"Are you a MacLeod? A MacKay?" he asked. Those were the two main clans in the area. But if she was from somewhere further south, as her dialect indicated, no telling which clan she'd come from.
"Nay," she said. Why the devil wouldn't she reveal her clan name at least?
"Are you running from someone?"
She froze, staring at him wide-eyed. That was it. Who was she running from and why?
A sharp gust of wind grabbed her cowl and flung it back, revealing more of her face and long dark hair.
Indeed, she was familiar. Was she someone he'd met during his youth? The familiarity niggled at the back of his mind, tormenting him.
"I've seen you before," he said.
She yanked the cowl over her head, concealing most of her face once more. "Nay. I think not. You're mistaking me for someone else."
A name sprang to his mind. "Isobel?" he asked.
She backed up a few steps, her suspicious wide-eyed gaze searching his face. "Who are you?"
Damnation, now he remembered. "You are Isobel MacKenzie, daughter of the MacKenzie chief."
In the late spring of his fifteenth year, he had gone with his da and several members of the clan to Dornie. He'd met her then. The other lads had been silly in their attempts to gain her attention. But she'd turned her nose up at all of them. She'd barely said a word or two to him when they'd been formally introduced.
Although he had to admit she was lovely, even then, she'd been much too young to catch his interest. Besides, she and her mother had been close to Dirk's stepmother. They'd laughed and talked for hours, and he'd learned Isobel's mother and his stepmother had been friends from the time they were young lasses. The same stepmother who'd tried to kill him. He didn't understand how Maighread could have two such opposite sides, or how people could trust her.
Later that summer, he'd been forced to leave his clan.
Though beautiful she might be, Isobel, given her association with Maighread, was as trustworthy as a viper.
"Who are you?" Isobel repeated, her voice more demanding this time.
"My name is Dirk MacKay. We met many years ago at your home in Dornie."
She frowned, her gaze searching his face.
"Do you remember?" he asked, knowing she wouldn't. But some part of him hoped she would.
"You've grown," she said.
Isobel remembered him? Stunned, he frowned. And though he was likely daft, he felt flattered and humbled. He supposed he'd gotten it into his mind that everyone from his past had forgotten him. Almost as if he'd truly died twelve years ago and been reborn a different person when he'd relocated and changed his name.
And she was right, he had grown. At fifteen, he'd been a tall, thin stripling of a lad, his frame much different from the large one he possessed now. Had Isobel known of Maighread's evil plot against him? Had she heard of his "death?"
Chapter Three
Isobel studied the tall, broad-shouldered man before her. He had the fearsome look of a Norseman, especially with that frown. Who could've guessed when she and Beitris had left the hovel that morn, they'd run into Dirk MacKay by gloaming?
His head was now protected with a snow-covered mantle's cowl, but she recalled his hair was reddish-blond like his invading ancestors… if he truly was Dirk MacKay. She remembered the lad well, but she thought he'd died years ago, not long after she'd met him.
How could a person change so much? His shoulders were twice as wide as they'd been back then. He looked to be a well-trained warrior, certain sure. He even wore metal-studded leather armor beneath his wool mantle. His sword's basket hilt gleamed in the scabbard by his side. When he'd approached her earlier with that deadly weapon drawn, fear had near choked her. A well-polished dagger hilt and pistol grip also protruded from his belt and shimmered in the approaching twilight. Only the wealthy possessed such impressive weapons. Of course, being a chief's eldest son, he certainly had everything he needed.
Even if she had met him long ago, how did she know he was trustworthy now? Mayhap he had become an outlaw since then.
"Well then, since we're not strangers, tell me what you're doing out here alone in this ghastly weather and so far from home," Dirk said. It wasn't a question. He was demanding an answer. But she was not yet ready to give it to him.
Last she'd heard, the MacKays and the MacLeods were allies. And if that was still the case, she couldn't tell him what she'd done to that MacLeod knave who'd attacked her. Dirk might drag her back to Munrick. After all, he was planning to stay there this night.
Though he'd sheathed his weapon, she was not yet ready to put hers away. Her fingers were almost frozen to the dagger's bone hilt.
Isobel glanced at her maid and then back to him. "'Tis naught for you to worry over. We are used to the Highland weather."