Page 18 of The Scottish Bride
This was wrong. The Scot was Edward’s messenger, one of them, not Malise’s enemy. The harper had been sent to find her—which made her the cause of his death. Covering her face in her hands, she bent forward.
Now the Dalrinnie men arrived, horses thundering around the cart, riders pulling on reins. Sir David Campbell dismounted and came forward.
“My lady! How is it you are here? What was all that about?” He gestured widely.
“Oh, Sir Davey!” Tamsin felt close to tears. The seneschal offered a hand to help her climb down from the cart, then turned to help the others.
“Well, Davey,” Lady Edith greeted her brother. “Finally, you are here! They just captured an outlaw. We thought him a fine Scotsman—but we were in terrible danger!”
“What happened?” Sir David looked toward the loch, but there was little to see.
“Sir Malise Comyn was here. He said the man was an outlaw,” Tamsin said. “But he was a harper. He helped us. It is cruel, what they have done.”
“A harper? Curious.” Campbell took his sister’s elbow and ushered the younger women ahead to help them mount the extra horses.
Dalrinnie’s seneschal was a strong, steady fellow, fatherly and practical. He had been at Dalrinnie Castle before Sir John Witton, before Tamsin, and he had become one of the few people she trusted there.
“We were all but prisoners in that castle,” Edith said. “I will say he helped us.”
“This is Edward’s business,” Sir David said. “We cannot interfere. Likely we will never hear more about that fellow.”
“Could he be alive? The brewer thought him killed,” Tamsin said.
“He would be lucky to be dead if you ask me. Edward shows no mercy to Scots these days.”
“Brutal attack. Fine young Scot,” the brewer said.
Sir David took coins from his belt pouch and thanked the brewer, who touched his cap and urged his pony and cart over the meadow.
Soon, Tamsin rode among the others, her legs to the side, cloak tucked around her. Ahead, cool moonlight revealed horses and knights in the distance, vanishing southward. One horse carried a form slumped across the saddle.
Sir David slowed to ride beside her. “If Sir Malise went after the man like that, he must have been an outlaw.”
“He mentioned having orders from King Edward. He was one of them.”
“Many Scots act for both sides, my lady. Some do what Edward orders. Some, like Malise Comyn, try to gain privilege. Others are a thorn in the king’s side. No matter what the harper told you, he may have been a thorn.”
Tamsin nodded. She had caused his death. She shivered as chill air and guilt tore at her. Autumn was in the air, and her world was changing fast around her.
She had seen it before it happened. Men, darkness, the glint of steel—a man on the ground. The harper, dead. She had tried to warn him, but he had not heard.
With a shout, one of the Dalrinnie men rode toward them. “Sir! We found this.” He held up a leather satchel. “It might be of value, but it is broken, by the sound of it.” When he shook the bag, Tamsin heard wood rattling, heard a sad, sour chime.
“The harp!” she cried. “I want to keep it.”
She had failed to save him. But she would not leave his harp behind.
Chapter Six
Evening dropped steelgray and quiet as Liam stood watching Dalrinnie Castle through bare-branched trees patterned against the sky. The woodland settled around him, hushed and darkening. Beside him, a chestnut stallion nuzzled for grasses in a thin layer of early snow. His sight-hound, tall and alert, stood beside him, wiry coat the color of thunderclouds.
Home.He had come here as fast as he could, having slipped free of that fool Malise Comyn. A few troublesome days, but easy enough to get away. He was just deeply glad to be standing here now, gazing up at his home.
Dalrinnie towered on a hilltop in blue dusk. The sentries walking the parapet were unlikely to notice the knight standing among the trees at the base of the long slope with its new coat of snow. Dalrinnie’s woodland was part of the outermost fringe of the vast dense tracts of Ettrick Forest—The Forest, as it was called—a massive canopied woodland of oak, birch, green gullies, rushing streams, and endless paths that only some knew. The English had never been able to penetrate it.
All was quiet now, but not an hour ago, dozens of English troops arrived to be hallooed through the opening portcullis. They were led by a temporary commander, so Gilchrist had reported earlier that day. More would come soon to fill the garrison.
He had escaped Comyn’s capture by working his way free of the ropes that bound him tossed over a horse’s saddle. Droppingto the ground to roll away, he had run into the woodland and away. Now he flexed the shoulder that ached from the fall. No matter.
