Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Elspeth woke with a pain in her ribs and a chair beneath her. For one confused moment, she could not understand either circumstance. Ladies did not generally sleep sitting upright beside their husbands’ beds unless they suffered some great misfortune of sense, comfort, or marriage.
Then she remembered: the meadow, the arrow, Colin’s blood, his face, pale beneath all that dreadful command and his hand lying beside hers upon the bed as sleep dragged him under.
She sat up too quickly and hissed.
“Dae that again,” Skye said from across the chamber, “and I shall tie ye tae the chair.”
Elspeth pressed a hand to her bandaged side. “How tyrannical ye have become since entering MacKenzie territory.”
“I learned from the laird.”
At the word laird, Elspeth looked toward the bed. It was empty. The sheets were rumpled, the pillow indented, and the blanket pushed aside as if Colin had abandoned sleep with his usual contempt for sensible things. For one breath, she could only stare.
“Where is he?”
Skye’s mouth tightened.
“Skye.”
“He woke before ye. Breac and Murdoch were here.”
“And?”
“And he went tae the Council.”
Elspeth stood. Pain caught her, sharp and hot along her ribs, but she ignored it as one ignored an impolite guest at supper.
“He went tae the Council,” she repeated, because perhaps the words would become more reasonable if spoken twice. “With an arrow wound in his shoulder.”
“The arrow is out.”
“How reassuring. I shall remember that when next I am stabbed and then claim meself perfectly restored because the knife is nay longer there.”
Skye came forward at once. “Sit down.”
“I shallnae.”
“Elspeth—”
“If every person in this castle may wander about bleeding, drugged, and unreasonable, I refuse tae be the only creature asked tae behave.”
Skye folded her arms. “He ate. Fionn said the potion had worn off enough that he could speak, though nae enough that he should command half the Highlands.”
“That has never stopped him before.”
“Nay.”
“Did he look ill?”
Skye hesitated. Elspeth’s heart tightened.
“Skye.”
“He looked like Laird MacKenzie,” Skye said, which was both answer and accusation against all men. “Pale, stubborn, unpleasant, and very determined tae convince the room he hadnae nearly died yesterday.”
Elspeth swallowed. “He nearly died?”
“Nay,” Skye said quickly. “That isnae what I meant.”
But the words already entered Elspeth and took root.
She reached for her shawl. “Where is he now?”
“The Council has ended.”
“And?”
Skye looked toward the door as if it betrayed her by existing. “One of the lads said he was seen near the lower passage.”
Elspeth tied the shawl with fingers that did not feel entirely steady. “Which lower passage?”
“The one toward the dungeons.”
Skye still stood before her with anxious eyes and the expression of a woman preparing to be disobeyed. The word dungeons fell cold into the room.
Elspeth thought of the prisoner, Robert Munro’s man. He was the one who had come with others to turn a feast into slaughter, the one who had perhaps aimed at her, or at Colin, or at any innocent body that might cause enough grief to satisfy his master.
Elspeth felt fear rise. Colin wounded was alarming. Colin wounded and angry near a prisoner was something else entirely.
“I am going tae him,” she said.
Skye stepped in front of her. “Ye are going naewhere without shoes.”
It was so absurd, so practical, and so Skye that Elspeth sat long enough to let her maid thrust slippers onto her feet and tighten the wrap more securely around her shoulders.
“If Fionn asks,” Elspeth said, moving toward the door, “I am resting.”
Skye followed at once. “If Fionn asks, I am blaming ye.”
“Wise. It has served many people well.”
The corridors beyond the chamber were quieter than they should have been.
The castle had the hushed feeling of a body after fever: alive, but listening anxiously to itself.
Servants moved with lowered voices. Guards stood at turns where none had stood the day before.
Men bowed when they saw her, some with respect, some with curiosity, and some with a gentleness that made Elspeth’s throat ache.
She walked faster. Her ribs protested every step. She ignored them. The lower passage grew colder as she descended, the air losing hearth smoke and taking on damp stone, iron, and the faint sourness of enclosed places. Torches burned along the walls, their light shivering over old mortar.
A guard at the stair straightened when he saw her.
“Me lady—”
“Is the laird below?”
His hesitation answered before his mouth did.
Elspeth lifted her chin. “I asked a simple question.”
“Aye, me lady.”
“With the prisoner?”
Another hesitation. “Aye.”
Elspeth looked down the stairway where darkness waited below, carrying the low murmur of male voices and, beneath it, something colder than speech.
She thought of Colin’s face when he had seen the blood at her side.
She thought of the arrow in his shoulder.
She thought of the way guilt suited him too well, like armor he had worn so long he mistook it for skin.
Then she gathered her wrap, took one careful breath against the pain in her ribs, and went down toward the dungeons.
The prisoner had begun to smell of surrender.
It clung to the small chamber beneath the sharper odors of damp stone, unwashed flesh, old straw, and the thin broth which sat untouched near his feet.
Hunger hollowed his cheeks. Sleeplessness bruised the skin beneath his eyes, while the cold kept a faint tremor moving through his limbs.
Colin stood before him with one arm held carefully near his wounded side. His shoulder burned. Every beat of his heart drove fresh heat beneath the bandage, but pain was merely another voice demanding attention, and Colin had never possessed much patience for demands.
“Tell me what Munro intends.”
The man lifted his head. The movement appeared to cost him.
“I told ye. I dinnae ken.”
Colin looked at the untouched bowl. “Ye have maintained that lie with admirable devotion.”
“It isnae a lie.”
“Nay?” Colin stepped nearer. “Men attacked me people during a feast. Women bled. Children ran through smoke while arrows fell among them. Me wife was cut open before me eyes.”
The last words emerged differently. The prisoner noticed. Fear sharpened his exhausted face.
Colin bent until little space remained between them. “What daes Munro intend?”
The man swallowed. For several moments, the only sound was water dripping somewhere beyond the wall. Colin counted each fall.
One. Two. Three.
His patience ended at six. He seized the man by the front of his filthy tunic and dragged him upright. Pain tore through Colin’s shoulder, bright enough to whiten the edges of his sight, but he welcomed it. Pain was simple. Pain did not possess Elspeth’s face or her blood upon trembling fingers.
“Speak.”
“He wants the woman!” The prisoner cried out of fatigue and desperation.
The words struck the chamber and seemed to remain there. Colin’s grip tightened.
“What woman?” He needed to be sure.
The man gave a weak, frightened laugh. “Y-yer wife… Lady Elspeth.”
Every part of Colin went still. He saw it and understood too late that silence might have served him better.
“He means tae kill her first,” he hurried on. “That is what he said. Her first, then the others. One man here. A family there. Guards, servants, tenants… anyone who belongs tae ye.”
The torch beside the door hissed. Colin heard it with unnatural clarity.
“Why?”
“So ye suffer.”
The answer was almost a whisper. The prisoner sagged within Colin’s fist, too weak to resist and too frightened to conceal what remained.
“He daesnae want ye dead quickly. He wants tae take them one after another. He wants ye watching yer clan disappear, kenning ye couldnae save them. Then, when there is nay one left tae mourn ye, he will kill ye, too.”
Colin saw the meadow again. Elspeth stood amid trampled fruit and overturned tables, with one hand red at her side.
He heard her voice calling his name. He felt the terrible instant in which he believed the blood might be enough to take her from him.
Something dark and ancient opened beneath his ribs.
“All because of what?”
The man shook his head.
Colin pulled him closer. “Because of what?”
“Yer… faither.”
The word entered him like a blade finding an old wound. “What did he dae?”
“I dinnae ken.”
“Ye expect me tae believe Munro would slaughter women and children over a grievance ye cannae name?”
“I swear it!” The prisoner’s voice cracked. “He never told us. Only that yer faither took something from him. That the MacKenzies owed him blood. That ye would pay what yer faither escaped paying.”
Colin stared at him.
His father… always his father.
The dead man had left cruelty behind as other men left land, silver, or respectable family names. Colin had spent his life governing what that man ruined, burying what he had killed, and proving by every measured decision that blood did not command character.
Yet Elspeth’s life now stood in the shadow of sins Colin could not even name.
The man’s mouth moved again. “Munro said she would beg before—”
Colin struck him. His fist met bone with a sickening crack. The prisoner’s head snapped sideways, with blood springing bright from his mouth.
Colin struck him again. He prisoner collapsed against the wall, but Colin caught his tunic and hauled him forward. Rage moved through him without reason or boundary.
It demanded pain. It demanded payment. It demanded that someone feel the terror that had seized him when he saw Elspeth bleeding.
He drew back his fist, but then, a gasp came from the doorway. It was small and shocked… it was familiar.
Colin froze. Elspeth was standing beyond the iron threshold in her loose wrap and slippers, with one hand pressed protectively against her injured ribs. Torchlight caught the loosened fall of her hair and the pallor of her face.
Her gaze moved from the prisoner’s blood to Colin’s raised fist. The rage abandoned him so swiftly it left sickness behind.
He released the prisoner. The man fell heavily into the straw.
Colin looked down at his own hand. Blood darkened the knuckles. For one dreadful instant, it was not his hand at all. It was his father’s.
“Elspeth…”
He could not endure the expression in her eyes long enough to discover whether it was fear.
Colin crossed the chamber at once. He did not touch her. He did not trust the blood upon his hands, nor the violence still beating beneath his skin.
He passed her without another word and left the prisoner behind.