“Once or twice, mayhap,” the other responded, his voice reflecting his lack of concern over his friend’s bark. “But it’s yer own fault, Jamesy MacCulloch. When you spoke of a little sister, we all imagined a wee bit of a bairn, no a full-grown beauty such as this. You should introduce us.”
Jamesy grinned down at her before turning to face his companions. “Well, then, Finn, you imagined wrong, did you no? And while we’re about it, I’ll thank you to keep my sister out of any further imaginings you might have, aye? She’s no meant for the likes of you.”
“Friends of yers, are they?” she asked, studying the face of each of the men. They had to be, or Jamesy would have taken the mouthy one to the ground by now.
“Aye,” her brother agreed with a roll of his eyes. He wagged his thumb to indicate the man who’d spoken. “The noisy one with the ragged dog at his side is Finley MacCormack. And the quiet one back there is Alexander MacKillican. I couldna shake the two of them from my heels when I left Edinburgh, so I’d no choice but to let them follow along. Like lost sheep, they were.”
“Allow us?” Finn snorted his disbelief. “We couldna trust this brother of yers to stay out of trouble without us. It’s we who had no choice in the matter but to leave our studies and trail along after him. Am I no telling the God’s honest truth, Alex?”
Alex shrugged. “We’ve a bond, for a fact. Harm one, harm us all.”
Brie acknowledged the two men with a dip of her head, then turned to her brother, catching up his hand in hers as the four of them made their way toward the great stairs.
She had so many things to tell Jamesy, so many plans to finalize. Chief among those things was determining when they would leave to find the sword they needed to confront their father’s killer.
Jamesy stopped, his gaze scanning the wagon and riders in the courtyard. “Patrick dinna return with you?”
She shook her head. “He and Halldor continued on after they met up with us.”
Continued on their own merry way, leaving her behind as if she weren’t every bit the warrior they were.
“Halldor?” Her brother turned a hard, questioning gaze her direction. “That would be O’Donar? He’s the one who managed to spirit you out of Tordenet in one piece, is he no?”
He’d gotten her out of there, but he’d failed as miserably as she had in her original purpose in being there.
“He is. But my escape from the castle came at a price. Torquil MacDowylt still lives, Jamesy. I missed my opportunity to kill the bastard.”
All traces of humor left her brother’s eyes. “So Malcolm has told me. And now I hear that, thanks to some mythical beast, the MacDowylt laird is even more powerful than he was before.”
Though she felt no trace of rebuke in what her brother said, she felt the guilt of having failed more sharply than if he’d accused her in plain words.
She’d been in the room while Torquil slept. She’d stood over him, that fancy sword of his within arm’s reach. It had called to her to take it up, to use it as her own, but she’d lacked the nerve. Had she but plunged the weapon into his heart then and there, she might have prevented the battles that were to come. She certainly would have had her revenge.
But she hadn’t. What she had done was take the coward’s way out. She’d tucked tail and run from his castle like nothing more than a frightened—
“Did you hear me?” Jamesy pulled at her arm. “It was foolish beyond measure, what you did, running off to Tordenet like that. No one had any idea where you’d gone or what peril you faced. And then you tried to gut the man with naught but a wee dagger at his own table in his own hall, surrounded by his own men?”
It had been the best plan she could come up with at the time. And it might have worked, too, if not for the strength of the Beast inside him. All too well she remembered the evil red glow shining from Torquil’s eyes as he’d pinned her to the table and gone for her throat. If not for Halldor’s intervention on her behalf...
“Are you listening to me? Yer no to ever put yerself in such danger again. With Da gone, it’s me you’ll need to answer to now, and on this matter, I will accept no quarrel. You’ll do as I say.”
She could hardly believe what she’d just heard. Jamesy’s voice oozed with entitlement, and for the first time ever her brother’s words sounded more like those of their uncle than of their father.
Bridget MacCulloch was no delicate maiden to be hidden away before some hearth and protected by men far weaker than she. Warrior blood coursed through her veins, just as it did through her brother’s. She was the last daughter of the House MacUlagh, descended from the Ancient Seven who ruled the land when not even the Roman invaders dared challenge all the way to the Northern Sea.
Yet Jamesy spoke to her as if a year away had caused him to forget that.
She pulled her hand from his and stepped back to glare at him. “Yer hardly in any position to be telling me what I can and canna do, Jamesy MacCulloch. You forget yerself. You forget who and what I am. When you leave here to go after the MacDowylt, it’s me what will be riding at yer side, weapon at the ready.”
“No,” he said, matching her glare. “I forget nothing, little sister. And dinna you be giving me that face. I’m all too familiar with the look yer wearing, and I’ll no be having any of it. Torquil MacDowylt is far too dangerous a quarry for me to give you yer head on this one. I dinna begrudge the way Da allowed you to grow up, acting as if you were as much a brother to me as a sister, but this is no the time for such pretense. If Da were here now, he’d say the same.”
“If Da were here now, there’d be no need for me to go after the murdering bastard what killed him, now, would there?”
The hurtful words were out before she thought. Jamesy flinched as if she’d landed a physical blow and a tremor of guilt ebbed over her. The loss of their father had to be as difficult for him as it was for her, but she couldn’t afford to backstep. One sign of weakness and he would pounce, declaring it reason enough to leave her behind. She must present her strongest side to convince him otherwise.
“You need me in this quest, Jamesy. You need the knowledge I have to find the sword.”
“Do I? And what knowledge might you hold that would be so dear to me?” He crossed his arms in front of him and waited, the familiar stubborn expression she recognized from childhood hardening his features.
