* * * *
Rafe was preparing for his visit to the MacIntyre clan. Annie had known he was to go, but now that the time was at hand, she felt bereft. She’d grown used to catching glimpses of him near the stables or in the castle or riding across the fields with his men in tow. Each day had gained a new excitement at the prospect that she might again come upon him when least expected. Now he would leave, and no such surprises awaited her around each corner.
She brushed aside her hair, anchoring it behind one ear and bent to tend the bannocks, she’d set to bake on the griddle. So intent was she on her task, she didn’t see anyone approaching until his shadow blocked the light in the room. Whirling, she glanced at the open doorway.
It seemed her thoughts had brought him to her. She gasped and put down the griddle and rose, unknowingly graceful and to her full height. Then realization dawned, and she quickly hunched her shoulders and dipped her head, so the shaggy hair fell over her eyes and half her face.
“Annie?” he said, gazing at her in some surprise. For a moment, he’d thought—but of course, he was wrong. This was just Annie, the goose girl. Still, with her face washed and her hair bright from the sunlight through the window, he’d thought she was the woman by the pond. The clan likeness was uncanny.
“I’ve come to find the shepherd who lives here,” he said, looking around.
He was surprised at how neatly the hut was kept, though the poorness of it was plain to see. Dirt floors had been recently swept, pallets neatly straightened, and the table in the middle of the room was clean and smooth from frequent scrubbing. Annie herself wore a fresh tunic, caught around her waist by a rope. Even the tops of her bare feet were spotless. He smiled at the sight of her pink toes and raised his head to gaze at her.
“Are you well cared for, Annie?” he asked softly.
Suddenly, he wanted to know that this slight girl should suffer from neither harm, nor want. She merely looked at him from beneath her straggly hair. Impulsively, he reached forward and tucked the hair behind her ear as it had been before.
She dipped her head lower. He took hold of her chin and raised it so he might gaze at her. Frantically, she put a hand to her face, inadvertently smearing soot from the fireplace across her brow and one cheek.
“Lass, you’ve made your face dirty with black soot,” he chided and rubbed at the markings. His efforts only smeared the soot more, so he finally stood back and laughed at her.
“I fear I’ve not helped it,” he said with some humor.
He caught a glimpse of answering wit in her greenish eyes. How familiar they were. His heart squeezed with anguish that he could not find the green-eyed sprite by the pool, then Annie stepped backwards and his hand dropped.
“What are you doing here?” a garrulous voice demanded.
Rafe swung around and was confronted by an angry old man in a ragged tunic. He carried a long staff, which he’d brought up as if to jab Rafe in the chest.
“What do you want?” the gray-haired man demanded, his faded blue eyes fierce.
“Are ye the herdsman known as Cowan?” Rafe asked, holding up a hand as if to ward off an attack. He had no doubt he could take the old man in a single movement, but he had no wish to harm or shame him.
“Aye, I am the shepherd,” the man answered. He’d lowered the heavy staff and stood staring at Rafe. “You’re the Laird’s nephew?”
“Aye.” Rafe nodded for emphasis, noting the man’s clothing. It was clean and neatly mended. “Do ye live here with Annie?”
The man made no attempt to answer the question. “What business have you here?” he demanded instead.
“Someone told me you know everyone who lives in these parts? Is that so?” Rafe asked.
“It depends on why you’re asking.” The elderly shepherd put aside his staff, obviously no longer fearing Rafe. “Annie, food,” he called and the girl hurried to fill a bowl with a thin, poor gruel and a bannock.
“I must eat and return to the herd.” The man looked at Rafe pointedly.
“I’m looking for a woman, a young lass, really. She has long pale hair, like moonbeams, and clear green eyes, not unlike Annie’s.”
The old man looked from Rafe to his charge, his lips tightening. Then he shook his head in denial and shuffled to a stool at the table where the steaming bowl of food had been placed. Taking up a bannock, he tore it in two and dipped the pieces in the gruel.
“Are you certain, old man?” Rafe asked impatiently, moving to stand over him. “She’s very beautiful, and I must find her.”
“There is no lass such as you’ve described.”
Rafe’s shoulder sagged, and he turned toward the open door, then paused and looked back.
“She sang with a voice like a fairy queen, so light and pure, it pierced a man’s heart. Have you not heard such as this?”
“Nay, I don’t know such a one,” the old shepherd growled and rose to his feet with strength he’d not shown earlier.
The two men stared into each other’s eyes, locked in a struggle neither could name or break. The clang of an iron griddle falling against stone broke the impasse between them. They looked at Annie who guiltily knelt and retrieved the cracked griddle.
“Have a care, lass,” the old man cried roughly, raising a hand as if he might strike her. “We’ve naught else to cook in.”
The girl hung her head. Rafe’s heart went out to the wretchedness of their existence. “I’ll get you another, Annie,” he said. “Come round to the kitchen and I’ll send word they’re to give you another.”
“Nay,” the old man protested. “I’ll not take your charity.”
“It’s not meant as charity,” Rafe replied. “And it’s not given to you, but to Annie.”
Annie raised her head slightly to look at him, then flinched and hunched down even more.
“Don’t be afraid, lass,” Rafe said. “Remember you stand under my protection now. Do you hear what I say?”
Slowly, she shook her head without looking up at him.
Rafe looked at the old man. “Don’t raise a hand against her,” he admonished sternly. “She’s naught but a simple girl and a cripple. You’re not to beat her.”
He stalked from the hut, loathe to leave Annie to the tender mercies of an ill-tempered, old man. His visit had been frustrating for he’d learned nothing more about the girl in the woods and there was little he could do to change Annie’s plight. He thought again of her unexpected beauty. If she’d not been handicapped, no doubt she would have found a village lad to take her as his wife. She would have had babies and even now would have one clasped to her breast as she bent over the hearth. Regret surged through him as he thought of what the goose girl’s future must be.
Father Cowan turned to look at Annie with accusing eyes.
“Lass, what are you doing? You must take care. You can’t trust a Campbell,” he warned.
“Aye. Well I know, Father, but I can’t turn my back on his kindness. None of us can do that. Our clansmen suffered too much last winter. If he offers a better winter ahead, then I must do nothing to stop him.”
“Have a care, child,” Father said softly. “The devil himself will bring down the MacDougalls given the chance.”
“But what if Rafe Campbell is not the devil?” she asked, rubbing her forearm in agitation. Her heart still pounded at his nearness, at the timbre of his voice, the reflection of light in his gray eyes. She studied the old man who was unrelenting in his lessons of life and felt cornered in this hovel that had been her home for the past ten years. But the masculine presence of Rafe still warmed her and her heart opened to him.
“What if he’s different from all the other Campbells?” she asked, unable to help herself.
“Don’t you believe it,” Father Cowan said hoarsely. “I saw Archibald himself sever your father’s head from his body, and he hung that head on the east gate, so all who passed would know that Ewan MacDougall, the Laird of Dunollie, was dead. They have no soul, these Campbells. It has been warped by greed for lands that don’t belong to them.”
“I know all you say, Father,” she whispered, “but I want to believe there are decent men out there, even among the Campbells.”
“Ye can’t believe a devil, child,” he said roughly.
Chapter Four
Rafe sat astride Bhaltair, gazing across the meadow at the line of racing horsemen. “Your riders are well trained,” he said to his host, Chief Macarill MacIntyre, a giant, barrel-chested man who dwarfed the black stallion he rode.
“As are the Campbell men,” MacIntyre rumbled and scratched his whiskered chin. He had a ready laugh and a quick assessing eye. “What do ye think, lass?” he asked of his daughter. “Will the Campbell lads outrace our own?”
Jean MacIntyre, seated at her own choosing on a sturdy highland pony, stood up in the stirrups as if trying to get a better glimpse of the racing men. “Not if Aindreas has his way,” she cried and ignored her father’s frown.
Rafe liked the woman whose time as a maiden was fast drawing to an end. She was not yet past her best childbearing years, and still she remained unspoken for. Rafe had noted her father’s chagrin the one time the subject had been raised as they sat by the fire and shared a mullet of wine the night before.
“I have a wish for grandchildren,” the gruff laird had said, “but I’ll not have her wed a simple captain of her clan, landless and penniless. A titled landowner would add to our holdings and ensure her continued comfort.”
Rafe had made no answer at first. What could he say? He was also without land, an adventurer who rode to help others more fortunate than him.
“Jean is your only living child?” he’d asked finally to break the expectant silence that had fallen between them.
“Aye,” MacIntyre had rumpled, shifting his weight in the chair. “My poor wife, may she rest in peace, delivered five sons to me over the years, and not a one of them lived. They were stillborn, every one. Only Jean, with her quick wit and determined heart was strong enough to survive and comfort me in my aging years.”
Now, in the heady morning sunlight, MacIntyre steadied his mount and gazed at his daughter with pride. Rafe noted how the wind had stained her lean cheeks with color. She was not a buxom lass as most men favored, being rather tall and thin by nature, but her hair was a silky rich brown, like the sables along the river banks, and her eyes could change from the blue of the sky to the gray green shade of the moss growing in the forest, depending on her mood.
“She seems well learned for a woman,” he said awkwardly, not wanting to encourage the laird in case his thoughts ran a certain way.
“Aye, I’ve seen to that. She’s well accomplished so she can run a home with an efficient hand. Though she’s a bit stubborn when she chooses, she is, for the most part, an even-tempered lass, altogether a prize for any man.” MacIntyre glanced at Rafe slyly.
Rafe felt heat rush to his face.
“I like what I see of you, lad,” the laird boomed at Rafe’s silence. “Even more importantly, Jean seems taken by ye as well.”
“Come on, ye blithering milksops. Don’t let the Campbells shame ye,” his daughter cried, then remembered their guests and settled back in her saddle, grinning while her intelligent eyes danced with mischief. “No offense meant, Rafe.”
“None taken, m’lady.” His smile was genuine for he liked MacIntyre’s feisty daughter, but the humor was quickly gone. Though he continued to lounge in his saddle for all the world as if he had no worries, if the truth be told, his patience was fast diminishing.
He’d arrived three days hence at the MacIntyre Castle, bringing gifts of some of Campbells’ best cattle and a long coveted chanter, which had once belonged to the piper, John Fairlay, and had been played on the battlefield with Wallace himself.
Archibald had been loathe to relinquish such a prize, but unable to come in person to make amends for Baen’s stealing of MacIntyre cattle, he knew his gesture of appeasement must be grand. Reluctantly, he’d sacrificed the chanter to the cause of enlisting help. None of this had seemed to have much sway with the MacIntyre chief who was a proud man, quick to temper and to hold a grudge against a wrong done him, or so Rafe had heard.
Without reference to the rustling of his cattle, MacIntyre had graciously accepted the gifts, listened to Rafe’s explanation of the need for MacIntyre men to fight with the Campbells against Baen and made no commitments, whatsoever. Instead, he and his daughter had entertained him and his party with a generous table and good fellowship.
Puzzled, Rafe had held his course, unsure which way the wind blew. The MacIntyres were thought to lend their loyalties to the Campbells; a branch of them were a sept to the Campbells of Craignnish, but they’d also once served as foresters under the MacDougall Lordship and might yet feel loyalty for them. Though ten years had passed, perhaps they still held a lingering resentment toward Archibald Campbell for his brutal attack and the death of Ewan MacDougall. Or perhaps Macarill MacIntyre was simply relishing his position, knowing Archibald of the mighty Campbell clan needed his aid. Either way, Rafe chafed at the delay.
As if reading his thoughts, MacIntyre kneed his mount closer. “I’ve thought on all you’ve told me since your arrival,” he said without preamble. “’Tis true you Campbells need us and I’ll not deny our help.”
“Thank you, Laird MacIntyre.” Relief flooded through Rafe. “However, I fear I’ve lingered here far too long. Time is running short, and I’ve a need to return to Dunollie immediately.”
“Aye, I can see your reason for haste. However, Baen and his men, even traveling light and fast as they might, will not make it back to Campbell land for at least a fortnight.” He paused and chuckled from deep in his belly. “Unless he’s sprinkled fairy dust on his horse’s arse.”
Rafe grinned appreciation of his wit. “Can your men be ready to leave on the morrow?”
“Aye, and my daughter, as well.”
“Your daughter?”
“Aye, she’s been a bit peaky lately, and I’m thinking she needs the company of other women. I hear Archibald’s niece has come to visit. She’s of an age as Jean. They’ll be good companions.”
Impatience twisted through Rafe, and he tried to keep it from his voice. “You don’t want to send your daughter into a dangerous situation.”