He heard voices raised and what might be laughter. He walked around to the front of the dun.
Two young men approached the building from the direction of the field that held the ponies. Very alike they appeared, of a height with fair hair and lanky builds. Dressed in kilts and cloaks, they sniped at each other, half laughing in a manner Adair recognized.
Just so did friends beset one another back home. Or relations.
As he stood watching, one of the young men shoved the other in a companionable fashion. They both laughed.
Adair stepped out.
The pleasant, teasing expressions the young men wore disappeared the moment they noticed him, replaced by something hard and disagreeable. As one, they changed their course toward the door of the dun and came to meet Adair.
They had to be related, brothers, far too alike to be anything else. Somewhere near Adair in age, they had broad foreheads and narrow, light brown eyes. Wide mouths with lips now also narrowed into hard lines.
Their manner in approaching Adair could not be considered aggressive; neither was it friendly.
“Here he is,” said one. “The next o’ the Erin cousins bent upon stealing our lands.”
Theirlands. “Ye must be my cousins.” Kendrick’s sons. What were their names? Aye, Kerr and Toren. Adair stepped forward. “Guilty as accused. Adair MacMurtray. Ye be my Uncle Kendrick’s sons, aye?”
They exchanged glances. One—he on the left—stepped up, all confidence.
“Toren MacCaigh. This is my brother, Kerr. We thought we were rid o’ you lot.”
“So I gathered from my reception yesterday.”
Kerr stepped forward, a glower heavy on his brow. “These are our lands, ye ken. Clawed from the wilderness and fought for. Bad enough having to battle against the local savages without ye lot back in Erin.”
He said the last word with utter scorn, which put Adair’s back up, though he did not let it show. Seldom did he lose his temper. This did not seem a good time to begin.
“Erin is a fine place,” he declared equitably enough. “Ha’ ye ever been there?”
“Nay, and no wish to go,” said Kerr, who seemed the more irascible of the two brothers. “No need to be anywhere save here.”
Aye, so they would have been born here and knew nothing else. They were not, as Adair knew, the sons of Mistress Tavia, whom he’d met yesterday, but of Kendrick’s first wife, whom the chief had brought with him from Erin.
“Well,” Toren said, “I suppose ye had best come in for breakfast.”
Adair barely heard the grudging invitation. For someone else stepped up, and as he turned to regard her—for aye, it was a woman—the light streaming in from the east hit him full in the face and dazzled his eyes.
At least, that was what he later told himself. In truth, he was never really sure, save that a brightness took hold of him, one he felt sweep through him from his head to his feet.
A woman, aye, a young one. Tall for one of her sex, she had hair the color of dark honey, tawny with strands of gold, that hung in waves over one shoulder, bound round with green bands. She wore green also—a plain underdress with a cloak over, and hide boots not far different from his own. Her face…
But her back was to the light and he did not get a clear look at it. He did not need to. The impression she made pierced him through.
Indeed, he could have sworn that everything, the world itself and all the rush of the morning, paused. The birds ceased to sing, the waves to rake the shore. His very heart stuttered in his chest.
She had a hound at her heels, a big gray one that rushed forward, breaking the spell. Everything, including the blood in Adair’s veins, began to move again.
The hound thrust its great head at Adair. The best welcome he’d had thus far from anyone.
He stepped toward its mistress. “Adair MacMurtray,” he said.
*
She’d not gota good look at him yesterday—no more than a glimpse when he’d come up the slope soaking wet, and when Torlag led him from the great hall after. Now he stood revealed to her in the clear light of the morning.
The impressions came hard and fast. Brown hair hanging down, a rich color that had threads of copper woven through, picked out by the sun. A clever, charming sort of face, the kind made to smile, though he was not smiling now and looked, rather, as if he’d been struck a hard blow. A good body of more than average height—making him a bit taller than she—but with fine, broad shoulders and narrow hips that made a woman think about… Well.
