“Aye? Well, I dinna fear them, nor the Mackintosh, nor Shaw, nor any grander laird wi’ them wha’ thinks he wields power over any Comyn. Not one o’ them does, and so they should all ken fine. We’ll meet again, Fin o’ the Battles. Make nae mistake about that!”
Fin’s hand was still on Catriona’s arm, and he felt her stiffen. Believing that she was about to add her mite to the conversation, he squeezed her arm in warning.
Glowering at them both, Rory Comyn turned and strode away, signing to his men to follow him.
James and the others remounted, but instead of following them, Catriona turned to Fin and said testily, “Why did you not let me speak?”
“I did let you speak, as long as you were encouraging civil conversation,” Fin said quietly. “But when I saw that he was getting angry and that you were about to make him angrier… If you will recall, lass, I told you to stay on your horse.”
She grimaced but said nothing, turning abruptly toward her garron.
He followed, caught her at the waist, and put her on the horse himself.
Fin’s action caught Catriona by surprise. When he put her on her garron with enough force to make her teeth snap together, she drew breath to tell him what she thought of such behavior.
His expression made her think again.
“We’ll talk soon,” he promised. “First we’ll let that lot get well away from us whilst I have a word with James.”
“What about?”
“Aye, what?” James asked curiously.
“Comyn knows about your exalted guests,” Fin said.
“I don’t see how he could,” James said, frowning. “Rothesay rode into the Highlands as one of Alex’s men, and Donald came to us as a mendicant friar. Nae one can have recognized either one of them.”
“One would hope not. Yet Comyn suggested that Rothiemurchus houses ‘grander lairds,’ wielding more power than the Mackintosh or your father.”
James’s frown deepened. Turning to his man, he said, “Ride back and tell the boatmen what just happened here. Tell them to report it to the Mackintosh and Shaw. Tell them, too, that we think that Rory Comyn kens more than he should.”
As they watched the man hurry back, Catriona said gently to Fin, “ ’Twas my speaking to Rory that earned us that information, was it not?”
“It was, aye,” he admitted.
“It is good then that I did annoy him a trifle.”
“The man was angry from the moment he saw us,” he said flatly. “I’d wager that when he departed, he’d have hurled much the same words at us.”
“But he had come to negotiate with my father, so he was not really angry until I told him that you and I had married.”
“You made the matter personal, Catriona, a matter betwixt you and him, Mackintosh and Comyn. A woman telling any man who wants her that he can never have her utters fighting words, words that beget trouble.”
He had given her something to think about, but his calm voice did not fool her. She decided that she would keep her thoughts to herself for a time.
When James’s man returned, they continued on their way, watching the now distant Comyn party until all six of them vanished over the ridge north of the loch.
Their own party followed the barely discernible track that she and Fin had followed the day they had met, when she had led him to Rothiemurchus. At the top of the ridge, they headed northwest and downhill to the river Spey. Fording the river, they splashed out onto a wider, more traveled path that followed the river for some fifty miles to its outlet into the Moray Firth near the cathedral town of Elgin.
Fin had not tried yet to open a discussion with her, so as they rode, she mentally practiced what she would say to him. But their party remained tightly grouped, and she had no more desire than he did for James or Morag to hear what she said. So she bided her time.
When she saw Fin look back across the river and then at James, she realized that they had been waiting until the Spey lay between them and the Comyns. At that time of year, the next ford lay ten miles to the north. Moreover, they would soon be in the heart of Mackintosh country and less likely to meet any Comyn.
Armed Comyns would certainly draw notice, and word of their presence would quickly spread until Mackintoshes confronted them in great number.
Fin said, “Do you know the turning we want, lass?”