Free Parris Afton Bonds by The Captive Page A

to his feet and hit his head on the stall’s low lintel.
    She halted, stared at him, and wrinkled her nose. "A bath wouldn’t hurt you either before we leave.”
    Rubbing her palms together, she resumed pacing. “ Malcolm mustn’t ken of this. I’ll tell him I am going to Edinburgh. That’s it. I’ll tell him Allan Ramsay wants to paint my portrait, and I’ll need to stay a fortnight. Alistair is capable enough to run Afton House and care for Malcolm until I return.”
    "You ’re not going with me, Kathryn.”
    She whirled on him. "Enya is me daughter, too.”
    He took her hands in his. "Not only would you slow me down, but I would accomplish more without you. People don’t question a scribe traveling on the back roads. A fine lady they would." "I don’t have to go as a fine lady.”
    His lips curled in a scoff. "You wouldn’t know how to go as anything else. A life of nobility is all you’ve ever known. You’d slip up and betray us in less than an hour. We can’t afford to alert this Ranald. He’s expecting Murdock. But not me.”
    She put her hands on her hips, still slender even after childbirth and middle age. His mind’s eye saw her again in that pose—a fetching lass who had often challenged him. "I can go places and get information that even a man can’t, Arch.”
    “ Like where?"
    She raised a brow. "Think about it."
    He could feel his big ears turning red with heat. "You’d go to the Highlands even if I said I wouldn’t take you, wouldn’t you?”
    Her smile was gentle, guileless, serene, and noble. "A repentant prostitute on pilgrimage is an excellent disguise, don ’t you agree?"

 
     
    Chapter Five
     
    T he reivers were eating haggis and neeps, jesting and quarreling and enjoying the comradely pleasures of the great hall. They conversed in that strange Gaelic language. Although there had to be more than fifty men tonight, more than usual, Enya knew at once which one was Ranald Kincairn before he even took up the bagpipe.
    Her mother would claim she was daft, but Enya didn ’t know how else to explain her knowledge of the man, other than to describe it as second sight, like dreams or visions that Elspeth said some of the auld folk had.
    From that distance, Enya could not really say the man was handsome. Rather ordinary, in fact, if she discounted his size.
    The tall, brawny man left his place at the head table to play the pipes for Ian Cameron. A collie that had been moping in the castle now perked up and padded behind the big man, who had taken up a hide-bound chair a short distance from her place at the end of the table. Unlike his kilted uncle and cousin, the appointed laird of the Cameron clan wore a hunting shirt and trousers of deerskin so worn and stained that the leather shined.
    In the five days she had been held captive at Lochaber Castle, she had learned through questioning Jamie that Ranald Kincairn had come and gone and come again, like a will-o’-the-wisp. Clearly, he was in no hurry to carry out his expressed intentions in regard to her.
    '"Tis a ceilidh tonight," Jamie said at her side.
    "A what?" The wild-sounding, hard-to-pronounce Gaelic words spoken by Highlanders confound ed her. Like Eidiann for Edinburgh and Glaschu for Glasgow. Gaelic was a completely separate tongue, with its own unique vocabulary and grammar, as different from English as were Greek or Polish.
    "A ceilidh is a Highland-style evening of music, dance, and drinking. The villagers will find any excuse for a ceilidh ."
    "What is the celebration?” In all the time she had been at Lochaber, the days and evenings had passed in monotonous isolation. Tonight was the first time she had been allowed to leave her room, although she had been permitted the services of Elspeth and Mary Laurie.
    She realized she had taken for granted the dancing classes, literary correspondences, debates, and flirtations that had enlivened her life at Afton House.
    Jamie’s dancing blue eyes didn't meet her own. "We are