“We'll only release you if you're referring to a male student in that school of yours.” Gerry stretched his leg along the side of the table as if to halt her escape.
“Stop fooling around,” Conor said, “and sit your butt down. Doc.”
“Really. Sorry everyone.” Haley reached over to give Maggie a big hug. “Welcome to the family.”
“She's really leaving?” Conor asked his father in disbelief.
“God help her!” Danny shouted.
“Leave the girl be.” Her dad nodded sagely. “She's got more important affairs to tend to than a mere football match. Our Haley knows what she needs to do.”
Haley scampered back out into the cold, winding her scarf about her neck as she went, the sound of hooting, cheering, and teasing about “affairs” sounding at her back.
Chapter Two
Argyll, Scotland. 1646
The branches of the old rowan barely bore his weight as he scaled them, and yet the wind in the leaves made more of a rustle than MacColla. It was a moonless night and he felt his way, clinging closer to the trunk as the branches grew thinner and more fibrous with his ascent. Just as the treetop began to stoop with the burden, he saw the roof materialize from the darkness.
It was a ruinous old structure nestled among the trees, a stout, near-windowless tower house, despite its grand title of Inveraray Castle. During the day, wooden steps bypassed the ground floor to lead to the entrance via the great hall on the second story. As such, invited guests wouldn't have to endure the unsightly cellars and vaulted kitchen, and the uninvited would be denied entry when the staircase was retracted at night.
MacColla's laugh was low and quiet. He would, most assuredly, be considered among the uninvited, and yet the fools must've thought some removable steps to be adequate security, for there were no guardsmen to be seen.
There were no suitable windows to climb to from the ground, leaving the roof as the second best access point. He studied it from his perch. A dormer bearing a single door was the only thing that interrupted the silhouette of the sharp peak. A low stone parapet flanked a thin walkway along the roof's edge, presumably to prevent guardsmen from falling the five stories to their death. Faint starlight shimmered in small patches all around, captured by the night's dew.
Ah, and wet too. MacColla thought with a smirk. Tweren't simple nough to begin with.
It was no matter. He'd risk life and limb without a thought to get to his Jean.
He heaved his weight. Perhaps it was a good thing after all that Campbell's lair was in want of windows. As it was, he'd be lucky if none heard the tremendous creak the old tree's bones moaned into the night.
MacColla leapt, hurtling his massive body through the air, crashing along the side of the roof and sliding down to land with an ungraceful thump on the narrow walkway.
He stood and drew his dirk from his b elt. Speed and agility had been paramount, and he'd left his claymore behind. Brushing the leaves from his tartan. MacColla curled his toes and adjusted to the feel of the slate tiles, cold and damp under his bare feet.
He trained his eyes into the darkne ss, making sense of the terrain in the distance. The castle was nestled in Glen
Aray, and the landscape was an almost impermeable black, punctuated only by the faint glimmer of Loch Fyne. a ghostly shade of dark silver in the far distance. He knew that squalid little huts clung to its banks in what constituted the village of Inveraray.
Certain now that nobody had heard his landing, MacColla made his way to the low entry cut into the dormer. “Och,” he muttered, jiggling the locked door, “'Twouldn't be that easy.”
MacColla leaned on the stone railing and looked over the edge of the parapet. “I'll not be going down, I see.” The nearest windows were a row of thin arrow slits over one story below.
He walked along the side of the ledge to where it ended, and looked around to the front of the tower. A small balcony was nestled in its triangular upper story. MacColla looked at the slick roof behind him, then again to the front of the building. Stones stepped inelegantly up to shape its peak.
“Nothing for it, then ,” he grumbled and, biting his dirk between his teeth, scaled the stacked and tapering blocks of granite until he was level with the small opening. Gripping the protruding stones between his thighs, he strained to reach the balcony. He grasped a crude ston e banister in his hand and dropped, quickly grabbing on with his other hand as his body swung out. Heaving himself up and through such a tight space was awkward, and MacColla had to shimmy on his belly until he landed in a pitch-black upper chamber.
He forced himself to pause, despite his eagerness to rampage Campbell's so-called castle. She was close now. He could feel her presence, enduring God -knows-what at the hands of his enemy.
Just as his father had. His father who'd been held captive by this same man for so many years, in just such a tower, trussed like a savage. Campbell, who dared take another from Clan MacDonald prisoner.
MacColla hissed low in his throat at the thought of Jean. Frail, without guile, and lovely as the dawn, with shining black hair and a shy cast to her eye.
Lovely Jean. His sister.
He vowed he'd die at the hands of one hundred Campbells before allowing her to remain another day captive to the brutish bastard. Word was, the Campbell wasn't even in residence, and if the blackguard was fool enough to abandon his precious prisoner, MacColla would avail himself of the opportunity.
He stooped, walking the perimeter of the cramped attic room, tracing his hand along the damp stone as he went, shuffling a foot tentatively forward with each step to see with his body what his eyes couldn't make out in the dark.