“They brought a ram,” Logan growled. “This is it.”
Katrina picked up the sword he’d given her, holding it uncertainly. She’d played about with the swordsmen at the carnival, but never gone toe to toe with an angry warrior.
The handful of soldiers and servants with them gathered in a clump, blades also at the ready.
“When they break through,” Logan said, “rush them as one. Cut them down. Do not let them make their way inside!”
The doors heaved again.
“Again!” Seamus Gunn roared.
The ram pounded against the doors, and they bowed inward, wood splintering around the ram.
Katrina glanced at Logan.
He focused intently on the door, sweat dripping down his forehead. “Another crash…one more…”
A howl went up outside, and the next crash did not come.
Katrina’s sword felt slippery in her hands. “What’s happening?”
“It could be a distraction,” Logan said.
“No!” One of the soldiers posted to the upper floor raced into the great hall, his face alight with excitement. “Laird Ramsey has arrived! He’s attacking their rear!”
Katrina’s sword slipped from her fingers in exhausted relief. She followed Logan to the twisted front doors, watched him yank off the bar and fling them open.
The ram stood there, completely abandoned. Its wielders had raced back to their army, which was swamped in Munro colors.
Logan’s grin nearly took her breath away. “Ramsey and Alec! Men—with me! To arms!”
He caught Katrina’s arm. “Tell the lasses their husbands are safe,” he said, before gathering his giant sword and sprinting out the doors. The small gathering of soldiers ran after him, the Munro battle cry bursting from their throats.
Katrina found her way back to the lower kitchen, where the women and children were still groggy from a night on the floor. “Logan says to tell you his brothers have arrived,” she said. “They are fighting.”
Katrina could feel the relief that took over the keep as word spread. Ramsey and Alec might not win, but at least they were no longer trapped.
By the time they made it back to the great hall, it was over.
Alec rode up to the doors, his mouth twisting slightly as he took in their sorry state. “The Gunns are in full flight,” he reported, “and Seamus will trouble us no more.”
Sabrina sat down hard on one of the benches. “Thank the Lord.”
Alec dismounted, tugged at the ram’s carriage, and then shoved it aside so he could walk in unimpeded.
Cara flung herself into his arms, and his son Connor firmly attached himself to his leg.
“The others?” Katrina asked.
“Well enough,” Alec said with a smile. “We took them completely unawares; our casualties were limited.” He picked up his son, tossed him into the air, and caught him with consummate ease. “We’ve got the Gunns beat!”
The celebration that followed stretched out across the Munro lands, and it found its epicenter in the carnival.
Katrina raced to her grandmother’s side when the freed prisoners arrived behind the army, and the old woman had to swat at her gently. “Easy, child, I’m not so sturdy as I once was.”
“Where did they put you?”
“A village not three miles away. Laird Ramsey came upon us almost immediately.” Grandmother’s strong, bony hands ran through Katrina’s hair, then hit a snarl. “Old Eric said he knew what Seamus had planned, and certainly enough, he surrounded the keep. Ramsey only had to wait for them to exhaust themselves with all that yelling.”
All that yelling had seemed perfectly terrifying at the time, but Katrina was willing to let Grandmother turn up her nose at it.
“Everyone is well?” she whispered.
“Aye, well enough. They did not harm us.” Grandmother pulled away and studied Katrina critically. “What’s happened to you? Your aura has changed.”
Katrina pushed her hair back from her eyes, unable to decide where to begin—or what to say. She could still feel Logan’s hands all over her, could recall the taste of him as he kissed her. Even now, some distant part of her longed for his touch, his possession.
But that had been a moment of panicked frenzy, and she would not partake of him again.
“You’ve met someone!” Grandmother enthused. “Logan is a fine lad, is he not?”
Katrina gaped at her. “How…?”
“I knew he was bound for a great destiny.” Grandmother touched her chin. “And you are the greatest destiny of all, my sweet. You know that.”
I do? Katrina didn’t have the heart to suggest otherwise. Grandmother spotted the Munro children and let out a delighted cackle, crouching down on her arthritic knees and holding out her arms. “Which of you bairns wishes your fortune told?”
Jamie and Connor raced to her, Rose and little Etain toddling behind them more sedately.
Grandmother had always loved children. Katrina watched her interact with the wee ones for a moment, then opted to gracefully retreat.
Rather than accept the refuge of Laird Munro’s halls, the carnival repaired its tents became a hub of festivity. Ramsey directed all revelers to the carnival, and loaned them cooks, musicians, and traders. The little grove in the forest expanded, becoming a bazaar of sound and laughter and joy.
The Munroes themselves seemed different. Some sort of weight had lifted from their shoulders, and now they laughed freely, swapping stories with commoners over cups of ale and wine.
That night, Katrina found Logan standing in front of her grandmother’s tent.
“So she’s always right, is she?” he asked when he saw her standing there.
“She is.” Katrina had taken in a little too much wine, and her vision swam slightly. Did Logan seem apprehensive? It did not fit in with the jovial attitudes of his brothers.
“Then I must beg yer pardon, lass, for I’ve some questions to ask.”
He ducked into the tent, leaving Katrina standing outside. She heard Grandmother’s welcoming tones, heard them seating themselves on the pillows.
Katrina took a breath.
Logan did not emerge within the next few moments, and Katrina was caught up in a nearby dance. She shook and twisted and laughed with Sabrina and Cara, and clasped hands with the Munroes and their kinfolk.
Ramsey sought her out once the dancers had paused for breath, guiding her a little way from the rest of them. “Ye are satisfied, lass?”
“I am,” she said, not certain what Laird Munroe wanted from her.
“What will ye do?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “The carnival will remain open for the season, but then we’ll likely return to the road.”
Always the road. She had never forged connections with others before; had never bothered, knowing she’d only have to leave in the end. But now there was Logan…
No. There was not Logan.
Katrina knew she was not some great destiny to be fulfilled. Even if his feelings for her were real, he could scarcely be expected to pair himself with a commoner, and a carnival denizen at that!
“Ye could stay a bit,” he said. “Cara and Sabrina fancied ye.”
She did not say yes or no, though he must have read her answer in her stance. Ramsey nodded, then bowed his head. “Well, ye’ve a place to stay, if ye wish.”
“Thank you,” she murmured, watching him walk back to his wife and middle brother. The Munroes held court in the very center of the carnival.
There would be a week of festivities, or so Ramsey said. In truth, Katrina was not sure how long the food supplies would hold out, or how much dancing human beings could actually partake in.
In the end, she walked back to her spot by the stream. The buckets were still there, right where she’d left them, and she emptied them with a chuckle. Grandmother will be pleased to have these back.
Logan cleared his throat behind her.
She turned around.
“Yer grand
mother said I would come full circle,” he said, glancing back at the carnival with an expression of disbelief. “And here I am.”
“Here you are.”
He held out his hand, revealing a long, narrow scar along his palm. “Years ago, I was in a fight with one of the lads from the carnival. He cut me…my mother and Alec intervened, and your grandmother took me back to her tent to bandage me up. She told me I was not yet ready to hear my fortune, but that I would see her again when I was.”
Grandmother had played this trick on many a young reveler, and she had a confounding knack for remembering faces, names, and the circumstances under which she’d met people, even years later.
Evidently, she’d done the same to Logan Munro.
“And what did she tell you?” she asked.
“She said it would disappear entirely when I did the thing everyone least expected me to do.”
Katrina frowned, her brow furrowing as she tried to discern the meaning there. “What…I don’t understand.” It seemed a dreadfully strange fortune, even for Grandmother.
“She also said…” Logan sounded slightly disbelieving now, “…that I should travel north, and I will find a tremendous adventure.”
Katrina realized what Grandmother was trying to do. She bit her lip; should she laugh it off, or give in to the tears she knew were coming?
She decided to play along, at least for a little bit longer. “The carnival is going north after this.”
“Aye.” Logan’s smile was downright mysterious. “Father William is here at the carnival, lass. Would ye do me the honor of paying him a visit?”
She gaped at him. He could not be asking this of her, could he?
“Logan…” she began, “we’ve only just met…”
“True,” he said. “But I feel it in me gut—and look here.” He pointed at the scar. “It’s already begun to fade since yesterday. Years of nothing, and now it fades?”
It sounded like magic, all right.
Katrina slipped her hand into his.
***
Logan married his carnival lass that very night.
Father William, who had served the Munro family for years upon years, did not seem overly surprised to be officiating a wedding on such short notice. “The Munroes do things as they will,” he confided to Katrina after the brief ceremony. “These younger ones, especially.”
She was quite sure the world was spinning around—or maybe she was just dizzy. She had just married Logan Munro, the youngest of the Munro clan. The bouquet of flowers she’d been given to hold were plucked fresh from the side of the road, and her regular dress had been hurriedly exchanged for a fine silver gown Grandmother procured from one of her trunks.
And then she had said I do and become a Munro.
Ramsey and Alec were still crowded around Logan, offering congratulations and asking him what the Devil inspired such madness.
Sabrina and Cara gathered around Katrina, both of them wearing knowing smiles.
“I suspected as much,” Cara said, embracing Katrina carefully. “Logan looked at you so intently. He must have been thinking it all along!”
Sabrina closed in as well, her smile conspiratorial. “We would have seen to it this happened, though, don’t you worry.”
Katrina caught her grandmother’s eye. The old woman smiled at her, winked, and seemingly disappeared, vanishing back into the revelers.
Almost like magic, Katrina thought, and then found herself back in Logan’s arms.
Logan and Katrina went north with the carnival at the end of the season, and indeed found themselves in the midst of a tremendous adventure. The old fortune teller had been right—they had been destined for each other from the start.
The scar on Logan’s hand healed, and they traveled to a great many places. At the end of each adventure, though, they returned to Munro keep, to Logan’s brothers and their wives, where they told stories and laughed around the hearth for hours at a time, until the stars winked out and the sun began to rise.
The Munro Clan Highlander Collection (The Munro Clan Highlander Romances) Page 16
