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returned.”
    “Aye, I am returned. Did you think I would not?” Jeanette asked.
    Malcolm noted the tension that sprang to life between these two as they spoke. He had the urge to touch Jeanette again, as he had when they had entered the clearing by the burn. That time she had visibly relaxed. Would it happen again?
    He reached forward and laid his hand upon her shoulder, but this time she shrugged it off and stepped quickly away.
    “We were worried,” the woman said, stopping just in front of Jeanette.
    “I needed some air, Rowan,” Jeanette said.
    “Aye, is that not what I told you?” the guard said to Rowan.
    “ ’Tis,” Rowan said, “but still, you were gone too long and though I made the men leave you be, I was worried.”
    As if seeing Malcolm for the first time, she met his gaze. Jeanette quickly made the introductions to her cousin, this time stressing his experience in the king’s army.
    “He is in need of a healer. We can offer him shelter, such as it is, while I care for him, can we not? And in exchange, he can give what assistance he can as we prepare to fight the English again.”
    Rowan did not respond right away, nor did she give her thoughts away. After a long moment she nodded. “Denis, you shall wait with them while I find Nicholas.”
    As they waited, Malcolm got a better look at the damages he had glimpsed from the trail. The length of curtain wall on his left was nothing but rubble, offering up a spectacular view of the loch and the distant mountains but leaving the castle vulnerable to any attack that might be launched against it. Men toiled there, clearing the rubble away. To his right he could now clearly see the source of the smoke stench.
    The blackened and broken remains of a large building lay like a corpse rotting in the sun. The women and weans working to clear the remains were like insects cleaning the body. Scorch marks on the curtain wall surrounding the blackened heap gave testimony to the intensity of the fire.
    Questions spun through him, but he set them aside for the moment, too intent on assessing the strategic impact of such destruction.
    He glanced now at the outbuildings scattered along the edges of the bailey. All of them showed evidence of fire damage, too, though most suffered only blackened patches to their thatched roofs. The single stone tower he had seen from the trail stood across the way, the only defensible structure from the looks of the place, and it was not large. The devastation to this small castle hit him like a punch to the gut, as his mind spiraled through all the dangers such wreckage presented.
    The only good thing he could see was that the English had left the castle in such ruins that there was no way they would want more from this place or these people, though he did wonder what the clan had done to merit such destruction. And then he remembered the English soldier skulking about in the wood not far from this very spot and his questions multiplied.
    “There is no hospitality to offer,” the guard said just loud enough for Malcolm to hear. “You will have to earn your way if you intend to bide here.”
    Malcolm nodded absently, for his mind was still busy solving the problem of how to defend such a broken castle. No matter how many ways he looked at the problem, there was only one conclusion he could reach: the castle could not be defended.
    A rumble of men’s voices rose from the crowd working on the rubble heap and Malcolm saw several men separate from the workers and head toward him, Rowan leading, hand in hand with one of them.
    He turned his attention back to Jeanette, who stood a few feet away from him, watching the approaching group. Her shoulders were lifted just enough to betray the tension she must have felt and that made him wonder exactly what her place was in this clan. Her cousin Rowan was clearly the chatelaine, but that said little about Jeanette’s position.
    Three men arrived with Rowan, and Malcolm only noticed another woman