Chapter 26
The rage came on her like a Highland squall fast, sharp, leaving her breathless.
Isla paced the length of what had been the Strathmore morning room, fists clenched at her sides.
The walls were smoke-stained, one window had cracked from the heat, a starburst of lines distorting the view of the hills.
“Nigel Blackwood,” she said, tasting the name like poison. “Burning my home. Sending his son with oil and straw as if we were a house of vermin to be smoked out.”
Alistair sat in the one surviving armchair, elbows on his knees, soot still ground into the lines of his knuckles. He looked, for once, older than his years.
“We do not know that he ordered it,” he said. “Morlich is an idiot. He could have …” His voice trailed off. Even he could not conjure a harmless explanation for pouring lamp oil in another man’s stable.
“His idiot son does not fill his own cans,” Isla snapped. “And Glenmore knew. He bragged of sending men to save our horses. He dismissed the man who burned his hands for him. It is all of a piece.”
She stopped pacing, drew a breath that tasted of ash, and forced her hands to unclench. Fury was a luxury she could not indulge in long; there was too much to do. Too many people to shelter.
“Then there are the love letters.”
Alistair growled in his throat, as though unwilling to even think of it.
“It does not prove anything,” he said at last, but there was no conviction in it. “Mother received letters from every idiot who fancied himself in love with her.”
“And kept none of them,” Isla pointed out, “but she kept his.”
Alistair’s jaw tightened. “It does not mean she … that they …” He could not quite finish.
“It means,” Isla said more gently, because his eyes were starting to look raw, “that Glenmore once wrote to her as if he had some claim. And now he sets a match to our stables and has his men rescue the horses as if he is a benevolent neighbor. He swore revenge, Alistair. He told her so.”
“You do not know that,” he objected.
“No,” she admitted. “But I intend to.”
He looked at the letter again. “If Father knew …”
“He would have torn Glenmore’s throat out with his bare hands,” she said. “Which may be why Glenmore waited until Father was in his grave to strike.”
“Whatever passed between them,” he said, “Mother is beyond gossip now. And Father. We must deal with what Glenmore does, not what he once wrote in a fit of youthful ardor.”
Isla nodded. Her fury re-ignited, this time tempered with a colder resolve.
“We will,” she said. “But first we must bring our people home.”