He’d held her in his arms. Mayhap, he shouldn’t have, but he had. He had never wanted to let her go. He’d felt every inhalation of her breath against him. Her heart thumping, same as his. He wanted to relish seemingly winning her heart. Was that what he wanted? To win her heart? Mayhap. Mayhap he hadn’t known it was what he wanted until the notion of it felt so real.
Pushing Alison and his daughter out of his thoughts when they would have come to plague him was easier than he’d expected. As he neared Clunes with the real possibility of an end to the Cameron/MacKintosh feud in sight, and a bonnie lass waiting for him in his castle—a lass he wanted to kiss again, he finally felt a touch of peace within him.
That peace didn’t last long.
Signing the agreement between the clans in the witness of the Chattan Confederation went peaceably enough—if one didn’t count Ronald MacKintosh muttering an oath when Constantine dipped his quill into the inkwell and Geoffry muttering back that he was going to hack Ronald into pieces and feed him to the wild animals if he made another sound.
Constantine’s peace was still held firmly intact after he paid MacKintosh 25,000 merks and then drank to peace with his men in a tavern a half league from Gairlochy.
It ended with a patron who sat at a wooden table stained with rings from hundreds of cups. He wore a thick woolen plaid in shades of blue and green and a blue bonnet atop his oily yellow hair. The cup from which he drank contributed to the stained table when he set it down.
When they were done having a drink, Constantine and his cousins rose to leave. Following behind them, Constantine was the last one to reach the door.
“Tastes like piss,” the stranger complained, swipinghis knuckles across his thick lips. He looked at Constantine watching him from the door and chuckled, exposing a row of yellowed teeth. “There is nothing else aroond, so ’twill have to do, aye?”
Constantine turned away. He didn’t care who this stranger was. He preferred to let Miss Drummond flit around in his head over talking to a man with airs about him that reminded Constantine of a few Cromwellians who wished they hadn’t met Lochiel of Lochaber.
“Alistair MacRae,” the stranger introduced himself. “Clan Chief of the MacRaes of Beauly.”
Constantine set his hand on the door. MacRaes. He thought hard about whether the Camerons and MacRaes were enemies. He couldn’t recall any battles with them. He was sure he remembered hearing that the MacRaes were staunch supporters of the MacKenzies.
Constantine looked over his shoulder at him. If he didn’t need to kill or maim the man, there was nothing else to say to him, so without reciprocating the introduction, he pushed open the door to the tavern. He saw his cousins waiting for him outside.
“I’m stopping in every burgh, nae matter how small, to find her. Mayhap ye have seen her?”
Constantine halted his steps and returned his attention to him. “Who?”
“My betrothed.”
“Yer betrothed fled from ye?” Could this be…? Constantine took a step closer to him, his dark gaze locked onto the stranger.
The man’s lips grew tight belying the friendliness of his smile. “I didna say she fled, good friend.”
“I said nothin’ to give ye the impression that we are good friends,” Constantine countered with a warning thread in his tone.
“Ah,” the man laughed without any mirth. “Fergive me, ye surely didna say anything of the sort.”
“What aboot yer betrothed?” Constantine steered him back to the previous topic.
“Alas, my dear Ismay disappeared from her home and I fear she may have been abducted.”
Constantine’s world rocked back and forth. He put his fingers to his head as if that might still him. Was he moving? Did this bastard say Ismay? He was thecruelbetrothed from whom she’d fled. She was correct about him searching for her. He had come as close as Gairlochy?
“I’m heading back to Beauly, but I’m asking everyone I meet…so tell me, I beg ye, have ye mayhap seen her passing this way? She has hair the color of autumn leaves.”
Constantine thought he might be ill if he had to listen to this swine speak of her another instant. He had to get home to her. MacRae was close. Constantine had to reach her first.
“She has the face of a goddess,” the fool continued, taking his life into his own hands. “And the tongue of a viper.” Did he realize he was scowling while he spoke of her? “She’s bewitching and if a man is no’ careful he will find himself charmed beyond good reason.”
Constantine did his best to conceal his trembling muscles. “Is that what ye’re tellin’ everyone ye meet?” he asked him through his ground jaw. “That she is dangerous?”
“Och, she is,” MacRae insisted.
Constantine wanted to kill him for trying to force Ismay to marry him. But he didn’t have to kill him. The bastard was heading to his home in Beauly. Still, before Constantine leaped for MacRae’s throat, he stormed out of the tavern.
He needed to get back to the castle…back to Ismay Drummond.
Chapter Seventeen
