“Pity he has no son to inherit all this.”
Hunter nodded. Walter, Jock’s son by his first wife, had died the year before he wed Brenna. That union had been too brief to bear fruit, nor had any of his mistresses quickened. There were some who speculated that Jock’s seed was dead.
“Why, ’tis wee Hunter, all grown-up,” said the old man who’d come out of the tower to greet them.
“Hutcheson, isn’t it?” Hunter swung down and handed the reins of his warhorse to his squire.
“’Tis Old Hutch, now, my lord. This is Young Hutch, my son. He’ll be steward after me.”
A skinny youth with his father’s pale eyes and hooked nose stepped forward and nodded. “We’ve put ye in the new tower.” He waved toward a two-story structure of gleaming gray stone.
Hunter smiled, grateful to be spared the room he’d stayed in the last time. “My uncle?” he asked anxiously.
“Ach, the old bird’s too tough to kill,” said Old Hutch. “But ’twas a near thing.” He shook his head dolefully.
“They say he’ll no’ walk again,” added Young Hutch. “The Murrays took a Jedburgh ax to him. Crushed his leg, it did.”
“Aye. He’s lucky to be alive,” said Old Hutch.
“He does not see it that way.” Young Hutch’s features tightened. “Better dead than crippled, he says.”
Hunter’s belly cramped, recalling the big, energetic man who had taught him to fish and trap. If only he’d been stronger, quicker himself twelve years ago, none of this would have—
“Hutch!” bawled a coarse voice from an upstairs window. “Is that my nephie come at last?”
“Aye, my lord,” the steward shouted back. “Just coming up.”
“See ye’re quick about it!”
Hunter smiled, the fear that had plagued him since receiving Jock’s call for help easing. “He sounds the same.”
“A bit testier is all.” Old Hutch herded them through the tower’s only entrance, a set of double doors, one of metal grating, the other made from thick oak planks banded with steel. “Go on up, ye know the way. Young Hutch’ll see yer men settled in the barracks building across the way. Tell Jock I’ll be along directly with ale and meat.”
“Come with me, Gavin.” Hunter led the way through a maze of kegs and oat sacks that filled the ground floor storage room to the turnpike stairs. The tightly coiled steps spiraled clockwise, so right-handed attackers would find their sword arms pinned against the wall as they tried to fight their way up.
“Practical folk, these Borderers,” Gavin mused, his steel-clad shoulders clanging on the close walls.
“Oh, aye, you’ll find they’re a breed apart, fiercer even in some ways than you Highlanders.”
“Ha, that I’d like to see.”
“Likely you will if I cannot persuade Uncle Jock to handle this matter my way.” Though why should he, when I mishandled things so badly last time? Hunter thought, sobered by the memory of his aunt’s abduction and subsequent death.
“Aye, well, your Border reivers will find this Highlander battle-trained and well protected.” Gavin thumbed his fist on the steel breastplate made in France of Spanish steel.
“Our armor is stronger than, their quilted leather jacks, but they’re a tough lot, hardened by a life spent constantly at war with reiving English and raiding Scots alike.”
They crested the stairs and found themselves in an entryway the size of a horse stall. It was as dark as one, too, the faint light of a single torch playing over walls whose only decoration was a coat of soot from a long-ago fire.
“Charming.” Gavin wrinkled his nose.
A muffled bellow turned both of them toward a heavy, iron-banded door, the worse for a few ax cuts.
“Coming, Uncle.” Hunter reached for the door latch and took a deep, steadying breath. It did nothing to ease the knot that had cramped his belly from the moment Jock McKie’s disheveled messenger had banged on the gates of Carmichael Castle. It wasn’t fear, it was the hunger for revenge dueling with his inbred sense of justice.
“The Murrays have paid for what they did to my sister,” his father had told him before he left. “Jock saw to that. There’s been enough blood spilled—on both sides,” added Ross Carmichael, a man of peace and reason. “Jock would not listen to my pleas he end the feud, but now that he’s sent for you, use that golden tongue of yours to make him see reason. More deaths will not bring our Brenna back.”
Nay, nothing would do that, Hunter thought, his hand tightening on the latch. But he would give all he owned—coin, property—to be cast back twelve years and have a chance to plunge his blade into Alex Murray’s black heart. He wrenched open the door and was driven back a step by the harsh light, the stench of smoke and unwashed bodies.
“Dieu,” Gavin whispered, goggle-eyed. “I’ve stayed in taverns that were more...”
“Civilized? Luncarty was once.” When his aunt was alive. And yet, the great hall was much as Hunter remembered—narrow, dark and low ceilinged, a peat fire smoldering in the corner hearth, hard-looking men in rough wool seated jowl to jowl at the scarred trestle tables, eating and arguing fit to raise the dead. It was a world away from Carmichael Castle with its linen-draped tables, tapestry-covered walls and multicourse meals served by liveried maids while a minstrel plucked at a harp and his parents spoke of books or his mother sang an ancient poem.
Hunter sighed. “When I came here to visit, I thought this the grandest place, so wild and free. Of course, with Aunt Brenna the lady here, things were much finer and cleaner.”
“Hunter? Damn and blast, where is that lad?”
“Here, Uncle.” Hunter squinted through the smoky pall to spy a big four-poster bed set square in the middle of the room.
“Does he not have a bedchamber?” Gavin whispered.
“Aye, he does, I expect, but Uncle Jock would have to be dead to stay away out of the thick of things.”
The man propped up in the bed was nearly as unchanged as his tower, Oh, time had dulled Jock’s black hair to steel gray and cut ragged lines in his square face, but the eyes staring from beneath beetled brows were as sharp as ever.
“Well, I’ll be damned. Ye’re bigger even than old Lionel Carmichael was. Come here, lad!” Jock waved an imperious arm.
Conscious of the grinning McKies, Hunter flushed and trailed across the room, feeling like a lad again.
“Aye, ye’ve your mama’s coloring, but yer grandsire’s size. Foul-tempered old bastard, he was. Always liked that about him. What of ye?” Jock grabbed hold of Hunter’s forearm and squeezed hard enough to draw a wince. “Not bad... not bad. See,” he shouted to the room at large. “I told ye he’d have been lifting something weightier than those bloody books of his
