Page 70 of Bride of Mist
She waited until they had passed through a flower-studded glen, by a pair of squirrels making chase in a tree, past a spring trickling down a mud bank on its way to the river.
Then she engaged him in seemingly innocent conversation.
“So tell me about your clan. Do you have other brothers and sisters?” she asked casually. “I have one sister and four brothers. I’m the oldest.”
“Nay, there’s just Gaufrid and me.”
“And are you close to him?”
“Gaufrid?” He smirked. “We’re close in age, I suppose.”
“So you don’t get along?” she guessed. “My brothers are always fighting.”
“I suspect ’tis the nature o’ brothers.”
“Nothing serious, though. Mostly words? A scrape? A black eye or two?”
His face darkened for an instant. “Nothin’ serious. Not so far.”
“With my brothers, ’tis always a fight o’er something ridiculous. Whose turn ’tis to right the quintain. Who gets the biggest slice of the roast. Which of them our mother likes best.” She smiled. “Is it like that for you?”
“My ma and da are dead,” he said stiffly.
“Oh.”
“And my da made his choice. Gaufrid’s laird o’ mac Darragh now.”
His words hung as heavy as fog. Was that bitterness in his voice?
“Is he a good laird?” She didn’t expect the truth. A clan always defended its laird, no matter how cruel they were.
“As good as he’scapableo’ bein’,” he replied.
What he left out spoke as loudly as what he said. And it put a new twist in the story.
Dougal didn’t think his brother adequate for the role of laird. Perhaps he thoughthedeserved that role. It wouldn’t be the first time sibling rivalry tore apart a clan. She wondered…
“You said you rode to Kirkoswald,” she said. “Did your brother ride out as well?”
“Nay.”
“Why not?”
A muscle twitched in Dougal’s jaw as he gave her a curt reply. “’Twasmyresponsibility.”
“Yours?”
“Aye,” he snapped. “A laird can’t be everywhere at once, can he?”
As soon as the words left his mouth, Dougal regretted his tone. It sounded exactly like something his brother would say. “Sorry.”
It seemed the wee lass’s wits were as pointed and accurate as her blade. In a matter of instants, she’d disarmed him and thrust a dagger into his heart.
She was right. It should have been the laird riding to Kirkoswald. Dougal wanted to believe his brother had saddled up a mount and followed soon after. But a part of him was aware of the truth. Gaufrid never did anything that inconvenienced him. And a fire was a definite inconvenience.
“So you and your brother’s men rode to the village,” she said.
“Only me.”
