Birdie, he couldn’t seem to help himself. It was just too tempting to disrupt her poise. He liked that he could fluster her, draw her out with a mere look or question.
And feeling her gaze on him like a caress while he’d shaved…
It was a form of torture he would apparently have to get used to, for her eyes left a warm path as they swept over him where he leaned against the door.
“Would ye care to see Castle Bharraich in the light of day?”
At his nod, she glided toward the stairs, and he fell in behind her.
She climbed upward. On the next floor up, she pointed out the guards’ garrison and servants’ quarters.
Above that, the stairs rose all the way to the battlements atop the castle. A gentle, cool breeze rustled her skirts as she moved to the edge of the stone battlements. He followed, absorbing the wide view of the moors they’d crossed yesterday.
“That is Ben Hope,” she said, pointing at a ridge to the southwest. She shifted her finger to the massive mountain due south. “And Ben Loyal.”
She pivoted, now facing the sparkling waterway to the north. Under the shroud of darkness last eve, Gregor had not realized that the castle sat perched mayhap fifty feet on a steep bluff overlooking this strait, which provided the final natural barrier protecting the castle in lieu of a curtain wall.
“And this is the Kyle of Bharraich. It is fed by fresh water from the southerly mountains, but meets with the salt water of the open ocean at the mouth of the kyle,” Birdie explained.
He drew a deep breath of the clean, crisp air, smiling faintly as he took in the landscape. It was vast and rugged and beautiful in its desolation. MacLeod lands were more forested, and less sweeping in their vistas. Still, this place reminded him of home.
It was good to be back in the Highlands again. He’d purposefully stayed away once he was old enough to join Robert the Bruce’s army, thinking there was naught for him but the pain of memories here.
His gaze settled on the hills to the east, where Birdie had pointed out the Morgan-Gunn boundary yesterday. She must have followed his line of sight, for she said, “Do ye wish to see the border?”
“Aye.”
She led him back down the stairs, past the garrison and Birdie and Tessa’s chambers. On the next floor down, she pointed out the doors to her father’s private chambers and solar, though she didn’t enter. Then they emerged in the great hall, which Gregor had already seen, along with the kitchens at the back.
The portcullis had been raised for the day, so they pushed through the double doors and descended the grassy slope to the cluster of buildings below. As they approached the stables, Gregor spotted Lamond consulting with a barrel-chested man in a soot-streaked apron outside what looked to be the smithy.
Lamond noticed them, too, for as Birdie approached one of the stable lads and requested that their horses be saddled and brought out, he hustled over to them.
“My lady, if ye give me a quarter hour, I’ll gather a few men and show MacLeod the sites of the most recent Gunn attacks.”
“Thank ye, but I’ll show him myself. And we dinnae need a contingent of guards.”
Lamond’s mouth tightened, and his blue gaze flicked to Gregor. “That is no’ advisable, my lady.”
“The Gunns have only ever struck under cover of night,” she countered evenly. “If I am no’ safe on my own clan’s lands in broad daylight, we would be in all-out war with the Gunns. Besides,” she added, giving the captain a pacifying smile, “I’ll have MacLeod with me if my horse throws a shoe or some similar catastrophe strikes.”
“And what of MacLeod?” Lamond said, now openly scrutinizing Gregor. “Mayhap the Gunns willnae attack, but that doesnae mean ye are safe with him.”
“Last I checked, we arenae currently feuding with the MacLeods. And I doubt he wants to change that,” she said to Lamond, though her gaze shifted to Gregor. “What’s more, he is a man of honor. I’m perfectly safe with him.”
Judging by the way his blood surged under Birdie’s moss-green eyes, he wasn’t so sure about that. He wasn’t sure of aught when it came to the lass.
“Yer lady will be safe, Lamond. I’ll stake my life on it,” Gregor offered.
Lamond was clearly unsatisfied, but the stable lad returned with their horses then. Birdie swung easily onto the back of her bay mare and nudged