she said.
Kieran’s lips twitched in what for him must be a smile, and he leaned forward to pat the stallion’s glossy black neck. “My English cousins, the Sommervilles, have been raising such horses for years. When I could afford to, I bought Rath from them.”
Laurel stored away the information. “Wrath as in anger?”
“Nay.” Another twitch. So, he had a sense of humor under all that surliness. “Rathadack. ’Tis Gaelic for—”
“‘Lucky omen.’ How come you to speak the ‘old tongue.’ ”
“I fostered in the Highlands with Lucais Sutherland, the husband of my Aunt Elspeth. How come you to speak the Gaelic?”
Laurel was delighted he’d asked a question. “We MacLellans keep many of the old ways.” She’d learned Gaelic from Nesta as preparation for the day when she’d be seeress of the MacLellans, but unless her gift improved, that day would never come.
What pained her? Kieran was concerned to see her lovely mouth turn down. What is it, he longed to ask, but keeping his distance was too ingrained. Already he knew too much about her for his own peace of mind.
Suddenly she straightened and shook off her sorrow with a force of will he admired, for he knew what strength it took. Her too-bright smile touched him even more. “I inherited my mother’s knack at weaving,” she said. “Though I haven’t her skill with details. Actually—” she leaned close, tone low and confiding “—my deer look like pigs, my people like sticks with hair, but I’ve a good eye for color.”
Kieran tried to close his ears but her clear, sweet voice slipped between the chinks in the wall he’d built around his heart, beguiling him with her mix of wit and self-deprecation. “And what did you inherit from your sire’s family?” he found himself asking.
“Naught I’ve the skill to use.” She turned away, but not before he caught the sheen of tears in her eyes.
“What is it?” he asked, he who’d steeled himself not to care for another’s feeling—except mayhap Rhys’s.
“’T-tis naught. I—I have something in my eye.”
“Let me see.” He angled closer. She pulled her mount away.
“Nay. I can look to myself.” Aye, so she could. She had as much pride and courage as most men. Her strength of character impressed him against his will.
“Will ye go up onto the rocks and get the lay of the land?” Rhys asked, reining in beside them.
Kieran scowled, conscious of how perilously close he’d come to opening himself up to Laurel. A serious mistake. Furious, he growled, “Take ten of our men and scout the cliffs for any trails that might offer access from the outside. I’ll take the other twenty along the river and do the same.” Studiously ignoring Laurel, he asked Ellis when the raiders attacked.
“In the dead of night when we are drowsing at our posts,” Laurel replied, angered by his snub. “We?” Kieran challenged.
Laurel lifted her chin. “I lead them in Grandda’s place.”
His black brows slammed together in clear disapproval. “The battlefield is no place for a female.”
Laurel couldn’t have agreed more. But... “If I didn’t go, Collie would. ’Tis my duty to act as Grandda’s eyes and ears.” She read grudging respect in his eyes before he urged Rath forward. It warmed her more than another’s effusive praise, for he didn’t seem to think much of her sex. Was a woman responsible for the ghosts that haunted him? She should let them rest, but she’d been born curious, and he was a mystery she longed to plumb.
When they cleared the tunnel through the cliff, she paused to study the broad plain that stretched between the mountains and the Lowther Hills a mile distant. Brooding clouds hung low in the sky, bringing with them an early dusk. The wind that stirred the trees along the river’s far bank held a promise of rain to come. As she watched the branches twist and bend, Laurel fancied she saw something...someone lurking in the shadows.
Shivering, she drew her cloak closer around her. ’Twas just her imagination. There was naught in the woods save birds and wee animals. She’d been affected by Kieran’s wariness, that was all.
He’d halted several paces ahead of her, back straight as the pines bordering the water, head up like a hound scenting the air. Then he unbent enough to lean toward his squire and comment on what he saw. It took her a moment to realize he was lessoning young Jamie in the art of soldiering, much as Father Stephen had taught her to read and cipher. ’Twas totally unexpected in a man who kept discipline by beating a man for breaking one order. Grudgingly she admitted Kieran could teach Collie things she couldn’t. Things her brother needed to know. They’d been wrong to shield her brother from the rougher side of life.
“Kieran has a canny knack for bringing out the best in others,” Rhys commented, walking his horse up alongside hers.
“Not in me, apparently?
Rhys chuckled. “Nay. But then, the path we are destined to tread is not always evident from the first.”
“What does that mean?”
“’Tis a thing my da used to say.”
Likely intended to convey some twining of her fate and Kieran’s. Well, she was having no part of it. “When you mount the cliff, have a care for loose stones.”
Rhys grinned but accepted the change of subject. “I take it ye’ve been up there?”
The memory of the last time she’d climbed the heights, scrambling for her life in the dead of night with Aulay hard on her heels and Freda baying after them made her belly clench. “Aye, ‘tis a fearsome drop straight down to the rocky riverbed.” As Aulay had discovered. “A deadly fall.” Especially when a wolfhound had ripped open your throat As Aulay had also learned. ’Twas a lesson he’d taken from this life into hell.
“If you’re through dallying with her, we’ve work to do,” Kieran called out.
Laurel looked up and found him staring at her. His expression was unreadable, yet his eyes seemed to glow in the shadowy depths of his helmet. Awareness tingled down her spine. For one moment she was cast back in time and place to the storage hut and the feel of his hands holding her as though he’d never let go. ’Twas almost as though something in him cried out to her, drew her closer when common sense urged distance.
“Command and I will obey without question,” Rhys said, and Kieran glanced away, mercifully breaking the spell.
“’Twill be a first, then,” Kieran grumbled. “That stretch of woods will have to go,” he announced, turning toward the river.
“Go?” Laurel straightened in her saddle. “But—”
“’Tis a hazard.” He looked first to Ellis, then young Jamie, everywhere but at her. “The reivers could sneak across yon field and mass there for an attack.”
“Now just a moment.” Laurel nudged her mare forward to confront Kieran. “Those woods are scarce ten feet wide in most spots. If a band of men did seek to hide in them, they’d be strung out from here to Kindo. And besides,”
