Page 97 of The Highland Laird’s Hellion Bride

The road was empty in the early morning, the hills pale on either side, the track rutted from last week’s cart traffic and then nothing, trailing off into rough ground where the road gave up pretending to be a road.

He kept the horse at a canter, reading the ground ahead rather than the horizon. Hoofprints surfaced in a muddy stretch below the first ridge, two sets, angled southwest. He adjusted and kept moving.

She went out to gaze at the stars.

Now that he thought about it, he’d known she went out. He’d faintly heard the west door somewhere in the hour after midnight. He’d heard it and told himself it was the wind, told himself she’d gone no further than the yard, because it was the night before their handfasting and he’d doubled the watches, and nothing was threatening about a woman who couldn’t sleep.

He’d lain there and listened for her footsteps and eventually stopped listening because he’d had three hours of sleep in two days and his body had decided for him.

The mud showed the tracks cutting northeast, away from the first lodge, toward the upper ground.

The second lodge. He’d been right that O’Brien would want a clear view.

He pushed the horse harder.

Elspeth had asked him once early on what O’Brien had taken. He’d said the castle. He’d said the clan. He hadn’t said everything that made it worth rebuilding. He hadn’t said the names. He hadn’t said that his sister Isla had been nine years old, or that his mother had had her hair in a braid the last morning he’d seen her, or that his father had pressed that cup into his hands when he was twelve and said it wasn’t the crest that mattered but the man who carried it.

He hadn’t said any of it because he didn’t say things.

The smoke appeared above the eastern shoulder of the hill, thin and grey against the pale sky, rising from somewhere behind the treeline ahead. Too early for a cooking fire, small enough to be deliberate.

Magnus raised his hand, and the five men behind him stopped.

He looked at the smoke. He looked at the treeline. He looked at the hillside above and found the ridge line where two men could sit with a clear view of the approach and miss nothing.

He turned in the saddle and kept his voice low.

“Circle the perimeter. North and south approaches only, stay below the ridge. Nae a sound and nae a move until I come out that door or ye hear somethin’ that tells ye I willnae.” He looked at each of them once. “Anyone who moves early answers to me.”

He dismounted, tethered his horse to the nearest tree, and walked toward the lodge alone.

* * *

Her wrists had been bound with rope, not leather, which meant whoever had tied them had done it in a hurry or hadn’t expected her to notice the difference.

Elspeth noticed.

She sat with her back against the wall and her hands in her lap and worked at the knot with her thumbnail slowly, without looking down, keeping her eyes on the room because looking down would tell him something she didn’t want him to know.

The lodge was small. One room, a cold hearth with a new fire built badly in it, two men near the door who hadn’t spoken since they’d arrived, and O’Brien himself standing at the narrow window with his back to her, watching the hills.

He was taller than she’d expected. Broader. The kind of man who’d once been formidable and carried the shape of it even now, though there was something worn about him, something that had been grinding against itself for a long time without resolution.

Beyond the window, against the dark of the hills, she could see the fire. Distant. Flickering.

Her thumbnail found a loop in the rope and pressed.

O’Brien turned away from the window and looked at her looking at the fire. He smiled.

“Only distractions,” he said, almost pleasantly, crossing the room and crouching to set another piece of wood on the fire rather than looking at her. “A handful of men at the walls, a few horses loosed from their paddocks, enough confusion to ensure Wallace comes exactly where I want him.”

Elspeth kept her eyes on the window. “Magnus will bring half the Highlands with him.”

O’Brien chuckled and sat back on his heels, brushing his hands together. “Nay. Wallace believes he must carry every burden himself.” He glanced at her sideways. “He’ll come alone.”

Her thumbnail found the second loop. She pressed harder.

“He has people who stand beside him.”