Page 65 of Highland Spy

“It sounds dangerous, Caleb. Mayhap I, as well as the rest of the madmen, can help ye find this man.”

“Nay. Please, Da. This is somethin’ I need to do on my own.”

“Ye sound as if ye are tryin’ to prove yerself to someone. Is that true?”

“I’ve always been smaller than the rest of the men of our clan. Because of it, I’ve had to bear the brunt of many jests. Aye, I need to prove myself to my friends as well as to the rest of our clan.”

“Includin’ Bridget?” Ian asked curiously.

“I suppose so,” said Caleb with a small nod, looking over the wall of the battlements.

“Well, with what her faither wrote in the chronicles about ye, I can see why ye’re worried. It was a little . . . shall we say exaggerated?”

“Och, I ken that, Da. But dinna worry. She’s taken those pages out of the chronicles so no one will ever read them again.”

“She?” His father raised a brow.

“I mean – he. I need to go, Da.” Caleb was tired and making mistakes. He’d almost spilled Bridget’s secret and he didn’t mean to do that. The last thing he ever wanted was to put her or her father in danger. No one could ever know the truth. He turned to go, but his father stopped him in his tracks.

“When a man is in love, he sometimes does foolish things,” said Ian. “Just be sure ye are no’ blind to the woman ye marry.”

“What does that mean?” he asked, being careful not to say too much.

“A man’s legacy lives on through his children,” Ian told him. “Caleb, I like Bridget, and I am sure ye can be happy together. But are ye really sure ye want to marry a lass who canna give ye bairns?”

“How do ye ken about that?” asked Caleb, surprised to hear his father say this.

“I overheard a man tellin’ the chronicler that Bridget is barren.”

“That makes no sense. Why would someone tell her faither somethin’ he already kens.”

“No’ him. The other chronicler.”

“Sorley?” he asked in surprise.

“I think that’s his name.”

Caleb cringed. Sorley seemed to write everything into his book, trying to impress the king. It was bad enough that poor Bridget had to be humiliated by having her marriage annulled. But did the king and the rest of Scotland need to read about it in the book as well? It made Caleb very angry.

“What was the man’s name who told the chronicler this?” asked Caleb, wanting to hunt down whoever it was and wring his neck.

“I canna quite remember.”

“Was it Valan?”

“Aye, that was it. Do ye ken him?”

“He is someone I’d rather forget,” said Caleb, heading to the great hall.

Once there, he found Logan having some Mountain Magic with their good friends, Hawke and Ethan.

“Caleb,” said Hawke. “How are ye?”

“When did ye two get here?” asked Caleb.

“Just now,” Ethan told him. “When we heard ye were competin’ in the Leader of the Lairds, we rode day and night to get here quickly because we didna want to miss it.”

“Aye, it surprised us to hear that the king chose ye to fill in for my da,” said Hawke.