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It shouldn’t have surprised him when a man he didn’t know—a messenger, he thought, by the looks of him—barged into the room, followed by two of his guards. The moment Laird MacLellan saw him, he stood and rushed to him, the two of them speaking in hushed voices.
Laird MacLellan kens him. He must be one of his men.
Chrisdean’s heart sank. The messenger couldn’t be carrying good news, he thought, not when he looked so serious, not when he hurried like jackals were after him. Something was wrong, and he was not the only one who could tell.
Brock was looking back and forth between them, a small frown on his face. He must have been thinking the very same thing, Chrisdean thought.
Chrisdean’s limbs were heavy as lead, and it took all his willpower to force himself to stand and walk to Laird MacLellan. Whatever had happened, he could fix it. He could surely do something about it; he could help.
“What happened?” he asked. Laird MacLellan didn’t respond, not at first, but Chrisdean saw the pallor of his skin, his furrowed brow, the cold sweat that had begun to accumulate on his forehead. He looked fragile, almost weak in a way that Chrisdean was certain he had never looked before.
“Laird MacLellan,” Chrisdean insisted, his hands coming to rest on the other man’s shoulders. “What is it?”
“The Sassenachs . . . they’re comin’ to destroy our lands,” Laird MacLellan said, his voice a trembling whisper. “We have word from our spies that they’ll be on the way soon, seekin’ revenge. Where will me people go? They canna fight them on their own.”
“Chrisdean?”
Nimue’s voice came from the door, and he turned to look at her, at the paleness of her own skin when she realized that something was wrong. “I . . . I saw our men, and I thought . . .” she continued, but her voice trailed off as she focused back on her father.
Before Chrisdean could say anything, the Laird stood and approached his daughter, placing his hands on her shoulders. “Nimue, this . . . this isna easy to say,” he said. “We received word that the Sassenachs are preparin’ to attack our lands and . . .”
Laird MacLellan’s voice trailed off, but it wasn’t long after he had stopped speaking when Nimue reached for him, grabbing his hand and, with it, his attention.
“Is everyone alright? Is Guinevere . . .”
“Guinevere is fine, and so is everyone else,” Laird MacLellan assured her, and Chrisdean let go of a breath that he hadn’t noticed he was holding. Even though he had never met Tristan and Guinevere, he knew how much they meant to Nimue, and losing both her siblings would be too much for her to handle.
Relief seemed to wash over Nimue, as well, and she collapsed into the chair as though all her energy had left her body. Chrisdean hated to see her like that, and he knew that there was only one thing that he could do to make her feel better. Besides, it was the decent thing to do, it was the what the Laird of a big clan should do.
“Laird MacLellan,” he said, looking at the other man. “Yer people can come and stay here, with us, for as long as ye need. Everyone is welcome. We have the means to house and feed everyone, and I willna stand by and watch, doin’ nothin’, while yer clan suffers.”
The look on Laird MacLellan’s face was identical to that of his daughter. The gratitude Chrisdean saw there almost brought him to tears, and he knew that he would never forget it, just like Nimue and her father wouldn’t forget what he was doing for them.
“Thank ye,” Laird MacLellan told him, grasping his arm and patting his shoulder. “Ye have me gratitude and that of me whole clan. I promise ye, we willna be a burden.”
“I dinna think that ye will be,” Chrisdean assured him. “We’ll be happy to have ye all here, though I wish that the circumstances were different.”
Chrisdean knew that he had much to discuss with Brock and his men. If the English had gone after the MacLellan clan, then they were bound to come after them, too, and they had to be prepared for an attack.
Chrisdean felt his optimism crumble, but the news also made him even more determined to defeat the English. He wouldn’t let what they had done go unpunished, and if they chose to attack his clan, too, then they would be met with an unstoppable force. It didn’t matter how much they would have to train, how many weapons they would have to forge, how many hardships they would go through. All that mattered was revenge for his men and for the MacLellan clan.
“I’ll do anythin’ in me power to stop the Sassenachs,” he told the Laird and Nimue. “Ye have me promise.”
