Suzanne Barclay - Lion's Lady

His horse started, long ears pricking forward.

“Is he come?” Gathering the reins to steady his mount, Lion leaned low and peeked between the branches of a sheltering pine. Sure enough, a single man guided his horse along the rocky banks of the creek swollen with late spring runoff.

“Jesu, he’s daft, riding in the open as though he hadn’t a care in the world,” Lion grumbled. He should leave him to his own devices, but his sense of justice wouldn’t let him.

As Padruig rode abreast of his hiding place, Lion urged his horse out from cover.

“What the...?” Pale light shimmered on deadly steel as Padruig lifted the sword from across his thighs. “Who are ye?”

“A friend.” Lion held both empty hands aloft.

“Friends dinna creep up on a man in the dark.” Padruig was a big, rawboned man of some five and forty years, with thinning hair and a warrior’s scarred face. How could Rowena have wed him? It hurt thinking of him with his Rowena, kissing her, lying with her, getting her with child.

“You left Blantyre in rather a hurry. And given the delicacy of my mission, it seemed best to meet you here.”

“Step into the open where I can see ye.”

Lion edged his horse out from under the canopy of branches.

Padruig’s widened as they focused on Lion’s face. “Lion Sutherland.” A brittle note underscored his surprise.

“Aye.” They had not been introduced during the brief hours Padruig had spent at Blantyre, come in answer to the summons of Lion’s current overlord, Alexander Stewart, Earl of Buchan. “How is it you know me?”

Padruig shrugged. “I’d reason enough to learn yer name.”

Had Rowena spoken of him? Had she told her husband that because of Lion she’d come to him no maid? It gave Lion savage satisfaction to know he’d been the first to taste her sweetness. It was not nearly enough, but it was all he had to ease the ache of yearning and regret “I see,” Lion said edgily, wondering if he faced a jealous husband. It would be his first time for that, for he was no poacher.

“I doubt ye do. Then again...” Padruig’s thin mouth lifted in what could have been a smile or a grimace. “Have ye come to kill me over it?”

Lion frowned. Although he seemed a blunt, uncomplicated man, there were unnerving layers of meaning in Padruig Gunn’s speech. Mysteries Lion had no time to unravel. “You rejected the earl’s request for men to help him subdue the outlaws that plague the Highlands,” he said, returning to the business at hand.

“Subdue outlaws?” Padruig cursed and spat. “’Tis an excuse to curb our independence and strip us of our property. Alexander Stewart’ll wipe out those clans that oppose him and take over their lands. He’ll make himself king of the Highlands, mark my words.”

Lion was amazed at how well Padruig understood the situation. Most of the clan leaders who had agreed to follow Alexander had either been fooled by his high-sounding mission or thought to gain power themselves. Those who had not joined him were of two groups—the lawless ones who did, indeed, need to be controlled and a few clans like the Sutherlands who guessed the earl’s darker purpose and wanted to stop him.

It was a dangerous, mayhap impossible task. One that had cast Lion in the role of spy in Alexander’s court. “If Alexander is as ambitions and ruthless as you say—” and Lion knew firsthand that he was “—then you were a fool to defy him so openly.”

“Bah. He’ll not miss the few Gunns I could have brought to his army. We’re a small, isolated clan.”

“He’s not a man who takes kindly to being told nay.”

Padruig snarled a curse.

Lion sighed. He couldn’t imagine his young, sunny Rowena wed to this cold, gruff man. Trying to do so hurt. “It would have been better to pretend to fall in with his plans.”

“Lie?”

“What harm in a lie that saves lives and buys us time?”

“Time to do what?”

“Find a way out of this damnable situation,” Lion replied.

“By agreeing to side with a rogue and murderer? Wolf, I’ve heard men call him behind his back. And it seems most apt, given the relish with which he raids and murders.”

Lion admired his convictions, if not his stubbornness. “Have you no care for your clan? For your...your wife?” The word stuck in his throat.

“Ah, my wife.” Padruig’s searing gaze raked Lion from his bare head to his leather boots, then back up. “I’ve a care for her—and for the lands I’d leave my son. Which is why I’ll not dirty myself by associating with that bastard. But I thank ye for the warning. Were our positions reversed, I wonder if I’d do the same.” He tugged on his horse’s reins and urged the beast into motion.

Lion sat scowling as he watched Padruig pick his way up the glen. When he passed from sight, Lion reluctantly moved off to the left, up the little-used trail he himself had taken. At the lip of the ridge, he paused long enough to ascertain he was alone, then set off to get his men. They had miles to go for his meeting with Fergie Ross.

Another hard, crusty old man with a stubborn streak who would rather defy the earl than harken to Lion’s plans.

He’d gone scarce a quarter mile when he heard it—a hoarse scream that tore across the quiet land. “Bloody hell.” Wrenching his horse around, he raced along the rim of the glen, calculating how far the Gunn might have gotten in the few minutes since they’d parted. When he reached the cut in the land where a stream poured down to join the creek in the glen, he dismounted, hobbled his horse and crept down on foot.

He was nearly to the bottom when a troop of men galloped past. A score or more, he judged by the sounds of their horses. Though he could not see them for the brush, he caught a flash of red and blue. MacPhersons? Aye, it made sense. Alexander often sent Georas MacPherson to do his dirty work.

Blade drawn, Lion crept through the underbrush. The sight of Padruig sprawled beside the stream in a pool of blood stopped him. He moved forward to feel for signs of life, but found none.

Damn. Damn. He should have gone with Padruig. Followed him at least. And died with him? Sobering thought, but Lion’s guilt didn’t ease. “Jesu, Rowena, I’m sorry. So sorry.”

The clatter of hooves on stone sent him scrambling for cover. It was not Padruig’s murderers come back, but his own men who burst onto the scene.

“We heard a cry,” Bryce explained, controlling his nervous mount as he surveyed Lion. “Are you hurt?”

“Nay, but Padruig Gunn is dead.”

“Alexander’s men?”

“Likely. They were MacPhersons, I think.” Lion knelt again by the body. “And it wasn’t robbery, for his purse is still here.”

“Damn, if only we’d realized the earl would stoop to this.”

Lion stood, “He grows desperate indeed if he will murder a man over a few troops for his damned army. I should have tried harder to convince the Gunn he was in danger.”

“What now? Will you take the body to his people?”

Lion debated only a moment before shaking his head. “I’m overdue to meet with Fergus. If I do not show up, God alone knows what foolishness he’ll undertake.” He looked down at Padruig again. “And the Gunns are bound to ask who did this, mayhap seek revenge against Alexander, and die in turn.” He exhaled. “Red Will, take three of the lads and carry Padruig Gunn near to home. Leave him at the side of the road...” Like refuse. Lion cringed, but couldn’t waver. “Make it look as though he’d been attacked and robbed.” Fewer questions that way.

Even by Highland standards, Padruig Gunn’s funeral was a wild and raucous affair. The Gunns come to mourn their fallen chief cavorted about Hillbrae Tower’s great hall like revelers on a feast day. Shouted songs and laughter vied with sobs of regret at his passing.