“And plenty died for it, aye? I say only, we ha’ an alliance. Why no’ mak’the most o’ it?”
“And I say we better no’ rely too heavily on such an untrustworthy set o’ allies.”
The man was right. Yet so tangled were Quarrie’s thoughts and emotions, he could scarcely think straight.
“I do no’ trust them,” Borald stated plainly. “And I do no’ like their men comin’ here so often to trade. Speaking to our women. That fair-haired one now—”
“Garik.” Hulda’s second-in-command.
“Him, aye.” Loathing entered Borald’s voice. “He has been speaking wi’ Morag.”
“Has he, then?” Quarrie fixed his friend with a sharp eye. They were close enough that he knew Morag for the young woman Borald had himself been courting for nearly two years without much success.
“Aye.” Sourly, Borald added, “I do no’ understand how she can gi’ him her time, and him with Scottish blood on his hands.”
“Does she give him her time?” Quarrie asked, surprised.
“Och, aye.” For an instant, despair looked at Quarrie from Borald’s eyes. “As much or more than she ever ga’ me.”
Aye, that was a problem. Quarrie’s men might—just barely—tolerate an alliance with hated members of the race that beleaguered them. Allowing them to poach their women? Never.
Yet men were men and women were women, and attraction would spring up where it may. He could hardly argue with that.
But he could not say so to Borald.
“Ye meet wi’ yon Hulda often enough,” Borald said unhappily. “Tell me they do no’ mean to come back in the spring.”
“We ha’ spoken, aye, about the alliance enduring for next season. But who can tell wha’ will happen by then? Many things may change over the course o’ a winter.”
“I can only hope so. I will be happy if I ne’er see them again—any o’ them.”
And Quarrie’s heart would shatter into a thousand pieces, were that so.
*
“Hulda—the men wantto go home.” Garik, having handed the tiller over to another crew member, chose the moment they sailed back into their borrowed Scottish harbor to deliver the news. They came flush with plunder following yet another series of successful raids farther south. That being so, Hulda couldnot imagine what reason the men had to complain. Had her bargain with Quarrie not given them a canny berth from which to operate?
She eyed Garik closely. “Are they not happy with what they have earned?”
“Ja. No one can say he is not.”
“Then why withdraw before times?”
“They tire of the rough camp. Of the hostility that lurks just out of sight.”
“They would be hostile too, toward folk who so often laid a blade to their throats.”
Garik hesitated. “They grow tired of what they see between you and the Murtray.”
Alarm raced through Hulda like fire. “What do they see?”
Garik gave her a speaking look. “Do not insult them, Hulda. They see what I saw long ago. You want him. For all I know, you have likely had him. Thosemeetingsyou keep arranging that last the whole night long…”
Dismayed, Hulda said nothing.
“It is none of my business, with whom you lie down.” Garik, though, still sounded uneasy. “A woman wants to rut as does a man, so I suppose.”
“Ach, does she?”
