realize she’d need those lessons.
Black Gilbert grunted. “I still say we should—”
A shout from Luncarty Tower sent the Murrays scrambling up the hill to observe a party of mounted men hailing the tower. Allisun counted twenty in the band. Even from this distance, their horses looked enormous, great black beasts draped in red blankets. Their riders were no less amazing, tall men clad entirely in metal that gleamed like fire in the moonlight.
“Who do you suppose they are?” she asked.
“Knights,” Owen replied. “French, likely. Or English.”
“English.” Allisun savored the word. “If we could prove Jock is treating with the English, Andrew Kerr would be forced to investigate, wouldn’t he?” The Warden of the Scots Middle March was charged with keeping the peace, but he had rejected the Murrays’ complaints against the McKies because Jock paid Sir Andy a handsome quarterly bribe.
“But we know proof is hard to come by,” said Owen.
“Aye.” How different things might have been had that not been the case, Allisun thought.
The guards at Luncarty called out, no doubt asking the identity of the newcomers.
The foremost man, more richly dressed than the others, his armor covered by a sleeveless tabard, removed his helmet and shouted something back. His reply was inaudible to the Murrays, but it sent the guards scrambling to lower the drawbridge.
Allisun eyed the leader of this band. His hair gleamed bright as newly minted gold in the light of wind-whipped torches, but it was his bearing that impressed her. He sat taller in the saddle than any man she’d ever seen, his back straight as a pikestaff. Arrogance, she decided. Aye, he carried himself like a man who owned the world., “Do you think he is an Englishman?” she asked.
Owen shrugged. “Possible. Though I’d not have thought lock so foolish as to trade openly with them.”
“The standard they carry, the black lion on red, I’ve seen it before,” said Black Gil.
“Where?”
“I do not know. ’Twas a long time ago, but I’ll remember.”
Owen scowled. “Mayhap we should stay and see what they do.”
“I say we go after those cattle,” Gilbert grumbled.
“Agreed,” Allisun said, but as the Murrays began to creep down the hill, she looked back at the armored knights walking their mounts over the drawbridge. “Those metal suits look vastly heavy.”
“Aye, and cumbersome. Ill suited to the sort of fighting that goes on hereabouts.” Owen kept pace with her during the descent. At the base of the hillock, he spoke gravely. “Once we’re back at Tadlow, I’m going to see about getting you and Carina away someplace safe.”
“Nay.” Allisun cursed and spun away from him.
Owen caught her arm. “Mind your tongue. Your poor lady mother is likely spinning in her grave to see how I’ve let you forget all she taught you about being a fine lady.”
“Lady.” Allisun spat the word. “What good are lessons in reading and playing the harp with my menfolk dead and the McKies hounding us? Better you teach me to wield a sword.”
“Nay.” Owen enclosed her icy, knotted fist with his warm, callused one. “I swore to Danny that I’d take you away to live in Edinburgh before I’d let aught happen to you.”
Allisun shook her head so vigorously her thick red braid beat against her back. “Never. I—”
“This is no’ the time, nor the place to discuss this.” Owen rubbed a hand across his whiskered jaw. “But our time is running out. Clearly Danny did not tell Jock where we’re hiding, but someday soon the old bastard will find us, and then—”
The McKie would not only kill them all, he’d discover the secret her father, brothers and countless other Murrays had died to protect. “Before it comes to that, I’ll take Will Bell up on his offer of protection,” she teased.
Owen’s eyes rounded in horror. “You cannot be serious, lass. Desperate we may be, but III Will Bell is—”
“A disgusting old reprobate.” And leader of the most infamous reiving family on the Borders. It had been her bad luck to be spotted by Ill Will one day when she and Danny were in Kelso fetching supplies. The old coot had . leered at her and offered to aid the Murrays in their little disagreement with the McKies. The price of that help had been patently obvious. Shuddering, Allisun thrust away the memory. “Come, if we’re going to lift a few head of McKie stock, what better time than whilst Old Jock is busy entertaining these knights.”
“Does it seem strange to be back here?” asked Gavin Sutherland as the party cantered over the wooden drawbridge.
“Aye. If Uncle Jock had not sent for me, I’d have been content never to set foot here again.” Hunter Carmichael’s mouth was held in a grim line, torchlight flickering on features as bleak as the land they’d traveled to reach this place.
Gavin knew full well what had caused his usually jovial cousin to look so dour. “Not since Aunt Brenna disappeared.” Though Brenna Carmichael McKie, sister to Hunter’s father, Ross, had not really been Gavin’s blood kin, the Carmichael and Sutherland clans were as close-knit as the dark Highland plaids both men carried rolled behind their saddles.
“Not since she was kidnapped—” Hunter corrected him “—by those cursed Murrays.”
“It has been a bloody feud.”
“One I vow to end—permanently.” Hunter’s oath echoed hollowly off the stone passageway that led them under the gatehouse and thence to the barmkin.
It was no idle threat, Gavin mused as he followed his cousin through the open meadow, bounded by Luncarty’s high walls and filled with grazing sheep. This second son born to Lady Megan and Ross, Laird of the Carmichaels, carried on the family tradition for valor and ferocity. While his older brother, Ewan, distinguished himself on the field of battle, Hunter was a warrior with words. Chief justice of King Richard’s high court at the age of five and twenty, so fiercely did he defend the cause of justice that he was often called the King’s Lion.
None outside the family knew that Hunter’s obsession with justice stemmed from the guilt he felt over that fateful moment twelve years ago when his aunt had been taken by the Murrays while Hunter, a youth of three and ten, watched helplessly.
He was not helpless now, Gavin thought as they passed under the portcullis and into the tower’s courtyard. Standing well over six feet tall, with muscles honed by hours of rigorous swordplay, and a razor-sharp mind, Hunter was a match for any man, be he statesman or swordsman. Almost, Gavin pitied the Murrays whom Hunter had come to punish for this latest outrage against poor Jock.
“Dieu, Luncarty’s a dour-looking place.” Gavin gazed up at three stories of sheer gray stone, broken only by a pair of tiny, shuttered windows on the uppermost floors.
“Aye, the peel towers are drear and poorly furnished,” Hunter said, glad for the change of subject. “Especially
