“She is ours!” Mina squealed angrily, but she must have seen that she would get nowhere, for she suddenly changed tactics. “Would you be wanting Mac Cailein Mor to hear things about you?” she hinted softly. “Things about how you are favoring King Charles, and what you think of the Covenant, and your own son associating with the King and bringing back messages from him, and from Montrose as well, perhaps?”
There was only one way Mina could have learned these things. Everyone looked at Kelpie, who stuck out her chin and grinned brazenly. Ou, the wicked, careless tongue of her, to be telling Mina that! Ian and Eithne were looking as if she had slapped them. There was a smile on Alex’s lean face and scorn in his eyes.
“And so you have not really changed at all,” he observed softly, and was surprised at the bitterness of his own disappointment. After all, what else had he expected? But his tongue went on scathingly. “Selfish, faithless, unscrupulous you are and always will be. You could never think of inconveniencing yourself for the good of another, could you, Kelpie?”
“Of course not,” said Kelpie defiantly, but the sweet face of Wee Mairi was warm and mocking in her heart.
“Let be, Alex.” Ian sighed. “She cannot help it. There was not enough time to change old habits.”
“Nor ever will be,” retorted Alex.
Kelpie hissed at him venomously. “Faithless yourself!” she spat. “Do not be forgetting what I told you, Ian!” And she turned away to Glenfern, who was laughing at Mina.
“By all means go to Argyll,” he said cheerfully. “Tell him whatever you like. He knows well enough where our sympathies lie. But leave the lass behind you when you go, for I should not like her to be burned as a witch along with the two of you. And now, farewell. I am sorry,” he added, turning to Kelpie, “that you could not stay with us, poor lass. Remember that we wish you well.”
That was really almost too much. Kelpie turned abruptly and started up the pass with Mina and Bogle, who knew when they were defeated. At least it was over, and she must just put it away out of her memory.