There were more men back in the foliage, now stepping through it. One of them had a young woman he’d grabbed when she’d tried to run away, but the second man…
God help her, she’d seen him before.
Disbelief filled her. The last time she’d seen him had been back at the Ludus Caledonia and Cam had been hanging on his neck, strangling him.
She began to feel sick to her stomach.
“Ye,” she spat at him. “What are ye doing here?”
The man stared at her with eyes that bordered on madness. “Drop the stick, woman.”
If he recognized her, he didn’t let on, but a strong sense of self-preservation told Isadora to back away from him. Cam had barely licked the man and, for him, it had been one hell of a battle.
As talented and knowledgeable as she was, Isadora wasn’t sure she could fight him and emerge the winner. She wasn’t sure she wanted to try. Something was telling her to run as fast as she could back to the village and sound the alarm.
The Beast from the Ludus Caledonia was in their midst.
“I willna,” she said, sounding braver than she felt. “Answer me. How did ye come here? Who are ye serving?”
“Astonishing, isna he?”
Another man appeared behind him, a short man with dark hair and a pale look about him. He smiled at Isadora and it would have been a pleasant smile had the situation not been so dire.
Isadora’s gaze moved back and forth between the man and The Beast.
“Who are ye?” she demanded. “What is that… that animal doing here?”
The pale man glanced at The Beast. “Him?” he said. “He now serves Drostan Lindsay. He’s come tae help us with the gypsies on our land.”
“What gypsies?”
“I think ye know who I mean.”
She did, but as for the rest, she was shocked to the bone. How on earth did The Beast come to serve Drostan? Last she saw of the man, he was being carried from the Fields of Mars after Cam had defeated him.
And now he was here.
My God… how?
Through her astonishment, Isadora retained enough sense not to push the issue. She didn’t ask again because however it had happened, it didn’t matter now. All that mattered was that it had. She continued to back away as The Beast moved toward her.
“One man canna drive us from our own lands,” she said steadily. “Harass us all ye want, but we’ll not leave. We have allies, too, or are ye too foolish tae realize that?”
The pale man kept her attention. “We’ve been rather brilliant tae bring the best warrior in all of Scotland intae our midst,” he said. “’Tisyewho are foolish if ye dunna realize that ye must leave or very bad things will happen.”
He meant The Beast and Isadora came to a halt when she backed into a bare sapling, her gaze now drawn to the pale man because there was something strangely familiar about him.
“I’ve seen ye before,” she said. “What is yer name?”
“Ternan. Who are ye, lass?”
“The daughter of Niall Keith. Ye know my family has held these lands for almost one hundred years. They belong tae us; they’re in our blood. Why can ye not leave us be?”
Isadora realized in hindsight that she probably shouldn’t have told the man who she was. She’d told him because it was natural to tell people who she was, and who her father was, but in this case, she should have been more prudent about it.
It was too late now.
“Niall’s lass,” Ternan said as if pleasantly surprised. “Ye dunna look like yer da.”
