Chapter 6
Eilidh woke feeling restless, as though she’d been plagued by dreams she couldn’t quite remember. She decided on the side of pushing the strange mood from her mind. She’d always been a person who loved the mornings, and today was a new day.
A day in which, she vowed, she was not going to be swayed by fancies.
Yes, she thought, putting a pep in her step as she headed down to break her fast. There was something good to be gotten from this whole…
mess with Ciaran Gunn. He had finally convinced her of the thing that her sisters had not managed to instill in her in eighteen years of life: there was no good to be had from letting her imagination run wild.
This resolution lasted right up until she entered the dining hall.
“What are ye doing here?” she demanded archly.
Ciaran paused with a bite of food halfway to his mouth, which even Eilidh found to be a touch dramatic.
“I thought I was the injured one,” he said, lowering the spoon in a manner once again—unbelievably dramatic. “But perhaps ye took a blow to the head as well? I’m Ciaran, Ciaran Gunn. I’ve been staying at this Keep.”
She scowled at him, and the annoying pest grinned at her.
It was that smile, cheerful and downright playful, that broke her resolution.
Because, all of a sudden, she could see it.
She could see him staying here in the same way that Arran had stayed after he’d become an ally to the Donagheys and Buchanans.
He could train with the men—no doubt they could learn a great deal from the legendary warrior—and maybe a friendship would bloom, as had happened with James and Arran.
And when he wasn’t training…
Well, possibly he could be friends with Eilidh, too. And perhaps, the next time there was a feast, he would walk her back to her rooms to prevent her from being bothered by overeager lads. And if they found a shadowy spot once again, perhaps he would touch her wrist. And maybe they would—
She cut off her thoughts. She was not not not doing this.
She had just decided she wasn’t doing this fanciful nonsense any longer.
She wasn’t about to let a crooked smile and a pair of gleaming emerald eyes trick her out of that resolution.
What was so special about green eyes, anyway?
Davina had hazel eyes, and they’d never once set Eilidh to dreaming about them!
“Are ye going to try to murder me?” Ciaran asked in a quiet voice.
This startled her. “I—what?”
Another crooked grin. Damn him. “Ye just have been staring at me rather intently for quite some time. I ken ye’ve seen me at my weakest, but I do think I could still best ye. Just in case ye were thinking of it.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Ye are in an uncommonly good mood. Did ye escape the Master Healer? Is that why?”
Ciaran spread his arms grandly, though he did wince slightly when the motion pulled at his shoulder.
“I have been freed from the healer’s tender care,” he said happily. “He says that in a few more days I’ll even be fit to ride.”
Och, it drove her mad that she was charmed by how happy he seemed at this prospect. But she was a Donaghey through and through, and she understood loving a horse beyond reason.
“He is a good horse,” she admitted, because she was annoyed with Ciaran, but not so annoyed that she would defame Shadowbane. And, like any good horseman, Ciaran grew visibly happier at the praise to his mount.
“It means much to hear that from a member of your family,” he said.
And, to her unending frustration, that made her light with happiness, too.
Before she could say anything foolish, the door to the Great Hall opened with such force that it banged against the wall, drawing the attention of everyone who had come in for their morning meal. Through the door rushed Ailsa, wee Jamie in her arms, a somber-faced Ewan at her back.
Ailsa looked terrified as she clutched at her son, though her expression dropped into stark relief as she spotted Eilidh.
“What’s wrong?” Eilidh asked, her verbal sparring with Ciaran forgotten in an instant as she turned to reach for her sister.
Ailsa’s face was as pale as linen, and she looked liable to drop at any moment.
Eilidh might have tried to take the babe to encourage her sister to sit, if not for the frantic way Ailsa held her son to her breast. Unlike Ailsa, who was practically trembling with fear, Ewan was radiating fury.
“Oh, thank the Lord, Eilidh,” Ailsa gasped, reaching out one arm to snatch her sister against her feverishly. “Ye were the last of us I hadn’t seen and ye weren’t in your rooms. I was afraid…”
The sight of her sister near to tears would send a spasm of fear through Eilidh.
Ailsa had been stalwart throughout the entire ordeal with their parents’ murders, the various attacks from Gordon—through the entirety of the war.
The idea that she might be driven to weep meant that something dreadful had happened.
“What’s wrong?” she asked again, pulling gently from her sister’s grasp so she could inspect her face. “Where are Davina and Vaila?”
“They’re fine,” Ailsa said at once, and Eilidh’s knees threatened to buckle with relief.
It was only a hand at her back that steadied her in the crucial moment; without her realizing it, Ciaran had gotten to his feet and come to stand behind her.
His touch was gone as soon as it had appeared, but Eilidh appreciated it nonetheless.
“But…” Ailsa interjected, pausing to kiss the downy hair atop wee Jamie’s head, as if she couldn’t bear so much as another breath without reassuring herself that her baby was fine. “My wine taster… she’s dead. Someone tried to poison me last night at the feast.”
“Oh, oh dear Lord,” Eilidh murmured in horror.
She had only spoken a handful of times to Ailsa’s wine taster, a man in his late thirties who had liked to joke that he had the best work in the Keep. It was unthinkable that he was now dead, poisoned, and that someone had tried to murder her sister.
Echoes of this news rippled through the dining hall; Ailsa’s voice had been tremulous, but it had carried. Expressions of outrage showed on the faces of the Buchanan clansfolk. Ailsa might not have been their lady for long, but she was beloved, and her people were loyal.
“Nobody else had been found harmed, which confirms that this attack was intended for my wife directly,” Ewan called in his steady Laird’s voice.
He was putting on a courageous show for his people, but his fingers were white where they clutched Ailsa’s shoulder.
“We dinnae yet ken what villain perpetrated this attack, but two of the kitchen staff are missing.”
This sent another ripple of dismay through the crowd, some expressing shocked disbelief, others looking betrayed that one of their own would act so cruelly.
“Everyone within the Keep’s walls will be questioned,” Ewan said, his voice unyielding. “Ye’ll be interviewed by the guards about anything ye saw or heard before and during the feast.”
Eilidh didn’t blame Ewan for the way his eyes flickered to Ciaran, not when he was the new arrival at Buchanan Keep, but she felt an instinctive denial. It wasn’t him.
It couldn’t be him, could it?
“We will find out who did this,” Ewan proclaimed with a laird’s absolute authority. “And punishment will be delivered to anyone who thought they could try to harm my wife.”
“I had best not let myself get my hands on the mhac na galla who tried to poison my sister,” Davina said darkly as she launched a dirk at a target and caught only the outer ring.
“Davina!” Arran said scoldingly from behind where Mairi, Davina, and Eilidh were lined up to practice their knife throwing. Eilidh chuckled at her gentle sister calling anyone the son of an undignified female, but she guessed they had all been quite affected by the events.
Davina arched an eyebrow over her shoulder at her husband.
“Dinnae tell me that ye object to my language!” she scoffed, clearly not taking any reprimand to heart.
Nor did she need to.
“Nay, of course not,” Arran said dismissively before coming up close and using his hands on Davina’s waist to position her more effectively. “Ye just shouldnae curse and throw blades at the same time. Curse after ye have thrown the blade and hit your mark.”
Davina huffed, but this time, when she launched the blade, it hit right on the edge of the inner ring.
Arran moved down the line of women, adjusting them in turn—though his hands only lingered when it came to his wife. Even so, fury seemed to be a positive motivator, and the women’s blades grew closer and closer to the center of the target.
“I just… I hate that this feels like it’s my father all over again,” Mairi said without looking at the others. “I couldnae save him. He died right in front of me. And now Ailsa…”
She stopped speaking and swallowed hard.
Eilidh and Davina, moving as one, embraced the woman whom they had come to regard as a fifth sister ever since the Buchanans had taken them in.
Mairi let herself be surrounded, and Eilidh hoped that the warmth of their arms could keep some memories of watching her father’s death at bay.
“He needs to die,” Mairi said, her head hung low. “Maybe it’s hardhearted of me to say so…”
“Nay,” Davina said fiercely. “It’s nae hardhearted of ye to wish a man like Gordon to be stopped.”
“I just hate that we cannae do anything,” Eilidh confessed. “I hate that he hides like some sort of wretched little snake, then jumps out and snaps at us. It lacks honor.”
Mairi’s laughter was hollow. “Nobody could confuse Gordon for a man with honor,” she said bitterly. “He’s nae a laird. He’s a murderer.”
Davina pulled back from the other two, giving them a fierce look.
“He is, but we are nae helpless,” she insisted. “We are here, learning to fight. Then, one day, when he sticks his wee snake head out of his wretched hole, we will be ready to chop it off.”