Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
The door to Isobel’s chamber was open.
He saw it from the end of the corridor, a thin line of firelight spilling onto the stone floor, and was already moving faster when he pushed it wide.
Jane was on the floor against the side of the bathtub, knees pulled up, with one hand pressed hard to her cheek.
The basin was overturned, water still spreading cold across the stone.
When she looked up at him, her eyes were wet, and her breath was coming in short, ragged gasps.
She shook so hard he could see it from across the room.
He crossed the room in three strides and went down on one knee beside her. “Jane.”
“He took her.” Her voice cracked. She pressed her lips together, tried again.
“Malcolm. He said ye sent him and she didnae believe it. Me Lady kept askin’ him questions.
She wouldnae go with him, and then…” Her hand shifted against her cheek, and she flinched hard.
“He hit me. Isobel ran to the door, and he caught her. She fought him. I heard it. I was on the floor, but I heard all of it, and I couldnae…” She stopped.
Her voice broke fully. “I couldnae get up. She was right there, and I couldnae do anythin’… ”
“Jane.” He put his hand on her shoulder and waited. “Look at me.” She pulled her eyes off the floor and found his face. “She fought him. Ye hear me? That matters. Are ye hurt beyond repair?”
She shook her head. Then winced. “Just me face.”
“All right.” He held her gaze for a moment, long enough for her to stop shaking quite so hard, and then he said, “How long ago did he take her?”
“I daenae ken how long I was on the floor before I could move.” Her voice was very small. “A while. Maybe a long while. I apologize; I should have…”
“Stop. Ye couldnae have stopped him.” He stood up. “Ye tried. That’s enough.”
He crossed to the tapestry, pulled it aside, pressed the stone, and the passage door swung inward.
Cold air and the smell of earth came out of the dark.
The lantern mount inside was still warm when he touched it.
He straightened and turned, and his voice came out at a volume that had nothing careful in it.
“Donal. Gregor.”
Boots on stone in the dark, first one pair, then more—men rushing from the hall, stairwells, and east corridor, waking up at the sound of that voice because there was only one reason it came at that volume at such an hour.
Gregor came through the door half-dressed, still pulling his belt straight. He saw Jane, the passage, Alasdair’s face, and stood very straight.
Alasdair said, “Malcolm has taken me bride from the castle through the passage behind that wall. Get me six men with swords and a lantern. Now.”
“Aye, Laird.”
Another man in the doorway. “Get Moira. Jane needs her.” Gone.
A third arrived. “Eastern gate. No one in or out unless it’s Fergus, Hamish, or me, lock it otherwise.
” Gone. A fourth, a fifth, each one taking an order and moving before Alasdair had finished giving it.
The castle pulled itself awake around a single point.
He was heading toward the passage when Lady Branwen entered through the doorway behind him.
A shawl was wrapped around her shoulders and her walking stick was clutched in her hand.
She looked at Jane on the floor, at the overturned basin, and at the open doorway to the passage. Then she turned her gaze to Alasdair.
“Malcolm took her through the passage,” he said. “I’m goin’ after them.”
Lady Branwen went straight to Jane and lowered herself beside her. Shetook the girl’s face in both hands. Jane flinched at the touch and then stilled.
“Ye’re safe,” Lady Branwen said firmly, her thumbs careful along Jane’s jaw.
“Hear me, lass… ye’re safe. Ye did well.
” Jane’s breath was still coming in pulls, but she looked at Lady Branwen’s face and held onto it.
Then, Alasdair’s grandmother said it again, quieter, and kept her hands where they were.
Euan’s voice came from the doorway, small and uncertain. “What happened to Jane?”
Sarah came through the door behind him with her hand on his shoulder. She looked at Jane on the floor and at the broken basin and at the passage door standing open, and her hand on Euan’s shoulder tightened once.
“Go to Lady Branwen,” she said to Euan, steadying her voice. Euan went and pressed himself against his great-grandmother’s side without a word, and Lady Branwen put one arm around him and did not stop talking to Jane.
Sarah came through the door behind Euan and looked at the room, at the passage door, at Alasdair.
“How long?” she said.
“Too long.”
“Is she…” Sarah stopped. She looked at Jane on the floor, at the smear of water across the stone, and she set her jaw. Alasdair was at the passage door.
“Stay here. Keep the door locked once I’m gone.”
“Alasdair.” He turned. Sarah was standing with her arms crossed and her chin up. “She’s nae fragile,” she said. “Ye ken that.”
“Aye, but Isobel is alone with Malcolm and we daenae ken why. What could he want with her, Sarah?” Alasdair stared at his sister, hoping someone, perhaps she, could provide answers.
Sarah shook her head stoutly. “Go. Find Isobel. Bring her back home..”
“Aye,” he said. “I will.”
He glanced at Jane, who remained on the floor with Lady Branwen’s hands on her face. Euan stayed close, wide-eyed and silent, embodying the quiet stillness of a child letting adults take charge.
He turned and went into the passage without a lantern to illuminate the path.
The ceiling was low, and he ducked his head to avoid bumping it.
Alasdair moved fast, with one hand on the wall.
At the first bend, the stone was disturbed, a fresh scrape where someone had gone down on one knee and come back up fast. He crouched over it for a second. The scrape was from a bare foot.
Isobel must have stumbled on purpose, or she was forced down and fought her way back up. Either way, she marked what she could.
He kept moving. He counted the turns the way he had counted them every time he had walked these passages since boyhood.
Left, the long right curve, the floor shifting from stone to packed earth.
The cold deepened as the air changed. Alasdair could smell the heather and the night before he reached the door.
Then the wooden door at the far end swung loose in the wind with the latch broken where Malcolm, or someone else, maybe Isobel, had destroyed it.
He came through it into the night and dropped to one knee immediately, allowing the silvery moon overhead to light the path.
Two sets of footprints in the frost heading east off the path. One large. One smaller and uneven, scuffing the frost to the side, the prints of someone being moved against their will.
A few feet from the door, a lantern was on its side with the glass cracked and dark. Beside it was a dark smear on the pale stone.
He touched it with two fingers. Blood. Not much.
He thought about Isobel picking up the stone in the passage. She would have held it tight, braced herself, then struck at just the right moment.
Good, he thought. Good.
He stood.
She had marked the floor in the passage. She had hit Malcolm with something before they got out the door. She had been thinking the whole way through.
Or at least he hoped and prayed that was what happened.
Alasdair took the lantern but then set it down again because a light would show him coming. He did not want to show himself. Unencumbered, he ran east into the dark, following the footprints by starlight as far as they showed, and then by instinct when they disappeared into the heather.
* * *
“Alasdair.”
The voice came from the north, and he pulled up. A shape came out of the dark at a dead run and slowed ten feet away before manifesting into Hamish, breathing hard, hands on his knees.
“Tell me,” Alasdair said.
Hamish straightened. His face was set in a way Alasdair had not seen before, jaw locked, a muscle working in his cheek, and he did not speak for a second. Hamish was a man who could absorb bad news and keep walking. He was absorbing something now.
“Tell me,” Alasdair ordered in a sharper tone.
“Three men in a hollow on the north hillside,” Hamish reported. “Been there a while, keepin’ low. I recognized the plaid from the old clan records—exiles, after Culloden. Yer father had them scattered. They’ve been out here ever since, waitin’.” He paused. “I made them talk.”
“How long did that take?”
“Nae long. They’ve been waitin’ a long time, and Malcolm hasnae come good on what he promised them. They werenae hard to move.”
“And?”
“Malcolm’s father didnae just fight at Culloden and die there.
He was taken alive after the battle and executed.
Yer father ordered it. There was evidence of double allegiance—the man had been passin’ information to the Crown while fightin’ under the Jacobite banner.
Both sides used him, and neither side trusted him.
When it came out, yer father did what the law required. ”
“I ken that part,” Alasdair said. “What I didnae ken is the rest of it. Tell me the whole of the story.”
“Aye.” Hamish held his gaze. “What ye daenae ken is what Malcolm’s faither did before the rebellion.
Before any of it. He went to a man’s holdin’ in the night.
Killed him and his wife. Took the land and everythin’ on it.
And left their infant son at a Laird’s doorstep, because a dead man has no claim and a baby cannae speak for himself. ”
Alasdair said nothing.
“That Laird was yer father.”
The wind moved through the heather, and neither of them spoke.
“Hamish?” Alasdair had been following the thread of the story well enough, but now, he was confused.
“That infant was me.”
Alasdair stood very still. He looked at Hamish, and his closest friend looked back at him and waited, letting him have the moment to comprehend.
“Say that again,” Alasdair said.
“The man Malcolm’s faither killed in the night,” Hamish said.
“Those were me parents. The holdin’ he took was mine by birth.
And then yer faither took me in, nae kennin’ any of it, nae kennin’ where I’d come from or what had been done to get me to his doorstep.
” His jaw was tight. “I found this out tonight. In a hollow in the hills. From three cold men who’ve been waitin’ years for Malcolm to come good on whatever he promised them. ”
Alasdair put his hands on the back of his neck and looked at the sky for a moment.
“The Lairdship Malcolm wants…” he said.
“Was never his to claim,” Hamish finished.
“And it was never yers to give me, because ye didnae ken ye had it. It was mine already. His father stole it. Yers took it back without kennin’ where it came from.
And Malcolm grew up kennin’ only one half of the story, that yer family executed his faither.
Thinkin’ it was injustice. Buildin’ it into a grievance he could spend thirty years sharpenin’ in the dark while sittin’ at yer table and smilin’. ”
“How long has he kent the truth?” Alasdair said.
“The men in the hollow didnae say. Long enough to plan this.”
A silence. The heather moved around them in the wind.
“The fire,” Alasdair said.
“He needed me out of the castle before I could follow any thread back to him. And he needed the castle in chaos. Needed people runnin’ and shoutin’ and nae watchin’ where he went.”
“And every warnin’ he gave in council about Isobel.
” Alasdair’s jaw was tight. “Every seed of doubt about her family, about Lowland loyalties, about the marriage being a weakness. I thought he was bein’ cautious.
But he was buildin’ a record.” He looked at Hamish.
“If somethin’ happened to her, the story already existed.
The Lowland bride brought trouble with her.
The agreement between me and her family was never sound.
And if she disappeared and I was left without a wife and an heir… ”
“The Lairdship reverts,” Hamish said. “His claim through the old line. Everythin’ absorbed quietly before anyone thinks to ask the right questions.”
“And me claim was built on land that was already stolen,” Alasdair said. He said it quietly to himself as much as to Hamish.
“Aye.”
Another silence.
“We’ll deal with that,” Alasdair said. “After.”
“Aye,” Hamish agreed. “After.”
“How long has she been out here?”
“Close to two hours. Maybe more.”
Alasdair looked east at the darkness.
“There’s blood on the stone by the passage door,” he said. “She hit him with somethin’ before he got her out.”
“Seems like somethin’ yer bride might do,” Hamish said simply.
“I’m going after them.”
“Aye.” Hamish stepped forward until they were standing close in the dark. “And so am I. Whatever we do with the rest of all this after tonight, we do it later. Right now me Lady is out there, and Malcolm has her, and ye’re nae goin’ without me. Daenae waste time arguin’ it.”
Alasdair looked at him for a moment. Every campaign, winter, council meeting, mistake, and success ran through his mind.
He and Hamish had been raised together in the same house on a holding that had come into their family through bloodshed and theft, with Alasdair’s father not knowing the difference.
Alasdair gazed out at the glens, dark and expansive ahead, the heather spreading beneath the stars. Somewhere out there, a barefoot woman in a thin robe with a stone in her hand, having just crossed two hours of freezing ground, faced Malcolm alone.
“Come on.”
They ran into the dark together, side by side, the way they always ran toward the things that needed facing. The heather closed around them. The sky was cold and clear overhead, and the glens stretched wide and empty ahead.
Isobel was somewhere in all of it. Malcolm likely followed close on her trail. But now, Alasdair and Hamish were tracking them too and the distance between them was closing with every stride.