Page 65 of Highland Guard

The flicker of a smile touched Nigel’s mouth. “Nay. Now, who are ye?”

“Sir Harcourt Murray.” He indicated with a wave of his hand each of his men as he introduced them. “Lady Annys sent for us after David died and when Sir Adam began to cause her a lot of trouble, thinking she was weak and badly protected.” He looked around at all the exhausted men. “Mayhap we can discuss all of this inside.”

“Agreed.” Nigel sheathed his sword.

Harcourt ordered the men to clear the field as best they could. Nigel informed him that a few of his men had already cleared Adam’s camp and were collecting anything of value. The two of them began to walk toward the keep when one of the dead rose up from the ground and stood in their path. Soaked in blood, one eye gone, it took Harcourt a moment to recognize Clyde. The man had a knife in his hand and Harcourt could only wonder which of them would end up with that knife in their flesh even as they drew their swords. There was no way for them to stop the man from throwing that knife but the one still standing would make certain he did not throw another ever again.

Then Clyde grunted and the knife fell from his hand. Very slowly he sank to his knees. Even his subsequent fall face down on the ground was slow. An arrow stuck out of the man’s back and Harcourt looked up at the wall. There stood Big Mary and Geordie and Geordie pointed at her. Harcourt saluted her with his sword.

“Ye have a woman on your walls?” asked Nigel as, after staring at Big Mary for a moment, he resumed their walk to the keep.

“Nay to my liking to have a woman on the walls instead of tucked safely inside the keep during a battle but”—he glanced down at Clyde as they walked past him—“nay fool enough to send away one with such skill when defeat was banging hard at the gates.”

“Ye thought all was lost?” asked Nigel.

“Didnae just think it. Kenned it for certain. I was already getting the slowest of us out and stripping the place of all that was valuable.” Harcourt turned to Callum who walked on his other side. “Best tell everyone ye can find that they dinnae have to leave and get back any who already have.” After Callum ran off, he turned back to Nigel. “If I didnae have plans for taking Glencullaich back from Sir Adam later, I think I would have burned it down as weel, nay even leaving the bastard the buildings.”

“I begin to think there was a great deal more going on here than just that fool deciding to kill David and take Glencullaich from my brother’s widow.”

“Aye, a lot happened, but it all led back to that base greed the mon suffered from.”

Nigel looked around at the men who had fought so hard for Glencullaich, even glancing up at the ones on the walls. “My family worked for their whole lives to prevent this from happening here,” he murmured, sadness weighting each word. “For doing this, for bringing back what had become naught but stories of the past, for that alone Adam deserved to die.” He looked at Harcourt. “But, ye got the men here to fight, trained them to do it weel, too.”

They entered a very crowded bailey. Harcourt almost smiled. All the people of Glencullaich who had gathered were staring at Nigel as if he was a ghost. He was certain he had looked just as stunned as they did when he had first seen the man’s face. Then Joan pushed her way through the crowd, stood before Nigel, and stared at him. All the attention turned to her as people waited for her to confirm what they were seeing.

“Ye have a few new scars, Sir Nigel,” she said, “but ye are looking verra hale for a dead mon.”

“Ah, Joan, if I wasnae covered in filth and gore, I would hug ye,” Nigel said and grinned.

“Then we shall get ye cleaned up and gather in the hall to feast and hear your tale.”

As Joan was busy ordering everyone to do what was needed to get Nigel and his men clean and ready to have a meal, Annys hurried out of the keep. She looked at Harcourt and did nothing to hide her relief to see him standing. Then she saw Nigel and went so pale that Harcourt rushed toward her, thinking she was about to swoon and take a dangerous fall down the stone steps. She held up her hand and he stopped, watching as she visibly gathered her strength. By then he and Nigel stood before her.

Annys could barely believe her eyes. Nigel had the look of David with the same brown eyes and black hair, even possessing a similarity in his features. When he had ridden away he had looked enough like his younger brother to have a few thinking they were twins. Now, however, there were a few strands of silver in his thick black hair, his features had grown harsher, and there was a steeliness in his gaze that had never been there before.

“Annys?” Nigel asked cautiously when she gave him no greeting.

“I was just thinking that Sir Adam might nay have been as bad at plotting and planning as we thought,” she said. “He is why we have been allowed to believe ye were dead for years, aye?”

“Aye. ’Tis a long tale and I will tell it. I am eager to hear all that has happened to ye as weel.”

“Maman!” Benet rushed out to stop by Annys’s side with Roberta trotting behind him and Roban sitting on the lamb’s back. “Ye look like my fither,” said Benet as he stared at Nigel.

“I am your uncle,” said Nigel, glancing between Benet and Harcourt several times and then looking closely at Annys. “I believe there is a lot your mother has to tell me about what has happened while I was gone.” Smiling at Benet, he said, “’Tis a fine thing to meet ye at last, Benet. I did hear a whisper or two about David’s son as I traveled here and was eager to see him.”

“Sir,” murmured Nigel’s man who had kept his back covered every step of the way from France, “there is a cat sitting on a lamb.”

“I ken it, Andrew, but I was attempting to ignore it.” His lips twitched when he heard Kerr and his other men start to chuckle.

“This is Roberta,” said Benet as he patted the lamb and then he added in a fierce voice, “and she is not for the pot. That is Roban on her back. He likes to ride.”

“Ah, not for the pot. Understood.”

Before anything else could be said, Joan hurried up to them and began to instruct them on where they could go to bathe. Harcourt watched Nigel disappear with his men and turned to speak with Annys only to find her hurrying back inside the keep with Joan, both of them discussing how to quickly ready the hall for a meal, what that meal would be, and how to sort out enough beds for Nigel and all those men with him. There would be no time to talk to her until much later, he realized. He sighed and, with his own men, headed toward the bathing house that had been prepared for Nigel, his men, and any other who fought for Glencullaich and wanted to scrub the stench of battle off himself.

“He kens who fathered Benet,” Annys said to Joan as they spread a cloth over the newly scrubbed head table.

“Ye cannae be certain of that,” Joan argued as she smoothed down a few wrinkles in the cloth.