Wild Highland Magic (The Celtic Legends Series Book 3)(35)

“As they should—”

“But your enemy is sly. He’ll make it look like he doesn’t want it, as if the responsibility is thrust upon him.”

Lachlan paused. How it galled him to think that his enemy might be smarter than he.

He turned his tankard in his hand and watched the rush lights glance off the surface of the ale. He summoned in his mind the faces of the most powerful men of the clan, those most likely to make a claim to the chieftaincy. The list was long. Dermot MacGilchrist, the head of the MacGilchrist clan, had married a Campbell years ago, a daughter of the sprawling, warlike tribe always trying to expand their influence. Callum Ewing, the head of the Ewing clan, had been beaten out by Lachlan’s own father when the rod passed over a decade ago. The Lamont clan to the east, always reeving cattle and driving their sheep onto MacEgan pastureland, would revel in the discord. Then there was Lachlan’s own stepmother, a Stuart, always casting acid looks his way while she watched over Fingal, her only son.

Fingal, his half-brother, and the next MacEgan in line.

No, not Fingal.

Never Fingal.

“The man who seizes the rod must be the one.” Lachlan repeated the words with confidence, all while he worried his fingers through the scruff of beard he’d not yet gotten used to. “He will be the devil responsible for all of this, I’m sure of it.”

His cousin nodded. “You must leave for Loch Fyfe as soon as possible.”

“I need a day, maybe two to prepare. I have to arrive unnoticed, and that’ll take some doing.”

“You don’t have a day, perhaps not even an hour. I’ve ordered my servants to keep your presence here a secret, but the fact that you arrived carrying a self-proclaimed sorceress complicates matters. Your witch is the talk of Derry. You are the talk of this house. Both of you have to leave before there’s a crowd at my door with torches and pitchforks.”

Lachlan grunted. If a rumor began that he was still alive, it would reach Loch Fyfe in the time it takes for a man to row across the strait.

“I need men. Arms.” He pulled at his borrowed clothes. “A tunic and surcoat of my own.”

“Or perhaps the robes of a cleric,” Angus suggested, shrugging.

“A cleric? Carrying a claymore?”

“Staying hidden does seem the wiser course. A smaller sword would be easier to hide.”

“Angus, I don’t exactly look like I’ve spent a lifetime bent over a scroll out of the glare of the sun.”

“Maybe not,” he said. “But nobody will notice if you’re one cleric among many who just happens to be accompanying a certain Derry merchant on a long-delayed visit to Loch Fyfe.”

Lachlan eyed his cousin as the implications sank in. “I can’t ask you to do that.”

“Sales of wine have dropped off from the north.” He raised his tankard and smiled through wine-stained lips. “I need to remind your kinsmen how much better Spanish wine tastes than your wretched ale.”

Lachlan frowned. Though his father had sent him to Angus to gather men to help in his fight, after so much death Lachlan preferred to act on his own. He didn’t need another death on his conscience.

“I loved your father, too, Lachlan,” Angus said. “Don’t deny me this small sip of your vengeance.” Then, dismissing all further discussion, his cousin raised one finger toward the balcony of the second floor. “What shall we do with our frail but misguided beauty upstairs?”

At the thought of Cairenn, Lachlan lifted his pewter tankard but it was already empty. He stared at the dregs and tried not to think of the way the sea wind played with her hair. He pushed away the remembrance of the way her hips moved when she climbed to the island’s height. He tried to forget what it felt like to burrow against her breasts, to feel her body arch in pleasure under the touch of his hand.

The clatter of another fortress tumbling startled Lachlan back to the great hall, to the cut of the tankard’s handle into his fist, and to Angus’s piercing scrutiny.

“Who is this woman,” his kinsman asked, “who weighs so heavily upon your mind?”

Memories overwhelmed him, of the curve of her neck lit by the sun, the arch of her feet as she crouched, the heavy slide of her braid over her shoulder. Images of her green eyes intent upon him and the intelligence he saw behind them. Her ease with the village boy, the deference of the fishermen, the stories she whispered to her sister to make the young girl burst into laughter.

His tongue felt like lead in his mouth.

Angus said, “Did you make this woman promises?”

“You know I cannot.”

“Love comes upon a man quickly, Lachlan.” Angus’s heavy sigh filled the room. “It flies swift out of the cold, like a sparrow shooting through the mead-hall in winter.”

His kinsman may as well have been speaking in tongues for all the sense Lachlan could make of it.

“I can arrange passage for her back to Galway,” Angus said. “My ships, and my sailors, are under my orders. They’ll do as I say, witch or no.”

A pause lay heavy between them. Lachlan knew he should order it done. Cairenn belonged safe in Inishmaan, among her own people.

Then the rapid click-click of a dog’s claws drew his attention. A ragged-haired lapdog bounded out of a far corridor toward Angus’s son, who shouted in delight.