death,” she had said. “An honorable man cannot kill to protect his honor.”
“What is it?” Ivor asked him.
“Nowt,” Fin said. “If you did not tell them the truth, what did you say?”
“I told them the same thing I’d said to you, that I had had enough of killing for one day and thought that someone from your side ought to stay alive to tell his version of the tale. Father was sure that you must have drowned, but we’ll have to tell him and Granddad the truth—aye, and James, too.”
“And Catriona,” Fin said. “I don’t look forward to that.”
“So you haven’t told her yet about Perth. Not even that you were there?”
“I haven’t mentioned Perth to her.” It occurred to him that, at St. Andrews, Hawk would have been the first person to whom he would have confided his dilemma. They would have talked it over until both had agreed on what the best course of action would be. That he could not do that now added to the pain that his indecision had cost him over the years.
“You must tell her,” Ivor said. “But stand back when you do. We don’t call her Wildcat without reason. She has claws, sharp ones, and although she keeps them sheathed most of the time, she does not hesitate to use them when she’s angry.”
“As I said earlier, I have seen that she has a quick temper, but she seems usually to keep it under control,” Fin said.
“Just wait,” Ivor warned him with a grin. “Now, I keep a dice cup in here. Are you of a mind to throw against me for a while?”
“Aye, sure,” Fin said, drawing up a stool while Ivor moved a table close to the narrow bed and then sat on the bed.
As he did, Fin had a sudden stray notion that Hell might just be a place where every resident faced a dilemma like his, and where the only way out was to find the right answer to an unanswerable question.
Catriona had paused outside Ivor’s door, because as she had closed it, she’d heard Ivor say, “Don’t imagine that you are going anywhere, my lad.”
But once the heavy door had shut, she could hear only the hum of their voices. She could tell Fin’s voice from Ivor’s but could not make out their words.
Moreover, she knew that it might occur to Ivor that she would try to listen. If he caught her, she did not want to think about the consequences.
She did not want to go to her own room, because she was not sleepy and Ailvie would be there. Nor did she want to rejoin the older women. She wanted to think, which required solitude, so she made her way quietly down to the kitchen.
It was dark, except for the glow of embers in the huge fireplace. But the embers cast enough light to show her the way to the scullery and to reveal Boreas curled by the hearth with the kitten that had adopted him sprawled across his neck. Boreas opened his eyes, then shut them when Catriona signaled him to stay.
Lifting the bar from the scullery door, she eased it ajar and stepped outside. Then, leaning against the wall, she inhaled the crisp night air and relaxed, gazing up at the thick blanket of stars in the moonless sky while she considered what Ivor and Fin had told her and tried to imagine their life at St. Andrews.
As she did, she realized that the two men had much in common. Both had an air of easy confidence, and from what she had seen of Fin’s skill with a sword, he was almost as fine a swordsman as Ivor was. She smiled, realizing that they must both have been thinking of Ivor when they’d argued about great archers.
She had always thought Ivor easy to talk to, and by comparison with James, he was. Fin was even easier to talk with, because Fin expressed more interest in what she said. Ivor was impatient and less likely to listen as carefully or discuss things as thoroughly as Fin did. And Ivor had never stirred her senses the way…
Feeling fire surge into her cheeks at the direction her idle thoughts had taken, and imagining Ivor’s outraged reaction to such a comparison, she realized that Fin outdid him in another way. Although she had always tried to avoid arousing Ivor’s quick temper, the very thought of angering Fin disturbed her more.
Where Ivor raged and might even wreak vengeance, Fin