Chapter Thirty-Nine
A certain mood overshadowed the manor that night, which Alan suspected no one could deny. As soon as the dark settled down, a wind sprang up, one that made it difficult to trust one’s ears against a step that might herald danger. And tensions spiked.
He could feel that in the men around him, those who guarded the house and buildings and those who accompanied him on his rounds. So jittery were they, the merest suggestion of a movement had them jumping.
“Easy, Tommy,” Alan said at one point to the young stable hand who paced with him through the dark.
“By God, Master Alan—I thought ’twere somewhat there.”
“Just shadows thrown by the trees, I think.” A fitful moon came and went through clouds driven by the wind, lighting the firs that bowed their limbs before slipping away again.
They were both armed, Tommy with a hoe and Alan a sword. Of the two, Alan believed the hoe more deadly in the hands of a lad who’d spent his days mucking out stalls.
Their route circled the house, and Alan glanced up at it time after time.
A light burned steadily in his father’s chamber and one in the hall where the men who were not on watch gathered.
Annista’s chamber—like his own—was dark.
Did she rest comfortably there with Bonnie?
Or at least safely. He expected comfort was too much to hope for on such a night.
And, where might Evan be?
Anywhere. That was the terrifying thing.
Alan found himself praying that morning would come.
With every turn in his route, he looked for a glow of light to the east, one he did not see.
He convinced himself all would be better when morning came again.
Evan would be found—elsewhere. Father would pass the physician’s milestone, awaken and despite the man’s dire predictions grow well.
The thing was—Evan would not be found elsewhere. He was returning to Kallan. Alan could still feel it right down in his bones.
He stopped walking and poor Tommy half stumbled beside him. “Master? What—”
The scream came from inside the house and split the night. It rose above the wind, wild and raw. Alan’s first thought was for his wife.
Yet—it did not sound like Annista.
Mother?
“He’s here,” he told Tommy and the night.
****
Annista had disobeyed her husband’s dictates and, having accompanied Bonnie back to their chamber once Cook and the maids went to bed, decided to go out again.
Bonnie had at last fallen asleep, and Annista did not want to disturb her.
So restless was she, unable to keep still, she had no choice but to rise and tiptoe out.
She hadn’t changed to her nightclothes—neither of them had—so was fully clad save for her shoes.
A dark form leaned against the wall outside Master MacKallan’s room—Seumas. Did he doze? Mayhap, for he did not stir when Annista tiptoed toward him.
A faint rime of light showed under the earl’s door. Quiet reigned.
Light also shone from the solar where the physician waited out the night. Annista did not desire company but wanted a breath of air. She went down the stairs, and Seumas did not stir. Should she go back and wake him? If she did, he might try to send her back to her chamber.
Careful to be silent, she skirted the kitchen, wondering at the shadows there, and exited by the rear door.
A feeling of wrongness hit her as soon as she met the night, which had gone muddy and fretful. Shouldn’t one of the men be on guard here? She’d expected a polite directive to go back inside.
But—she saw no one. The yard lay empty all the way to the stables. No lights there.
Did her eye catch movement at the entrance to the yard? Was it Alan, out on watch? Had he told the other men to take a rest?
Nay, surely just a shadow.
Well, if the men were not on watch here, she could take a turn. She was more than wide awake and had her knife in her pocket.
She started off across the open space, determined to at least peek into the stable, and was halfway across when she heard it. A sound not above but beneath the sough of the wind.
What was that? And from whence did it come?
Following instinct rather than the sound itself, she skirted the stable block, trailing her fingers over the rough exterior wall, and around the corner, knowing even as she went it was madness. She had promised—or had she?
Deeper darkness lurked around the side of the building, and she very nearly withdrew. But then—the shift of a very large shadow indeed. And the sound repeated.
A horse. Blowing out air.
By heaven!
She groped her way forward. Even before she reached the beast she knew him, though he looked no more than a dark blur. She could hear rather than see his distress.
“Tempest.” She barely breathed his name. Raising her hands, she encountered his nose, his shoulder. He trembled beneath her touch.
“Och, poor lad, poor lad!”
He pressed his great head to her shoulder—this stallion purported to be a killer—and she embraced him. Only then did the truth hit her.
If Tempest was here, so must Evan be also.
But where, exactly?
“Poor lad,” she crooned again into the horse’s neck. “Where is yon beast? Did he leave ye here in the dark?”
He had, perhaps because there was grass here and Evan knew the horse’s hooves would sound loud on the cobbled yard. Evan did not want anyone to know he was returned.
Oh, God, she had to warn Alan. The rest of the men. But—
Evan could be anywhere, up to anything. In the stable, about to set it alight. In the trees that surrounded the manor. In the house itself.
Suddenly the absence of the guard outside the back door felt far more sinister.
If he got into the house…
A sudden scream split the night. It rose like the wail of a ghost from a graveyard, and Annista’s first thought was for Bonnie.
Whom she’d foolishly left alone.
Leaving the stricken horse where he stood, she ran. Others came behind her—she heard someone emerge from the stable. A man called out from the direction of the road. Footsteps clattered.
Annista reached the kitchen door first. Clawed it open and went inside.
Someone was in the kitchen. A light flared and Cook’s round face came in sight.
“Wha’ was that?”
“A scream. From where?”
“I think it came fro’ upstairs,” Cook replied. “I heard—” Two of the kitchen maids appeared from behind her. She put her arms around them.
A commotion sounded. Yelling, the pound of footsteps. A challenge. Struggle? Was that Seumas?
“Stay here,” she told the women and ran.
The stable hands had come in behind her. One or more of them would stay to guard Cook and her maids.
Someone followed her. Glancing back she could see it was old Billy.
A river of light spilled down the stairs from the door of Master MacKallan’s room, which stood open. Two men struggled there, one with hair of flaming red.
Annista did not hesitate. With her fingers wrapped around the handle of her knife, she pounded across the hall, traversed the place where Robena had died, and flew up the stairs.
One part of her mind registered that the physician had come out of the solar and stood pressed against the wall, staring. Another part noted someone came in the front door, downstairs.
He called to her. “Annista!”
Very nearly did that make her pause. But she tripped on, her one true focus—
Seumas and Evan struggled together like two bears wrestling for supremacy.
Locked in one another’s grip, they grunted and strained and swore, each trying to take the other over.
Evenly matched they were, had it not been for Evan’s madness, which Annista could see had his features strained into a rictus.
Seumas was a big lad. The trouble was, he played fair.
Evan never had.
Annista tried to cry out when she saw the knife in Evan’s hand, but the sound caught in her throat. Seumas fell back suddenly with a yell. Evan dashed into his father’s room.
Annista followed.
The scene within the chamber impressed itself immediately on her mind. The bed directly across from the door with Earl MacKallan—still seemingly insensible—lying there. The light burning and Mistress MacKallan standing before her husband, her arms spread as if she would protect him with her life.
From her own son.
“Evan,” Mistress MacKallan sobbed, and Annista knew it had been she who’d screamed, alerting them all. Somehow unseen, Evan had made his way into the house, and at her first glimpse of him—
“Get out o’ the way, Mother.”
“Nay, Evan. Please!”
“I will hurt ye if I must.”
“Wha’ d’ye want wi’ your father? What—ha’ ye no’ done him harm enough?”
“He was never fair to me.” Evan’s broad back was directly in front of Annista and for an instant she thought his mother might talk him round. That the men might arrive in time.
She could hear them pounding up the stairs and glanced toward the door. Seumas lay collapsed in the hallway—dead? The physician knelt beside him. And there—
Alan. Chest heaving, face stark and white, his eyes reaching for her.
Come, she almost heard him say. Come away.
Then Evan bulled his way forward, and she lost track of everything behind her.
“Out o’ the way, Mother,” Evan said again.
“Nay!”
Evan reached out with filthy, bloodied hands, plucked his mother up, and more than half threw her aside. She gave a cry as she fell to the floor.
“Look at me, old man,” Evan thundered at his father. “Ye’ve blamed me for everything all my life long. A bane ye ha’ been to me. Now ye will look at me and see who I am.”
The earl did not stir or open his eyes. Incapable—in fact he appeared dead. Was he?
On the floor, Lady MacKallan sobbed.
From the doorway, low and steady, Alan said, “If ye’ve a quarrel here, brother, ye will tak’ it up wi’ me.”
Evan spun—he did it clumsily, and Annista sensed all was not well with him. A sickness of the body? Or of the mind?
He eyed his brother, who stood in the doorway with a sword in one hand, bright red blood showing above the bandages on his chest.
Evan sneered. “I do no’ think so.”
Almost casually, he raised his knife. Against a sword, it did not make so formidable a weapon. Save in the hands of a madman.
“Put down the knife,” Alan told him, “and come awa’ out o’ there.”
“To wha’ purpose?”
“We will talk.”
“I do no’ want to talk to ye. I want to talk to him.” Even waved the knife at the bed, and Annista flinched, which drew Evan’s attention to her. He looked at her with reddened, maddened eyes.
Alan said, “Brother—I canna let ye do any more harm. Come awa’ now.”
“I do no’ think so,” Evan said again and, reaching out almost casually, took Annista into his grasp.