Sorley cocked a brow. “I thought you were from Nought, in the Glen of Many Legends?”
“So I am.” Grim helped himself to another spoonful of venison stew. “Nought is my home. Just now, I’m helping a neighboring chieftain rebuild his stronghold, Duncreag, and his garrison.
“A war-band of broken men took the castle about a year ago, doing much damage. Worst of all”—he paused, dabbing the napkin to his lips again—“the brigands slaughtered almost every soul at Duncreag. The chief’s sons and daughter, most of his kin, and even his beloved lady wife all perished.”
“I’ve heard such feuding is rampant in the Highlands.” Sorley took a bite of bramble-laden bannock. He needed to occupy himself and didn’t want Grim to see that his tale affected him. No stranger to fighting, he did feel sick inside whenever he heard of women mistreated.
To learn of innocent ladies slain made his gut twist painfully.
So much so, that he forgot his dislike of Grim.
“Even in Stirling, we hear tell of the clan warfare, the rampaging—”
“The tragedy that befell Duncreag and Archibald MacNab had naught to do with clan feuding.” Grim was watching him even more intently now. “Archie’s stronghold was raided because the attackers thought to find a hoard of treasure hidden there. They also hoped to use Duncreag as a base for their depredations in the surrounding glens. Duncreag is remote. You’d be hard put to find a better-suited hideaway for such a purpose.” Grim took a long sip of ale, his gaze never leaving Sorley’s face. “The stronghold sits atop a sheer bluff, a great soaring one even higher and more rugged than Nought. The only access is a thread-thin goat track that winds up the cliff face. Duncreag should be impregnable, and will be better defended once I’ve trained and settled Archie’s new garrison.”
“The MacNabs weren’t good fighters?”
“Duncreag was taken by stealth. But, aye, the men weren’t the stoutest warriors. The MacNabs’ strongpoint has ne’er been swinging a sword.”
“What then?”
“They’re a race of poets.” Grim sat back, a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “Seldom have I heard words and song of such beauty as can be enjoyed in Duncreag’s hall of a cold, dark night, the fires blazing and good ale flowing at the tables.”
“Humph.” Sorley snorted, his resentment of Highlanders returning with a vengeance.
Hadn’t he dreamed of spending his nights thus, as far back as he could remember?
He also finally grasped what Grim wanted of him. Leastways he had a suspicion.
“You’re in charge of manning the chief’s new garrison?”
“I am, aye.”
“Can it be you’re asking me to help you?”
“No’ quite, though it’d be a boon for Duncreag if you would.”
“Alas, I cannae.” Sorley ignored the stab of regret his denial brought. “I’m a Stirling man as much as you’re a Highlander. My life and work are here, no’ off in your hills fighting for men I dinnae ken.”
“And if I told you they are men you should know?” Grim swirled the ale in his tankard, studying the frothy brew as if it held all the world’s wisdom. “If I told you the chief, Archie MacNab, is a broken man? That, as I believe, it would heal him greatly if you ride north with me?”
Sorley frowned.
Something wasn’t right, a word, a twist of phrase, a puzzle he wasn’t seeing.
He set down the spoon he’d been about to dip again into William’s delicious venison stew. “Why do I have the feeling there’s more to this than needing a good fighting man to help rebuild a garrison?”
“Because there is.” Grim leaned forward, his face earnest. “I am as much Archie’s friend as the acting captain of his new garrison.”
“That’s no’ an answer.”
“It is if you agree that when you love a man, you want the best for him.”
“That makes even less sense.” The fine hairs on the back of Sorley’s neck were beginning to rise. Worse, he had the most uncanny sense that his plaid was stirring, moving about his shoulders and arms almost like the gentle, caressing hands of a woman.
He gave Grim the driest look he could muster, not wanting him to guess his ill ease. “Any seasoned warrior could train a garrison. Surely there are enough stalwarts in your hills for such a task?”
Grim didn’t blink, his steady gaze making Sorley feel under assault. “The garrison is only part of it. To be sure, we have braw fighters in the Highlands. I want the man who will no’ just join me in strengthening Archie’s defenses, but also make him whole again. He needs and deserves his peace. I mean to give it to him.” He offered Sorley the slightest of nods. “No’ what he’s lost, but something else to lift his heart again.”
“You’re that close to the MacNab?”
“I care about him, aye. He’s a fine chieftain, a good man who made mistakes.” He gestured with his stew spoon, pointing it at Sorley. “We all do, or will you disagree?”
“Nae.” Sorley shook his head, not sure if the odd rushing in his ears was his blood or the wind racing past the inn’s windows. “There isn’t a man walking who doesn’t carry regrets, sorrows, and guilt.”
He wasn’t sure where the words came from, or the sympathy he felt for this unknown Highland laird.
For some reason, his throat was thickening and he felt an odd pain in his chest. His heart thumped slow and hard. And each breath was a struggle. He almost felt lightheaded.
Reaching for his ale, he drained what was left in the tankard.
He’d always heard Highlanders had a touch of the fey about them, and Grim was proving it. Even the din from the nearby long room seemed to be fading, his whole world contracting to the Highlander’s strong, black-bearded face, the bitterly earnest look in his eyes. The intangible sense that a hint of pleading lurked in his gaze’s smoke-gray depths.
“I’m glad you see it that way.” Grim’s words seemed to come from a great distance.
They also made Sorley damned uncomfortable.
“I still cannae go north with you.” Sorley wished William would return with more ale. He could do with a barrel. “I’m no’ the man you need.”
“Mayhap,” Grim agreed. “But you are whom Archie needs.”
Sorley’s eyes narrowed. “Whom he needs?”
“As I see it, aye.”
His words rushed over Sorley like flood waters, knocking the breath out of him and making him feel as if he reeled, even though he was in a chair. He shook his head, not liking the notions rising in his mind.
It couldn’t be possible.
His wild imagination was running free, mocking and teasing him…
“What are you saying?” He reached across the table, grabbing Grim’s wrist. “Speak plain.”
“Can you no’ guess?” Grim’s question made Sorley’s entire body still.
“Nae, I cannae.” Saints o’ mercy, was that his voice? “Tell me.”
“Archibald MacNab is your father,” Grim declared. “I’d like to take you to him.”
Chapter Thirteen
That cannae be.” Sorley stared at Grim in stunned disbelief. He clutched the table edge, his temples pounding. “I ken all the Highland chieftains who come and go at court. No’ just now, but in past years. MacNab of Duncreag is no’ one of them.” He shook his head. “You err.”
“Nae, he was, for sure.” Grim looked certain. “You wouldn’t know his name because the late King Robert banished him from court. He ordered Archie struck from memory, forbidding anyone to speak of him.”
“Then how do you know he’s my father, if no one dares voice his name?” Sorley leaned forward. “Did he tell you of me? Send you here?”
“He doesn’t even know.” Grim reached for the earthen jug on the table and poured the remaining ale into their tankards. “I came on my own. And that’s of no import. What matters is that Archie will heal if you’ll return with me to Duncreag, assume your rightly place as—”
“What, his heir
?” Sorley came to his feet, then wished he hadn’t, for the room seemed to be spinning. “That’s howling mad. If I e’er meant aught to him, if he even knew I existed, where was he all these years?”
Grim raised his tankard, took a long swallow. “We agreed all men make mistakes, have regrets.”
“No’ living, breathing ones!” Sorley dropped back into his chair, grabbed his own ale. He tipped it to his lips, annoyed the tankard only held a sip.
He glared at Grim, vaguely aware of whoops and table thumping in the long room. The raucous sounds were so close they could only stem from one corner. And he knew exactly where it was, right outside the open archway. He also knew who sat there, making merry at his expense. Not that he cared. His three archfiends could strip naked and dance a jig on the table and it’d be nothing to him.
Their revelry was the least of his worries.
What plagued him was his curiosity.
He wanted to know more about Archibald—Archie—MacNab of Duncreag.
At the same time, he didn’t like feeling a jot of sympathy for the man.
That he already had, before he’d known Grim’s secret, was a problem.
“The day is a fine one, eh?” William strolled up to the table, smiling ear to ear as he set down an even larger jug of fresh, frothy ale and a small pewter tray with two cups of uisge beatha.
“I’m thinking something stronger than ale is welcome?” William rapped the table. He also gave a Sorley a friendly whack on the back. “Indeed, I’m passing round a few flasks of my best spirits in the long room.”
“I wouldn’t know why.” Sorley didn’t touch the little cup.
He did lift his head to glare at the innkeeper. “If the ruckus out there has aught to do with me, we are no longer friends. You’ll have proven yourself spawned in the depths of hell and no’ the man I aye thought you were. One who kens when to keep his lips sealed.”
William raised his hands, palms outward. “I told everyone we’re celebrating the year-day of this inn. That’s no’ far from the truth, as the day passed a sennight ago.
“Ten grand years”—his smile deepened—“since I took o’er the Red Lion from my father and his father before him.”
Sorley nodded once, in polite recognition. “I still dinnae want your uisge beatha.”
“Knock it back, my friend.” William rested a hand on his shoulder, gripped hard. “Remember, the view down a road aye depends on the direction you’re looking. Think on that. My fine Highland spirits will help.”
“They’ll give me a sore head in the morning,” Sorley grumbled, taking a nip all the same.
When he plunked the cup back down on the table, William was gone.
Grim was watching him, looking mightily pleased.
“What?” Sorley glanced down, wondering if he’d dribbled uisge beatha or Berengaria’s bramble preserves in his beard or onto his plaid.
“You have the devil’s own temper.” Grim sipped his uisge beatha, his observation seeming to amuse him even more. “Did you ken that the MacKenzies’ greatest—”
“I dinnae ken that lot at all.” Sorley leaned across the table, clamping his hand across Grim’s wrist before he could lift his cup for another sip. “I told you, I like the colors of their tartan.”
A plaid that—he noted to his horror—once again seemed to be shifting lightly across his shoulders and back, as if an unseen female hand were touching him. Stroking him not in a sensual way, but gently and soothingly.
The sensation made his skin crawl.
Lady Mirabelle, were she here, and he praised the gods she wasn’t, would say a ghost was caressing him.
“Have you aye been drawn to the MacKenzie tartan?” Grim didn’t seem to care at all that he was gripping his arm so tightly. “Aye been so hot-headed? Truth be told, I’m no’ surprised.”
Sorley let go of Grim’s arm and sat back. “I dinnae see what my temper, or the MacKenzies, have to do with you and Archibald MacNab of Duncreag.”
“Nae?” Grim arched a brow. ““Were you no’ aware that Clan MacKenzie’s greatest hero chieftain, Duncan, the Black Stag of Kintail, was also known as ‘the Devil’? He, too, had a raging temper.” Calmly finishing William’s uisge beatha, Grim raised the empty cup in salute and set it back down, quietly. “One could say such outbursts of fury run in the blood of that house.”
“I wouldn’t ken.” Sorley reached for old Berengaria’s bramble preserves only to discover he’d already emptied the little pot.
“Your mother was a MacKenzie.” Grim spoke as easily as if he were commenting on the mist whirling past the windows. “Daughter of a cousin several times removed from the mighty Black Stag himself.”
The words slammed into Sorley, stunning him so thoroughly the impact nearly knocked him off his chair.
“My mother?” He stared at Grim as though he’d stood and turned into Duncan MacKenzie himself.
He couldn’t say more because his heart had stopped, his world crashing in on him. His jaw slipped, his chest tightening fiercely.
“I ken it’s a shock.” Grim was sympathetic.
Somehow he’d procured more uisge beatha, a fresh wee cup, which he slid in Sorley’s direction. Wyldes must’ve crept into the parlor, unseen as he so oft managed to be, bringing more of the fiery spirits. “I wish I could’ve lessened the blow,” Grim owned, looking on as Sorley drained the cup in one quick gulp.
“I dinnae have a mother.” Sorley wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, set down the empty cup. “I ne’er knew her. I cannae believe you.”
“Och, it’s true enough. Her name was Gavina and by all accounting she was exceptionally beautiful. Unfortunately, she was also high-spirited, and in her most tender, vulnerable years, she lost her heart to the wrong lad, a roguish squire passing through Kintail with his liege lord.”
Grim paused, waiting for Sorley’s nod before he continued. “Your mother quickened with child. By the time she knew, the lad who’d compromised her was gone. His name is lost to history, no one remembers. Fearing reprisals from her family, Gavina fled, making her way south through the Great Glen. She eventually found sympathetic farmers, MacDonalds of Glencoe, who took her in, caring for her and then comforting her when the child was stillborn. She stayed on with them, helping with chores and looking after the smallest bairns and children.”
“A servant, then?”
Grim shrugged. “Perhaps some would say so. But the MacDonalds treated her with kindness. They respected her secrets and never sent word to her father, a possibility she greatly feared.”
“The MacKenzie temper?” Sorley could imagine.
“Their rages and passions are far-famed, aye.” Grim spooned up a bit of gooseberry pastie. “That hot blood became your mother’s worst enemy, heralding her downfall, and yours.”
Sorley stiffened. “I’m still no’ convinced she was my mother. The MacNab was a MacNab, no’ a MacDonald. Glencoe is a great distance from Stirling. I do ken I’m a court bastard, sired at the castle.”
Grim arched a brow. “You weren’t aware Scottish Kings love hunting? That their wish for the most magnificent stags takes them far and wide, even into the wilds of Glencoe?”
Sorley comprehended. “She caught the eye of one of the King’s men?”
“Nae, it was King Robert who claimed her.”
“The King?”
“King Robert II himself.” Grim took another bite of gooseberry pastie. “I couldn’t learn what he told the MacDonalds, or perhaps paid them for her, but he took her with him to Stirling. Once at court, he made her his mistress.”
“The King?” Sorley couldn’t believe it. Never had he heard the like, and hadn’t Grim sworn Archibald MacNab sired him? “You’re no’ making sense. If I was the King’s by-blow, I’d no’ have slept on a bed of straw in the kitchens as a lad.”
Grim set down his spoon. “I didnae say the late King fathered you. I said he made your mother one of his most favored mistresses.”
The truth hit Sor
ley like a punch in the gut.
He winced, imagining Lady Gavina’s dilemma.
Looking Grim square in the eye, he voiced his suspicion. “Archibald MacNab seduced her. That’s what you’re saying, right? Her waist thickened with me and the King’s wrath was great, aye? He banished her, or had her killed. That’ll be why I ne’er knew her.”
The possibility chilled his liver.
“Tell me that’s no’ true.” He hadn’t expected to feel anything, but his heart was splitting, a terrible heat burning the backs of his eyes.
He wanted to wring the MacNab’s neck.
“I wish I could say otherwise, my friend.” Grim sounded genuinely regretful. “More or less, that is the way of it. Leastways, from what I could gather of her sad tale. You did know her, though. You—”
“Nae, I ne’er—”
“Aye, you did, but only as a wee mite.” Grim was fingering one of his beard rings, as if the telling bothered him. “The King meant to have her walled up alive, great-bellied as she was, so tremendous was his rage. But his own lady wife, who knew of his many women and was a caring soul, persuaded him to simply send her away. A lesser noble with connections in the Hebrides arranged for a deep-pursed Islesman to take her. Once she’d birthed you, that is. The Islesman, a Barra man, I believe, came for her and you, and there you lived for nearly two years. On the far isle of Barra, until your lady mother perished after eating seabird eggs that had spoiled.”
“So she took me with her?” Sorley could hardly speak for the thickness in his throat.
“She did, and she loved you fiercely. With all her MacKenzie passion.” Grim closed his eyes as if the tale pained him. “Sadly, the Islesman had fallen so hard for her, he couldn’t bear having you around as a reminder. It’s said you resemble her greatly.
“And so…” He let the words tail away. “I was returned to court to be raised as the unwanted bastard of Archibald MacNab.”
Grim looked embarrassed. “I wouldnae put it that way, but aye.”
“Be glad I cannae go with you to Duncreag.” Sorley couldn’t believe the fury burning inside him. “I would kill the MacNab with my bare hands.”
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