“No’ so daft as all that,” Toran replied, smirking. “I can see the effect her name has on ye, six years later.”
Jamie snorted again then took a big swallow from his cup, coughing and spluttering as the strong spirit hit the back of his throat and burned all the way to his belly. At least he hoped the whisky caused it and not heat of another kind. He hadn’t seen Caitrin in six years, and she was about to be betrothed. At the time, it had all been innocent enough, for a while. Had he really cared for her? Or been jealous of any attention she paid Toran? Either way, he had no business resurrecting feelings he’d fought to contain as a hot-blooded lad.
Toran smirked. “Ye’re going to like the rest of what I have to say even less.”
Jamie stilled, suddenly wary.
“Ye ken I canna go.”
Jamie frowned, apprehension turning the burn of the whisky to ice in his belly.
“Ye’ll go in my stead. I’ll give ye a letter for the Fletcher, and one for the MacGregor. Aye, it will extol the virtues of our former fosterling and playmate of our childhood.” Toran paused. “On second thought, I’d best leave out that part.”
Jamie Lathan glared at his laird and best friend. “Ye jest.”
Toran shrugged. “Aileana is determined to provide our clan with a wealth of sons and daughters. Our triplets are no’ yet a year old, and she says she’ll deliver twins by the full moon. Ye ken with her talent, she’s never wrong about such things. She’d skin me alive if I told her I planned to travel for weeks with a lass from my past, even if it is to deliver Caitrin to another man. Besides, better ye than me,” he groused. “She was a wee pest, following us around, ruining our hunts with her noise and her sympathy for the creatures.”
His smirk warned Jamie he had more to say.
“Aye,” he continued, “but ye thought her a bonnie lass. I’ll wager she’ll be even more bonnie now, despite what Fletcher implies.”
“Ye’re imagining things.”
“Is that why ye dinna wish to make this trip? Ye fear ye’ll fall for her again?”
“Fear? Ye are daft! I’m no’ afraid of any lass. Least of all one ye used to dunk in the burn to get her out of our hair.” Jamie grimaced at the memory of Caitrin running to the keep for dry clothes. He’d done what he could for her, but unlike now, in those days, he hadn’t dared to object too strongly. Toran wasn’t the heir, but hewasthe laird’s son.
“I think ye are.”
Toran’s chuckle failed to elicit the same response. Jamie just groaned.
****
The next morning, as he gathered what he needed for another foray from the Aerie, Jamie still wrestled with the idea of seeing Caitrin Fletcher. He had done his best to forget her these last six years. He’d thought never to see her again, certainly not before she was married off and mother to a keep-full of bairns. That she remained unwed rankled like a thistle under his seat. Despite what he’d admit to Toran, the idea of escorting her to her betrothal to another man cut him to the core. He went to the window and looked out over the keep, but didn’t see any of it. Perhaps she’d forgotten him.
How had Caitrin fared in the six years since they’d last been together? At fourteen, brown-haired and brown-eyed, she’d been coltish, but had shown promise. Surely by now she was a woman grown into her beauty. He regretted the circumstances under which she’d left the Aerie, but she’d been sent home for her own good. The events of that time still weighed heavily on him. He hoped she’d never learned the details. His sister’s body had been found in the woods where the wee lads and lassies often played. The clan elders had deemed the area outside the keep no longer safe, locked the Lathan children inside the Aerie’s walls and sent Caitrin home to Fletcher. The rest of the summer had passed in a cloud of fear and suspicion, but his sister’s killer had never been found. Since then, he hadn’t wished to remind Caitrin of the tragedy, or the grief of her leave-taking, and so had kept his distance. As much as it still hurt, he accepted the necessity.
Since it was his fault.
Pushing away the memories, he rubbed the back of his neck. What was he doing, packing to accompany the Fletcher ghillie back to their keep? He shrugged. Following Toran’s orders, as usual. Instead of dwelling on the past, he tried to imagine the Caitrin of today. She’d be taller, certainly, lithe and strong, since she’d always loved to be active. She used to run Toran and him ragged trying to avoid her, outfox her, or, worst case, outrun her.
That last had been getting hard to do by the time she’d left. Her coltish legs carried her nearly as fast as the lads she chased in their games. She could climb a tree, nock an arrow and hit dead center in a target, even wield a practice sword as well as either of them. Only the weight of a real sword slowed her down. But she’d been hell with a dirk, Jamie thought, smiling. Her intended husband had better never cross her, or he might find himself missing certain favorite parts of his anatomy. That idea elicited a chuckle, breaking Jamie from his reverie, and reminding him he had more than one mission to accomplish.
Toran not only wanted him to stand in his stead as the escort the Fletcher requested, but to sound out the MacGregor, and if at all possible, get his signature on the Lathan treaty.
Many old feuds had died along with the lairds and their heirs who were killed with King James IV while fighting the English four years before at Flodden Fields. To take advantage of the thaw in relations between the local clans, Toran had conceived a mutual-defense treaty. Since the lowlander incursion last year brought his healer wife, Aileana, Toran had become even more determined to see the treaty succeed. The journey to MacGregor offered an unexpected opportunity.
And a dilemma for Jamie.
What had become of the MacGregor, once his schoolmate at St. Andrews? Had he, like Toran, risen to the demands of the position he never expected to hold? Was he, like Jamie, forced by circumstance to do things he’d very much prefer not to do? Clenching his teeth, Jamie tossed another shirt into his bag and added a spare dirk for good measure. He closed the bag as someone knocked on his chamber door.
“Are ye ready?” Toran said as he stepped in, unbidden.
“Come to offer last minute advice?” Jamie tied the bag closed then regarded his friend, nay,his laird.
“Of a sort.” Toran propped a hip on the window ledge and crossed his arms over his chest.
Jamie hefted his bag in one hand and claymore in the other. “And?” Something in Toran’s posture made him set them down again.
