“Aye, he did… because I begged him to teach me how to fight. It was only within the last few weeks before leaving for Scotland that my father took notice, mayhap what would become of me if he didn’t return…” Aislinn fell silent, wondering why Cameron was asking her these probing questions. At that moment, she almost wished he wasn’t speaking so much to her as he seemed to study her—
“Has your hair always been short?”
His voice so husky that she found herself blushing, Aislinn shook her head and gestured toward her waist.
“That long, then. It must have been beautiful.”
She shrugged, though the way he was looking at her made her shiver anew. “I had to cut it to pass for a youth. The plans had been made, and my father and his men soon sailing to Scotland. Stowing away was the only way for me to go with them. Mayhap if he still lives and I’m able to help him, he’ll see me differently. Listen to me. All I ask for is a say over my own life…”
“Aye, a say over one’s life.”
Cameron’s voice grown somber, Aislinn swallowed hard at everything she had revealed to him—but not all.
He hadn’t asked her if she was spoken for, but if she was married, and she had told him the truth. The other didn’t matter, not unless her father refused her request—saints help her, she didn’t even know if he was yet alive to consider such an outcome!
All she knew was that soon they would arrive in Dumbarton and she’d come face-to-face with King Robert the Bruce. Her cousin’s husband… and most likely, the man who—at least in the short term—would decide her fate.
Cameron clearly intended to help her find her father—the most astonishing surprise of all! Yet would she be allowed to accompany him?
Aislinn gave a low laugh, astonished that she would even consider such a thing.
Allow her? Even if the king said no, she would find a way. If her father still lived, shemusthelp to rescue him. She had wanted to show him that she could fight, aye, as ably as a man, but the ambush had changed everything. Mayhap now she would have a second chance to prove herself and earn the right to choose her own future—
“Something amused you?”
Aislinn met Cameron’s eyes, but the last thing she’d admit was any thought to defy King Robert. Instead she shrugged. “Sorcha hugging you, is all. You looked so startled, but it was kind, what you said to her. You’re a good and honorable man, Laird Campbell—even if you do roar a bit too much.”
“Roar?”
“Aye, and well you know it. Do all Highland lairds bellow and bluster like you?”
She was teasing him, and now he looked startled again, as if he couldn’t believe it.
Yet a slow smile spread across his face as he gazed at her, making Aislinn’s heart race… until he focused once more upon the low hills in the distance and urged his horse into a canter.
Chapter 11
“So you stowed aboard your father’s ship. An impulsive and foolish move for a young woman”—King Robert shook his head as he scrutinized Aislinn’s male garb—“even if I can see how you might pass for a youth.Thank God the ruse succeeded or you wouldna be standing before me now. I dinna want tae think of what Earl Seoras’s men might have done tae you if they had discovered the truth.”
Aislinn swallowed hard, not wanting to think of such a fate, either, while Cameron stood silently beside her.
So close that their fingers might have touched if she moved her hand just the slightest wee bit, but she stood stock-still as Robert the Bruce began to pace in front of them.
His footfalls the only sound in an antechamber leading into the great hall of Dumbarton Castle, though the din of the midday meal could be heard beyond the closed door.
To Aislinn, he looked as much a king as she could have imagined, strongly built and taller than most men—though Cameron towered over him by a head—with dark brown hair that brushed his muscular neck. His stride exuded power, his broad forehead creased in thought as if considering what Cameron had requested of him.
To allow her to accompany him to rescue her father and brother—ifthey still lived and could be rescued. That dark thought pressed in upon her as King Robert stopped to look at her with no small amount of disapproval.
“Do you underestimate for a moment, Lady De Burgh, what atrocities the English are capable of? What tyranny we’ve suffered under King Edward’s yoke? My dear wife Elizabeth,your own cousin, is held prisoner in Yorkshire under frightful conditions and God alone knows when I will see her again. Yet you wish tae join my newly appointed baron on a perilous quest tae find your father, who, if wounded two weeks ago, is probably dead unless his captors afforded him a healer—och,woman! I can only think that Laird Campbell must be smitten with you tae ask such a thing of me—”
“Aye, my king, you have judged me rightly,” Cameron broke in, though he bowed his head in deference. Yet only for an instant before he looked up to face Robert the Bruce, while Aislinn felt her cheeks ablaze. “It is my hope tae wed her, though I’ve not yet broached the matter with her… if she’ll have me and if her father agrees—I mean, if he’s alive—”
“I know what you meant, Campbell.”
King Robert fell silent and looked again at Aislinn, who felt as if the floor could have opened up and swallowed her and she wouldn’t have felt more astonished.
Cameron had not yet broached the matter with her? She couldn’t bring herself to glance at him, but she jumped when she felt him suddenly clasp her fingers.
