He should have known better. She whirled on him, round chin jutting out indignantly. “And will you be judging her unfairly, like all the villagers and all?” Eithne demanded. “Don’t deny it, Alex MacDonald! You’re thinking hard, suspicious things about her this very minute!”
Alex’s sunburned face looked disconcerted at this sudden attack, but only for an instant. “Oh, aye,” he agreed cheerfully. “I am that. And why wouldn’t I be, with the many reasons she’s given me already? Has she put a spell on you, m’eudail? Best be away to the house and see if Catriona can break it.”
Eithne stamped her foot, but it wasn’t easy to find a retort. “You—you talk like a Covenanter!” she finally flung at him scathingly and flounced out in a swirl of petticoats, Fiona behind her.
Alex scratched his red head, more confounded by her passion than by her rather shaky logic. He grinned wryly at Kelpie, who looked back at him in triumph.
“Poor innocent waif!” he jeered, putting one foot up on the edge of the cot, where Dubh spat at it. He rested an elbow on his kilted knee and stared at Kelpie with interest. She stared back through slitted eyes.
“Before you’re up and away again,” he said, casually, “I’ve a wee word to be saying to you, and it is this. Unlike Ian and Eithne, I’ve a nasty suspicious mind, I have.” He wagged his head sadly. “And I’ve a picture in my head of you away off tomorrow bearing every movable thing in the glen hid in your rags, and we sitting here without so much as a stick of furniture left to us.”
“Indeed, and I would never be doing such a thing!” cried Kelpie indignantly. “How could I be carrying it all?”
Alex laughed outright. Kelpie scowled. She had been cursed and beaten often enough, but she had never before been laughed at, and she didn’t like it.
Alex stopped laughing and grinned at her. “Well, so, and I’ve a soft heart in me, so I’ll be doing nothing about such matters as pocket-picking or a certain snuff box, nor will anyone else, I think. But”—and he leaned forward a little—“should anything else just happen to be missing when you leave, then you’ll be finding the hand of every Cameron and MacDonald, all through the Great Glen and Lochaber from Loch Leven to Loch Ness, turned against you.”
Kelpie showed sharp white teeth in a defiant laugh. “Are you thinking I’ve never heard threats before?”