, grateful breath.
“Remind me to strap some cushions to the saddle the next time we go riding,” she muttered, leaning forward so she could rub her backside. “Or better yet, knock me on the head and wake me up when we get there.”
Cailean glanced in her direction. “I dinna have such a death wish that I would ever knock a MacFinnan spellweaver on the head.” He nodded at the scene in front of them. “But at least yer backside can rest now for a bit. This is North Cove.”
Rose looked out. Ahead of them lay a wide horseshoe bay. A beach of sand so pale as to be almost white sloped down to the water’s edge, and she could see layers of flotsam lying along the tide line, washed up at high tide. From this distance, she couldn’t make out what the flotsam was. But she could smell it.
Rotting fish.
She pressed her sleeve across her mouth and nose. “Ugh. Lovely. Well? Shall we go and have a look?”
Cailean swung his leg over his horse’s back and jumped down. He landed lightly for such a big man, and he turned in a slow circle, taking in the view from all angles before he answered her.
“Aye. There’s nobody else here. It seems safe enough.”
Rose wasn’t sure what sort of danger he was expecting. Leaning forward and clinging to the saddle horn, she managed to swing her leg over the horse’s back and slide ungracefully to the ground. Her knees buckled as her feet hit the sand, and she would have fallen had she not been clinging onto Snip.
“Are ye all right, lass?” Cailean asked.
She waved away his concern. “Fine. Fine. Nothing a Swedish massage and a few gin and tonics wouldn’t mend.”
He gave her a bemused look but didn’t comment. From here, a series of sand dunes led down to the beach. Waves lapped at the shore with their incessant sigh and moan, and the wind was stronger, whipping her hair out behind her and filling her nostrils with the dead fish smell.
She put her sleeve over her mouth again and followed Cailean down the dunes and onto the beach. Just as she’d expected, the flotsam scattered along the tide line turned out to be dead fish.
They were everywhere, in all shapes and sizes. They formed a wide line almost the entire length of the beach, marking the extent that the water reached at high tide. Rose spotted more of them bobbing in the water, their silver bellies flashing in the sun.
Cailean’s expression was troubled as he took in the scene. “I dinna like this,” he muttered.
Rose was inclined to agree. Something didn’t feel right, and it wasn’t just the dead fish and the smell. Something felt… wrong. Unnatural. She studied the beach in both directions, trying to put her finger on what was bothering her.
And then it hit her.
“Where are all the scavengers?” she asked, turning to look at Cailean. “Where are all the gulls and crows and goodness knows what else that should be here feeding on all this? It’s a feast too good to miss, but there isn’t a single one. No creature would ignore a glut like this unless…”
