When the Laird Returns (The Highland Lords #2)

Chapter 26

Chapter 26

The stench of smoke was being carried with Iseabal in the breeze. To travel at night and alone was unthinkable, even if the destination was her childhood home. But there were considerations more vital than safety.

Where was Alisdair?

Fernleigh stood tall and ominous in the darkened countryside, not one glimmer of light penetrating its thick walls. No welcoming lantern was hung by the front door, and the moonlight, shining silver on its corners, made her childhood home appear like the chimney of Hell.

Iseabal dismounted, tying the horse’s reins to the ironwork in front of one window. Rage and grief vied with each other, rising to fill her chest and swamping any other feelings. She pushed her way past the guard, determined that no one would stop her from finding Alisdair.

Inside the clan hall, a few tapers had been lit in a grudging concession to night. Her mother sat in her customary place beside the cold fireplace, her father drinking at his table. For once he was alone, his cadre of followers absent for the night.

Leah glanced up, her expression one of shock upon seeing Iseabal. She stood, dropping her needlework on the chair behind her. A second later Iseabal was enfolded in her mother’s arms.

“I thought you gone, Iseabal,” Leah said, patting her cheeks, examining her from toes to head in a sweeping glance.

The screech of wood against the stone floor made Iseabal turn. Her father sat back in his chair, surveying her.

“You’re not welcome in this place, Iseabal MacRae. Go back to your husband and tell him that I’ll not return his money for you.”

“Where is he?” she said, standing in the middle of the clan hall. Her hands were clenched behind her, and her heart beat a pounding rhythm so strong she could hardly breathe. “Where is Alisdair?”

“Have you lost your husband, girl? Barely a month wed and he’s already fled from you?” He glanced at his wife, and added dismissively, “I should have suspected as much, if that one taught you in the womanly arts.”

As she took one more step toward him, Iseabal could feel the cold stone of the flooring through the leather of her shoes. Stone no more warm than this man’s heart.

“Where have you taken him?” she asked, her voice level and harsh. Did he sense what she was feeling? Was that why he straightened in his chair, loosening his grip on the tankard? His eyes narrowed, his lips turned down, expressions of disfavor she’d seen every time they’d met.

“What has happened, Iseabal?” Leah asked.

Without taking her gaze from her father, Iseabal answered her.

“He burned a village, Mother. For the sake of his sheep. Alisdair tried to intervene. He’s been missing ever since.” She couldn’t utter the other words, images that remained out of sight, just beyond thought. He had not been shot; he was not dead. She would know it, be feeling something other than this killing rage.

Drummond stood abruptly, striding to her side. He raised an arm to her and she smiled, the gesture halting him.

“Hit me,” she dared him. “Silence me with your fists. I have thirty men at my command,” she said in a low, threatening tone. “Thirty men who would willingly force you to reveal what you know. Or kill you. We’ll see how brave you are when confronting someone other than my mother and me.”

He struck her then, but Iseabal didn’t flinch from the blow.

“Where did you take him?” she asked, wiping the blood from her lip. The pain inside was greater than anything her father could do to her.

“To Cormech,” her mother whispered.

Iseabal spun around to find her mother staring at Drummond. Leah knew, Iseabal suddenly realized, wishing that the knowledge wasn’t there in her mother’s stricken look.

“He sells his clansmen at Cormech,” Leah said, her voice trembling. “As bonded servants. Or as slaves.”

“Shut up, woman,” Drummond snapped. “You know nothing of my business.”

“I know that you used to send them to the Carolinas, in the colonies,” Leah said, “but with talk of the rebellion, you had to find another place.” She pointed to her chair. “I sit there day after day at your command. Do you think that I don’t hear you, don’t know what you’ve done?”

She took Iseabal’s arm, standing in mute defense of her daughter. Not the first time she’d done so, Iseabal thought, but the only occasion in which Iseabal had known the extent of her father’s greed and crimes.

“I don’t know where he sends them now,” Leah said.

When her father raised his hand again, Iseabal grabbed his wrist. “Are you going to beat us both, Drummond?”

Releasing him, Iseabal stepped away. The anger she’d felt had deepened, altering her. She was no longer afraid of him. She felt nothing at all, neither fear nor conscience. In the depths of her heart there might have once been a wish for understanding, or a seed of compassion.

At one time she’d wanted to believe the best of him, had wanted him to be the kind of man who, instead of frightening her, would show some affection. Ever since she was a little girl, she’d thought that a piece was missing in the puzzle that was her father. All Iseabal had to do was find it and then she would understand why he was the way he was. Why he took so much pleasure in his power over others, why he treasured money over his family.

But there was, she abruptly realized, no missing piece of Magnus Drummond. He was always as he had been; the only difference now was that she was seeing him without hope clouding her vision.

Leah bowed her head, the arch of her neck rendering her vulnerable at that moment. She became, as Iseabal watched, a frail woman in a world that was not disposed to tolerate the weak. But there were other victims this night, people who might have been spared, had Leah spoken earlier.

“Why?” Iseabal asked, moving back from her mother. “Why did you never say anything? Or do anything?”

Leah raised her head, her eyes swimming with tears. “What do you expect me to have done, Iseabal? Do you think people would listen to me? There were enough to know what he was doing, and not one hand was ever lifted to stop it.”

“Get out of my house, daughter,” Magnus said, his voice slightly slurred.

Glancing over at him, Iseabal allowed her anger free reign. “Don’t call me that again,” she said sharply. “I wish to God I weren’t of your blood. But rest assured, I’ll spend my entire life making amends for it.”

“You do that,” he said, eyes narrowing. “I don’t know where your husband is, but you can tell the MacRae that I’ll be watching as he’s driven from Gilmuir. I’ll go to court and win that land back as rightly mine.”

“I doubt you’ll fare well against English magistrates,” she said dismissively. “Alisdair MacRae is an English lord now. The Earl of Sherbourne.”

“Is he, now?” he asked, striding back to the table. Sitting, he peered into the bottom of his tankard. “Or maybe he’s just a ghost.”

Iseabal knew, as she passed beneath the arch, that she would never come here again. The Fortitude had proved more a home. This had never been a welcoming place, and now it truly was an empty shell.

Looking back at the two of them, Iseabal wondered why she had never before seen her parents quite this way. She might as well have been a foundling, so removed did she feel from either of them.

She would go to Cormech with the crew of the Fortitude and search every ship in the harbor in order to find Alisdair. And if that did not prove successful, she would travel the world to rescue him.