CHAPTER 10
“Iain and Euan are ignoring reality.”
The male voice drifting up from the bailey to Calum’s open window stole his attention from the repair he was doing on the leather straps of his cotun before he had to don it and leave for the practice ground and his young charges there. Today would be their first chance to use dulled metal swords. The leather garment, tightly packed with woolen stuffing, acted as a light form of armor that would protect at least part of him from the worst of their wild swings.
The man’s statement piqued his curiosity. What reality were Iain and Euan ignoring? Calum stood and moved silently closer to the window, hoping to overhear more.
“Aye, he’s never going to be the scout he was,” another man replied.
Calum’s blood turned to ice. They were talking about him?
“Bloody blind man,” the first agreed. “There are other men more qualified to do that job.”
“Like us,” his companion asserted. “With two good eyes and more sense than Calum ever had. Ye ken he went with Euan to Ross to get Eduard back. They barely got away with their lives.”
That was pure shite. Calum’s arm had been broken when their fishing boat, the Tangie, wrecked in a storm on a Ross cove. Euan also survived, found him and kept him alive. When he and Euan escaped in a small Ross boat with Muireall and the body they’d found washed up on the sand of their youngest crew member, he could only row with one hand. She’d had to help him with his oar to balance Euan’s powerful strokes so they wouldn’t go in circles.
Calum would have been of no use on Eduard’s rescue mission, and didn’t go. But the men who went, led by Euan, were successful.
Sudden rage heated his blood to boiling. Ignoring stealth in his fury, he stomped to the window and leaned out, determined to see who was speaking. But the men had moved on, and enough people milled around the bailey to make identifying his detractors impossible. Damn it. He needed to know who they’d been, and whether there were any more who thought the same way.
Despite Mhairi allowing him to go back to training and doing anything else Iain needed, he couldn’t ignore the fact that his vision was still not exactly what it used to be, and its improvement was progressing more slowly than he hoped. If he had enough detractors like those two, would they be able to convince Euan and Kenneth, or even Iain, to set him aside? To consign him to training others alone, no longer a scout or a warrior? All the fears that tormented him while his eyes were still bandaged came roaring back. None of it was true. He was doing well, and better every day. He could fight any man. Neither Euan nor Kenneth put pressure on him to find another path, another role to play in the clan. He didn’t expect Iain would, either, without their support and recommendation.
But how did one fight rumors, falsehoods and mean-spirited jealousy? Who in Brodie would be so petty as to deny him the role he’d earned and excelled at for years?
Fists clenched, he glared out the window, searching, but there were too many pairs and groups of men moving about to be certain of anything, and the voices had been pitched low enough to keep passersby from understanding what was being said, so he hadn’t recognized them. Not without a doubt. He could think of as many as six men with similar sounding voices that they might have been.
He should have given in to the urge and looked out the window sooner. Perhaps if they saw him staring down at them, they’d think twice about how qualified he was to be a Brodie scout.
He was about to turn away from the window when he heard a voice he did recognize. Ella’s.
“Who do ye think ye are?” She sounded furious. “He’s twice the man as the two of ye put together. How dare ye.”
She was defending him? What had she heard? The two men must have continued talking about him as they moved away. He rushed back to the window to see whom she was confronting, but didn’t see her. She must be around the corner of the tower, somewhere out of his view.
One of the men laughed and if he hadn’t been certain Ella could tell him whom she confronted, he wouldn’t have cared. It didn’t matter. He recognized that cackle. He knew them now. Those men were two of the worst fighters the clan had. Euan kept them on the wall on guard duty, certain they’d be killed within moments in a hand-to-hand fight. Euan and Kenneth would be amused—and angry—when they heard about this.
Calum ceased being outraged over their comments. Instead, he listened for Ella’s voice, but apparently, she’d made her pointand moved on. And the two men had moved on as well. He heard no snide comments coming from them about her defense of him.
She’d defended him. Despite all he’d said and done to her, she cared.
How many times would he be reminded how wrong he’d been about her? How unfair?
Ella’sdaily routine often took her past the practice field, but today, she went another way. The smile Calum gave her in Euan’s chamber made her hope they were getting past the barriers between them. But days passed since then, and he’d yet to take her aside to speak to her, much less to offer any companionship. The distance between them continued to frustrate her. Perhaps he’d been right that they didn’t suit. She hadn’t pictured a deadline when the healer suggested that if Calum no longer returned her affections, she might resort to finding someone else to give her what she needed. She’d thought they’d had a breakthrough, but apparently she’d been wrong.
So why had she defended Calum to those two oafs she’d overheard disparaging him? She knew why. She couldn’t tolerate the tone of their comments, nor the fact that none of them were true, especially what they’d said about the rescues Brodie men made at Ross. Calum had been injured then, and unable to go with them. Aye, he still had much to overcome, but he was making great progress and he was still a better warrior—and a better man—than either of those two wastrels.
She was so deeply into her own thoughts that she ran into a wall of muscle before she realized there was someone in her way. She gasped and looked up. “Iain! I’m so sorry. I wasna watchingwhere I was going.” Of all people, she had to bump into the laird? What must he think of her?
“Dinna fash, lass,” he told her as he steadied her, her upper arms wrapped in his large and capable hands. “Actually, we are well met. There is aught I wish to discuss with ye. Will ye come to my solar when ye finish the errand that brought ye this way?”
“Of course.” What other answer could she possibly give the laird? “I can come now, if ye wish.”
“Nay, lass. Take yer time. I’m going to observe how the wee lads are doing under Calum’s instruction, then I’ll return.”
Ella nodded, but her belly tensed. Calum would not be happy to see Iain watching him. Still, it had to happen sometime, and she couldn’t think of a good reason to delay Iain.
“Good, Ella. Just…have a care where ye are going, aye?”
