Chapter 12
Elspeth
She wasn't sure how long she'd been locked in this damp, stinking cell.
Days? Weeks? Time had blurred into one endless stretch of cold stone and the drip of water from the eaves.
The air tasted of mildew and sweat; even the straw in her pallet had gone sour.
She was filthy, her dress ruined, her hair tangled, and she longed for her bed—longed for home.
Where was Calum? Had he not returned from Glenbrae yet? Why had he no' come for her?
She refused to speak whenever Elder MacRae came to question her. Let the auld man glower and spit his disapproval; she'd give him naught but silence. Silence could be a weapon if wielded right—let him rage into the quiet and wear himself out.
Her brother sat in the cell beside her, the traitor having sung like a lark the first chance he got.
She wouldn't be forgetting that betrayal any time soon.
She watched him sometimes in the dim, the way his shoulders curled in guilt and fear; it made her blood run colder than the stone.
And in the next was Niall, the guard who she'd paid to abandon his post—and he had done the same, turning coat the moment the elder had pressed him.
When a guard escorted a lass with a trencher to her cell a few times a day, not a word passed between them.
She kent the women and girls who came—they'd been her friends once, whisperin' over the looms and laughing on market days.
Now their eyes slid past her like rain on a window; even their hands trembled when they set down the food.
They wouldna even meet her gaze. Aye, the whole of Strathloch kent well enough what she'd been accused of. .. what she was guilty of.
She had overheard that a few of their clansfolk had perished in the attack.
That hadn't been part of her plan. She'd told the raiders clear as day that no harm was to come to the folk of Strathloch—only Sorcha.
But how could she prove such a thing now?
Blood had been spilled that should ne'er have touched the earth, and the weight of it gnawed at her, though she kept telling herself it wasna her fault.
Three more cells were filled with the surviving raiders—the men she had allowed to tear into her clan like wolves. They would all stay locked down here until Calum returned. Elder MacRae had made that much clear. Then, the criminals would speak their truths before the laird himself.
And when that day came... well, she couldn't let it end with a noose around her neck.
She lay awake on the hard stone, plotting and twisting words in her mind.
Mayhap she'd tell Calum the raiders had threatened her, forced her hand under pain o' death.
Or that Sorcha had bribed her brother and the guard herself, setting poor Elspeth up to take the fall.
She practiced the wet, trembling voice of a woman ruined by fear; she practiced the look of someone broken by violence.
A tearful tale of fear and helplessness might do the trick.
.. aye, Calum had ever been soft for a weeping lass.
Or better still, she could say Sorcha had arranged the whole bloody attack to play the hero, knowing the folk would fall at her feet for it. Aye, that sounded clever. All she had to do was plant the seed, play the poor, broken-hearted victim... and Calum would believe her. He always believed her.
She clung to that thought like a drowning woman to driftwood. If she spun the right lie, if she cried the right tears, she might still have him. She might still keep her place. And Sorcha—the interloping MacAlasdair stray—would be cast out like the mongrel she was.
Night after night she rehearsed the lines, turning the lies until they felt believable even to her own mouth. In the dark, the cold stone seemed to listen, and she told it the story until it was slick and ready.
And when that day came, Elspeth swore she'd not be the one the noose claimed.