to go home from here, though. So I’ll have to tell Rothesay.”
“If you’ll take some advice…” Ivor paused.
“From you, always,” Fin said.
“You will know how to tell your brother, but you should assume that Traill has told Rothesay everything. His reverence did not become Bishop of St. Andrews by keeping secrets from his royal patrons. He served as confessor for both the King and Queen, and doubtless for Rothesay and even Albany. I’d wager that Traill told Rothesay to make good use of you but otherwise to let you go your own road.”
“You may be right,” Fin acknowledged. “I own, I just assumed that Rothesay did not know, because he has always made a point of calling me Fin of the Battles and introduces me as such whenever he presents me to anyone.”
“Aye, well, the one thing I do know about Davy Stewart is that he delights in secrets and can be gey good at keeping them. The only time he does not like them is when others act in secret against him.”
“As Albany is doubtless doing now,” Fin said.
Catriona took her place beside Morag, trying to decide if the older girl had been crying. Morag’s expressions were so slight that it was always hard to read them.
Aware that Ealga was talking with Lady Annis, Catriona leaned close to Morag and murmured, “James is looking for you.”
“Is he?” Morag said without looking at her. “He must know gey well that I come here to break my fast.”
“Of course, he does,” Catriona said, striving to conceal sudden impatience. “I’d wager that he looked here before he went out to the woods.”
“Did he go outside the wall?” Morag signed to a gillie to pour ale into her goblet. “How do you know that he did?”
“I saw him, of course, and he asked if I had seen you. Look here, Morag, I know that you don’t like me—”
“When did you come to think that?”
“Good sakes, you scarcely ever speak to me unless I speak first. And then you talk as if you are annoyed that I have disturbed you. What else should I think?”
Morag gave a shrug. “I expect you are right then.”
“Are you angry with James?”
“Should I be?”
Catriona’s temper stirred sharply. But courtesy and the present royal company required that she keep it in check. Forcing calm into her voice, she said, “He thinks that you are angry with him and do not want him to find you.”
“I am a dutiful wife,” Morag said. “A dutiful wife does not hide from her husband. Moreover, I should find it gey hard to do, since I cannot get off this island without permission from your grandfather, your father, or from James himself.”
“God-a-mercy, you are furious. What did he do to deserve such anger?”
“Why nothing at all,” Morag said. “How could he have done aught to displease me when he stayed with the Mackintosh yestereve until long after I had fallen asleep? One assumes that they were drinking whisky with the other men.”
“I see,” Catriona said.
“I warrant you do. But James does not.”
“Nay, for he told me what he said to you when you told him you had missed him,” Catriona said with a sympathetic sigh.
“So he told you that, did he? Well, if he is going to share our private converse with you, there can be no need for me to tell you anything more.”
“Morag, James is an ass, and so I told him. But he does love you.”
Morag looked at her then, her pale blue eyes widening.
Catriona saw tears welling in them before Morag looked away again.
After they had broken their fast, Ivor said to Fin, “I mean to reacquaint myself with Strathspey today, and I’ll take my bow. Do you want to come?”
Knowing that Rothesay would hold no meeting until Donald of the Isles and Alex of the North arrived, Fin accepted with alacrity.
As soon as he had spoken with Rothesay, the two friends took bows and quivers and rowed to the west shore. From there, they hiked to the river Spey and along its bank to a field where Ivor said they could get some good practice.
Returning to Rothiemurchus late that afternoon after exploring much of the countryside, they discovered that during their absence, Donald and Alex had both arrived. To Fin’s astonishment, it appeared that the burly, bearded, forty-year-old Donald and his companions had traveled on garrons through the west Highlands with a mendicant friar, all six of them dressed in robes similar to the holy man’s.