Chapter 27
Duncan came through the gate at a dead gallop, and Edward was already moving before the horse had fully stopped.
“Ambush!” Duncan swung down without waiting for the animal to settle, chest heaving, one hand gripping Edward’s arm. “The clearin’ past the second ford. Men out of the trees, a dozen at least. Moved like they’d been standin’ there since dawn, waitin’ on the exact moment the carriage passed.”
“What of Chloe?”
“Alive when I turned for ye. I didnae stay to watch more than that.” Duncan was already reaching for a fresh horse, waving off the stable boy who tried to check the girth for him. “Thought ye’d want me back here faster than ye’d want another pair of eyes there doin’ naught but countin’ bodies.”
“Ye did right.” Edward was shouting for Beira, for Tyler, for every man within earshot who could hold a blade and sit a saddle. “How many of ours did ye see standin’?”
“Two, maybe three. It happened fast, me Laird. Fast and quiet. Nae shoutin’ beforehand, nae warnin’ at all. One moment the road was clear, and the next it wasnae.”
“Quiet.” Edward swung up onto Beira before the saddle was fully cinched, and the stable boy holding the girth had to jerk his hands back or lose his fingers to it. “Men daenae go quiet like that unless they’ve done it before, on ground they chose themselves.”
“Aye.” Duncan was already remounting, his own horse lathered and blowing hard but willing enough. “That’s what I thought.”
Tyler came out of the barracks at a run, sword already belted, and did not waste breath on a single question. He mounted and fell in, and the three of them were through the gate and onto the north road within a few breaths, riding harder than Edward had ridden anything in thirteen years.
“How far?” Edward said, eyes fixed on the road.
“Second ford. Nae more than four miles.”
“Four miles.” Edward’s hands had gone white on the reins. “Ye left them alone in a clearin’ with a dozen armed men and rode four miles to fetch me?”
“I left them with four guards still standin’ and rode four miles because I couldnae fight a dozen men alone, and I couldnae carry ye there any faster than me own two legs, and this horse would allow.
If I’d stayed, I’d have been one more sword against odds already wrong, and dead besides, which helps nay one.
” Duncan did not slow the horse to say any of it.
“Ye ken all that already, me Laird. Ye’re only sayin’ it because ye want someone to shout at, and I am the one here. ”
Edward said nothing to that, because it was true, and because there was nothing left in him at that moment that was not already given over to the four miles of road still between himself and the clearing.
“Whoever it was,” Tyler called across, “kent the route. Kent the timin’. That’s nae raiders workin’ a pass on chance.”
“Nay.” Edward’s jaw had locked itself somewhere around the second mile and had not unlocked since. “It isnae.”
“Which means someone inside our own walls talked,” Duncan said.
“We’ll settle who, after.” Edward did not look at him. “Ride.”
They came on the clearing at a full gallop, and Edward was down off Beira before she’d fully stopped, sword already drawn, the whole scene arranging itself in front of him in the space of one indrawn breath.
The carriage sat askew where it had been forced off the track, one wheel tilted into the ditch.
Three of his guards lay in the grass nearby.
Edward’s eyes moved from one to the next, checking for breath, blood, and the rise and fall of a chest, and he found two of them still alive, which was more mercy than the scene had any right to offer.
Melodie sat pressed against the carriage wheel with her arms wrapped around her knees, unhurt but stiff, staring at something across the clearing she could not look away from.
Chloe stood at the center of it, her wrists bound in front of her, held tightly at the shoulder by a man still wearing MacLaud colors, the false messenger, Edward understood at once, Fergus Boyd if that had ever truly been his name — and a second guard Edward did not know, both armed, neither in a hurry.
And across from her, close enough that the blade in his hand caught the light every time his wrist so much as twitched, stood the man who had put Chloe's hand in his at the altar and called it a settled debt.
"Laird O'Brien." The man's voice carried easily across the clearing, unhurried, almost pleasant. "Ye'll remember me, I expect. Alistair O'Donell. Chloe's father."
The knife rested against William’s throat, close enough that the boy had gone rigid and silent, as if he knew something was wrong. Some animal instinct in him, reading stillness as the only safe thing left to offer.
“Let the boy go.” Edward’s voice came out level, flat, hiding how much anger he felt with Williams in that position. “He’s naught to do with whatever quarrel ye’ve got.”
“He’s yer heir’s shadow, near enough, and ye’d bleed the whole clan dry to see him safe.
That’s quarrel enough for me purposes.” Alistair’s eyes moved to Chloe, something in his face shifting, not softening, closer to appraisal.
“Ye look well, daughter. Marriage suits ye. Pity it wasnae the marriage I arranged.”
“Ye arranged nothin’.” Chloe’s voice held steadier than Edward would have managed in her place. “Ye sold me. There’s a difference.”
“Semantics.” Alistair did not look away from Edward. “I’ve come for what’s owed me, Laird O’Brien.”
“Ye’ve been paid. In full.”
“Coin was never the whole of what was owed.” Alistair began to circle, slow, the knife loose but never lowered.
“I want somethin’ returned to me that me daughter’s been keepin’.
And I find men listen a great deal better when they’ve somethin’ to lose standin’ right in front of them the whole while I am askin’. ”
William made a thin sound against the silence, working toward a proper cry, and every person in the clearing tensed at once. Alistair’s hand tightened on the blade.
“Give him to her,” Edward said, before he’d decided to speak at all. “A bairn cryin’ willnae strengthen yer position, O’Donell. It’ll only make yer own hand less steady, and I’d nae wager much on how steady it already is.”
Something flickered across Alistair’s face, the beginning of a calculation he had not made before. He looked at William, red-faced and building toward a wail, then at Chloe, whose whole body had drawn tight as a bowstring.
“Boyd. Give the boy to his aunt. He’s no use to me screamin’.”
Boyd crossed and lifted William, setting him into Chloe’s bound arms. She could not hold him properly with her wrists tied, so she bent instead and pressed him to her chest, and William quieted almost at once against the sound of her heart.
“There.” Alistair straightened, the knife lowering though not sheathing. “A show of good faith, Laird O’Brien.”
“Ye held a blade to an infant’s throat nae a minute past.”
“To be certain ye’d listen, which ye are.” His tone had not shifted at all, still easy, still pleasant. “Now. Terms, before this goes any further.”
Edward’s grip on his sword had gone white-knuckled. Behind him, he heard Duncan and Tyler draw level, neither lowering a blade, both waiting on a word from him that had not come yet. Across the clearing, Alistair waited too, unhurried and completely at ease.
Alistair let the silence stretch a moment longer, plainly enjoying the shape of it, before he spoke again.
“Ye’ll be wonderin’ why now. Why nae in the first month of yer marriage, when the takin’ would’ve been easier.
” He resumed his slow circle, the knife still in his hand.
“I’ve had men watchin’ yer castle since the weddin’, Laird O’Brien.
Watchin’ the bairn most of all, once word reached me a child had turned up on yer steps within weeks of the vows bein’ said. ”
“He’s me brother’s son. Naught to do with ye.”
“So I learned. Took some doin’, but I learned it proper. Legitimate, born in wedlock, the true blood of the O’Brien line, nay bastard shame on him at all.”
Alistair’s mouth curved, not quite a smile.
“And once I kent that, I understood what it meant better than ye seem to, yerself. A livin’ heir already secures yer bloodline, Laird O’Brien.
Ye’ve nay true need of a son from me daughter at all, now, have ye.
Which means me daughter’s worth to ye, as a political matter, has gone considerably thin. ”
“She’s me wife. Nae a ledger entry.”
“Everyone’s a ledger entry, to the right eye.
” Alistair’s gaze slid past Edward to William, still pressed to Chloe’s chest. “Remove the boy, and the balance shifts back. Ye’d need an heir from her again, wouldnae ye, and any child she gave ye would carry me blood as much as yers.
Me grandchild, Laird O’Brien. A far more useful thing to me than a daughter I’ve already spent. ”
Chloe went rigid where she knelt. “Ye’d kill a bairn to make yer own blood matter more.”
“I’d remove an obstacle. There’s a difference, same as there was a difference between sellin’ ye and arrangin’ ye, as ye were so quick to point out earlier.”
“Ye’re mad.” Chloe struggled against the rope at her wrists, twisting hard enough to draw a thin line of blood at one wrist where the binding cut in. “Edward, daenae, daenae come closer, he’s nae bluffing, he’ll—”
Alistair’s hand moved before she’d finished the sentence, an open-palmed strike across her face that cracked loud enough to still every other sound in the clearing.
Chloe’s head snapped sideways, and she went down onto one knee in the grass, a thin line of blood already welling at the corner of her mouth.
Something in Edward’s chest came loose entirely.
He did not remember closing the distance. There was the strike, and then there was his sword already swinging, and Boyd was between him and Alistair with a blade half-raised.
Edward went through the parry as if the man weighed nothing at all, opening his forearm and forcing him back into the second guard so hard that they both fell into the grass together.
Behind him, he heard Tyler’s voice, sharp and clear, along with the clang of Duncan’s blade striking something to his left; suddenly, the entire clearing erupted into chaos.
None of it mattered to Edward beyond the single fact of Alistair O’Donell standing in front of him with a knife still in his hand and Chloe on her knees in the grass with blood on her mouth.
“Ye shouldnae have done that,” Edward said, and his voice had gone somewhere he did not recognize, low and even and entirely without mercy.
“Struck me own daughter?” Alistair’s blade came up, unhurried even now, a man who’d survived on confidence for so long he’d forgotten it could run out. "She's mine to correct as I see fit. Always has been, whether either of ye care for the sound of it."
“Ye’ll nae survive doin’ it again.”
Alistair came at him first, which was his mistake. A man who talked as much as Alistair did had rarely needed to fight for anything, and it showed in the shape of his first strike, wide and telegraphed, easy enough to read that Edward had already turned it aside before it had finished forming.
Edward answered with three strikes of his own, fast, controlled, driving Alistair back a full stride with each one, and watched something like real fear enter the older man’s eyes for the first time since he’d stepped into this clearing.
“Ye think killin’ me solves anythin’?” Alistair said, breathing hard now, circling. “There are more men behind me than the ones dyin’ here today. More debts than the one ye think ye’ve settled.”
“Then I will deal with those after.” Edward’s blade caught Alistair’s next strike and turned it wide, and this time he did not step back to reset the distance.
He stepped in, inside the reach of the knife entirely, close enough to feel the older man’s breath.
“This one’s for what ye did the moment yer hand touched her face. ”
Alistair tried to bring the knife up between them. Edward caught his wrist with his free hand. He held it there, the blade shaking between their two grips, close enough now that he could see every line the years and the greed had put into Alistair’s face.
He drove his sword home, and Alistair O’Donell went still against him, and Edward held him upright a moment longer than he needed to before letting the body fall into the trampled grass at his feet.
The clearing went quiet almost at once. Boyd was already down and bleeding out from the arm Edward had opened earlier, the second guard disarmed and pinned under Duncan’s knee, Tyler standing over the last of them with his sword still drawn, and no one left willing to test it.
Edward stood over Alistair’s body and found he could not, for several long seconds, make himself move at all.
Then Chloe made a small sound behind him, not quite his name, more the shape of it caught somewhere in her throat, and it broke whatever had held him still.
He crossed to her, dropped to his knees in the grass in front of her, and reached for William first, gathering the boy out from where he’d been pressed against her bound arms and holding him against his own chest with both hands, checking without meaning to for the rise and fall of his breathing, for the warmth of him, as though the boy might stop existing if Edward did not confirm it with his own hands.
William, entirely unbothered by any of it now, worked a fist into the collar of Edward’s shirt and made a small, contented sound.
Only then did Edward turn to Chloe.
His hands were shaking when he reached for the rope at her wrists, properly shaking, badly enough that the first attempt at the knot failed.
He had to still them by main force before he could work it loose.
The blood at the corner of her mouth had already begun to dry.
He looked at it and felt something in his chest that had no name he was willing to give it.
“Chloe.”
“I am here.” Her voice came out rough, thick, but steady enough. “I am here, Edward.”
The rope broke. He caught both her freed wrists in his hands, being careful of the raw line where the binding had cut in, and for a long moment, neither of them said anything at all.
William’s small weight still pressed against Edward’s chest, and the clearing was completely silent around the three of them.