Page 92 of Owned by the Scarred Laird

“What is it ye ride?”

He paused.

“A gray geldin’, me Lady. Sound of wind, steady on rough ground, naught special to look at.” He turned the horse before she’d finished deciding whether to ask anything further, and was down the road and out of sight within a few minutes, the dust settling slowly behind him in the still midday air.

Melodie came back up from the burn with William on her hip, damp to the knee and entirely unbothered by it.

“Who was that, then?”

“MacLaud’s man. Come to see us the rest of the way.” Chloe watched the empty road a moment longer, the dust gone flat and undisturbed now, no trace left of the rider at all. “He’s to escort us.”

“Fine, then. More men, more safety, aye?” Melodie hitched William higher and started back toward the carriage, already talking of getting him fed before the afternoon’s ride. “Ye look like ye’ve swallowed somethin’ sour, me Lady.”

“Do I?”

“Aye.” Melodie glanced back at her, some of the ease going out of her own face to match it. “Somethin’ wrong with him?”

Chloe looked once more down the empty road, at the place where the dust had already gone still, and found she had nothing to give Melodie that would sound like more than a woman inventing trouble out of a stranger’s good posture.

“Nothin’ I can name,” she said, and climbed back up into the carriage, and did not stop thinking about the gray gelding, or the good chamber, or the particular way the man’s eyes had counted her guards, for the whole of the rest of that day’s ride.

27

Duncan came through the gate at a dead gallop, and Edward was already moving before the horse had fully stopped.

“Ambush!” Duncan swung down without waiting for the animal to settle, chest heaving, one hand gripping Edward’s arm. “The clearin’ past the second ford. Men out of the trees, a dozen at least. Moved like they’d been standin’ there since dawn, waitin’ on the exact moment the carriage passed.”

“What of Chloe?”

“Alive when I turned for ye. I didnae stay to watch more than that.” Duncan was already reaching for a fresh horse, waving off the stable boy who tried to check the girth for him. “Thought ye’d want me back here faster than ye’d want another pair of eyes there doin’ naught but countin’ bodies.”

“Ye did right.” Edward was shouting for Beira, for Tyler, for every man within earshot who could hold a blade and sit a saddle. “How many of ours did ye see standin’?”

“Two, maybe three. It happened fast, me Laird. Fast and quiet. Nae shoutin’ beforehand, nae warnin’ at all. One moment the road was clear, and the next it wasnae.”

“Quiet.” Edward swung up onto Beira before the saddle was fully cinched, and the stable boy holding the girth had to jerk his hands back or lose his fingers to it. “Men daenae go quiet like that unless they’ve done it before, on ground they chose themselves.”

“Aye.” Duncan was already remounting, his own horse lathered and blowing hard but willing enough. “That’s what I thought.”

Tyler came out of the barracks at a run, sword already belted, and did not waste breath on a single question. He mounted and fell in, and the three of them were through the gate and onto the north road within a few breaths, riding harder than Edward had ridden anything in thirteen years.

“How far?” Edward said, eyes fixed on the road.

“Second ford. Nae more than four miles.”

“Four miles.” Edward’s hands had gone white on the reins. “Ye left them alone in a clearin’ with a dozen armed men and rode four miles to fetch me?”

“I left them with four guards still standin’ and rode four miles because I couldnae fight a dozen men alone, and I couldnae carry ye there any faster than me own two legs, and this horse would allow. If I’d stayed, I’d have been one more sword against odds already wrong, and dead besides, which helps nay one.” Duncan did not slow the horse to say any of it. “Ye ken all that already, me Laird. Ye’re only sayin’ it because ye want someone to shout at, and I am the one here.”

Edward said nothing to that, because it was true, and because there was nothing left in him at that moment that was not already given over to the four miles of road still between himself and the clearing.

“Whoever it was,” Tyler called across, “kent the route. Kent the timin’. That’s nae raiders workin’ a pass on chance.”

“Nay.” Edward’s jaw had locked itself somewhere around the second mile and had not unlocked since. “It isnae.”

“Which means someone inside our own walls talked,” Duncan said.

“We’ll settle who, after.” Edward did not look at him. “Ride.”