The Accidental Highland Hero by Terry Spear Page A

she remember Glen Affric so well?
    If she visited a cousin there in the summers, it must not have been her home. Why could she not remember her home?
    “Glen Affric. Hmmm, that is very interesting, my dear. My other sons are there, helping the Lady Anice of Brecken Castle. Know you her?”  Lady Akira lifted a piece of brown bread and buttered it.
    Eilis gulped. James had family there. ‘Twas not good. “Aye, everyone in the area knows of the lady. She is known to be kind to those who serve her.” And again, she couldn’t fathom why she could recall Lady Anice of Brecken Castle, but not her family’s name.
    “Have you served her?” Lady Akira asked, her brows lifted. “Do you have word of my sons?”
    “I…I have not been back there for sometime, I do not think. And I do not know anything much about her except…”  She frowned, trying to dredge up the elusive memory. “Her uncle died, and she became King Henry’s ward.”
    “Aye, ‘tis true. Know you, Eilis,” Lady Akira said, her words said deliberately slow, “we are of the Clan MacNeill?”

Chapter Five
     
    Eilis could scarcely breathe, the part of her meal that she had managed to eat now sitting like a solid rock in the pit of her stomach. Why had she not thought to ask someone, anyone, which clan James was the chief of?
    MacNeill . Mayhap in her semi-unconscious state someone had mentioned the name and that’s where she had gotten it from. She groaned inwardly.
    “You have a clan name now, Eilis,” James said, dryly, his jaw taut.
    He didn’t seem at all pleased, and Eilis had a hard time choking down her fowl, but she didn’t feel she could change her name so easily now. What if she picked the name of an enemy clan?  She thought of many clan names, but had no idea which the MacNeill might not like, except for the Dunbarton.
    “Aye, MacNeill is my clan’s name.” She lifted her chin and dared him to disagree.
    “From the Glen Affric branch?”
    “Aye.”
    “Tell me what you know of the area, Eilis MacNeill of Glen Affric.”
    She buttered a piece of bread, trying to calm herself, attempting to quell the trembling in her fingers. “I love picking berries from the rowan trees beside the Allt na Imrich stream in Glen Affric. My da, when he was alive, made drink from it. I collected blaeberry also to dye my cloth blue or to give to our healer who used them to aid the digestion. South of Loch Beinn a'Mheadhoin, I gathered berries from the juniper to add to the meal and hazel nuts from the trees at the falls. I have watched the beavers build damns on the river and the crossbills courting one another in early spring, singing to each other, then fighting for ownership. I have seen the red deer stag with velvet-covered antlers in summer grazing on the grasses and heather against the backdrop of the Five Sisters of Kintail. I have found the home of the red squirrel, its drey of twigs and leaves in the fork of a pine overlooking Glen Affric lach.”
    She looked at him finally, her eyes challenging him to dispute her recollections.
    His look devilishly sinister, James nodded. He motioned for a servant and spoke to him in a hushed voice.
    Eilis tried not to attach any importance to his actions, but a trickle of unease snaked up her spine.
    The servant spoke to Eanruig sitting beyond Niall. He glanced at James, who nodded. When the seneschal looked at Eilis, she noted the surprise in Eanruig’s expression, and she quickly shifted her gaze to the table.
    Somehow, she believed she had sunk deeper into a quagmire of quicksand like the kind she had accidentally gotten into along the banks of the river Nith.
    Eanruig joined James. “Aye, my laird?”
    “The lady says she is one of your kin.”
    Eilis shrank in her seat.
    Eanruig leaned closer and looked at her, then grinned. “Aye, I do remember a bonny lass who looked like the lady. She was with a woman in the village whose family married into mine…a distant relation, as I recall. I thought she