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sea-swept boulders that littered that far northern coast. Much of the cliff face was red sandstone, which had split into giant fissures along its bedding plane and was now being invaded by sea wrack and destructive salt. He had no doubt that the tower, from its cellars to its attics, had been impregnated with the smell of the sea, which, on a good day, was bracing. And on a bad day—or any occasion when a shark was being butchered in the flensing shed—rather more pungent. It made him grateful that he resided inland at York.
    As they drew closer, he could see that it was not a true wood that ringed the keep, but rather heaps of thistles that besieged the tower’s lower walls.
    Colin frowned. Doubtless the vicious weeds helped secure the fortress against intrusion, a prudent precaution given the area and the circumstances under which the tower had devolved upon the heiress and new laird of the Balfours. However, as an emblem of warmth and hominess, the thorny wild flowers were sadly lacking in welcome. In fact, the entire precipitous slope where the tower sat failed to suggest any vestige of tranquility or bonhomie on the part of the builder. Frankly, he’d seen castle dungeons more agreeably appointed.
    To be fair, there was little cause for optimism among the keep’s inheritors, and the builders may well have sensed its fate from inception. Noltland’s owners had all come to bad ends. There had been the Tullochs who built the place one-hundred-odd years ago, and then the Sinclairs who died out to a single female, and now the Balfours, whose northern branch was also becoming extinct with amazing rapidity. And if the MacLeod had his way, the tower would shortly be changing hands again. There were MacLeods in Harris and Lewis—and of course in Skye—why not the Orkney’s Noltland Castle as well?
    It would, Colin knew, take a great deal to discourage his cousin from pursuing his chosen course of acquiring this keep; the only hint of unease he had shown was at the preposterous tale of a spectral hound that haunted the Balfours.
    Colin exhaled slowly. It was not that he was entirely decided against the plan of seeing someone installed at Noltland—so much would depend upon what hefound at the fortress. Mayhap it would be better to establish someone strong within the keep rather than permit a bloody massacre of defenseless innocents by the ravaging wolves who lived nearby. But whatever was eventually done with the heiress and young laird, he did not see himself playing the Trojan horse for the MacLeod. Murder and rape of the infantry was not his favorite method of securing political appointments, and he would not assist in that particular project even to win favor with blood kin.
    A flash of now-familiar red caught his eye. A female and a lad were up on the cliff’s ragged edge, both clad in gay colors, which were an insult to the gray of sea and stone. A telltale plume of sand shot into the air, explaining their presence outdoors on such a blustery day. Obviously, they were taking exercise. At a guess, the boy was either beating a badger to death with a stick or else he was trying to get a golf ball out of a deep bunker.
    Colin watched the boy’s wild swings with a critical but sympathetic eye. The lad had a bad habit of throwing up his head just before he struck. He would have to be cured of that or he would never be able to control his ball. Colin knew this from painful experience. He had finally broken himself of the habit by tying a stone about his neck. The weight of the rock, and a few blows to the chin and nose from the heavy pendulum, had finally convinced him that he needed to stop jerking his head up when he took his shot.
    Colin’s brows drew together. The two youngsters stood perilously near the ocean, a most insalubrious locale, and with the wind as strong as it was—
    Even as the thought was conceived, a wad of brown leather, hurled by a furious hand, shot over the cliffand headed for the rowboat. Colin