Somehow they had all ended up in the stables, all three—Rob and Jamie and Nhaimeth. Lhilidh had trailed along as well, but to Nhaimeth’s mind, she hardly counted as one whole person, being such a wee slip of a thing. Supper was long past, and neither Farquhar nor his lady had attended. Lhilidh reckoned she wouldn’t be needed till morning.

It gave Nhaimeth a warm feeling to note that Kathryn was getting on fine with Farquhar. For some peculiar reason—though he was unlikely to claim the relationship to her face—after all was said and done, she was still his sister. To his way of thinking, blood ties carried some responsibility, and he didn’t blame Kathryn for their father anymore than he blamed Lhilidh for her mother.

It was still daylight, but nights in the north were either over too soon or never ending and he had long ago decided that the long summer ones were to make up for the short half-dark days of midwinter when the sun barely appeared. Tonight the sky was like the inside of a blue ball stretching frae mountain to mountain. If they were blessed by the auld Norse gods, then one of those nights, the lights might dance in the sky, for that was a sight to behold.

Not, however, if they were stuck in the stables. After all these years, he still didnae ken what it was with Jamie and horses. “How much longer, Jamie? It’s very malodourous in here for a wee lass. Horse piss is bad enough but, well, the least said about the rest…”

“It is just that his fetlock is hot to the touch. It hasn’t been right since we rode through the Forest of Marr. I have to look after him, for I’ll never find his equal.”

“You say that about all your horses,” added Rob.

Jamie laughed out loud and the chestnut gelding shifted at the noise, pushing Lhilidh aside. “Well if that’s the way of it, what I say about them must be true, for you wouldn’t brand me a liar.” His grin widened. “At least not to my face.”

He hunkered down beside the gelding, rubbing its fetlock with some brew he had persuaded Kathryn to make for his horse, mumbling from under the curve of the bay’s belly, “Why don’t you lads walk Lhilidh back to the hall. After this afternoon’s contretemps there might be some entertainment.”

Nhaimeth stared at Jamie and shook his head, not in reply but in dismay. “Ever since you went to court, you’ve been trying to impress us with the French words you picked up there.”

Jamie hesitated for a moment from the task of pouring some of the horse liniment onto a cloth. The only thing in the brew’s favour was the way the stench overrode the prevailing smell of horse that Jamie had become immune to.

“Come away, Lhilidh.” Nhaimeth gasped on a mouthful of fumes, indicting the direction to her with a jerk of his head.

“Aye, and I’ll go with you,” Rob told them all with a wrinkle of his nose. “Standing around, watching Jamie fussing over Faraday is not very entertaining.’

Jamie just glowered. Nhaimeth was wise enough to know it was Rob the look was meant for, as Jamie realised he had just given Rob a chance to accompany Lhilidh back to the hall without him.

“I’ll follow as soon as I’m finished here. I won’t be long.” Jamie’s abrupt reminder sounded more like a warning, but Nhaimeth and Rob were used to his foolish, lovelorn ways—foolish since there was no way in the world Jamie’s father would countenance such a match.

Most of Jamie’s zeal, though, could be laid at the door of competing with Rob.

Aye, Nhaimeth thought, there was nae need for the McArthur to worry about these two. Just listening to them he could tell they were both still bairns.

Following on the two young ones’ heels as they walked toward the brae leading back to the hall, Nhaimeth could hear Lhilidh telling Rob, “I hope there isn’t a scrap tonight. All right for you and Jamie, but it makes me nervous. I’ve never afore seen as much blood as yon that came out of the Laird. I thought I might swoon clean away until Kathryn said to me, ‘Lhilidh, you are made of hardier stuff than that’, so I just took a deep breath and did what she asked.”

Brodwyn got most pleasure listening to other folks’ conversations when they had no notion she was there. Tonight in the stables, she had smiled to herself at the ridiculous rivalry between Jamie and Rob, and all over a wee bit mouse of a lassie. Rob she didn’t much care about, but Jamie, he was the aulder, a good strapping lad ready for some horseplay, she’d be bound. And not the horse whose rump he was running his hand over. Now if he’d stroke her arse that way, she could guarantee he would get a much better result.

“It’s a fine stallion ye have there,” she said, coming up behind them. The lad jumped but the horse didn’t budge. Placid. That was good to know.

“He’s not a stallion, he’s a gelding,” he informed her, but she could hear a wee quaver in his voice, as if she made him nervous, which was all to the good.

She came and stood beside him, away from the end that kicked, and ran her hand under the horse’s middle down to where it had been cut “You mean they’ve taken away his manhood?” she asked rubbing her hand up and down its warm belly while taking note of Jamie’s eyes following her every move.

His answer was a mere unsteady nod of his head, and when she turned into him, lifting her chin to face him, he attempted to move back a pace. However, she refused to let him, halting any chance of flight by clinging to the front of his handsome linen shirt. The Ruthven clan was rich and had land and silver coming out their ears, as the saying went.

“That’s too bad,” she whispered, keeping her voice low and sultry, her warm breath brushing his lips. “All the same, I bet you more than make up for it,” she groaned, running her hand down the front his plaid. And there she found it—long, hard and unused, just waiting for some direction.

The lad was speechless, his mouth hung open and sweat clung to his top lip as she rubbed the length of him up and down enclosed by his worsted plaid. “Do ye like that?” she murmured. What could the lad do but nod his head, while she reached on the tips of her toes and covered his open mouth with her own, pushing her tongue inside as his big hands gripped her shoulders and pulled her closer. She didn’t often kiss men, didn’t like the taste of Harald, but with this lad she made an exception. Rules were made to be broken and, och, but he was so eager.

Brodwyn gripped his prick while she fenced with his tongue, but not too tight. He was young and strong and she didn’t want it to be over too fast. Tonight she would enjoy herself. She pulled her mouth away from his, pleased to hear him protest as he moved one hand down to palm her breast, but he quieted when she slid her hand under his kilted plaid and let him feel her warm skin on his swollen flesh. “Lead me to a pile of clean straw and I’ll show you what to do with this.”

This time he made no protest about having to tend to his horse.

There was a piper playing in the hall. They could all hear it as they climbed the final wee brae to the ridge. Voices were raised as well, and the noise of half-hearted drunken war-cries followed the notes. Nhaimeth cocked his hand to his ear and said, “Do ye hear that? They’re dancing inside.”

“I never learned how, but that’ll be the Northumbrian in me coming out. I can’t remember what they played there—a harp or a whistle most like. Nothing that stirs the blood like the pipes can.”

“I never learned either,” Nhaimeth cast a grin at Lhilidh and twirled around afore making a wee bow, imitating Jamie. “I never had the legs for it.”

“None of that, Nhaimeth. Your days of playing the Fool are o’er,” said Rob. Yet he couldn’t keep back the guffaw ticking his throat. “Not that your steps didn’t stir up a bit of laughter, as you knew they would.”

Lhilidh chimed in with, “It was always one of yer best, Nhaimeth. I remember when I was a bairn, you always used to make Geala and me laugh. She liked to watch the men dance as well. She would have enjoyed all this in the days before she got sick.”

Rob patted her thin shoulders with a big hand, long fingers. He had and a wide palm, yet he never cast up to Nhaimeth the dwarf’s not being able to get his fingers around some of the sword grips in the armoury at Cragenlaw. “You must miss your mother, Lhilidh. I can remember not being able to understand what had happened when my grandfather died. He was a great horseman, yet they said he was thrown and killed. We found out later it wasn’t true. Yon one you called an Arabian potentate took him hunting in the woods and killed him. After that, Morag and I had to leave Wolfsdale, our home.” His words held little happiness yet he grinned. “I found my father at the end of our travails, so it was all worthwhile. You’ll see Lhilidh, something good will happen for you. Just you wait and see.

Rob had a way of easing folks’ sorrows, and he had done the same for Nhaimeth after Astrid died, though at the time neither of them had an inkling she had died giving birth to Rob’s wee brother, or half-brother—the same relationship that linked Nhaimeth and Kathryn, though she too was none the wiser.

“Oh, look,” cried Lhilidh, pointing up at the sky where the lights had begun dancing over the top of the mountain. Morag had always called them angels, and Nhaimeth hadn’t liked to tell her different, for he had grown up with the lights at Dun Bhuird. Some years they never lit up the sky, but when they did it was a wondrous sight.

“Mayhap it’s an omen,” laughed the wee lass with a catch in her breath, as if she needed a sign.

Well, if she thought it was a message frae Geala, it wouldn’t be a good one. Omens, he had found, could be either for good or for ill, and given what had been happening around Dun Bhuird, he’d an inkling tonight’s one wasn’t for the best. There had been a stirring in the air, a low murmur of unrest, ever since Harald cut Gavyn in a training fight.

As if to prove his point, a group of clansmen rumbled out of the hall’s great doors, chased after by two huge housecarls. They all began cursing and throwing fists, eventually tussling with each other on the ground outside the hall.

Nhaimeth took one look and made up his mind. “The hall isn’t the place for you tonight, Lhilidh—not when ye can’t shelter in Kathryn’s apartments.”

“I seldom sleep there anymore since the Laird came home.” She giggled. “I’ve a feeling he likes to gang about it with a lot of noise. Sometimes I sleep in the kitchen, or in Geala’s house. By right’s it’s mine now.”

“I dinnae like the thought of ye there on yer own, but anything would be better than the hall. Rob and I will accompany ye there.”

As Rob fell into step with them, heading back down the slope, Nhaimeth said to him, “Ye have never seen where I was brought up, lad. When we get there you’ll see why I like Cragenlaw so much, what with its windswept battlements and the waves crashing halfway up the cliffs. It makes me homesick just to think of it.”

Rob never said a word, just looked cannily at him as Nhaimeth turned his back on the hall that should have been his by rights, the way Lhilidh had claimed Geala’s auld house.