Magdalene heard Euna’s startled gasp even as she realized here, too, she had never once uttered the woman’s name before—or a full sentence to Euna, for that matter.
“No, no, I’ll not try tae stop you, Lady,” Euna murmured, still looking so stunned that Magdalene went back to digging through the armoire. “The laird told me you’re tae have free run of the castle…no more bolted doors, no more confining you tae your room—”
“Then help me, please! Has he gone tae the bailey?”
“The stables, Lady. A rider has come and it canna be good news from the commotion it started, the laird calling out for his men tae join him as he set off at a run—”
“A run?” Her heart in her throat, Magdalene already knew she was too late. She took only an instant to pull a linen shift over her head before she ran to the window, wishing she could knock out the glass to shout to Gabriel.
Already he had mounted his silvery gray stallion, the massive creature snorting and rearing on its hind legs as other men ran to the stables—Cameron and Conall, Alun and Finlay.
His loyal captains, and why wouldn’t they be with a laird as commanding and honorable as Gabriel? How she had misjudged him!
A servant ran forward with a breacan in hues of blue and brown. Gabriel caught it up and wound the garment around him as men joined him, the bailey soon filled with mounted warriors atop their prancing steeds.
A formidable force, they rode out the castle gates with Gabriel at their lead, Magdalene pressing her splayed hand to the glass.
Chapter 16
“So you say Robert the Bruce and his men came through this way?”
“Aye, Laird,” the red-haired youth answered swiftly to Gabriel’s query, bobbing his head and pointing to the craggy path that wound northward through a mountain pass. “It was nearly dark last night and I’d just bedded down the sheep. I heard their voices before I saw them—two hundred at least, most running and a few on horseback. I’ve never seen King Robert, but one of his men addressed him as such. God help me, I pissed myself as I ran and hid behind the rocks.”
“They would have known you were there,” Gabriel murmured more to himself than his young kinsman, whose freckled face had blanched white in the retelling. “Probably saw you long before you saw them and decided to spare you.”
“Och, Laird, do you think so?” The youth gulped, his Adam’s apple bobbing, while Finlay gave him a reassuring squeeze to his shoulder with a massive hand.
“You did well, lad, tae alert us as soon as it was light enough tae ride your pony down the mountain.”
“Aye, but I wish it had been sooner! By the time they were gone, I couldna see my hand in front of my face, it had grown so dark, and I didna dare make a peep. A good thing, too. A short while later, hundreds more men came after, with some carrying torches tae light the way—”
“So it’s finally begun, Gabriel,” Finlay cut him off, his expression somber. “Robert the Bruce and his forces amassing in Argyll—bold as can be and not caring in the least that their movement might be noticed.”
“Aye, bold as can be.” Gabriel exhaled heavily, the news of his enemies passing through his lands not filling him with fury as it might have only months ago.
The prospect of battle looming ahead not filling him with keen expectation, but something else entirely.
A reluctance.
A grim change of heart that had begun the day Seoras MacDougall had foisted his mad sister upon him in front of smug, grinning courtiers.
A move meant to humble him. A move meant to control him, aye, Gabriel had known the marriage for what it was the moment Seoras had proposed it.
The fat dowry dangled in front of him the only thing that would keep Gabriel’s clansmen and their families from starving…and now he was honor bound to fight for Seoras wherever his accursed ambition might take him.
That despicable excuse for a man hoping to become King of Scots even as a bishop-crowned king, Robert the Bruce, had left Ayrshire to stake his claim in Argyll and beyond—aye, so it had finally begun.
“Do we gather more men and ride after them?” Cameron queried, Gabriel meeting his captain’s somber gaze.
Secretly he wondered what his longtime friend—Conall, too—truly thought of Seoras as their overlord. At best an uneasy alliance existed between the MacDougalls and the Campbells, which, to all appearances, had been reinforced by Seoras’s marriage to Cora, the brothers’ first cousin.
Yet who could say? Gabriel had never asked them and his two midnight-haired captains had never broached the matter, as if to do so might pit them against each other. Gabriel shook his head at Cameron, wondering if his most trusted companions, Alun and Finlay included, sensed at all that his feelings were shifting about his own alliance with Seoras.
“We’ll not catch them now. They’re already through the pass and mayhap hiding until dusk, when they’ll set out again. There’s plenty of caves tae shelter hundreds of men while they gather for an attack, but I’m certain Seoras knows of their movement. He’s enough scouts scattered throughout Argyll—”
“Aye, which means we’ll be hearing from him no doubt this very day,” Finlay said dryly, Gabriel aware that his cousin knew his heart more than any other man.
Finlay had taken one look at his face this morning in the bailey, and had known without a word from Gabriel that Magdalene had survived the night.
