Page 9
The gates stayed shut. A woman arriving alone, unescorted and yet unharmed, must have looked like a trap to them, because it was some time before two guards finally appeared.
The elder of the two looked like a seasoned fighter, with a heavy scar across his face and hair that had just started to gray. The younger guard beside him had fiery-red hair, braided back.
“And who might ye be?” the older guard asked.
Isla hesitated, just for a moment. Who was she, indeed? Who was she, and who did she want to be?
She pushed those thoughts aside. Who she was didn’t matter. What mattered was who she needed to be right now.
“I am Lady Murray,” she declared, her voice even.
The older guard studied her, trying to pry the lie loose with a keen eye. Isla’s expression didn’t falter.
It was the younger guard who broke the silence.
“There is no Lady Murray.”
Isla understood exactly what he meant. There were no Murrays left. She was the last of them.
“I am the daughter of Laird Malcolm Murray,” she clarified.
The older guard drew his sword. The younger guard, she realized, knew only the recent history, but the scarred one clearly remembered further back.
“Isla Sinclair,” he spat out.
“I am nae a Sinclair.”
The younger guard drew his sword as well, bracing for an ambush. Isla glanced up at the battlements, certain she had heard a bowstring being drawn somewhere above.
“Leave,” the scarred guard ordered. “No Sinclair is welcome in here.”
“I willnae! I will speak to Laird MacLeod.”
“Laird MacLeod wouldnae—”
“Who dares speak of what I would and wouldnae do?” a voice boomed from the courtyard beyond the gates.
The guard went ashen, but Isla very nearly laughed in triumph. She knew that voice. It had echoed in her mind ever since that meeting in the gardens at Dougal Castle.
“Me Laird,” the guard greeted.
A group of riders came through the inner gates, and at the head, mounted on a massive black stallion, was him. Alisdair MacLeod, every bit as dangerous as she remembered from a week before. If she could just get behind that massive frame of his, her uncle would never reach her.
She was almost ready to gallop toward him in relief when his icy grey eyes found hers. His eyebrows drew down into a sharp line of shadow. The moment he saw her, his jaw locked tight, a muscle ticking in his cheek.
Whatever trust she had hoped to find in him, there was even less of it now than there had been in those gardens.
“A Sinclair! At our gates!”
Isla looked at the man who had spat out her name like a curse. He bore a striking resemblance to Alisdair, and she guessed at once that he was his younger brother.
“What is the meaning of this?” Alisdair demanded to know.
“Me Laird,” the scarred guard hastened to explain, “this Sinclair menace dares show her face at our gates.”
Alisdair drew closer, his gaze fixed on hers the entire time. Her breath caught at the intensity of it, and she swallowed hard to keep her composure.
“She insists on talking to ye, me Laird.”
