She was tempted to point out they might not welcome Eoin MacLean’s wife. “I’m not too tired. But it’s getting dark. If you keep pushing like this someone will get hurt—Eachanncould get hurt.”
He stiffened, and the other man—Ewen Lamont—turned to look at him. “Eachann?”
“My son,” she explained. “Ourson.”
Lamont muttered what she thought was a rather strong curse, and his gaze went to Eoin’s for confirmation.
Eoin’s mouth tightened. “She claims the lad with MacDowell is my son.”
Lamont gave a long, low whistle and shook his head, his expression seemingly one of sympathy for Eoin.
Margaret had to bite her tongue to keep from arguing about “claims.” “I know you want to catch my father, but if you keep pushing like this, my father will keep pushing, and Eachann is the one who will suffer. Have you thought of what this pace must be like for him?”
Eoin answered with a flex of his jaw that made a muscle start to tic. “What do you suggest we do? Let your father escape? If he makes it to the coast and a ship, we won’t have a chance of catching them before he reaches whatever heavily fortified castle he decides to hole up in. They can’t be more than mile or two ahead of us. We would have caught them by now had we not needed to avoid the parties of English soldiers your father sent after us. But there is no bloody way in hell I’ll stop now.”
Margaret couldn’t believe this brutal, uncompromising man was her husband. He was more like...
She grimaced. He was more like her father. “So you would put your son’s life at risk to prevent my father slipping through your fingers?”
Eoin kept a tight rein on his temper. He didn’t need to defend himself to her. “It isn’t me who has put his life at risk. It’s your father.” He looked to Lamont. “Come on. We’ve rested long enough.”
Eoin walked away. But just before Ewen Lamont went after him, she thought he glanced at her with a glimmer of sympathy.
“Yourson, Striker? Christ, why didn’t you tell me? I thought you took her with us for information.”
Eoin mounted his horse. “I did, and there wasn’t time.”
Lamont shot him a look as if he knew the explanation was shite—which it was. But finding out that he had a son—afive-year-old son—had thrown him in such a state of shock and confusion the only thing he’d been able to concentrate on had been the mission. Find MacDowell and then he’d try to come to terms with the knowledge of a son. He sure as hell hadn’t been ready to talk about it. He still wasn’t.
“The lass is right,” his partner said. “This could be dangerous for the lad.Ifhe is yours—”
“He’s mine,” Eoin said, cutting him off angrily.
Lamont lifted a brow. “You didn’t sound so certain a few minutes ago.”
Eoin grunted a nonanswer.
“More than one way to exact retribution, is that it?”
Eoin glared at him. “Do you blame me? You know as well as I what she did.”
His partner acknowledged the truth with a grim nod. “Aye. Although...”
Eoin’s gaze narrowed. “Although what?”
Lamont shrugged. “I don’t know. She’s just not what I expected.”
“She hides the snakes beneath the veil.”
Lamont ignored the sarcasm. “She can’t be much older than three and twenty.”
“She turned five and twenty last June.”
“She appears to genuinely care about the lad. And I saw her face when she saw you at the church. She didn’t look like someone who had sent you happily to your death.”
Eoin’s mouth drew in a hard line. “Yet that is exactly what she did.”
Lamont eyed him carefully. “You also didn’t mention that she is rather... attractive.”
