my brother, Connor, and Connor's cousins - would return as soon as they learned the clan was in danger, and they would need someone inside the castle."
Ilysa would make a better spy than he did, for certain. With her innocent face and quiet demeanor, no one would suspect her.
"Connor needs ye," Ilysa said. "For the sake of the clan, ye must help him."
Lachlan did not remind her that Connor could already be dead. Nor did he tell her that he wished he could change his course. The demands of honor were inflexible and unforgiving, and so must he be.
"There's a man crossing the field to the castle," one of the guards shouted from the wall.
Ilysa bolted from the steps, and Lachlan ran with her to the gate.
An unexpected rush of relief coursed through Lachlan when the guards flung the gate open and he saw the tall, black-haired figure in the midst of the broad, empty field.
"Praise God!" Ilysa said, pressing her hand to her chest.
Connor was using a thick stick as a crutch, and his sleeve was bloody, but he shouted a greeting and waved. The chieftain had survived another brush with death.
He was a hard man to kill, in more ways than one.
* * *
"Can I speak with ye?" Sorely asked from the doorway of Connor's chamber.
Sorely shifted his weight from foot to foot and flicked his gaze around the room. Connor was surprised to see him here at all. It had taken him a while to figure out why Sorely was always slow to answer a summons to come to Connor's chamber, never took guard duty at his door, and generally waited to speak with him until he was in the hall or the courtyard.
The tough old warrior was shaking in his boots for fear he would see the nursemaid's ghost.
"There is no ghost," Connor said. "I've been here a fortnight, and I haven't seen her once."
"There! She's there!" Sorely said, pointing toward the tower door. "Don't ye see her?"
Connor sighed. God help him, this was one of his best warriors. Once a story like the one about the nursemaid got started, people were likely to imagine they saw her ghost for centuries. Connor only hoped Alastair MacLeod had a few ghosts of his own to deal with.
"I'm telling ye, there is no ghost, but let's go down to the hall," Connor said, deciding there was no sense in torturing the man.
He used the stick for a crutch going down the stairs, though he was healing so quickly he hardly needed it.
"We must be cautious that no one overhears," Sorely said in his usual gruff voice as they entered the hall. Apparently, he did not fear that the ghost had chased them down the stairs.
"What is it?" Connor asked once they stood in a quiet corner.
"Someone alerted the MacLeods that we were going to that cottage," Sorely said.
Connor thought it far more likely that whoever betrayed them had told Hugh, expecting him to do the dirty task of eliminating Connor himself, rather than use the MacLeods. It was one thing for a MacDonald man to favor Hugh over Connor as chieftain and quite another to betray the clan to the MacLeods.
"Who do ye think told?" Connor asked.
"I can't say for certain," Sorely said, "but there's something ye ought to know about Lachlan of Lealt - something no one's had the ballocks to tell ye."
"I told no one where we were going but the men we took with us."
"One of them could have told Lachlan," Sorely said with a shrug. "Or he could have overheard them talking."
"I suppose." Connor hoped to hell it was not his best warrior in the castle who betrayed them.
"Lachlan wouldn't need to know our destination," Sorely added. "If he alerted the MacLeods in which direction we went, they could easily have watched for our boat."
Anyone could have done that. "What is it I should know about Lachlan that makes ye suspect him?"
"Lachlan's mother was one of your father's women," Sorely said. "She was married to Lachlan's father at the time, but ye know how the chieftain was about the lasses. When he wanted one, he had to have her."
Connor did know about his father and women. "I can't mistrust all the relatives of every lass my father bedded," Connor said. "That would be half the clan."
"There's more," Sorely said, glancing back at the doorway to the adjoining building. "It was her son that the nursemaid dropped out the tower window."