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sacrifice must be made lest greater ill befall this house.” He paused, his dark eyes narrowing. “Or would you rather I commanded you put to the cliff?”
“So my penance is to deliver our family’s most valued treasure into the hands of Dunkeld’s canons?”
“Taking gifts—humble offerings—to Dunkeld to replace what they’ve lost is your duty as my brother, and son of this house.” Donall regarded Iain for a long moment, then slid a meaningful look at Gavin MacFie. “He
will accompany you.”
“MacFie?” Iain glanced at the burly Islesman.
Not unpleasant to the eye, Gavin MacFie stood head and shoulders over most men, had an open, honest face, and warm hazel eyes. His thick auburn hair could be called a bit unruly, but he kept his beard neatly trimmed.
And at the moment, he shuffled his brogue-clad feet in the floor rushes and looked more uncomfortable than Iain had e’er seen him.
The bampot’s ill ease fueled Iain’s own. “Do the good saints have a score to settle with him as well?”
“Nary a one,” Donall said, his voice sounding tired. “He goes solely to keep an eye on you, and”—he paused, a look very close to genuine sympathy clouding his face—“to make certain you heed your penance.”
“So at last you tell me the whole of it.” Iain folded his arms. He’d known there’d be more.
Donall released his breath on a resigned sigh.
Iain tensed, and waited.
Though, in truth, his brother’s sigh, followed by a brief glance at the raftered ceiling, proved eloquent enough.
“I want you gone before daybreak,” Donall said, his voice surprisingly soft for such harsh words. “On your journey to Perthshire, you shall draw halt at every sacred place you happen upon. Be it holy well or tree, stone cross or martyr’s shrine, you are to prostrate yourself and pray to be purged of your temper.”
“And you’ve charged MacFie with assuring I do?”
Donall gave him a tight-lipped nod.
The MacFie’s face turned near the same shade of red as his unruly hair.
Cruel and swift, comprehension swept aside all remaining vestiges of Iain’s befuddlement. He stared at his brother—now every inch his laird—the glimmer of regret in Donall’s dark eyes smiting him more than aught else.
“Is that all?” he managed, his voice blessedly void of emotion.
Donall lifted a hand, and for the space of a heartbeat, Iain half expected him to reach for him, mayhap clasp him to his breast in a gesture of brotherly camaraderie— something he could have sorely used—but Donall lowered the hand as quickly.
“There is more, aye,” he admitted, the words thick and choked-sounding . . . as if dredged from the most desolate corner of his soul.
Iain waited, his defenses already throwing up shields.
“Christ God, but I loathe that we’ve come to this,” Donall vowed, his lairdly reserve breaking. A shudder ran the length of him, and when it had passed, he was once again all chief, his face expressionless.
He cleared his throat. “As the first rains of spring come gently, then gradually build to a steady, lashing downpour, so have we suffered your increasing foulness of mood”—he paused to draw a breath—“You must now brave the fury of the storm you’ve called upon yourself.”
Iain braced himself and hoped no one else heard the roar of his blood, the wild knocking of his heart.
“You, Iain, younger son of the great house of MacLean, shall ne’er again set foot on Doon lest you adequately master your temper,” Donall declared, his voice rife with finality. “As I and the Council of Elders have decided, so be it.”

So be it.

Hours later, long after moonrise, the words still echoed in Iain’s splitting head, and much to his annoyance, his every attempt to outstrip them proved a fool’s exercise in futility.
The devil himself couldn’t craft a more fruitless pursuit.
Nor one so maddening.
Salt wind whipping his hair and stinging his eyes, he spurred his shaggy-coated garron down Doon’s wee strip of a boat strand. Faster and faster he rode, streaking past thatch-roofed