by Lucy Monroe
“We do not know that is not what happened.”
“So it was not a lie?” she asked, finding the whole conversation beyond her knowledge of the wolves.
Barr shrugged. “There are lies and there is stretching the truth when it will not harm.”
“You need to put a new plaid on,” she blurted out.
The nearness of his naked presence was overshadowing all else.
“You do not like my naked body?”
“I think she likes it too much. I will get my basket of remedies.” Verica curtsied and left the room.
The walls that seemed spacious before started to close in as Sabrine realized they were well and truly alone.
Barr sat beside her on the bed and then proceeded to start tugging his plaid from her body.
She grabbed at it. “What do you think you are doing?”
“Verica cannot clean your scratches if she cannot get to them.”
“I’ll remove the plaid when she returns.”
“You were not so modest in the forest.”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“Come, I’ve already seen your delectable body. It’s of no consequence if I see it again.”
“Truly? You think to convince me with insults?” But was it an insult? He thought her body delectable. Though his scent had said he found her sexually appealing, ’twas not quite the same.
“It’s not an insult.”
Maybe that was not a lie. “Turn your back and I’ll get under the blanket.”
She expected him to refuse, but he stood and turned around so his back was to her. She made quick work of ripping away the now-bloodstained plaid and climbing between the bedding.
The blanket was the softest wool she’d ever felt and different colors than the Donegal plaid. Sabrine remembered something Verica had said. “Are you from a different clan?”
That would explain his being laird when the Éan spies had named a different man.
“Aye, I was born a Sinclair.”
“But you have the armband of the Donegal laird.”
Verica came into the room carrying a large steaming bowl of water. “That’s because Scotland’s king and our former laird, Rowland”—she practically spit the name—“saw fit to give my brother’s rightful place to another clan’s warrior.” A girl followed behind her, carrying a basket that was half her size.
“I am training your brother to take his rightful place when he has reached maturity.” Barr donned a plaid with deft movements.
“And when will that be?” She put her hands on her hips and stared her laird right in the eye. “When he’s a grandfather?”
The girl put the basket down, her downcast gaze flitting back and forth between her mistress and her laird.
“If the boy isn’t ready to lead by his twenty-fifth birthday, I’ll wash my hands of him and this superstition-riddled clan.”
Rather than look offended at the slur on her clan, Verica nodded as if pleased. “I have your word on that?”
“You do.”
Verica opened the basket and handed the girl a packet of herbs from within. “Drop two pinches into the water and stir.”
The girl did as she was told, then Verica took some of the water and mixed it with several other ingredients in a smaller bowl. Verica wet a cloth in the large bowl of water and began thoroughly cleansing Sabrine’s wound on her arm. When she was done, she and the girl made a poultice and applied it to both sides of the wound. “That should draw out any poison.”
Verica wrapped the upper arm in a linen bandage before carefully washing each scratch and treating it with salve. Barr watched everything with close scrutiny. Verica showed no more concern for Sabrine’s modesty than Barr had though. Which was no surprise, Sabrine supposed. They were both Chrechte after all. Humans in the Highlands were not an overly modest bunch, and the Chrechte were even less concerned with exposure. However, in her case she’d discovered a sense of modesty she’d not known she possessed.
She felt as shy as a human virgin in Barr’s presence.
Barr knocked a young human male on his backside, the impact sending up a cloud of dust around the warrior in training.
He’d left Verica watching over Sabrine, with instructions not to allow anyone else in his room. There were things he was certain she had yet to reveal. Determined to be the one she told them to, he used her injury as an excuse to keep her isolated. If keeping her in his bed and away from the other males of his clan pleased the wolf more than it should, that was his secret to keep. His new clan was curious about her though. No fewer than five people had asked about the naked woman he’d found in the forest. Gossip spread faster than a pitcher of spilled ale.
Barr was too busy training soldiers to satisfy their curiosity and he left it to Muin to tell what he knew. Which was less than Barr; that was little enough.
Though the younger Chrechte still managed to make a full meal out of it.
“When your opponent is bigger than you, use his size against him. Use your speed, your agility to stay out of his reach,” Barr instructed the young man he had knocked down.
The soldier’s intent expression would be a welcome sight on some of the Chrechte Barr and Earc had been working with.
These human men wanted to learn.
“I try, laird, but you’re faster than me despite your size.”
“Keep trying.” Excuses wouldn’t protect the clan.
The soldier nodded, falling back into a fighting stance.
“Muin, stop your gossiping and get over here,” Barr yelled to where the young male flirted with a Chrechte woman.
“Rowland didn’t allow us to train with the elite soldiers,” one of the other Donegals mentioned from where he and a small group of human men waited their turn to spar with their new laird.
Disbelief jarring him harder than any of these soldiers’ attempts at a strike, Barr stopped and turned to face them. “He kept you separated for training?”
“Aye.”
What kind of fool did not prepare his clan to battle other Chrechte? Relying on the wolves completely for protection was a weak strategy that left far too many in the clan vulnerable. It was no wonder their king had demanded the older Chrechte step down from his role as laird. Not that the king would know of Rowland’s bias toward his Chrechte brethren, but even a human would see the misuse of clan resources and poor tactical stance the old man had taken.
If a human warrior did not learn how to fight his stronger counterpart by training with them, the clan was left weakened and vulnerable when their enemies might well outnumber them in Chrechte warriors.
“Who did you practice with then?”
“Each other.” From the look of things that was not exactly stone sharpening stone.
“Who taught you?”
The men looked down and at each other but would not meet Barr’s gaze.
“Answer me.”
“Rowland said we had to earn the right to be trained by staying on our feet for one minute with an elite soldier. We never could.”
Of course they couldn’t. Without proper training, a human soldier had no chance against the wolf nature of even the poorly trained Donegal Chrechte. “Rowland is an idiot.”
A shocked gasp sounded. But the man who had spoken looked like at least he openly agreed with Barr.
“He’s our laird,” Muin said in a scandalized tone as he jogged up.
Barr didn’t hesitate. He knocked the Chrechte flat on his back with a blow meant to get notice. “I am your laird. Rowland is an old man who forgot the importance of every member of his clan. I don’t make those kinds of mistakes.”
“No, my laird.” From what he’d seen the former laird was close friends with Muin’s grandfather, but there was no hesitation in the younger warrior’s agreement.
“You earn your right to be trained by giving your loyalty to your clan,” Barr said to them all.
The youth he’d been sparring with drew himself up, his face set in hard lines. “We’ve
done that.”
The other men nodded.
“Aye?” Barr prodded.
He did not doubt it, but they needed to be made aware in their own minds that they spoke bone-deep truth.
“Aye.” The youth’s tone was vehement, his head jerking up and down in agreement. “We build homes and repair our keep. We hunt to put food in hungry bellies, no matter our circumstances or the weather like to freeze us. We stand by our families, serving them as we do the clan as a whole. We try to learn to fight, but are left to train amongst ourselves.”
The other men nodded, adding comments of their own, the frustration they knew at the hands of Rowland and his ilk evident in every tense fist and grinding jaw. Their loyalty had been met with mockery and disdain.
Barr would allow no such travesty to happen again.
“Teaching you to hold your own against superior strength, skill and speed is my responsibility. I don’t fail at the tasks I take on,” he warned them.
Several of the men smiled, looking pleased by his promise. They weren’t smiling two hours later, but they weren’t complaining, either. Though each and every one of them, including Muin, sported fresh bruises and some had been bloodied as well.
They stopped their practice when Earc returned with the Chrechte hunting party.
“Did the boar get the best of you?” The hunters looked as beat up as the soldiers Barr had been training.
“You can damn well smell the blood.” Earc’s nostrils flared. He was clearly in no mood to be teased. “You know we caught our prey.”
But the final kill had obviously been a hell of a lot harder than it should have been with three wolves, even if only one of them could control his change.
Earc would mate soon enough and gain the ability to shift at will. That was one thing Barr and Talorc had argued over. Talorc maintained that sex constituted a mating. The wolves in his pack not born with the ability to shift at will like Barr could had to wait until mating to make that happen. To his knowledge, only the white wolf and its descendants were born with that ability. Others had to have sex after their transition to adulthood in order to control the change. It made little sense to Barr, but then there was much in his world that remained a mystery.
The inability to shift at will put Sinclair warriors at a tactical disadvantage to clans like the Balmoral, who had no such mores assigned to sex outside a mating.
He did not know what the Donegals practiced.
Circin and Fionn came forward, carrying the boar on a sturdy branch between them.
“Fionn looks like he wrestled the boar before you killed it.”
“Let’s just say he needs to learn a subtler way to hunt.”
“You instructed him?”
“He didn’t listen well the first time.”
Barr doubted the pig had been the only one in the forest who Fionn had to defend himself from. Earc was a patient man, but he was not a saint.
“I got the lesson,” Fionn said in a weary voice.
“That is what matters, but if you fail to listen to my second again, it won’t be his wrath you face.”
Fionn winced but nodded. “Understood.”
Sabrine was sleeping when Barr returned to his room to check on her.
“I gave her a calming drink of steeped herbs,” Verica explained. “She was restless and wanting to get up.”
“Are you sure it’s safe for her to slumber?”
“She’s only dozing, not in a deep sleep.”
“Your senses are finely honed.” It was not always a simple matter to distinguish between the two.
“It helps me in my role as healer.”
He found that easy to believe. “Explain to me why you held your brother back from training with the older Chrechte.”
Circin was by far the most dedicated of their trainees. He obviously hungered for the kind of mentoring he’d gotten among the Sinclairs and now received from Barr and Earc.
Circin would make a fine laird one day, but he was years behind where he should be in his training.
“I wasn’t ready for him to be a man.”
“Your words ring with truth, but there is something more.” Like with Sabrine earlier.
Verica fussed with the blanket over the dozing woman. “Nothing you need concern yourself with.”
“I am your laird. Everything about those in my clan concerns me.” As much as it was not a position he would have had by choice, now that he had the responsibility, he would uphold it completely.
“That is a laudable sentiment to be sure, but some things are private.”
“If you have a reason for distrusting the other Chrechte in this clan, I need to know.”
“I have nothing more than a feeling. I won’t make accusations without substance.”
He had to respect that. “I’ll admit, I wish some of the others showed your reticence to gossip.”
Her lips twitched. “We’re a small clan. Word travels faster than footfalls in some instances, but curiosity makes it go even faster.”
“I noticed.”
“Did questions about your captive keep you from training?”
“Nay.” He was a warrior, not an old woman. Gossip didn’t keep him from his duties. “And she is not my captive. Sabrine is a guest.”
“So, I can leave the room?” Sabrine demanded from the bed, her eyes opening. “I was under the impression”—and she gave Verica a measured look—“that I was not to do so.”
“For your own protection, I would prefer you not leave this room unaccompanied.” There, now that was mindful of her feminine sensibilities, wasn’t it?
Talorc’s wife insisted a woman preferred not to be dictated to. Barr could allow his guest to think she had a say in the matter, but the truth was he would have his way.
“I need protection among your clan?” she asked, not sounding as surprised by that as she could have been.
“You are a stranger to them. The Donegals are not overly friendly with those they do not know.”
“You think I will get my feelings hurt?” The disbelief tingeing her voice was rather naïve on her part, he thought.
But then she had suffered memory loss. Perhaps she had forgotten how easily a human woman’s emotions could be damaged. Even the Chrechte women of his former clan took exception to things he never saw as beyond innocuous.
“You are not yet sufficiently recovered to venture out of this room. You need healing rest.” He patted her uninjured arm in what he hoped was a consoling manner. “You’re fragile and must conserve your strength.”
She stared at him with blatant incredulousness for three full seconds before she blinked, and then nodded. “Right. I’m weak and need my rest.”
His senses had prepared him for her argument. This sudden capitulation startled him.
“Aye, that is exactly what you need,” Verica replied before Barr had the chance. “Tonight at least, you’ll take late meal in bed.”
“You’ll see to it?” Barr asked.
Verica nodded. “Brigit and I will have our meal in here as well.”
He was tempted to join them, but the clan still needed his visible presence as often as possible, to solidify his role as their laird in all their minds. The healer and her young apprentice would be good company for Barr’s mysterious and much too alluring guest.
Rowland joined Barr at the head table before the food had been brought in from the kitchens. Though the older Chrechte had showed no happiness at being forced by his king to cede his leadership, he always ate with Barr. Earc said it was because Rowland still considered the head table his.
After learning what he had today, Barr wasn’t sure how long he would allow it. The man’s presence only fanned the slow-burning fury his inadequate former leadership caused in the new Donegal laird.
“I heard you called me an idiot, boy,” the old man said in querulous tones as he sat down.
Barr was fairly certain none of the men he’d been training had said anything, but the training yard was n
ear the kitchens. And there had been a group of watchers during the entire training time. Barr could easily have been overheard.
“I heard you neglected to train men eager to do their duty by the clan.” The old man opened his mouth to speak, but Barr forestalled him. “Worse, I’ve seen with my own eyes how badly you taught those you did bother to train.”
“Now you listen here—”
But Barr had heard enough. He leaned down until their faces were inches apart. “No, old man, you listen to me. I am your laird and you will address me as such if you need to address me at all. You lost your position through idiocy and neglect, but if you think to challenge me for the right to lead this clan, think hard. I will kill you.”
Rowland’s grizzled visage twisted in a scowl. “You need to show respect for your elders.”
“Respect is earned.” So far, the only thing this man had earned from Barr was a swift kick.
“I led these people since my dear friend and our rightful laird was killed while hunting when Circin here was but a boy.” He indicated the untrained heir with a gnarled finger. “That is deserving of respect.”
For his part, Circin looked less than impressed by Rowland’s claim. Certainly no affection toward the older man showed in the future laird’s expression or manner.
Rowland may have taken Circin’s father’s place as leader of the clan, but he’d not fulfilled his role of mentor for the man’s children.
“It would be if you hadn’t done such a piss-poor job of it.” He wasn’t about to sugarcoat his words for the sake of the man’s ego.
Rowland tried to look dignified, but it was too far a stretch to Barr’s way of thinking. “We do not need to discuss this here.”
“We won’t be discussing anything at all. Challenge me, or shut the hell up.”
“With age comes wisdom.”
“For some, and some of us turn into fools,” Osgard said.
The old man was the only other Sinclair who had accompanied Barr to the Donegals. It had not been by choice, but rather his only option in the face of his actions in regard to their former laird’s mate. Osgard had taken his banishment from the Sinclair clan hard but accepted it. He’d earned the punishment and both knew and acknowledged it.
The confused thinking he’d shown back at the Sinclair hold that had led to his unacceptable attitudes had diminished away from the constant reminders of memories that had clearly grown too heavy to bear. Though he still had days he spent in his room, lost in a past too real for him to fully forget.
