“If they can send word to each other and ken all else we think they do, then nay, it doesnae fool them at all. They ken where the boys are being taken by now.”
She shivered, and the way Brian held her a little tighter only slightly warmed the chill of fear. It was a fear that ran too deep to be banished. With each passing day, each new scrap of information on their enemies, her need to see Michel and Adelar grew until it was a sharp ache inside her. It was not just because she missed them, which she did, but a need to see with her own eyes that they were safe. She also needed to see that Scarglas could keep them safe. Although she trusted in Brian’s word on that, her heart needed the proof her own eyes would give her.
“Dinnae worry so, love.” Brian brushed a kiss over her mouth and stood up.
“Easier to say than to do,” she muttered as she took hold of the hand he held out to her and let him tug her to her feet and into his arms. “’Tis hard for many to understand considering who Michel and Adelar are, but they are my boys.”
“Ye had the raising of them, fostered them in many ways.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead and then led her over to the horses. “Ye also have a heart too good to hold the wrongs their parents did to ye against them. It will nay be long now before ye are with them again, a sennight at most. There may e’en be word about them waiting at Dubheidland.”
Arianna prayed there was. It would be enough for her to calm her fears about the boys for a while. Her arms ached to hold them, but if she knew for certain that they were safely behind the walls of Scarglas, she could endure their absence for a few days more.
Chapter 8
“Wait here, lass.”
Arianna frowned at Brian as they both dismounted. “What do ye plan to do?”
“Slip into that wee village ahead and find someone to take word to your kinsmen,” he replied.
“Ye think that must be done now?”
“Aye. There are ten men after us, lass. Ten. If they have sent an equal number in all three directions we tried to lead them in, then we have a small army running about the country hunting those lads of yours.” He winced when she paled and wished he had held to his decision to keep that information from her.
She gasped and grasped him by the arms. “Michel and Adelar?”
“Are better protected than we are and, ye must trust me in this, lass, my family kens weel how to sneak about and hide themselves and anything of value they have, including other people. I can promise ye that verra soon after my kin rode away from that beach those lads wouldnae have been recognizable e’en to you and a plan was already made to hide them if the need arose. And do ye ken what else my kin can do verra weel?”
“What?” Arianna desperately wanted to believe him if only to push back the fear that was now making her thoughts scatter and her heart pound. “What can they do?”
“Fight.” He kissed her on the forehead. “We survived for years surrounded by enemies, which my fither was verra skilled at making. Some of those enemies were verra determined to see us all dead. They failed. As my fither liked to say, he may nay have been the best of fithers and was a worse husband, but he had done a fine job of teaching his lads how to survive. And he did. We are all verra, verra good at it.”
She rested her forehead against his chest for a moment as she finished beating down her fear for her boys. His plan had been a good one, still was a good one. The fact that there were a lot more men hunting her, Michel, and Adelar than they had believed did not change that. The utter confidence underlying his words helped her get control of her fear as well. She recognized that sort of arrogance for her kinsmen had it. Brian knew his strengths, his abilities, and those of his kinsmen. It was a good arrogance, too, for it was one that would not blind him to what he could not do, to what would be just reckless to even try.
Stepping back a little and releasing him, she took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and nodded. “Go then. Since I am nay sure of exactly where I am, I am nay sure which of my kin is the closest ...”
“I am. Once Fiona let us ken who her clan was allied with, we found out all we could about them.” He gave her a quick kiss. “I willnae be gone long.”
“Just be careful.”