on a shoulder as he said, “You timed your arrival well, lads. Lady Catriona, pray allow me to present to you my squire, Ian Lennox, and my equerry, Toby Muir. Ian speaks little Gaelic.”
“I can get by if you speak slowly,” Ian said as he made his bow.
Catriona greeted both men with her customary grace, but Toby was watching Boreas narrowly. “Wi’ respect, m’lady, be that great beast friendly?”
“Aye, he is,” she replied, smiling. “Boreas, give the man a paw.”
The dog sat, tail thumping, and raised a forepaw to the grinning Toby.
Fin looked toward the loch. “Do we wait for your boats?”
“Nay, I’ll wave them off unless you want to go back,” she said.
“I want to see that burn,” he said. “My lads could follow us, but we won’t all fit in your coble when we return. Still, I expect they can swim to the island.”
“Nay, then, master, unless ye’ve acquired a taste for wet clothes,” Toby retorted. “We left our sumpter pony laden wi’ your gear in yon woods above.”
Laughing as she raised a hand, Catriona said, “They will want food and rest in any event. Our men can take them across now with your gear, sir.”
“That suits me,” Fin said. Looking thoughtfully from Ian to Toby, he added, “Toby, after you rest I’ll want you to return to Perth. The Mackintosh has agreed to the request but bides here at Rothiemurchus and will for some weeks yet, I trow.”
Doubtless noting Catriona’s curiosity, Toby glanced at her and back at his master before giving a nod. He asked no questions, but Fin had expected none.
“What was that about?” Catriona demanded when she and Fin were out of earshot. They had not waited for the others to deal with the pony and the baggage.
Fin said evenly, “Now, lass, if I could tell you that, do you not think that I’d have spoken more plainly to Toby?”
Catriona was accustomed to men who kept secrets, but custom made them no more acceptable. Grimacing, she said, “I’ll find out, you know.”
“You will, aye, but not until you must. And before you assure me that I can trust you to keep silent, I will tell you that I do believe I could. But I dare not risk even a slight possibility that you might be a prattler. Moreover, you are sensible enough to admit that if I did risk it, you might think me one who trusts too easily.”
She had been poised to tell him curtly that she was not a prattler, but his last statement silenced her. She might say or think such a thing of him in such a case.
Had he just manipulated her feelings to make his silence seem right?
“Do you mean for us to stroll all the way?” she asked. “Or may we go faster?”
He gestured for her to lead the way. When she obeyed, sending Boreas to range ahead of her, Fin said, “I hope you do mean to refuse that churl Comyn.”
“I do. In troth, though, I don’t mean to marry any man yet, if ever.”
“Why not? Most lasses want to marry as soon as they can, do they not?”
“Perhaps, but even if I were willing to leave here, I’ve known too many young men who have died—three cousins and an uncle in just the last two years. And four and a half years ago, the wretched Camerons killed eighteen of Clan Chattan’s finest in one battle alone, at Perth. Mayhap you heard something about that, sir.”
“I did, aye,” he said quietly. “A terrible affair.”
“Aye, well, no worse than others. But I love my family. And I don’t want to live as a stranger in another one, being as miserable as my good-sister is. In troth, though, if I find a man lacking all eagerness for battle, I might well marry him.”
“You would?”
She smiled wryly, knowing that he could not see her face. “When I am lying in bed at night, imagining a perfect life, I do like to think that I would.”
“But?”
“In troth, I admire bravery and would likely think that such a man was a coward,” she said. “Sithee, the plain fact is that I like making up my own mind and acting on my own thoughts. And I hope to go on doing so for a long while yet before I must subordinate my wishes to a husband’s commands.”
“But your family cannot mean for you to marry Comyn.”
She wished she could reply to the statement as fiercely as he had declared it. Sighing, she said,