Page 2 of To Love a Scottish Lord (Highland Lords #4)

“T ell me about my patient,” Mary Gilly said.

“When we were boys, I called him Hammer,” Brendan said, glancing over at her and then away as if afraid to witness her response to his words.

“Hammer?” Mary asked. “A rather fearsome name.”

Brendan smiled, an appealing expression she’d thought when she’d first viewed it. Now, however, she was well aware that the man was actively attempting to charm her.

“As a boy he had a head as hard as iron. He used to butt me in the stomach whenever he didn’t like what I had to say, which was most of the time. I started calling him Hammer then.”

“I’m more interested in him as a man,” she said.

“I no longer call him Hammer, of course. It would be foolish to call a man over thirty by his boyhood name. Yet I’ve been known to do something daft now and then.” He glanced at her again, and Mary couldn’t help but wonder if he was thinking that bringing her here was one of those foolish acts.

She was having the same doubts.

He was the brother of Alisdair MacRae of Gilmuir, a long-time customer of her husband’s.

Had it not been for the fact that she’d known Alisdair and his wife, Iseabal, a number of years, she wouldn’t have considered leaving Inverness with Brendan.

Now, however, she doubted the wisdom of that decision.

Mary stared straight ahead, deliberately concentrating on the mane between her horse’s ears.

She and her long-suffering mare were both feeling the effects of this journey.

They’d been pelted by rains all day. At first, the roads were not only passable, but very good.

In the afternoon, however, they’d turned off the main thoroughfare and were now following a meandering course beside the loch.

This path was rutted and muddy, their pace slow to allow the full wagon behind them to catch up from time to time.

“Don’t be surprised by his appearance, Angel.”

She glanced at him, irritated. “Please, do not call me by that name.”

“It’s what everyone in Inverness calls you.” There was that charming smile again.

“Not everyone,” she countered.

“Enough.”

“Just because people repeat something doesn’t mean it’s right or proper.

” She looked at him, willing him to understand.

“I do not want you to think that I’m capable of miracles.

I can’t guarantee to help your brother,” she said, compelled to offer him the truth.

“His injuries may be too far advanced for my limited skills.”

“He may be too far for anyone’s,” Brendan said glumly.

“It’s been nearly a month since you’ve last seen him?” Another question trembled on her lips. Finally, she forced herself to speak it. “Are you certain he’s still alive?”

“Of course he is.” But his lips thinned, and his expression made her wonder if he were as optimistic as he sounded.

The farther west they traveled, the more barren and desolate the landscape became. To their left was the loch and beyond, the sea. On the right were stark mountains even now dusted with snow. The lowering skies tinted everything somber and gray, the color of sadness.

She smoothed her hand over the medicine case on the saddle in front of her. The case was a talisman of sorts, and her stroking a habit. The leather was worn smooth where her fingers had caressed it beneath the handle so many times before when she was nervous or simply waiting.

Patience was a requirement in healing, she’d discovered. She must wait for a patient to improve, for a medicine to work, for a fever to break. Sometimes, the outlook was good. At other times, it was not, and Death swooped in, black garbed and cackling, to steal the ill from her grasp.

“You mustn’t be surprised at his appearance,” Brendan said. It was the second time he’d made the comment, as if he were afraid she’d exclaim aloud or recoil in aversion upon meeting her new patient.

Otherwise, he’d been remarkably reticent about his brother’s injuries. She, in her pride and foolishness, had been in a rush to be of assistance, not asking all the questions she should have prior to leaving Inverness.

“I’ve seen many grievous things, Brendan,” she assured him quietly.

“India changed him. He’s not as he was.”

“People who’ve always been healthy often react with anger to sudden illness. They don’t expect their bodies to betray them.”

“He’s not angry,” he said and then looked away, as if uncertain whether to continue. “Perhaps resigned,” he added after a moment. “He seems to simply accept whatever happens to him, almost as if he’s ready for the worst. It’s not like Hamish.”

“It could be a symptom of his illness,” she told him, familiar with such behavior in her patients. “Even the healthiest man will have the doldrums if he’s been laid low.”

He nodded but said nothing further.

Her hands were chilled beneath her leather gloves, and Mary felt as though she had never been warm or dry.

The wind whistled out of the north, flattening the horse’s mane.

A gust traveled beneath her voluminous red cloak, lingering at her ankles.

She held herself tight, elbows pressed against her sides, chin erect.

“We’ll be there shortly,” Mary said. It was not a question, rather a hope voiced in a statement. Brendan, however, did not dispute it, remaining silent.

He reminded her, oddly, of her late husband’s apprentice, Charles. Brendan was a more attractive man, with an open countenance and a face that encouraged an answering smile. His hazel eyes were earnest; his brown hair had a habit of falling over his brow boyishly.

Charles had a narrow face and an even narrower mind. Over the past few months, he’d been irritatingly possessive of her, so much so that she’d seen this new patient as an escape, of sorts.

The two men were alike, however, in their single-mindedness. At dawn they’d left Inverness and had begun their trek west, never halting despite the weather. She had the feeling that no obstacle would stop Brendan until they reached his brother.

She’d never been this far from home, and during this interminable day told herself that the adventure of this journey would be worth the minor discomforts of it.

When other people mentioned their travels from now on, she would be able to say that she, too, had traveled beyond Inverness.

Even if the only sights she saw were snowcapped peaks and a gray, finger-shaped lake that pointed to the sea.

Brendan slowed his horse, pointing ahead. “There it is, Castle Gloom.”

“Castle Gloom?”

“That’s what I thought when I first saw the place,” he said, staring ahead.

Peering through the trees that lined the road, she saw her destination.

She’d never expected an isolated castle dominated by a tall tower.

Of dark red brick and stone, it seemed a blot on the landscape.

Almost a wound. The thought was as disconcerting as the flock of seabirds suddenly circling overhead.

With a rush of wings, they flew swiftly away in the other direction, almost as if in warning.

They heard the explosion first. Brendan’s face paled, but before she could understand what he was about to do, let alone prevent it, he lunged at her, launching himself off his saddle and into her with such force that she was catapulted to the ground.

A moment later, she was on her back in the grass beside the road with him atop her.

Before she could push him away or demand to know what insanity had overcome him, a projectile crashed into the tree to their left.

“He’s firing at us! The damn fool is firing at us!”

“Who is?”

“Hamish!” he said angrily.

She pushed at Brendan’s shoulder. He moved off her, but neither of them made an effort to rise.

“What sort of man shoots at his own brother?”

Brendan didn’t have an answer to her question, and she didn’t press the matter. In a moment, she sat up. He stood and helped her stand.

Her knee hurt and her left shoulder ached from where she’d hit the ground too hard. However, she didn’t mention those minor inconveniences. They paled in significance to being blown away by a cannonball.

Behind them, the trees sparkled. In the grayness of the day, the sight was eerie, as if she’d chanced upon a magical forest. Mary bent and picked up a piece of the shot and held the warm, glittery metal in her gloved palm.

Before she could comment on it, Brendan reached out and plucked it from her hand.

“What is it?” she asked.

“A piece of bronze.”

He met her eyes. In his gaze was the same confusion she felt.

“Why is he shooting at us?”

“I don’t know, Angel,” he said.

This time, however, she didn’t correct him.

If he’d only lowered the sight two inches, he might have been able to hit the top of the tall pine. Hamish jotted down the coordinates, using a piece of charcoal wrapped in a rag. He was nearly out of paper. He hoped Brendan arrived before the rest of his supplies were as depleted.

The tower room in which he sat was drafty. He’d stuffed straw in some of the archer’s slits to cut down on the wind, but he’d left the lone window open, folding back the shutters. Now the barrel of the cannon rested on the stone sill.

On one of his early explorations of the ruins of his borrowed home, he’d discovered the cannon sitting there in the tower.

It hadn’t been difficult to figure out why such armament had been laboriously carried up the four flights of curving stairs.

Resting just within the curtain wall that followed the irregular shape of the island, the tower commanded a view of the countryside and was in the perfect defensible position.

If he stood at the window and looked left he’d have a view of the loch and beyond, the sea.

To his right was a narrow strip of woods and the road that led to civilization.

The bridge, however, was flooded at every high tide, protecting him from any possible intrusion.