The Curse of Clan Ross (15 page)

Thank The Lord he’d thought to lower the bar.

“Lass. Jillian. Hide ye in the stairwell. Quick now,” he added firmly when she raised her chin. “Do ye want to hang...or burn?”

That moved her trews-covered arse.

Stalling for as long as he could, he made his way over to the great wood portal then lifted the heavy cross beam. The door flew open, but he caught it and stepped forward, pushing his would-be rescuers back out into the evening air. Joining them on the steps, he pulled the door closed behind him.

“I’m not dead, Widow Murray. An assassin lurks among us, and ye all choose to stand up here and give him a fair target?”

“He’s only after ye, Laird, do ye no’ think?” asked a soldier with a faultering voice. “Perhaps we should go inside, to be sure.”

“I ordered everyone from the keep for a fortnight, and a fortnight it’ll be.”

“Monty!” Ewan shouted from the wall. “He’s torn his plaid gettin’ away.” He paused, as did every ear, waiting to hear the colors. “It’s a MacKay.”

A sad silence dropped like a blanket in the gloaming, as if a child had died.

“You there,” Montgomery told the soldier. “Saddle my horse and a dozen others.”

Ewan’s voice crying, “MacKay” had turned the fire in his belly into iron, and a lucky thing, too.

He’d need to be cold and hard if he were to kill his old friend.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

They found them on the border.

Between MacKay and Ross lands ran a burn, slow and sure. It was named The MacKay-Ross burn, or The Ross-MacKay burn, depending upon which side of the burn one happened to be standing while discussing it. If a fight landed both parties in the creek, then it was just The Burn.

The Burn is where Monty and Ivar had met now and again when they both were able to sneak away from training, chores, and interested eyes. In the treed shelter they’d hidden from large cousins and even larger lassies. Many a time they’d stayed the night through to prove to each other how truly fearless they were, and on nights they did not prove so brave, they would run together from the banshee to a cottage nearby or barn in which to hide.

Later, they wooed their first women to this place. The Burn. And later still, Monty had found Ivar there with Morna.

Aye. That first lapse in loyalty had not come from a Ross, but from a MacKay.

Monty looked down upon the dark head of his enemy and marveled that the man could sit so at ease with his men and his conscience. Had he not anticipated being followed after failing to do the foul deed?  That The Ross was able to crawl up into the tree above showed how Ivar MacKay had let his reiving skills dull.

“Disgraceful,” Monty said in full voice.

The four MacKays all leapt to their feet, but not one unsheathed a weapon.

Ewan walked casually in from the MacKay-side trees, braced his feet for battle while his arms hung deceptively at his sides, but only a whisper away from a dagger at his hip and a skean dhu at his knee.

“Monty. Ye’ve come.” Ivar laughed as if he had no suspicion that he may be hanging from that same tree in but a moment or two.

The hangman dropped from the tree, landing but two paces from the condemned, and before any could react, the latter hugged the former to him and pounded his old friend on the back.

“Thank God. Or thank Isobelle, I should say.” Ivar stepped back, grinning and looking about. “Where is she, old man?  Where is Morna?”

Montgomery had never suffered a loss of speech before then, but he’d be damned if he could guess what the other man was thinking.

“Monty, where is Morna?” Ivar’s smile had faded and he now looked about the clearing, noting the number of Ross men now circling the camp. “I don’t understand.” His face and his voice fell. “The prophecy, man. Is it not time?”

Montgomery’s head ached. While he rode toward The Burn he had played out Ivar’s death in various ways; the only thing left to decide was in which manner the MacKay man would die, how much he would suffer. If the whole of the MacKay clan had been waiting on the rise it would not have surprised him more than finding the man lounging beneath a tree waiting for a faery to bring Morna back to him.

The man was daft...as were many folks these days. Surely it was not Montgomery whose mind rattled about in his head, although the whole of Scotland believed it was so.

“Where is Luthias?” Montgomery asked, finally noting Ivar’s shadow was not among this lot.

“He has no patience for sitting about, hoping for miracles.” Ivar’s voice had completely lost the joy of those first few words. “And where is Ossian?”

Was there suspicion there?  Perhaps not. It was a natural question to follow his own.

“Dead.”

Ivar’s eyes stretched wide for a moment, searching his face. Surely he saw nothing.

“I’m sorry to hear it,” the man said. “I was not told.”

Montgomery’s stomach pitched. Of course Ivar was sincere in his regret. Until only a year ago, the five of them spent much time together; Luthias dogging Ivar, Ewan and Ossian shadowing himself. As the future Laird of his clan, he had need of two protectors. As the third in line for the MacKay lairdship, Ivar needed no such special treatment. The sure start to a good fight had always been for one to say the other was weaker, or himself more important. His knuckles itched now for such a scratching.

“Have ye replaced the man with this dozen, then?  Are ye so afraid for yer health?”

Oh, his knuckles would be satisfied, and soon, but he wanted answers first. Either Ivar was taunting him into fulfilling the purpose for his visit, or the knuckles on the other man itched as well. The forced smile on the MacKay’s face told him the man was merely frustrated that his miracle had not come to pass and he wished for Montgomery to join him in his misery.

“Are ye growing soft, as well as frightened, Monty?”

It was the familiar name that slapped him. Ewan was the only one who called him Monty now.

“Leave us. All of ye,” he barked.

The MacKays never moved until Ivar nodded. At least all training had not been forgotten by his enemy.

When even Ewan and his lads had departed, Montgomery stepped forward and gripped Ivar’s shoulders, forcing his former friend to look in his eyes.

“Tell me ye had no hand in sealing the woman in the tomb,” he demanded.

Ivar frowned, then his brows rose.

“Morna,” he choked out, clutching Montgomery’s forearms before his knees gave way. Montgomery’s grasp kept the man upright. “Is she—”

“Nay. Not Morna. The MacKay woman. Did ye have no hand in it, then?  Ye did not send Jillian MacKay to stop my wedding?”

“I did not. The Jillian I ken is only five or six summers. Someone sealed her in a tomb?  Isobelle’s tomb?”

Montgomery nodded, satisfied the man had never used Jillian so, but disappointed she was no kin of Ivar’s. The other two alternatives left him sick.

His enemy waited for more.

“Truth to tell, this Jillian is a woman grown, not a bairn. I have yet to find her family, or discover if she is who she claims to be.”

“Have ye considered the Gordon bastards?”

“Aye, I have.”

A moment later, they were sitting on the MacKay side of The Burn as they had for years; Ivar on the ground with his back against a giant felled tree and Montgomery on a large grey boulder with a seat naturally hollowed out, as if by an ancient puddle of water. But now the boulder looked half the size it had when they had first discovered it, and the noble trunk was rotting in pockets of crumbled rusty bark.

Montgomery pushed aside the pain of the last year, and its sources, to enjoy the familiar feeling of not being alone in the world, to remember what it was like before women and responsibilities changed the size and significance of things. For just a wee while, he was Monty, sitting with Ivar, hiding from the world and planning its conquest. They were going to rise together against The Cock o’ the North and show The Gordon their bare backsides.

No one could take away knowledge, however, and pretending the last year had never happened was a game Monty was too old to accomplish.

“Tell me about the weddin’.” Ivar tossed a pebble over his shoulder and smiled when it made a splash.

Monty shot Ivar a frown. The man held up his hands.

“Aye, everyone has heard. But I’d like to know what really happened. By the time the tale reached my ears, Isobelle had come back, the faery from the prophecy was well on her way, and they only waited for ye to come and fetch me.”

“Ah, so that is why ye were here. Waitin’ for me to take ye to a faery and bring about a war with the Gordons.”

“I kenned not what to think, but I was going to be here on the chance I might have my reason to live given back to me. And I was not about to cross the MacKay/Ross Burn and give ye leave to run me through.”

“Speakin’ of runnin’ a mon through, and blood channels—”

“Were we speakin’ o’ blood channels, then?”

“Aye. ‘Tis why I’ve come. I mean to see ye hang for yer attempted murder o’ the MacKay lass.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Jilly had not hidden in the tunnel as she’d been instructed, but had slipped into the shadowed space between the tomb and the back wall. If the hall filled with people, there was little chance of her being seen if she stayed quiet. And even if Medieval Montgomery didn’t like her interpretation of his order, he should be grateful she’d hidden at all.

He’d used that nonsense about burning her to gain her cooperation, that’s all. They only burned witches, didn’t they?

Hope flashed.

He already believed she was from another time, or a fairy. Why else would he worry she might be hung as a witch?  And hadn’t Ewan told her he and the laird already believed her?

“We don’t discuss such things here,” he’d said.

Bullcrap. He didn’t want to admit such things here.

Neither had she, back in the states, when the Muirs had told their romantic tale. It didn’t seem like hundreds of years away, but it felt like a modest lifetime.

No. Montgomery Ross was pretending he didn’t believe her, but why?

While Jilly racked her brain for possibilities, she was content to remain in her small space, with escape available to either side, or above her. Although The Ross had gone outside and left the hall empty, she’d take no chances. Besides, she wanted to show him she had obeyed, albeit to a point.

Jilly had just determined to confront Montgomery to discover the reason for his pretense, when the great door opened and quickly closed. She was about to call out when the shuffle of far more delicate feet than Montgomery’s or Ewan’s padded through the hall.

Who would chance being caught disobeying the laird?  Well, besides her, of course.

“Isobelle?” a woman called, tentatively. “Are ye here, Isobelle?”

Jilly smiled. Widow Murray was a fifteenth century shade sniffer.

As quiet as a mouse, one tiny movement at a time, Jillian began climbing the back of the tomb. She just had to see what the woman was going to do next, and who knew when she’d have a real life opportunity to use her rock climbing talents.

“Isobelle,” the widow began again, her voice bouncing eerily around the nearly empty cavern, “I wanted to thank ye for chasin’ away the Gordon woman.”

Bless you, Grandma, for the Gaelic lessons.

Movement off to her right side had Jillian freeze as she was reaching for her next handhold. The widow’s voice had sounded as before, like the woman had stopped mid-hall in all likelihood to keep warm in front of the hearth. If there was someone at this end of the hall, it was someone else.

With the top of the tomb but a foot from reach, Jilly scrambled as quickly as possible to get out of sight. Blood rushing in her ears made it impossible to say how much noise she had made, but the lack of reaction from the widow was reassuring.

The roof of the tomb was a solid slab of stone, into the center of which Jilly crawled and flattened herself as much as she could. As she pulled her leg away from the edge, the slightest shifting of air raised goose bumps on her calf.

Someone had slipped behind the tomb. Jilly could feel them there. It was Ewan. Lord, let it be Ewan.

“Ye’ve done yer work well, Isobelle.” The widow was apparently not finished. If she was looking for some kind of contact, Jilly was tempted to oblige her, but Ewan would rat on her if she gave the older woman a heart attack. “No lass, from any clan, will want to fight the likes o’ ye. But now,” the woman continued, “if ye’d be kind enough to move along, I’d like to have Montgomery back. He willna come to me as long as he believes ye’re here. He’s said as much.”

“Nay yers,” came a whisper from the high ceiling.

Holy crap.

Isobelle really was here.

“Nay yers,” the same voice whispered before the first echo had died, only this time from the right end of the tomb. “He’s nay yers,” it said, now more viciously from the left end. “Montgomery Ross belongs to a MacKay or to none at all.”

The last was sung clearly from the ceiling, followed by overlapping cackling from all directions. And just as Jilly was about to leap from the tomb and race Widow Murray to the door, her leg was anchored to the rock lid by a firm bony hand. Her scream mingled with the widow’s and every stone of the castle rang like a bell.

The great door was left ajar for only a minute, and while Jilly struggled to free her leg, the wood slammed shut of its own accord.

The cackling continued, in a less menacing tone, but still in stereo.

“Ye nearly had me wetting meself, dearie,” complained the ghost who still held Jilly’s leg. The hearth fire was dying from lack of attention and it was impossible for Jilly to see any form in the shadows behind her.

Suddenly the hand released her, patted her calf then disappeared. Light flared and Jilly looked back to the hearth where a woman with graying red hair stirred it to life. Though the blue-clad woman struggled to keep her lips shut, she was still laughing. A second version of the same woman came into view from the end of the tomb and joined the first at the fire. When their gazes met, they both bent in half, laughing themselves silly.

Muirs.

Jillian had the distinct urge to run for her life.