She breathed deeply, gathering courage for her next question.
“Could I travel with you?” She saw her question took Erskine by surprise. His dark eyebrows shot up, almost disappearing beneath the dark red hair that hung about his forehead.
“I beg yer pardon?” Dearg’s voice interrupted before Erskine could answer.
Laura turned her eyes to Dearg. The amiable expression he had worn before had vanished and was replaced by one of disdain.
“I daenae see why nae,” Erskine replied, drawing Laura’s gaze back to him.
“What? Nay!” Dearg rounded the table and reached Erskine’s side again. “Ye cannae be serious, brother?”
“Why nae? Billie is headin’ to Inverness, and we are passin’ straight through it. What is the harm?” Erskine’s logical words only appeared to rattle his brother further.
Laura held onto her hope for a minute, with her eyes darting quickly between the brothers.
“Can I speak to ye alone?” Dearg asked politely though his hand went for Erskine’s arm, pulling him to his feet urgently.
“Aye, ye can,” Erskine said as he tore his arm away from Dearg’s grasp and led a path away through the busy tables of the inn.
Laura looked back to Tam with a questioning expression.
“Aye, I ken what ye are thinkin’,” Tam smiled, gesturing after the two of them. “They are brothers. They will always find somethin’ to argue about. Nay matter how trivial.”
“Only one of them inevitably wins, though,” Aiden collected the empty tankards from the table.
“Which one is that?” Laura asked, with her gaze following the path the brothers had taken.
“Erskine, of course,” Tam replied, pulling her gaze back to him. “He is the heir to the Lairdship. He has seniority over his brother.”
He is the heir!
Laura screwed up her hands in the cloth of her breeches. Her old nervous habit was not so easy to do with the little material available on the breeches. It had been much easier with a voluptuous skirt.
No good can come from being attracted to the heir of a Scottish lairdship!
Yet she was attracted anyway, and her eyes sought out the brothers’ position across the room, seeing them talking together with tension and obvious irritation.
* * *
“I daenae understand ye,” Erskine shook his head at his brother. “He is just a lad; look at him!” His voice was sharp as he gestured across the room toward Billie. The boy was staring at them across the space. “What possible harm could ye expect him capable of?”
“I daenae ken,” Dearg matched his sharp voice. “Perhaps there is nothin’ suspicious about him, but it is a long journey home, and that lad is dead weight.”
“Dead weight?” Erskine repeated the words with disgust.
“It is fine to meet such a lad and drink with him for a night, but to take on a long journey? Nay, it is a poor idea. Look at the men we travel with, look at us,” Dearg pointed between them. “We are all trained, Highland soldiers. The roads are full of highwaymen and thieves. We never take anyone with us on the journey who cannae defend themselves.Welook afterourselves.With that boy taggin’ along, he cannae look after himself; it would be up to us.”
“How is that a bad thing, hmm?” Erskine was growing more and more infuriated. “It is our responsibility to look out for our faither’s people in our clan, to look after people who need such care —”
“Well, we are nae in our clan now, are we? We are in London! And I daenae trust the lad…he’s still a stranger to us,” Dearg looked around them in the tavern, emphasizing his point. “Let the English look after their own.”
“Billie wants to go to Scotland to see family. Inourclan,” Erskine saw his words took the wind out of Dearg’s argument, but still his brother did not appear happy with this resolution. “So what if he cannae defend himself well? That is nae a bad thing against him. It merely means we should be lookin’ out for him.”
Erskine looked back to Billie across the room. The boy being so slight in stature reminded him of someone they had lost from their lives. He and Dearg had once had a little brother, someone who was equally delicate. That boy had been sickly, and when he had fallen ill, he had not had enough strength to fight the sickness.
“Does he nae remind ye of someone, Dearg?” Erskine asked, lowering his voice and gesturing across the room. Dearg’s eyes widened in realization.
“That boy is nae our brother, Erskine.”
