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steward?”
    “He did not complain, though I warrant by the look on his face that he was rankled to his bones.”
    Jaime recalled the man’s arrogant expression up on the ramparts and found himself unmoved. “Pity that, but it was never his right to claim the laird’s chamber in the first place.”
    “Tell that to Maddog, my lord. These Scots are a surly, presumptuous lot.”
    Jaime stood, wiping his fingers on his trews. He lifted a brow, but constrained himself from pointing out that he too was a Scot by birth—half Scot. It was easy enough for his men to overlook, likely because he didn’t feel like one himself. “Maddog? Is that his name?”
    “Aye, my lord.” Luc gave another nod. “So it seems.”
    “What of his affiliations?”
    “None that I know. Born here, served Rogan and his brother before him, and their father before that, but that’s as much as I know. Seems he had some hope of rising in David’s service now that the MacLarens are all dead.”
    Jaime ignored the stab of glee he felt over that simple truth. Donnal’s grandsons were hardly responsible for their grandsire’s sins. “Good to know. How many of MacLaren’s men remain?” His gaze automatically rose to the ramparts where a pack of MacLaren guards stood watching him with sober faces. As yet, they kept themselves apart from his troops, gathering in small numbers to watch what Jaime would do. His own reinforcements, led by Kieran, his captain of many years, were at least a day’s ride behind him and so he might advise his men to heed themselves, lest they find a dagger in their backs.
    “I counted forty-three, though that includes everyone, from children and scullery maids to the blacksmith, who seems to be lame in one leg.”
    “And how many are fit to fight?”
    Luc shrugged. “Mayhap thirty of that lot.”
    Jaime sighed again, wearied to his bones. His breath lingered in the air, leaving him with a certainty that the rains that had plagued them all the way north would soon turn to snow. It was bloody cold in these Highlands! “So we have thirty, plus twenty and seventy more to come?”
    A gleam of admiration appeared in the youth’s winter blue eyes. “Aye, though we have the Butcher and some say he has the strength and cunning of ten.” He grinned over that, and Jaime resisted the to urge to reach out and tousle the lad’s hair.
    “Flattery will get you naught from me, wolf pup.”
    It wasn’t precisely the truth, and they both realized it. In so many ways Luc was the little brother Jaime never had. At one time their fathers had been like brothers as well. The simple fact that Luc’s sire was old and surrounded by too many daughters and his own was many years dead should have given Jaime a pang of envy, but it did not. Weston FitzStephen had done nearly as much to help Jaime rise in Henry’s service as David had, and Jaime would return the favor for his only son. The lad’s temperament merely made it easier: Luc was a proud, fearless, loyal lad and it was an attitude he wore like a second skin. Betimes it made Jaime proud. Betimes it tried his patience.
    Much like the girl up in the tower.
    She did not even blink at the sight of his raised sword and that fact piqued Jaime’s curiosity. From the instant he’d sent her away, it was all he could do not to climb the tower stairs to discover who she was and what she was doing in the company of these men. She brought to mind Boadicea, the long-ago queen of the Iceni tribe, who’d led the uprising against the Romans. With the lass’s lovely face swimming through his head, he left off inspecting the gates and started toward the keep, annoyed with his sudden inability to focus on anything but her face.
    Luc followed.
    “Where did you put the yellow-haired behemoth?” Jaime asked, not wanting the lad to glean how pervasively the girl had crept into his thoughts.
    “The gaols, my lord, as you requested.”
    Jaime’s gaze swept the courtyard, spying two of MacLaren’s men