“Well?” his best friend and fellow soldier, Sam, asked as he sat down next to him on the bench. “What is she like?”
The first word to come to mind? “Gracious.”
“Aye?” James entered the conversation.
“As gracious as ye are an arse,” Adam said.
Joseph laughed. “A wild boar’s wart-ridden arse.”
James threw a turnip at his twin brother. “Why isna she here eating? At the high table?”
Adam frowned. He had hoped to change his father’s mind about the girl. That’s why he had withheld most information from his closest friends. “I am no’ supposed to discuss it.”
All three gazed at him in silence, then chuckled.
“That has never kept ye from telling us anything. We are a team—we share our burdens,” Sam reminded Adam, though sarcastically. Kali was a burden any man would gladly take on.
“Aye. I willna deny that. But…”
“Ye are fond of the lass already,” Sam said, arching a brow suggestively.
“In awe. She is calm in the face of controversy and a stalwart sister.”
“What controversy?” James asked as he shoved an oversized piece of bread in his mouth and chewed like a coo.
“Ye already know about her sire—how he left the Highlands in shame under threat of death.”
“Aye,” they said in unison.
“The poor lass has been accused of witchcraft by her father and sent here as punishment.”
“A witch?” Sam shook his head. “That lass is an angel, no’ a conjurer.”
“Ye mustn’t mention her beyond the four of us,” Adam warned. “The laird wishes to protect the clan from herdarkarts. Isolate her—punish her for sins I am sure she has no’ committed.”
“Anyone with eyes in their head saw us arrive from the village,” Joseph said.
“Aye, but they dinna know the nature of her business with the MacKays.”
Sam rubbed his chin. The man had been trying to grow enough facial hair to call it a beard for three months now. In Adam’s opinion, it looked like he had a dirty face, nothing more. It made him smile.
“Whyever are ye simpering at me, Adam?” Sam tousled Adam’s hair.
“The thing on yer face ye call a beard. It makes me lose my appetite.”
The others pointed and laughed at Sam, too.
“Go and shave, lad!” James said, throwing him a square of linen. “Or dip this in your ale and wipe yer maw clean.”
A maid brought over a platter of blackened mutton, and Adam chose a large piece to put on his trencher. He breathed in the aroma of the broiled meat, the MacKay gold that kept his clan fed and clothed throughout the long winter months.
“My father has ordered her to stay in the old tower during the day, with only one maid to keep her company.”
“Damn,” Sam said. “The old laird is losing his mind. Reminds me of the way he’s been treating the orphans and the old healer.”
“Aye.” Adam dropped his knife on the table. ’Twas truth. If his sire could withhold food from poor children—orphans, no less, then why should Adam expect anything different for Kali? “It isna proper,” Adam grumbled. “She’s nearly family.”
“She’s no’ MacKay,” James said. “But a Bane. And as for the orphans, I’d no’ worry too much about those wee rascals. They have friends aplenty among us.”
