Highland Troth (Highland Talents Book 3) (2 page)

Toran gripped his arm then told him, “Let’s get a draught to warm ye. Ye can give me yer message inside.”

“My thanks.” Will shuddered. “’Twas a long, cold ride.”

Jamie’s curiosity got the better of him as they walked. “Do ye ken what message ye carry?”

“Aye,” Will answered, stepping through the doorway into the Aerie’s Great Hall. “’Tis about his daughter, Caitrin.”

Jamie exchanged a glance with Toran while they led their guest toward the hearth.
Caitrin!
A memory flashed before his eyes. Caitrin, coltish and beautiful, not long before she was sent away, while she laughed at something Toran said. But Jamie recalled her gaze moved quickly to him, and he’d never forgotten the flash of
need
he’d experienced. The need he’d never been able to satisfy.

He held onto his composure and nodded to their guest. “The dinner hour has passed, but I’ll send to the kitchen and see something is brought out to ye,” he offered, taking a step back to allow the Fletcher ghillie to deliver his message to the Lathan. His wave got the attention of a serving girl.

“I’ll no’ refuse yer kindness,” Will said with a sigh as he finished warming his hands at the hearth. He pulled a rolled-up vellum from his shirt and handed it to Toran. “I’m to say to ye that the Fletcher would be most pleased to receive a swift reply or action, since he is bound away from his keep within a hand of days.”

Toran nodded. “Ye’ll stay the night and return on the morrow with my answer, if one is required.”

The man dipped his head in thanks and took the seat Toran pointed to. In a moment, a serving girl brought a platter piled high with sliced meat, cheese, and bread.

After Toran gave the girl orders to see a bed prepared for their guest, he took his leave, gesturing for Jamie to accompany him. On the way upstairs, Toran ordered one of his men to stay with the Fletcher ghillie and see to his comfort and security.

“I’m all for providing guest-right,” Toran told Jamie, as they made their way down the hall, “but I willna have a stranger moving about the Aerie unescorted.”

In the solar, they settled by the hearth with a dram of the best MacKyrie whisky, a gift from Donal McNabb’s new bride. Toran broke the seal on the velum.

Jamie sipped and stared at the fire, watching out of the corner of his eye as Toran read the Fletcher’s request and frowned.

Finally, Toran dropped the letter into his lap and leaned his head against the high back of his chair.

“Well?” Jamie kept his tone even, despite the chill that had washed over him as the mention of Caitrin Fletcher’s name brought back memories he’d thought long suppressed. A chill even the whisky had yet to warm away. Those had been terrible days. What had happened to her now that the Fletcher would need to involve the Lathan?

Toran didn’t leave him guessing for long. “Our friend and ally requests I lend the prestige of the Lathan name and presence to secure the betrothal of his only and cherished daughter, Caitrin Olivia Fletcher, to the MacGregor.”

Jamie’s heart sank at the news even as he blew out a relieved breath that she must be well. He’d been right not to seek her out in the years since the tragedy that took her from him. But the news that she was about to marry saddened him, though he had no claim on her. He’d never had a chance, and thought he’d accepted her loss. Now this. Would he steal her from her intended if he had the chance?

“The MacGregor?” He’d known a MacGregor at St. Andrews. “The Lathan name
and
presence?” He set his drink aside, a crease deepening between his eyebrows. “Why would he think he needs ye there to convince the MacGregor to marry Caitrin? Wait. Olivia?” The name ‘Olivia’ didn’t fit the tomboy lass Jamie remembered.

Toran cleared his throat. “In a nutshell, aye. There’s more, of course.”

Jamie’s lips quirked. “Of course.”

“He’s leaving early to begin the negotiation with the MacGregor in person. He doesna want to bring Caitrin with him and put her at risk, unless he kens she’ll be honored and safe in the MacGregor’s keep.” Toran huffed out a sigh and tapped his knee with his free hand.

Jamie straightened, trying to recall his days at university. “The auld MacGregor died at Flodden, aye? Who is laird now?”

“Alasdair MacGregor.”

Jamie thought for a moment, then the face came to him. “I kent him in school. That’s no’ a good worry to have. But it doesna sound like the lad I met at St. Andrews. Is it justified?”

“I havena dealt with MacGregor. No’ yet.”

Jamie frowned, not liking the implication of Toran’s half-answer. What did he know?

“Fletcher isna much to regard. His holding is small, so he canna call on many men to fight for him, though he lost very few at Flodden. But we must avoid making an enemy of him,” Toran warned. “Caitrin’s to be the final enticement to Fletcher’s ambitions, it seems, along with the prestige and presence of the Lathan laird, and MacGregor’s approval of the lass.” He read from the document on his knee. “Fletcher recalls our fondness for her as a child and promises she has bloomed most handsomely into her maturity, a woman any man would be proud to call wife.”

“What the hell does he mean?” Jamie shook his head. “She’s three years younger than we are. That’s no’ too old to wed.”

“He makes it sound as though she fell from a horse onto her face.” Toran gave a quick grin and then shrugged. “Which, recalling our Caitrin, is quite possible. We spent five years trying to keep her out of trouble.”

Jamie snorted. “No’ the Caitrin I remember,” he objected. It came to him then that Toran had even prevailed on Jamie’s older sister to keep her occupied, but sadly, she’d had little use for a lass five years her junior. Perhaps if she had, things would have ended differently. Jamie shook his head at the memory and returned his attention to Toran. “She was all knees and elbows by the time she left us, aye, but she was pretty enough for a lass of fourteen summers.”

“So ye did have a yen for her. I thought so, even then. Ye canna deny it.”

“Ye’re daft.” Jamie hid his annoyance at Toran’s allegation by picking up his cup and studying the liquid left in it. Toran was right, of course. Jamie had admired Caitrin’s spirit and never objected to her company, even welcoming it as she grew. Much to Toran’s dismay. Jamie had never been sure if Toran thought of her as a pesky younger sister or if he’d suspected she was sweet on him and didn’t want to encourage her.
That
possibility was something they’d never discusssed.

“No’ so daft as all that,” Toran replied, smirking. “I can see the effect her name has on ye, six years later.”

Jamie snorted again then took a big swallow from his cup, coughing and spluttering as the strong spirit hit the back of his throat and burned all the way to his belly. At least he hoped the whisky caused it and not heat of another kind. He hadn’t seen Caitrin in six years, and she was about to be betrothed. At the time, it had all been innocent enough, for a while. Had he really cared for her? Or been jealous of any attention she paid Toran? Either way, he had no business resurrecting feelings he’d fought to contain as a hot-blooded lad.

Toran smirked. “Ye’re going to like the rest of what I have to say even less.”

Jamie stilled, suddenly wary.

“Ye ken I canna go.”

Jamie frowned, apprehension turning the burn of the whisky to ice in his belly.

“Ye’ll go in my stead. I’ll give ye a letter for the Fletcher, and one for the MacGregor. Aye, it will extol the virtues of our former fosterling and playmate of our childhood.” Toran paused. “On second thought, I’d best leave out that part.”

Jamie Lathan glared at his laird and best friend. “Ye jest.”

Toran shrugged. “Aileana is determined to provide our clan with a wealth of sons and daughters. Our triplets are no’ yet a year old, and she says she’ll deliver twins by the full moon. Ye ken with her talent, she’s never wrong about such things. She’d skin me alive if I told her I planned to travel for weeks with a lass from my past, even if it is to deliver Caitrin to another man. Besides, better ye than me,” he groused. “She was a wee pest, following us around, ruining our hunts with her noise and her sympathy for the creatures.”

His smirk warned Jamie he had more to say.

“Aye,” he continued, “but ye thought her a bonnie lass. I’ll wager she’ll be even more bonnie now, despite what Fletcher implies.”

“Ye’re imagining things.”

“Is that why ye dinna wish to make this trip? Ye fear ye’ll fall for her again?”

“Fear? Ye are daft! I’m no’ afraid of any lass. Least of all one ye used to dunk in the burn to get her out of our hair.” Jamie grimaced at the memory of Caitrin running to the keep for dry clothes. He’d done what he could for her, but unlike now, in those days, he hadn’t dared to object too strongly. Toran wasn’t the heir, but he
was
the laird’s son.

“I think ye are.”

Toran’s chuckle failed to elicit the same response. Jamie just groaned.

****

The next morning, as he gathered what he needed for another foray from the Aerie, Jamie still wrestled with the idea of seeing Caitrin Fletcher. He had done his best to forget her these last six years. He’d thought never to see her again, certainly not before she was married off and mother to a keep-full of bairns. That she remained unwed rankled like a thistle under his seat. Despite what he’d admit to Toran, the idea of escorting her to her betrothal to another man cut him to the core. He went to the window and looked out over the keep, but didn’t see any of it. Perhaps she’d forgotten him.

How had Caitrin fared in the six years since they’d last been together? At fourteen, brown-haired and brown-eyed, she’d been coltish, but had shown promise. Surely by now she was a woman grown into her beauty. He regretted the circumstances under which she’d left the Aerie, but she’d been sent home for her own good. The events of that time still weighed heavily on him. He hoped she’d never learned the details. His sister’s body had been found in the woods where the wee lads and lassies often played. The clan elders had deemed the area outside the keep no longer safe, locked the Lathan children inside the Aerie’s walls and sent Caitrin home to Fletcher. The rest of the summer had passed in a cloud of fear and suspicion, but his sister’s killer had never been found. Since then, he hadn’t wished to remind Caitrin of the tragedy, or the grief of her leave-taking, and so had kept his distance. As much as it still hurt, he accepted the necessity.

Since it was his fault.

Pushing away the memories, he rubbed the back of his neck. What was he doing, packing to accompany the Fletcher ghillie back to their keep? He shrugged. Following Toran’s orders, as usual. Instead of dwelling on the past, he tried to imagine the Caitrin of today. She’d be taller, certainly, lithe and strong, since she’d always loved to be active. She used to run Toran and him ragged trying to avoid her, outfox her, or, worst case, outrun her.

That last had been getting hard to do by the time she’d left. Her coltish legs carried her nearly as fast as the lads she chased in their games. She could climb a tree, nock an arrow and hit dead center in a target, even wield a practice sword as well as either of them. Only the weight of a real sword slowed her down. But she’d been hell with a dirk, Jamie thought, smiling. Her intended husband had better never cross her, or he might find himself missing certain favorite parts of his anatomy. That idea elicited a chuckle, breaking Jamie from his reverie, and reminding him he had more than one mission to accomplish.

Toran not only wanted him to stand in his stead as the escort the Fletcher requested, but to sound out the MacGregor, and if at all possible, get his signature on the Lathan treaty.

Many old feuds had died along with the lairds and their heirs who were killed with King James IV while fighting the English four years before at Flodden Fields. To take advantage of the thaw in relations between the local clans, Toran had conceived a mutual-defense treaty. Since the lowlander incursion last year brought his healer wife, Aileana, Toran had become even more determined to see the treaty succeed. The journey to MacGregor offered an unexpected opportunity.

And a dilemma for Jamie.

What had become of the MacGregor, once his schoolmate at St. Andrews? Had he, like Toran, risen to the demands of the position he never expected to hold? Was he, like Jamie, forced by circumstance to do things he’d very much prefer not to do? Clenching his teeth, Jamie tossed another shirt into his bag and added a spare dirk for good measure. He closed the bag as someone knocked on his chamber door.

“Are ye ready?” Toran said as he stepped in, unbidden.

“Come to offer last minute advice?” Jamie tied the bag closed then regarded his friend, nay,
his laird
.

“Of a sort.” Toran propped a hip on the window ledge and crossed his arms over his chest.

Jamie hefted his bag in one hand and claymore in the other. “And?” Something in Toran’s posture made him set them down again.

“Have a care. The MacGregor is powerful, and there are rumors...”

So, Toran did ken more than he’d admitted last night. “What kind of rumors?”

“Rumors telling me he may no’ be a good match for our Caitrin.”

“
Our
Caitrin, is it now?” Jamie ran a hand through his hair. What was Toran leading up to? “Last night, ye wrote her off as a horse-faced pest.”

Toran stood. “I didna call her horse-faced, as well ye ken. I said she might have fallen off a horse onto her face. She was a bit clumsy in the early days.”

“As are most lasses—and lads—at that age. I recall a few trips and spills of my own—and yers,” Jamie retorted.

“She was a bit of a pest. Ye have to admit that.”

“I dinna have to admit anything of the sort, least of all to ye.” He bent and retrieved his bag and longsword then faced his laird again, one eyebrow cocked. “She worshipped the ground ye walked on. I’d think ye wouldha missed her, given nay other woman has been fool enough to do so since.” Jamie hefted his claymore and turned toward the door.

“Until Aileana? Or do ye mean Coira?”

Toran spoke so softly, Jamie barely heard his question. He glanced over his shoulder and instantly regretted his words. Toran’s expression told him his comment had brought Coira to mind, the woman who stabbed Aileana at their wedding dinner had nearly been killed by Donal in defense of his laird’s new bride. Though badly wounded, Aileana managed to save Coira’s life. Toran had sent Coira home as soon as she could travel. Her escort had returned, reporting her safe delivery and that had been the end of it. Jamie was perfectly at ease with the fact that they’d never heard from her again. Bringing her to Toran’s mind was a mistake. He mentally kicked himself. He had wanted to keep his leave-taking lighthearted, despite their disagreement over this mission. They’d been friends too long to part in anger. “I suppose every woman has her weakness.” It was a feeble jest, but the best he could manage.