Page 63

A SHORT WHILE later, Father Donal crested the hill, huffing and puffing. He was small and stocky, with a round pink face, sweating in his heavy robes.

“Good morn!” he called out to them.

“Good morning, Father,” Brodie replied. “We wish to be wed … can ye perform the ceremony?”

“Of course,” he replied, halting before them and wiping sweat from his brow with the back of his forearm. “When is the happy day?”

“Now.”

The priest’s eyes widened. “Ye want me to marry ye right this moment?”

“Aye … we’re in a hurry, Father,” Greer said, flashing him a smile. “Apologies for the short notice.”

The priest smirked, eyeing Greer in a way that made her hackles rise. “Ye are a keen one, aren’t ye?”

“Aye, we both are,” Brodie growled. “Now, will ye wed us or not?”

Father Donal’s smug smile faded. He then huffed a sigh. “Very well … but first let me catch my breath. I will need a cool drink of ale too.”

Brodie nodded before grabbing the skin of ale he’d purchased from the tavern and handing it to the priest. “Here, Father. Drink yer fill.”

“Very kind of ye,” Father Donal replied. He took the skin, unstoppered it, and drank thirstily.

Greer and Brodie watched him.

The priest drained the skin before handing it back. “A fine drop.”

Brodie nodded and refastened the empty skin to the back of his saddle. “Are we ready then?” he asked, impatience creeping into his voice.

Father Donal burped. “Aye.” He moved to the stone step before the oaken door and beckoned to them. “Come closer, and face each other … that’s it. Now, join hands.”

Greer’s heart started to race. This was it. She was about to become Brodie Mackay’s wife. Nothing had ever felt so right.

Once they had taken up their positions as instructed, Father Donal nodded. “Can I have yer names?”

“I am Brodie Mackay … and this is Greer Forbes,” Brodie replied gruffly.

To Greer’s relief, the priest didn’t tense or frown at learning their identities. They were close enough to Druminnor that she worried he might have heard of her—yet he showed no sign that he had.

“Very well.” Father Donal cleared his throat.

“On this, the twenty-eighth day of August in the Year of Our Lord, 1454, I join this man, Brodie Mackay, and this woman, Greer Forbes, in wedlock … under the holy ordinance of Our Lord.” He paused then, his gaze suddenly sharpening as he surveyed them.

“Ye do realize the importance of the bond ye are about to forge … and that ye shall accept each other … for better or worse, for richer or poorer, for fairer or fouler … in sickness and in health?”

“Aye, Father,” Greer replied quickly. “We are fully aware of it.”

The priest nodded, placated. “Excellent … I shall proceed then.”

Greer inhaled deeply. She wished he would.

Brodie squeezed her hands then, and she lifted her gaze to his face.

He was smiling down at her. There was a tenderness in his eyes, one she’d never seen before.

He’d already called her ‘mo chridhe’ and whispered other endearments throughout the night, yet she knew with that one look that he loved her as deeply as she did him.

“Brodie Mackay, do ye—” The priest halted then, his gaze narrowing as he shifted his attention from the couple before him to a point beyond Greer’s shoulder. “We have company, I believe,” he huffed.

No sooner had he spoken when the thunder of hoofbeats shook the ground.

Brodie cursed, and Greer whipped around, focusing on where a knot of horses was galloping up the hill toward them. Their riders crouched low in the saddle, and as they drew near, Greer caught a flash of green and black plaid.

For an instant, she merely stared, unable to comprehend what was happening. And then, her heart leaped into her throat, panic erupting within her.

“Hurry up,” she gasped to the priest. “Marry us!”

Father Donal’s eyes snapped wide. A moment later, he shook his head and stepped back, plastering himself against the door to his kirk.

Frustration punched Greer in the ribs. She wanted to leap forward, grab the priest by the collar of his robes, and shake him. Yet even if he agreed to conclude the ceremony, she knew, deep down, it was too late.

Somehow, her father had found them.

Still gripping Brodie’s hands, she turned to him. “How?” she gasped.

He shook his head, his expression stunned. “They must have ridden through the night to catch us.”

“We need to go.” She yanked him toward where he’d tethered Brèagha to the branch of the nearby yew tree. “Now!”

Brodie shook his head, and in his eyes, she saw a grim resignation. “No,” he rasped. Jaw bunched, he drew the dirk at his side and let go of her hand, stepping forward. “I’ll not be run down like a hind. We face them.”

Greer stared back at him, panic pounding through her. Run. Run. Run.

But there was no time to argue with Brodie, for moments later, the horses were before them, drawing up in a semi-circle in front of the kirk.

Greer’s father was the first of them, with Sutherland right behind.

Their hair was tangled, their clothing sweat-stained and dusty.

Indeed, they had spent the night hunting her.

The looks on their faces, drawn with tiredness and red-rimmed from lack of sleep, were savage, as if they were riding into battle.

“If ye have married them, priest, I shall kill ye,” Alexander Forbes’s angry voice cut through the balmy morning air. He then swung down from his horse and drew his dirk.

“I haven’t!” Father Donal gasped, shaking his head vigorously before crossing himself.

“I swear by the Holy Cross!” The priest started digging in the pouch at his side, no doubt searching for the key that would allow him to unlock the door behind him so he could withdraw into the sanctuary of his kirk.

“Good,” Greer’s father growled. He dismissed the priest then, his attention snapping to his daughter, his gaze pinning her to the ground. “What in the devil’s name have ye done?”

Meanwhile, a dull thud sounded behind them. Father Donal had managed to unlock the door and had now sealed himself away.

Swallowing, Greer forced herself to hold her father’s eye. “I’m marrying Brodie Mackay.”

A rough curse filtered across the kirkyard then, not from her father, but from her betrothed.

Sutherland had also dismounted and drawn his dirk. His face was red, and his pale-blue eyes glittered with wrath. “I don’t believe it,” he snarled. “Cuckolded by a Mackay. ” His gaze raked over Brodie before his lip curled. “I recall ye, mongrel … from Kilchurn.”

Heat ignited deep in Greer’s stomach. She wouldn’t have anyone insult the man she loved. “I’m sorry it has to be this way,” she replied, lifting her chin as she met Sutherland’s gaze. “But I won’t be yer wife.”

“Ye will marry whom I deem worthy,” her father cut in, his voice as hard as tempered steel. “And it is not this bastard blacksmith.”

A sickly sensation washed over Greer. She’d thought her father hadn’t paid Brodie any attention during his brief visit to Dun Ugadale. Yet it seemed he had.

“Ye chose him over me?” Sutherland’s expression turned incredulous, his gaze bewildered, as if he was genuinely at a loss.

Greer held Sutherland’s eye, even as her pulse thudded in her ears. “I care not about his parentage.”

“Leave us, Forbes,” Brodie growled, speaking for the first time since the Forbes party had drawn up before the kirk. “I love yer daughter … and I shall make her my wife. Stand aside, and let us get on with it.”

Alexander Forbes spat on the ground between them. “ Love ?” he snarled. “What do I care about that.” It was hard not to wilt under the force of his rage. His glittering gaze met Greer’s once more. “Ye have always been a silly chit … but I thought ye had the wits to understand yer duty to yer kin.”

Greer stared her father down, letting his insults wash over her. “I understood,” she replied, her voice surprisingly steady. “But I’ve chosen another path.”

A shocked silence fell then. Alexander Forbes’s face slackened as if he couldn’t believe his daughter could be so defiant.

Eventually, Sutherland shattered it. “I’ll not weather this insult.” He took an aggressive step forward then, a vein pulsing in his temple as he glared at his rival. “Prepare to meet yer maker, mongrel.”

Brodie raised his dirk, violence rippling across his face.

Nausea rolled over Greer in a sickly wave. Christ’s blood, she couldn’t let them start fighting.

“Stand down, Sutherland!” An angry voice roared across the hillside then—and all gazes swiveled to find a second group of horsemen barreling up the incline. “Touch my brother, and I’ll gut ye.”

The newcomers were as disheveled as her father’s party, their horses lathered. Greer gasped, her gaze fixing on the sashes of forest green and dark-blue that the two blond men riding at the front wore across their fronts.

Relief barreled through her then, weakening her knees. Iver and Kerr are here to save us.