Fin wondered if the Mackintosh customarily let his granddaughter roam the woods at will, or if she might face rebuke for bringing a stranger home with her. He hoped not, because it would complicate a matter that was complex enough already.
Considering the dilemma that he faced with regard to the lass’s father, Shaw MacGillivray, he wondered next at his own motives. The Clan Chattan war leader’s name had haunted him for nearly four and a half years. That he was about to enter the man’s stronghold produced a host of conflicting thoughts and emotions.
He would be accepting Shaw’s hospitality, so the voice in Fin’s head shouted that he should seek shelter from anyone but the man he had sworn to kill. Highland law forbade harm to anyone who sought hospitality or provided it.
His original plan had been to pass through Strathspey into the mountains to the west and reach Castle Moigh quietly. To that end, he had traveled cautiously, and after parting from his squire and his equerry, he had traveled alone.
The fact was that he was in enemy territory. To be sure, a truce had existed since the great clan battle. But truces could evaporate overnight, especially in conflicts over land. And when a feud had gone on for decades, as the Cameron-Mackintosh feud had… Had whoever shot him known he was a Cameron?
Fin knew that he had kept up his guard. Although he had seen crofts and cottages along the way, he had not wandered near enough to draw undue notice.
After entering the woods where the lass found him, he had felt safer. But although the forest provided more cover for a traveler than open glens and hillsides did, the unseen archer had shot him. And no man shot without seeing his target.
Without the lady Catriona’s timely arrival, the villain might have killed him. In return, he was about to accept her hospitality despite his fell intent toward her father.
She led him downhill at an angle, past the islet, to a granite slope on which a flat-bottomed boat lay beached. As she dragged its oars from nearby shrubbery, Fin said, “Do you expect that wee coble to carry us and the dog all the way to yon islet?”
Turning to face him—chin raised, eyes flashing—she stood her oars on the ground with their blade ends against one shoulder. “I do expect that, aye. Art so cowardly, sir, that you fear I shall not get you safely across?”
Disliking both the word and her tone but determined not to rise to such obvious bait, Fin noted absently that her eyes were not light brown but golden-hazel. When she glared at him again, he said, “I do wonder, Lady Imperious, if you habitually speak so to men. But, frankly, I’d not trust anyone except myself to row such a craft, overladen as it will be. But the dog and I can swim, and a ducking will do you no harm.”
When her hand shot up in response, he caught her wrist and held it.
What, Catriona wondered, had come over her to dare such a thing?
His grip would leave bruises, she knew. She also knew that had she dared to taunt either of her brothers so, let alone tried to slap him, he would have flung her into the icy loch if not right over his knee. Worse, Fin was injured, albeit evidently recovering quickly, and he was about to become a guest of her father’s household.
Still annoyed that he had doubted her skill but tingling now in a different, more unusual, and intriguing way in response to the stern look in his eyes, she did not fight his grip or answer his question. Nor would she look away until he released her.
When he did, she put her oars in the boat and began to tug it toward the water. She had not got far before he grabbed the other side to help her.
If he still suffered from dizziness, the speed at which he had caught her hand belied it, as did the ease with which they dragged the boat to the water. Still silent, she gestured to Boreas, and while she and Fin steadied the boat, the dog stepped gingerly into it, then over the oars and the midthwart to curl up in the stern.
Fin continued to eye the boat askance. “Mayhap I should row,” he said.
“With you in the middle and Boreas at the stern, the pair of you would likely weigh it under whilst I was still