Fallon shrugged, as if he had known what she would ask. “I barely knew my intended bride. We had met only once before she journeyed here. It was an advantageous marriage between two powerful clans.”
“So your happiness meant nothing?”
Lucan pushed his trencher away and leaned his forearms on the table. “As eldest, Fallon was expected to make the clan stronger.”
“I realize that,” she said. “Did you even like her?” she asked Fallon.
Fallon gave a halfhearted grin. “She was pretty enough with her fair hair, but she was shy and quiet. I don’t know how she would have fared in the MacLeod clan.”
Cara looked at her hands as he spoke. “Quinn married for love?”
“Aye,” Lucan agreed. “They were both very young when they wed. They had been inseparable as children, and when they got older, it was obvious they would marry.”
Cara turned her head to Lucan. “And you? Did you have someone you loved?”
“Besides my family? Nay. There was no woman for me.”
“Not for lack of them trying,” Fallon said with a chuckle. “I’ve never seen women fall over themselves as they did for Lucan.”
Lucan raised his brows and smiled. “Now wait a moment, Brother. I seem to recall you had your fair share of women as well.”
Fallon laughed a full, robust laugh that caught even him off guard. “At least we never had to fight over a woman.”
“Thank the saints for that,” Lucan replied with a wide smile.
His eyes danced with merriment, and Cara had to wonder when was the last time the brothers had laughed.
Fallon’s smile died. “I miss having a woman warm my bed.” His gaze became distant, as if he lost himself in a memory.
Cara winced as she saw the stark loneliness in Fallon’s eyes. She had seen the same in Quinn’s. But Lucan, his had only shown desire and concern.
“Your god was bound once. Maybe he can be bound again,” she said to Lucan.
He shrugged. “We tried. For years we tried to find a way.”
“But it was hopeless,” Fallon said.
Lucan glanced at his brother. “The only person who knows how is Deirdre, and she’s not about to tell us.”
“Not when she wants to use us in her army,” Fallon added.
Cara wasn’t ready to give up. “There has to be a way. Just as I’m sure there are other Warriors like you, hiding from Deirdre, there has to be someone who can bind the gods.”
Lucan scratched his jaw as he considered her words. “You may be right, but if there was someone who knew how, I can guarantee Deirdre has found them and killed them.”
“The Druids were a large part of the Celtic life. Just as the Celts have never gone away,” she said, and glanced at his torc, “the Druids haven’t, either.”
“They won’t show their faces,” Fallon said. “The Druids would be persecuted as soon as it was discovered who they were.”
Cara stopped short of rolling her eyes. For such brawny warriors, they didn’t think half the time. “Have you, or have you not, been hiding in this ruin of a castle for over two hundred years next to a village that never knew you were here?”
Fallon sighed. “Point taken.”
She looked at Lucan. “A Druid could be a practicing Christian but still believe in the old ways.”
“Say you’re right,” Lucan said. “How would we begin to look for them? It’s not as if we have the time to travel over Scotland stopping at every village or cottage we come across.”
“I haven’t thought that far ahead.”
“It’s not a bad idea,” Fallon said after a moment. “I just don’t see how we could carry through with any of it.”
“We could leave the castle,” Cara said.
“To go where?” Lucan asked. “We have nowhere else to go.”
“Why stay here?” she argued. “You said yourself Deirdre would attack again. We could leave and seek out other Warriors and see what we can discover about the Druids.”
Fallon rose to his feet and reached for his bottle of wine. “It is a good plan, Cara, but I’m not leaving my home. This castle is all I have left. If I leave it, I’m afraid I’ll come back to find the MacClures or some other clan has decided they want it. I couldna stop them from taking our lands, but I refuse to give up the castle.”
She watched Fallon walk from the hall and out the castle doors.
“He’s been outside more today than he has the last hundred years,” Lucan murmured.
Cara sighed. “Only because I’m sitting in the place he usually occupies.”
“Our lives got disrupted, and I think that’s a good thing. For too long we’ve huddled in the castle, pretending we didn’t exist. We fought Warriors and wyrran, but we should have been living. Learning the world that has changed so much.”
“We all know the attack is coming. To stay here and wait to be outnumbered seems folly to me.”
Lucan lifted one side of his mouth in a grin. “There is no place any of us could go. They know your scent now. The Warriors will hunt you unto the ends of the earth if they have to.”
Cara shuddered at the thought.
CHAPTER TEN
Cara rose from the wooden tub and reached for the drying cloth. It had been a surprise to find the tub in her chamber filled with steaming hot water. She knew without a doubt Lucan had brought the tub and lugged the water up the stairs.
She hadn’t realized how tired her body would be after the training she’d had that morning, but the bath had done wonders for her sore muscles.
After luncheon, the rest of the day had flown by with Lucan showing her places to hide and various ways to get out of the castle. She doubted if she would remember them all, but he had said it was important.
She was so weary she couldn’t remember eating supper, but she did recall it was another quiet affair. The only comment from Fallon was about the fish Quinn had caught being better than the fowl. She had gone into the kitchen to cook, but Quinn already had everything done. Since her body ached so, she didn’t complain. At least at the meal Quinn spoke, though he had nothing to say other than the castle was secure.
Cara shook her head at that. There was no way three brothers, even immortal and powerful, could defend a ruined castle this size alone.
She touched the silver vial that hung between her breasts. She had taken it off only once since her mother had put it around her neck. What was so important about her mother’s blood that Deirdre wanted it?
Cara tried to remember the night her parents were killed, tried to recall if her mother had said anything else to her. Cara had been crying and unwilling to be put in the hole under the cottage. Her mother had been speaking the entire time, but Cara couldn’t remember a word she had said.
Cara dropped the drying cloth and reached for the nightgown she had taken from the village. She had just slipped it over her head and let the hem fall to the floor when she heard Lucan call out her name.
Part of her wondered what she would have done had he walked in when she was naked. The other part of her was glad he hadn’t because she would have made a fool out of herself, she was sure.
“Aye,” she answered. “I’m here.”
He moved from the shadows, his shoulders filling the doorway. “Do you feel better?” His voice was lower than normal, gruff, and filled with emotion. And God help her, it excited her.
