Chapter Sixteen
“You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.”
Rory couldn’t spare a horse for Cyrus and Laria, not while transporting four other souls across the moors to Scorrybreac as quickly as he could. So the two of them walked, skirting the open moorland to hide among the trees of the forest.
Laria’s tongue was still, but her mind spun like a leaf caught in a whirlpool.
Holy Mary’s tears! Would she finally be able to prove that Iain was a monster who’d had his mother killed and who exiled innocent, good people?
Growing up, he’d hidden his internal ugliness, had hidden the way he whispered hurtful things to his twin brother and pricked Laria with pins when he knew he couldn’t be caught.
’Twas a game to him, a game his nursemaid certainly knew about—and probably encouraged with her constant whispering in his ear.
The village had celebrated when Wallace Macqueen had fallen from the cliffs, leaving his younger brother unchallenged as chief.
Immediately, Iain had sent Jasper Whitt to chain Erskine, even though Laria’s older brother hadn’t divulged his bloodline to anyone in the village.
By the time Laria had found him nearly dead of thirst in an abandoned bothy, the villagers had sworn their allegiance to Iain, welcoming him as their new chief.
But it wasn’t long before the villagers realized that, beneath his mask of polite affability, Iain was worse than Wallace.
“Ye haven’t come back out to your aunt’s grave since that night?” Cyrus asked.
“No. I’ve been rather busy moving us around and trying to keep everyone alive.
” She didn’t mean to sound terse, but the question had been tinged with doubt.
It seemed that every time she thought Cyrus believed her, he hinted that he did not.
One moment she thought she trusted him, only to be reminded that she didn’t.
Not fully. With her body, yes. But trust Cyrus with her people?
Their lives? Though part of her longed to lean into him, to fully trust him, she couldn’t.
She pointed, thankful for the breeze cooling her face.
“The deed happened on the next moor at the base of that hill near the trees.” She swallowed against the dryness in her mouth, remembering the night months ago when the wildflowers were still fresh and waving in the breeze.
Aunt Jane had loved Laria, had helped Sophie raise her after her mother had died young.
So sending Aunt Jane and her sweet pup away in the night without a proper goodbye had been another gash against her.
How many of Iain’s small cuts and gaping slashes could she withstand before she bled to death?
When Sophie alerted her, and Laria saw Aunt Jane being loaded up in the coach, she hadn’t thought, had only reacted to the perceived slight.
She’d slammed her feet into her boots and grabbed a cloak, tossing it over her shoulders to run down the back staircase and emerge into the gardens.
She’d raced to the stables, pulling Lancelot from his stall.
Something had been wrong. Aunt Jane wouldn’t have left without a farewell.
Laria and Lancelot had ridden along the tree line, following the coach’s slow progress under the moonlight. Unseen, she’d watched them veer off the road onto a flat moor that bordered the forest.
“There,” she said to Cyrus and felt the tears ache behind her eyes.
“Before those trees.” Three soaring pines marked the spot like sentries standing guard over her beloved aunt.
Aunt Jane certainly hadn’t deserved this, especially from her own son.
She had survived her cruel husband only to be burdened with two evil sons and the loss of a third, Tomas, the only one with a kind heart.
Laria’s quick steps increased into a slow run toward the trees, her gaze scanning the flat ground.
It had been four months since that night.
Not long enough for Aunt Jane to turn into bones.
This would be gruesome, but perhaps the woman would still be recognizable by her clothing and hair.
Cyrus had seen a picture of her on the gallery wall.
Would that be enough to convince him it was Jane Macqueen that Laria had seen murdered?
Cyrus jogged beside her. He carried a shovel, and they pulled a wooden sled on ropes behind them.
Her braid swung like a pendulum, grazing her back.
The closer she got, the tighter her stomach became.
Should she have tried to dig her up as soon as the men left?
But she’d seen Jasper slice her aunt’s throat before throwing her into the hole.
Aunt Jane would have been dead before they finished burying her.
Luckily Ginny had run off in a different direction, or the men would have found Laria, crouched down among the trees in her nightclothes.
The whole thing was a nightmare that would never leave her.
“At the center of the three trees, about ten feet out onto the moor.”
As they drew near, Cyrus dropped the sled. “The ground is recently disturbed.” He ran forward with the shovel, stopping on the patch where tufts of grass had been placed back onto loosened soil. “Bloody foking hell!” He began to dig in earnest. “That bastard could have buried Grace!”
The idea was beyond horrible. “Why would he?” she asked.
“She could have challenged him.”
Laria ran to the sled to grab a piece of thick bark to use as a tool.
She dropped to her knees opposite Cyrus, then tore away the clumps of grass and began scraping at the loose dirt with the bark.
“Be careful not to hit the—” She was going to say “body,” but the word was too terrible to speak aloud.
She hadn’t known Grace as more than the woman standing beside Iain, supporting him.
But the turmoil changing Cyrus’s face into a mask of fury and pain sliced through Laria.
“Grace!” he called, but he must know that if she were buried in this grave, she would not answer. ’Twas as if sanity swirled around him, and he would either snatch it back or let it fly away with the dirt they were frantically tossing.
The cold earth jammed under Laria’s fingernails, and the dry dirt flew in the air, fine particles coating her face and making her spit. But neither of them stopped.
She glanced at Cyrus, who dug with a stern doggedness, his muscles contracting under his tunic, pressing against the seams. His face was fixed in a tortured snarl. If Grace was in this grave, Iain would not survive the day.
They dug in tense silence. Cyrus, with his muscles and shovel, moved much more dirt than she. Crack. He paused, his chest rising and falling in exertion. He tapped the tip of the shovel down again. Crack. Crack.
Laria exhaled. “’Tis not wood like a coffin.” They hadn’t put Jane in a coffin, but Iain might have put his pretty new wife in one. “It sounds like stone.”
He dug around it, trying to find the edge, but it was large. “’Tis a boulder or bedrock.” He moved to the other end of the hole to shovel the dirt, but it looked packed.
“I don’t think Grace is here,” she said.
“I need to make sure. The dirt was dug up, loose. This is a foking grave.”
Laria sat back on her heels. “By the devil,” she said, looking down at the dirt before her. She leaned forward, pinching several strands of hair from the rocky soil. She rubbed her fingers down them. They were pale strands, not dark like Grace’s. “By the Goddamn devil.”
Cyrus looked at her, and she raised the white and pale-brown strands so that the wind tugged at them. Her heart hammered, and she didn’t know if she should cry or scream, so she spoke softly. “This is Aunt Jane’s hair. Cyrus, they dug her back up.”
…
Cyrus walked with Laria toward Staffin Village, both of them stained with earth.
His stomach grumbled with hunger, and he craved a gallon of thirst-banishing ale.
They could have returned to Erskine at the broch, but Kate, Oscar, and Errol had probably already moved the man to another hideaway farther toward the border of Macqueen territory.
Laria said they had several choices, the most likely being a small but sturdy bothy where Erskine, Kate, and Leah had lived before the others joined them.
“I’ll bathe in the loch,” Laria said. “I need to get this grime off me.”
Much as he’d love to see her naked, rising from the water like the legendary Lady of the Loch, Cyrus needed to make certain Grace was safe at Tuath Tower.
His panic at the site where the dirt was churned up hadn’t completely dissipated.
Images of Iain dropping a sedated or dead Grace into the ground, covering her with cold earth, letting her smother or bleed out…
They had overwhelmed him. Despite her annoying arrogance, he loved his sister, had grown to adulthood with her laughter and teasing.
The worry of her being tortured or killed clung to him like the reek of a decaying fish.
“It won’t take me long,” Laria said.
Cyrus released a breath. He should be used to the feeling of being tugged in two different directions by now, but the tightness still plagued him. He wasn’t about to let Laria swim alone.
“I’ll order a warm bath brought up to yer room at Tuath Tower as soon as we get there.”
“I—” she began.
“Jasper Whitt could be lurking out here.” He captured her hand, feeling the grime over her rough skin. “And ’tis warmer inside.”
After a long moment, she asked, “Will we just appear up the back steps?”
“The door was boarded shut when I left, but we can pull them off.” He still carried the shovel, which could act as a fulcrum.
“’Twould be best for ye to go in that way.
I’ll walk through the front and explain that we’ve been at the tower all night, but that I went out to train this morn. ” He indicated his sweaty appearance.
“If you’re going to say that, then just come with me up the back stairs.”