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‘You fool no one, Bain. Morna is no guest of yours, and you do not care about her safety. Let us speak plain. You are merely trying to increase the ransom for your hostage.’
Will smiled. ‘Ah Buchanan, the weather on Skye can be tempestuous. Your men will freeze out here on this hillside besieging us, but you already know that. Did you think I would be intimidated into doing your bidding by the sight of your warriors lining up outside my keep? I have been at war for years against far more brutal foes than you.’
‘Then perhaps I should find these foes of yours, the Cranstouns isn’t it, and join with them to bring you down?’
‘The very men to whom your sister was sold. The men who would have made a whore of her? I suppose Drostan left that fact out as well, didn’t he, so he could make me the villain of the piece? Come now, Cormac, see sense. How many men are you prepared to sacrifice? A score, a hundred, a thousand. Oh but I forget, you don’t have that many because you have thrown too many lives away fighting for your precious King Robert.’
‘Aye, I have lost men fighting for my King, and for Scotland, better that than cowering on my backside on an island in the middle of the ocean because I do not have the courage to be loyal.’
‘Loyal, you call it? I fought for the Scots at Bannockburn and was taken for a traitor. They would have executed me, no matter how many English lives I took. That King you love so much is no different from Edward of England. They are both butchers, but Robert is just better at it. Don’t take me for a fool, Cormac Buchanan. I don’t live my life by your rules, or your King’s, and Morna stays here for now. Who knows, I may decide to keep her for good.’
‘Then you are a dead man.’
‘But until that day, I am a living one, and one Morna grows fonder of every day. Soon, I suspicion, she will not want to leave me.’
‘You can have anyone you want, any woman, why hang onto something that is not yours.’
‘This one intrigues me and, until she stops doing that, I won’t let Morna out of my sight. I will not send her back into the middle of a clan feud and a war, Buchanan. As I see it, you need to be gone soon to defend your King’s interests at Berwick. I hear rumours of an English army marching north to take back Robert’s hard-won prize. After all that blood he spilt, it is going to slip through his fingers. Hiding on an island in the middle of the ocean might not seem so bad then.’
‘I can crush the English, and I can crush you, like the insect that you are.’
‘I am done talking. You’ll have a cold night out here in the open. Good place for an ambush too.’
‘It will not be my first, nor my last, but try it, and it will be yours.’
Will glared at Cormac and then turned to go, just as the Sutherland wretch called out to him.
‘If you touch one hair on Morna’s head, I will kill you,’ he bellowed.
Will spun his horse around and rode it back to Sutherland, almost barging into his horse. Something about this man was getting his temper up. ‘It is not her head that particularly interests me,’ he said, goading him.
Will noticed Cormac glare at the Sutherland fellow.
‘Don’t make me step over your corpse to see Morna safe,’ said Sutherland. ‘She is my betrothed, she belongs to me. ’
Will tried not to betray himself as his world spun and crashed. She had lied to him. ‘She belongs to me.’ So much possession hung in those words from this arrogant young man. Raging jealousy formed a vice around his heart.
Cormac’s black eyes were fixed on Will’s face. Could he see the weakness there, the shock, the hurt? ‘Bain, come the morning, you will bring my sister to me, or suffer the consequences,’ he snarled.
Will turned to Cormac. ‘I say again. Morna is in no danger, nor will she be, but attack my keep, and this dog will be the first one I kill,’ he said, stabbing a finger at Owen Sutherland.
Chapter Fifteen
When they got inside the keep Will flung himself off his horse and was all set to storm off and confront Morna when Waldrick’s hand on his arm stopped him in his tracks.
‘Where are you going?’ Will tried to shake off the other man, but he was not having it. ‘Enough Will. Leave the lass be. We must stop and have this out.’
‘Bar the gates well and double the men on the walls. Make safe the ships down below, and lay an ambush in the cave in case Drostan has spilt all our secrets.’
‘Will, that Cormac Buchanan, the man has ice coursing through his veins. I have come across men like him before. He will find a way to kill you for this, no matter how long it takes, and he has the ear of the King. You shouldn’t cross ruthless men with powerful friends.’
‘Am I not ruthless?’
‘Aye, but Clan Bain stands alone out here. You have put all of us in danger, playing with his sister. A wise man would give the lass back and send him on his way, indebted to you for saving her life. Instead, you seem intent on angering him.’
‘His arrogance offends me. He thinks us beneath him, mangy dogs drooling over scraps, but I will not bend the knee to the likes of him.’
‘He’ll never go away once he harbours a grudge, and I see your death at the hands of that man,’ said Waldrick.
