“I think ye’re right.”
“How long, d’ye think, till morning?”
“Hard to say. When it gets light, I mean to take Chieftain and go out looking again.”
Their eyes met and she tipped up her chin. “Then I go wi’ ye.”
“No’ a good idea, Annista.”
“I am no’ letting ye go out there on your own. If ye meet up and fight him again—”
“I will tak’ Seumas wi’ me.”
“Poor Seumas will need to sleep.”
“One o’ the others, then. Ye stay here wi’ yer fierce knife and keep guard.”
She drew a breath. “I do no’ like it.”
“There will, so I fear, be much neither o’ us likes before this is done.
****
The sun rose through a blanket of blood-red clouds, and Earl MacKallan did not return. Annista could not but consider that gory dawning a bad sign. She shuddered to think what this day would bring.
And what might befall her husband.
It shocked her a bit—aye, more than a bit—to realize how her allegiance had shifted. From her mother and, by way of her, Robena, to her husband. Yet vengeance aside, there was naught she could do for poor Robena, who slept in the cold ground, while her husband was alive and vital and…
Well, she desired every inch of him.
Was this all about desire? Surely not. She appreciated many other things about him. His steadiness and his strength. The way he thought about things, not rushing to anger. His deep-down gentleness, which she glimpsed when she gazed into his eyes.
A lad with such a gentle heart never stood a chance against Evan. He must have been badgered and bullied all his life. Yet he’d retained a very potent decency.
A woman could well give her heart to such a man. Had she already? Well…
The house came alive soon after dawn. Mistress MacKallan emerged from her chamber with her woman at her back, the lady looking woefully upset.
“Yer father has no’ returned,” she told Alan when they met in the great hall. “I am sore worried. Where can he be? Out all night in that rain.”
“Aye. I mean to go out searching at once.”
“Wemean to go,” Annista asserted.
“Och, but son—your wound!”
“It has closed over.”
Did he lie? Annista shifted her gaze to his face and decided that yes, he did. As he’d lied to her last night when he said none of their indulgences had hurt?
Och, she must be more careful of him, if he would not be careful of himself.
“And,” Alan directed what he no doubt meant to be a stern look at her, “ye will no’ be coming wi’ me. I thought we settled this?”
“Ye thought wrong.”
Lady MacKallan looked from one to the other of them as if she sensed the change in their relationship. Hesitantly, she said, “Son, mayhap Annista is right. Ye should no’ go alone. Yer father went wi’ two footmen and we ha’ no idea what happened to him out there.”
