As Beatrice regained the road, she saw the woman stop and appraise her in a similar manner. After only a few moments, the horse was moving again and soon pulled up alongside her.
“Good morning to ye, lassie,” the woman greeted her, looking more curious than suspicious a lone girl abroad in the Highlands on foot at this hour. “Are ye well?”
“Aye, well enough. Thank ye.”
A handsome, capable-looking lady of some thirty years, the woman laughed as though Beatrice had said something funny. Still, it was a friendly laugh and without malice.
“Ye’re out early and it looks like we’re goin' in the same direction. Would ye care to join me? It will be quicker on horseback, if that matters to ye.”
The woman gestured at the winding road through the landscape ahead and Beatrice paused before answering. A ride would help her but she must be sure of their direction first.
“I’m on me way to MacSween Castle,” Beatrice told her new acquaintance.
“Are ye indeed?” asked the woman with an amused lift of her eyebrow. “Do ye have business there?”
“Aye, with Laird MacSween. But that is private business.”
Again the woman laughed, this time throwing back her head and pealing with merriment.
She looks like she’s havin' a fit.God help me if she falls off that horse…
“Laird MacSween? Well, there’s a good man to have private business with,” the woman said, after recovering her composure. “A beautiful beast of a man, that one.”
A beautiful beast? What manner of man was he that other women should talk of him as they did? Beatrice’s mouth ran dry, and her heart fluttered in her chest. She had spoken the truth in saying that Laird MacSween’s appearance did not matter to her. Was there something in him that would make her revise this position? It was hardly a question she could ask.
“Get on, lassie,” said the woman, now holding down a hand to help Beatrice up on to the saddle behind her “I’ll take ye the rest of the way to the castle.”
Leo had not slept following the council meeting. He hadn’t even bothered trying and had instead paced the castle walls and then his own chambers for the entire night, faithful Tyler at his side.
“We'll find someone suitable, me Laird,” Tyler had tried to assure him several times as Leo alternated between pacing the floor and glowering out of the window into the darkness. “We’vetime enough to find ye a wife who will be loyal and true and a good mother to Effie and…”
Each time Tyler spoke such nonsense, Leo silenced him with a glance, his man-at-arms knowing well enough when to stop talking in his laird’s presence. If only his council were so wise.
“Someone is at the castle’s entrance,” Tyler suddenly spoke up, raising himself from the window seat where he had been dozing, and peering out for a better view. “It’s a woman!”
“Have ye nae kent many women yerself, Tyler?” Leo retorted in ill temper. “Ye sound like this one is the first ye’ve seen. The castle is full of women.”
“Nae like this there’s nae,” returned Tyler, unabashed by Leo’s gruffness. “It’s a young woman, a lady, alone. Oh me, look at her, Leo! I think she’s a beauty under that hat and cloak.”
Leo declined to look. He was in no mood to appreciate the beauty of strange women at the castle gate. She was likely only the daughter or sister or one of the senior guards or stewards and Tyler was only thrown by whatever outlandish hat she wore.
“If she’s really alone, ye’d better go downstairs and make sure nay one gives her any trouble,” Leo dismissed his man-at-arms. “Conduct her to wherever she’s goin' and then ye may go to bed yerself.”
“Aye, me Laird.”
Expecting that he would not see him again until the afternoon, Leo was surprised when Tyler returned a very few minutes later. He was even more surprised to set eyes on the strange young woman at Tyler’s side.
Now carrying her hat and grey cloak, this visitor’s auburn hair fell in a tumble about her shoulders and her hazel eyes sparkled with a most peculiar energy. While not usually a lecherous man, Leo could not prevent his eyes from glancing appreciatively over her curvaceous figure before he reined in his gaze and confined it to the woman’s face.
She was indeed a beauty but why on earth had Tyler brought her here?!
“Ye said to conduct her to wherever she was goin',” Leo’s man-at-arms told him mischievously. “She said she was coming to see ye.”
“Me?!” Leo blurted out in astonishment. “I’ve never seen her before in me life, Tyler! Ah….I daenae ken ye, Madame. Why should ye come here seekin' me?”
Tyler had rapidly absented himself from the scene, leaving the laird alone with his visitor and utterly disoriented. While she regarded Leo quietly, saying nothing until now, the woman’s eyes were lively and disconcerting. There was a purposefulness to her, a daring, that intrigued him. He had addressed her as “Madame” but saw no ring on her finger.
What kind of bold young woman turned up alone at the laird’s castle and demanded to see him as a man of equal rank might do? No, bold was not the right word for this woman, Leo decided as he studied his guest further. There was a sense of shy desperation radiating from her too.
