“Will do, Mistress,” the lad said, taking astep back and eyeing Alina’s breeches.He spoke softly to Etain andpatted her neck and Alina handed over the mare’s reins.
Roark handed Beasty’s over to another handand offered Alina his arm.Laying her hand on his arm, theyfollowed the greybeard up stone steps to the entrance.One of themen-at-arms who’d ridden in with them opened the heavy double doorsand they followed the greybeard into a large, open entryway.
“Wait here,” the greybeard told them.
Roark patted Alina’s hand on his arm and tookin the grand staircase leading up to the second story.There was adining hall to their right with not one, but two high tables andsix low tables.To their left was a huge common room with a largehearth built into a stone wall and chairs, benches, and sofasspread all over the room.
He heard voices and footsteps coming from thedining hall and stood at alert as Alina gripped his arm.Thegreybeard followed behind a handsome man in his middle years withshoulder-length, dark brown hair and a short beard shot throughwith the first steaks of grey, accompanied by a slim sylph of awoman of the same age with light blonde hair braided and piled highatop her head.Both of them were dressed in good, plain, unadornedlinen clothing.
“I’m Owen, laird of clan MacLeod and SilverWater Keep,” the man said.“This is my wife, Lady Siusan.I knowwho you are, Roark MacInnes.”His deep green, thickly lashed eyestook Roark in from head to toe before settling on Alina.“Who mightyou be?”
“I am Alina,” she said with a dip of herknee.“Princess of Sea Ridge in the Northlands.Daughter of KingJerrik and Queen Alyssa, granddaughter of King Aleksandr and QueenSahar, and great-granddaughter of King Asad and Queen Oona, who wasthe daughter of Aaron and Iseult, who was the daughter of Isolde ofthe clan MacLeod.”
The laird’s green-eyed gaze fixed on Alina.“You certainly know the maternal lineage of the MacLeod side of myfamily,” he said.“But then, so do many people.”
Alina dipped her head and said nothing.Thelaird looked to his wife, who glanced from him to Alina and back toher husband.
“She does have the MacLeod eyes,” shesaid.
“Aye,” the laird agreed.“That she does.”Hetook in her dirty, ragged state and boy’s clothing.“Still, shecould as easily be some poor cousin’s by-blow.”
Alina visibly stiffened.“I assure you I amwho I say I am.”
“That may be,” the laird said, nonplussed.“If it is, I assume you’ve come here counting on our kinship forprotection.”
“We have,” Roark answered.He held thelaird’s waiting, watching gaze.“If you know who I am, then youknow the story being spread about by Roger MacKinnon, laird ofNorth Shore Keep.”
“I do,” Laird Owen said.“His story is thatyou and a serving wench,” he indicated Alina, “set a trap for andmurdered his son.”
“The only trap set was for the princess andher parents,” Roark told him.“A trap I was, to my dishonor, a partof.All to settle a twenty-year grievance, which I’m now trying tomake right by getting the princess back to her family.”
“Did you kill the laird’s son?”
“No.”
The laird looked to his lady, whose nod wasalmost imperceptible.He swept his arm toward the dining hall.“Youtwo look half starved,” he said.“Come, sit, eat.Tell us yourstory of how you came to be here.”
***
Alina paced herself with the fresh bread,soft cheese, and red, juicy berries the kitchen maids set out asshe and Roark sat across the table from Laird Owen and Lady Siusan.Between bites, she couldn’t help staring at the laird’s eyes, solike her mother’s, or her own.The laird kept staring into hers tooas Roark told him and his lady of how Roger’s scheme to kidnap herfor ransom first came about, how he and Leif saw it through,thankfully leaving out the details of how she’d led him like alovestruck fool to the lake and allowed herself to be taken.
He told them of starting to suspect theveracity of Roger’s version of the wrongs done him and his familyby Alina’s parents, of finding out about Roger’s real plan forselling Alina in the same desert slave market where Oona and hersister, Lyrra, had been sold, and of how Roger intended to let herparents think her dead for the rest of their days while he gloatedfrom afar, his coffers full of the gold he’d sold Alina for.
Roark told them of Leif’s attempt to rapeAlina in the stables, and she found she couldn’t meet the ladySiusan’s kind eyes, though the shame wasn’t hers.
“I wanted to kill him,” Roark admitted.“Alina stopped me to avoid the very thing we’re accused of andrunning from now.We left him tied, gagged, and unconscious, butalive.We were leagues away before we heard he’d been killed by ascythe to his chest.”
“Why didn’t you go to your family for help?”Laird Owen asked.
Alina glanced at Roark.“We would have,” shesaid, not exactly lying.“We were told his father had sided withRoger.”
“Ah,” Owen said.“I see.”
“We decided to cross the Mounths,” Roarkcontinued, “to make for the North Sea Firth, where we hope to finda ship to sail Alina home.A storm waylaid us for a few days andthen we were overtaken by a band of men intent on collecting thereward Roger offered for us.”
“What happened?”Lady Siusan asked.
“Roark’s horse went lame so he stayed tofight them and give me time to get away,” Alina told her.“Hekilled two of them before they managed to take him.”
