inside Jamie snapped and broke. Hot and jagged, it spun free to whirl ever upward, lodging in his throat, making it thicken and swell, burning his eyes.
He blinked, needing to clear his vision.
When he did, he recognized it was the panic in his father's eyes that twisted his heart. And made him angry. Munro Macpherson had never been afraid of anything.
Saints, Jamie wouldn't have been surprised to hear his da challenge the Horned One himself. A fight to the death and with the devil's own weapons of choosing!
Yet now the old man's every indrawn breath was tinged with fear. A grievous state he'd lived with e'er since a certain faceless coward began using the tragic deaths of his sons to haunt and break him. A miserable gutter-sweep Jamie strongly suspected might even have caused those deaths. And whoe'er he was, Jamie would find him. Even if doing so meant overturning every stone and clump of heather in all broad Scotland.
"Mother o' the living God!" Munro bellowed then, flailing with his good arm.
"You're both right pests," he added, trying in vain to knock Morag and Lady Juliana away from him.
But with the fortitude born of women, they ignored his curses and thrashings, only nodding calmly when four braw clansmen appeared to help Jamie hold his father in place as they washed and tended the wound.
"Come, sir, one sip - for me."
Jamie heard his bride's voice in the midst of the chaos, soft, sweet, and soothing as a gentle spring rain. Glancing at her, he looked on as she tried to coax Munro to drink the uisge beatha .
A cure he needed as surely as having his wound cleaned because the moment the women finished, the dread sealing would follow.
Whether it pleased Munro or nay.
He'd die otherwise for nothing else would staunch the bleeding. Jamie shuddered. Having once had a sword cut on his thigh sealed by such hot branding, it was a pain he'd prefer to spare his da, so he nodded to the four kinsmen holding Munro and went to the head of the table, taking the flask of fiery Highland spirits from Aveline's hand.
"Drink," he said, clamping his fingers on to his father's jaw and tipping back his head. He held the flask to the old man's tight-pressed lips, nudging. "As much as you can."
Munro glared at him, tightening his lips even more.
Jamie glared right back at him. "You know I will pry open your lips and pour the whole flask down your throat if you dinna take a swallow - or two."
Apparently believing him, Munro shut his eyes and opened his mouth. Not much, but enough to allow Jamie to send a healthy measure of the healing water of life flowing down his father's throat.
Before he could get him to accept a second gulp, a commotion in the hall drew all eyes.
Beardie came pounding up onto the dais, red-faced and panting, but resplendent in his great-great-grandsire's rusted Viking helmet and his huge and shining Viking battle-ax clutched tight in his hand.
"The siege is ended!" he announced, coming to a skidding, graceless halt. "And without a single scaling ladder being thrown against our walls. No' one enemy fire arrow sent whistling through the air!"
Beaming, he swiped a hand across his glistening brow. "My Viking helmet must've scared them! One glimpse of a true-blooded Norseman hanging o'er the parapet and waving a battle-ax, and the spineless bastards tucked their tails between their legs and ran."
Jamie stared at his cousin. He couldn't believe there really had been attackers.
"You saw them?" he asked, his mind whirling with the consequences if Beardie spoke true.
"Well ... " Beardie looked down, taking a moment to hitch and adjust his belt.
"We had to have frightened them off because there was nary a sign o' them anywhere," he admitted, removing his Viking helmet and scratching his head.
"Nary a glint o' steel, no whinnying horses or clink o' armor. Not one insult hurled at us as we looked for 'em."
He jammed his rusty helmet back on, looking puzzled. "Truth is, the castle dogs didn't even bark."
"I told you it was the bogles," Munro said from the table, his eyes popping open.
"Neill's bogle. I saw him take aim. He was wearing his burial shroud and he was in the bailey. Only a ghost could've slipped past the gatehouse."
A ghost or someone who comes and goes as he pleases.
And has a right to do so.
Jamie's blood chilled.
He should've asked where the attack had occurred.
Now he knew.
And the answer was more