“No one wants that situation again. Aye, ye be valuable, being Rory’s cousin, but they will send ye back as soon as they can.”
Then he’d better accept it. Whatever this mad, unreasonable thing—connection, insipient attraction—between him and Rhian might be, he’d better surrender it.
Rhian MacBeith, so he assured himself sternly, was but a woman. A wondrously warm and caring lass for all that, with a wealth of charms and a spirit in which he began to suspect his could be at home. Just a woman like any other.
Only she was not like any other. That, he believed to his bones.
Chapter Nineteen
Rhian sat inthe great hall with Alasdair and Moira when Farlan came in. The big man moved quietly and stood for a moment listening to what Alasdair was telling them. A party had located the lass Elreadh, she who had attempted to kill Leith. Found hiding with family up in the hills and brought back by Alasdair’s men, she now awaited an audience with him and Moira, wherein she would learn her fate.
Rhian’s attention flew to Farlan. She knew where he’d been, that he’d just come from seeing Leith, and she ached to ask him how his friend fared. Because she’d resisted returning to Leith all day, had not allowed herself to go and tend him.
Soon they would send him back to MacLeod. Moira had just been telling Rhian so, asking how soon she thought Leith would be ready to travel, before Alasdair came in with his news.
’Twould solve her predicament anyway. If the man departed from her sight, he would also disappear from her mind. Would he not?
For the best. Without question.
Then why did she examine Farlan’s face so closely, looking for signs of—what? Worry? Signs that his friend was much worse?
Farlan did send her a look, one she failed to interpret.
Alasdair spoke on. “She is reported to be distraught. Weeping and half out o’ her mind with grief. Ye need to decide, Moira, whether or no’ you and I can handle the matter or ye want the full council involved.”
Moira raised her eyebrows. She too shot a look at Farlan. “I do no’. The prisoner has survived the attack. Surely, Alasdair, if you and I confer over Elreadh’s predicament and arrive at a fitting punishment, ’twill suffice.”
Alasdair gave an uneasy shrug. “The runner who came to me seemed all too sympathetic to the lass’s plight and says she is offering no resistance. Wi’ the way things are, the council will likely no’ agree to punish her at all.”
“Yet she tried to kill a man,” Rhian heard herself say.
“She tried to kill aMacLeod,” Alasdair corrected her with an unreadable glance at Farlan. “And as Moira points out, she did no’ even succeed.”
An unhappy silence fell.
“If we drag a weeping, grieving woman before them,” Alasdair said after a moment, “the council will crumble.”
“Still,” Rhian huffed, “there needs to be justice.”
“One justice for a MacBeith,” Moira mused softly, “and another for a MacLeod.” She looked at Farlan in turn.
“I ha’ just come from Leith,” Farlan said. “He is up on his feet.”
“What?” Rhian felt herself go pale. “He should no’ be. That wound o’ his will tear open wi’ any movement.”
“He was nearly murdered in his sleep. He feels defenseless and wishes to garner his strength as he may.”
Rhian must go to him. She’d need to check the condition of that ugly wound. She did not doubt it would need re-dressing.
Alasdair dismissed the prisoner from his consideration. “If ye call Elreadh here for judgment, the council may well hear o’ it. If so, they will come on their own.”
“So they will,” Moira agreed. “Rhian, will ye stay and help me face them? I feel there must be some form o’ justice handed out, even if ’tis no more than a slap. If we fail in that, there will be no hold upon what folk think they can do to MacLeod prisoners.” Moira swallowed hard. “Da would no’ want it so. He would no’ want us to become—well, those who attack the defenseless.”
“He would no’,” Rhian agreed.
“We maun be better than that,” Moira declared, and looked at Farlan again.
Rhian wondered if Moira recalled questioning Farlan soon after he’d been taken prisoner, also with a grave wound. During questioning, Moira had laid a heated iron against Farlan’s torn flesh.
