They could see the coach now, pulled by a team of four, accompanied by two riders in back and two guards alongside the coachman. The postilion held a lantern aloft on a pole to light their way, in addition to the light cast from the carriage lamps.

“Who in bloody hell comes at half past midnight?” Donald demanded.

Seamus suddenly gasped. He pulled the spyglass away from his eye and squinted at the coach, then just as quickly put it back to his eye and leaned forward. “No,” he said, his voice full of disbelief.

His two companions exchanged a look. “Who?” Donald demanded. “No’ Buchanan,” he said, his voice almost a whisper, referring to the Mackenzies’ most persistent enemy through the years.

“Worse,” Seamus said gravely, and slowly lowered the spyglass, his eyes gone round with horror.

“By God, say who it is before I bloody well beat it from you,” Sweeney swore, clearly unnerved.

“’Tis...’tis the Lady Mackenzie,” Seamus said, his voice barely above a whisper.

His two companions gasped. And then Sweeney whirled about, grabbed up his gun and hurried off to warn Mackenzie that his wife had returned to Balhaire.

Unfortunately, coming down from the tallest part of Balhaire was no easy feat, and by the time Sweeney had made his way into the bailey, the coach had come through the gates. The coach door swung open, and a step was put down. He saw a small but well-shod foot appear on that step, and he broke into a run.

* * *

ARRAN MACKENZIE ADORED the pleasant sensation of a woman’s soft bum on his lap, and the sweet scent of her hair in his nostrils, especially with the golden warmth of good ale lovingly wrapping its liquid arms around him. He’d sampled freely of the batch his cousin and first lieutenant had brewed. Jock Mackenzie fancied himself something of a master brewer.

Arran was slouched in his chair, his fingers slowly tracing a line up the woman’s back, lazily trying to recall her name. What is it, then—Aileen? Irene?

“Milord! Mackenzie!” someone shouted.

Arran bent his head to see around the blond curls of the woman in his lap. Sweeney Mackenzie, one of his best guards, was shouting at him from the rear of the hall. The poor man was clutching his chest as if his heart was failing him, and he looked quite frantic as he cast his gaze around the crowded room. “Wh-wh-where is he?” he demanded of a drunk beside him. “Wh-wh-where is Mackenzie?”

Sweeney was a fierce warrior and a dedicated commander. But when he was agitated, he had a tendency to stutter like he had when they were children. Generally there was little that could agitate the old salt, and that something had made Arran take notice. “Here, Sweeney,” he said, and pushed the girl off his lap. He sat up, gestured his man forward. “What has rattled you, then?”