Chapter 27 #3
“Well?” he prodded when the old man remained silent. “Can you?”
Gerbert hesitated. “Aye, I ken the way. But I’d rather not go there, now we’re here.”
“Why not?” Iain hooked his thumbs in his sword belt. He heard a high-pitched ringing in his ears, his rapid pulse giving proof of his mounting anger.
His increasing dread.
For deep inside, he knew why Gerbert didn’t want to seek out the MacKinnons after they’d journeyed so far.
“Speak, man.” Iain leaned toward him. “I want your answer.”
“It would no’ be wise to disturb them, I’m thinking,” Gerbert said, his voice laden with compassion. “Now we’re here, ’tis clear we’ve accused them falsely.”
“Nae!” Iain lifted his hands before him as if doing so would ward off what he knew Gerbert was about to say.
What he didn’t want to be true.
“Nae,” he said again as the old man stooped to take a piece of sun-bleached ship’s planking off the sand. “It cannae be.”
“Aye, well.” Gerbert held out the wood for Iain’s inspection.
Iain looked away.
He’d seen enough. He didn’t need to hear Gerbert put the damning evidence to words to recognize the truth.
The storm that had damaged the MacLean galleys had not been the one that had smashed the MacKinnons’ entire fleet. The condition of the wreckage gave irrefutable proof that whatever storm gales had lashed at MacKinnons’ Isle with such fury had done so long ago.
Too long ago for them to have used one of the ships to sail to Doon to murder Lileas.
The MacKinnons had not killed his wife.
“This evening,” Isolde told Niels and Rory. She kept her chin raised, resisted the urge to rub her arms against the chill of Dunmuir’s vast undercroft. “If he is not there by the time the hall settles for the night, I shall fetch him myself.”
At her feet, Bodo stared up at the two guardsmen with an unblinking gaze as if warning them to heed her wishes. Rory glared at the dog, then jerked his head toward the iron-banded door behind them.
With its heavy drawbar in place, the door’s solid strength kept all those behind it where they belonged: locked away within whatever dark corner of Dunmuir’s dungeons they’d been cast.
“We told you,” Rory began, “Lorne has joined us during the late watches. He’s done so every night since he had the bastard pulled from the sea dungeon.”
He flicked a wary glance at Bodo. “How are we supposed to haul the churl out of the MacFie’s cell, past Lorne, and up to your bedchamber, without alerting everyone to your wicked doings?”
“Wicked?” Isolde folded her arms. “Some would say my goals are bold and daring, their execution costly to none but me.”
She didn’t add that she no longer viewed gaining the MacLean’s favor as an unpleasant task.
“Have you nothing else to say?” She waited.
Rory pressed his lips together.
Niels scratched the side of his neck. “I don’t know how we’ll get him past Lorne.”
“Try.”
“A mite eager, aren’t you?” Niels frowned at her.
“The devil’s done cast a dark spell over her.” Rory made the sign against evil. “Over Lorne, too.”
“Aye.” Niels nodded. “The whole of Dunmuir’s gone mad of late.”
Isolde glanced over her shoulder at the stairs up to the great hall. Rustling noises, the clatter of cutlery, and the low hum of voices drifted down the curving stair tower, an indication that preparations for the evening meal were underway.
Bodo also glanced at the stairs, surely looking forward to whatever tidbits could soon be had.
Isolde turned back to the guardsmen. “Can you not suggest Lorne guard the dungeon entrance in the hall? The one that opens into the broch’s wall passage?”
Niels and Rory exchanged uncomfortable glances.
“What is it?” Isolde looked from one to the other.
Rory glanced aside and began mumbling under his breath.
Niels pulled on his bushy red beard. “’Tis no’ guarding the MacLean and his friend, Lorne is doing. He’s watching us,” he said, a pink stain tingeing his face.
Isolde blinked. “Watching you?”
“We told you the world’s gone addled,” Rory said. “Lorne is worried Struan and the others will have us move the MacLean back to the sea dungeon when he isn’t looking.”
“And would you?” Isolde pushed a braid over her shoulder.
“Sakes, but we’d like to,” Niels admitted.
Isolde assumed her late father’s laird’s look. “But you won’t, will you?”
“Nae,” Niels allowed.
Rory spat on the floor, blessedly not anywhere near Bodo. “Dinnae worry, we will not. Much as the bastard needs the arrogance washed out of him.”
“We answer only to you, lady.” That from Niels.
Satisfied, Isolde relaxed. “There is not much time. Not this night, not at all. I can waste no more. You have not brought him to my chamber in a full week.
“I want him there this e’en.” She drew herself up to her full height. “Do not fail.”
Before they could argue, she hitched up her skirts and strode toward the stair tower, Bodo bounding ahead of her. She hadn’t taken three of the winding stone steps before Rory hurried after her.
“We cannae promise, lady. Lorne-”
Halting her upward climb, she glanced over her shoulder. “Find a way. I must see him.”
I want to be kissed like a knight kisses.