“Aye, sure, but if I keep low, I can easily follow you. Sithee, I ken fine how to paddle without making noise. I have often—”
“Often what?” he demanded sternly.
Clearly unabashed, she chuckled low in her throat. “Stop trying to come the ogre over me, sir. I’m just thinking that you are more likely to get back safely if we do take the raft. We can swim beside it if you think that would serve us better.”
“We are not going.”
“Ay-de-mi, but you will take the raft. If you mean to put holes in that dam, you will need it just to keep you afloat if the dam breaks before you expect it to.”
“As you said yourself, lass, if it goes, I’ll go with it, raft or no raft,” he said grimly. “And so will anyone else who is nearby on the loch. The current there will be fierce until the loch returns to its natural level.”
“Then it will be as well if we… that is, if you… are out of the water long before then,” she said. “To avoid disaster, you must mean to plug your holes somehow. Or do you simply mean to bore holes until the dam breaks?”
“I do have rags to plug them and a large ball of twine,” he said, realizing that she thought such plugs would keep the dam strong enough to hold but unwilling to increase her fears by explaining that each hole he drilled would weaken that plank regardless of any plugs, that they would just keep outflowing water from interfering with him as he worked his way down to the most vulnerable planks. He would tie the plugs together so that he could pull them free quickly in a hope of relieving the water pressure if any plank began ominously bowing or cracking as he worked.
That small relief would, he hoped, give him time to get out of the water.
“A ball of twine is not enough,” she said. “We… you need a rope, a long rope.”
“I mean only to set the plugs in place tonight if such a plan proves feasible,” he said. “At the pace the water is rising, it won’t reach the great hall until tomorrow afternoon or evening. Tomorrow night, Aodán and I can return if that becomes—”
“Listen,” she murmured.
He heard it then, too, the sibilant whisper of raindrops in the canopy above.
“All the better,” he said, reaching for her and pulling her close. “The rain will help conceal me, sweetheart. I must go, but I will be back as fast as I can. Now, kiss me, cease your fratching, and get back inside that castle and to bed.”
She leaned into him, putting her arms around him and holding him close. Then she tilted her face up and kissed him, pressing her tongue to his lips.
Parting them, he savored the taste of her, aware that he might never taste her again if anything went wrong. Plunging his tongue into the softness of her mouth, he moaned softly, wishing that he could carry her back to bed and stay there.
Reluctantly, he released her.
“How will you go?” she asked.
“I had thought of swimming straight down the loch from here,” he said. “But now that the rain has come, I think I can safely swim to the shore instead and walk at least partway and possibly as far as the turning if I can keep near the water.”
“That path will still be above water, I think. But won’t they be using it?”
“If any Comyn is wandering about at this hour in the rain, I will attend to him,” Fin said. “He won’t be expecting anyone, and I will. Don’t fret.”
“Nay, then, I won’t, I promise.”
“I want you to promise me something else.”
“Aye, aye, I ken fine what that is. Now go, so you can come back to me.”
He gave her a hug and stripped off his mantle, keeping only the thin tunic he had donned to come outside, and he kept that only to cushion his sword as he swam. After weeks of hardening, his bare feet were tough.
Handing her his mantle to hold while he fastened the belt that held his dirk in its sheath, he tied the cloth sack that contained his rags, twine, and auger to it. The sack would hamper his swimming more than the sword but was a necessary burden. He had a shorter distance to swim, so it would not hamper him much.
Confident that Catriona and Boreas would return to the safety of the castle, he