surprise and then speculation flared in his gray gaze. “I did. Do you ride as protector of your mother?”
Shona didn’t understand the man’s reaction to her son, unless it was to the fact that such a small child spoke Gaelic so well. She’d spoken to both her children in her native tongue since their births and they both communicated equally well in Gaelic and English. Just as she did.
Her son, mayhap, even better than she did.
Eadan puffed up his little boy chest and did his best to frown like the warriors in front of them. “I do.”
“You sound like a Scot, lad, but you dress like a Sassenach.”
“What’s a sassy patch?” Marjory whispered from her perch in Shona’s lap.
“An Englishman,” the big warrior answered, with a barely there smile for her daughter’s interesting pronunciation of the word, proving he’d heard the quietly uttered question.
“Oh.” Pop. Marjory’s thumb went into her mouth. It was a habit Shona and Audrey had worked hard to break her of, but the little girl still sucked her thumb when she was overly tired or nervous. After two weeks of grueling travel and coming upon men who looked more like giants than soldiers, the tot was no doubt both. Shona sighed again.
This brought the big man’s attention back to her. “I am Niall, second-in-command to the Sinclair laird. My men and I will accompany you to the keep.”
“Thank you.” What Shona really wanted to say was, Thank you, but no.
She’d rather head directly for the island. She was tired of traveling and she wasn’t going to feel safe until she’d gotten the Balmoral laird’s promise of protection for her and her small band.
However, to refuse the hospitality of the other laird would not only be considered rude, but she’d no doubt they would end up traveling to the keep no matter what she might say on the matter.
She’d learned long ago that some things were beyond her control.
The keep was a fortress far superior to that of the MacLeod holding where she’d grown up, and even more formidable than that of her deceased husband’s. The high wall surrounding the laird’s home and guard towers was stone, though the buildings within were crafted mostly from wood.
The keep itself was on top of a motte, the manmade hill only accessible by a narrow path she just knew Niall was going to tell her they could not take their horses on. Even from this distance the keep looked big enough to easily accommodate fifty or more in the great hall. The imposing nature of the holding made her wish her family was of the Sinclair clan. She could do naught but hope the Balmorals lived equally as secure.
The bailey was busy with warriors and clanspeople alike, many of whom seemed interested in the new arrivals. And slightly suspicious, if the frowns she and her companions received were anything to go by. But the overt hostility she might have expected toward those garbed as the English was surprisingly absent.
Niall stopped his horse and the warriors with him did as well. Shona guided her tired mare to a halt, so fatigued she was not absolutely sure she would make it off the horse without sending both herself and Marjory tumbling.
“Should we dismount then?” Audrey asked, her tone showing no more enthusiasm for the prospect than Shona felt.
Shona opened her mouth to answer, only to lose any hope she had of speaking as her gaze fell upon a warrior standing near the open area in front of the blacksmith’s. The man, who was easily as tall and as broad as Niall, wore the MacLeod colors with no shirt beneath the plaid to give him any hint of civility.
His back to them, his lack of interest in the English strangers was more than obvious.
But she could not claim the same apathy. Not when every inch of his arrogant stance was as familiar to her as the mane on her mare’s head.
His black hair was longer than it had been six years ago, the blue tattoos covering his left shoulder and arm a new addition, his muscles bulging more, but she had absolutely no doubt about the identity of the MacLeod soldier standing so confidently among the Sinclairs.
Caelis.
Even the sound of his name in her own thinking made her heart beat faster and her hands tighten into fists.
Betrayer, screamed that voice in her mind that had never gone fully silent though she’d been forced to marry another man. Mine, cried the heart that had