Sir Geoffrey’s eyes widened with greed. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Come to my room in an hour,” Colban told him.
He spent the first part of the hour packing, the second pacing like a caged wolf, imagining the worst. What secret perversions did Hallie’s bridegroom enjoy? Was he rough? Cruel? Did he engage more than one lover at a time? Did he fornicate with animals?
He wished now he’d remained at Creagor. Perhaps then he’d be close enough to protect Hallie. Close enough to defend her against her villainous bridegroom.
At last, a knock came on the door.
Colban cracked it open a slit.
“Let me in,” Geoffrey said. “We need to be discreet.”
Though Colban had mostly recovered from his overindulgence in ale, his stomach turned when he ushered Sir Geoffrey in with his guest.
The lad could not have been five years old. He was dressed in rags, pale and shivering, as filthy as a rat.
“This was the best I could do on such short notice,” Sir Geoffrey explained. “But he’ll clean up nicely. I’ve ordered a bath brought to your room, and his mother won’t expect him home until morn.”
Colban could barely suppress his increasing horror and rage.
“In the meantime,” Sir Geoffrey continued, “why not get undressed, let the lad get familiar with ye?” He turned to the lad, who was biting his bottom lip. “Robbie, remember what I told ye,” he sternly warned. “Ye must do as I say, or I’ll have to hurt your ma.”
The lad’s lip quivered.
“That’s a good lad.” Sir Geoffrey smiled. “Do ye like toys, Robbie?”
The lad nodded.
“Why don’t ye go on and see what the nice man has for ye to play with?”
Colban thought he would be sick, listening to this fiend speaking in such dulcet tones about such sickening perversions.
Just then, a soft scratching at the door announced two maids, arriving with a small tub filled with steaming water.
But Colban had heard enough. When he glanced at wee, frightened Robbie, the sort of “special entertainment” Archibald Scott preferred, he made up his mind. He’d not let Geoffrey touch or threaten the lad again.
“Wait!” he shouted to the maids before they could leave. “Give the lad the bath he deserves. He’s cold and miserable.” He dug in his pouch of silver and pressed a coin into each of their hands. “Buy him a new set of clothes and send him home to his ma. Tell her she’s never to speak to Sir Geoffrey again.”
Geoffrey was gaping at him like a landed trout.
Colban should have left him like that. But his outrage, combined with the ale he’d consumed, compelled him to pay back the torment Sir Geoffrey had visited upon God knew how many innocent victims.
While the maids pulled Robbie to safety, one of them covering his eyes, Colban fought back for all the lads who couldn’t fight for themselves.
Drawing back his fist, he plowed it into Geoffrey’s aristocratic nose, which bloomed instantly with blood. He followed up with a punch to the man’s scrawny belly, folding him in half. What he did after that, he only saw through a miasma of fury. But soon the fretful sobs of the maids shook Colban from his rage, and he realized the man wheezing on the floor with the ruined face and the battered body was no longer capable of fighting back.
“If ye e’er traffic in innocents again,” Colban bit out, “I’ll finish what I started.”
He dragged the useless coward out of the room and left him gasping in the corridor.
“Take care o’ the lad,” he reminded the maids, taking one last pitying glance at Robbie, who reminded him far too much of Ian.
Then he swept up his satchel of belongings and his claymore, hurried down the stairs, and left the inn by the southbound road.
He wasn’t worried about Hallie. She could handle herself.
What made his stomach knot with fear was the thought of her little brother in the company of such a monster. Sweet, naïve Ian could be so easily tricked. So easily misled. So easily persuaded.
He had to get to Rivenloch. He only hoped he wasn’t too late.
Chapter 36
“I’m going to show Archie the old crannog,” Ian announced as he leaned over the wattle fence enclosing the practice field.
Hallie was currently indisposed, straddling an upstart knight who was flat on his back, a cocky youth who had thought he could best her with a blade. Her palm was on his chest. His blade and shield were halfway across the field. And her dagger was at his throat.
She glanced up through the morning mist. Archie stood beside Ian, staring at her, aghast.
She sighed and let the knight up. Perhaps one day her husband would recognize that she was a real warrior maid with real warrior skills. It was her duty to keep those skills honed. She would have hoped, after three months of marriage, he would be accustomed to seeing her engaging in swordplay.
“The crannog?” she asked. “Why?”
A remnant from ancient times, the crannog had once been a home for her ancestors. A round wooden cottage on stilts, perched over the loch, it was half rotted away now and made a good place for fishing. Trout liked to shelter in the shadowy depths, among the sodden timbers.
“Archie said he wants to do an experiment,” Ian said, an admission that made her husband blush.
“Aye,” Archie rushed to explain, hefting up a fishing pole. “We’re going to find out what kind of bait works best.”
Hallie arched a brow. In winter? It wasn’t the best time of year for fishing. Few trout would rise from the icy depths of the loch to snap at bait.
But she didn’t want to discourage the only friendship Archie had forged within the clan. And Ian was enthused about showing Archie the crannog.
“Be wary in the mist,” she warned, speaking mostly for Archie’s benefit. “You don’t want to fall in. The loch is nigh frozen. And those timbers aren’t going to last forever.” On the other hand, the crannog had been there for hundreds of years. It might well last for hundreds more.
“Don’t worry about us,” Archie said. “We’ll be back by supper.”
As she watched them disappear into the thick fog, hand in hand, she wished she could so easily cultivate the warmth Ian had for Archie. But then Ian was still a child. His affections were easily won by the slightest bit of attention.
The last man who’d given Ian such attention had disappeared without so much as a farewell. At least this one would stay.
Colban, driven by fear, fury, and the need to champion the helpless, traveled for two days without sleep to reach Rivenloch. The weather seemed determined to thwart him. Last night, heavy rains had drenched his wool cloak and caked his boots with mud. Today the world was robed in layers of fog as thick as a burial shroud, with branches of ashes and elms emerging from the mist like charred bones.
His feet were blistered. His shoulders were weary. His lungs ached. But his sore and gritty eyes burned with the fire of valor and vengeance.
His arrival at Rivenloch castle naturally caused a stir. Isabel was the first to see him.
“I knew it!” she cried, tearing across the courtyard, while Gellir and Brand followed at more dignified pace. “I knew you’d come back!”
Overjoyed to see The One, despite his haggard appearance, she wanted to order him a hot bath and a soft bed at once.
“I’m not here to stay,” he said gruffly. He had only one purpose in mind. Protecting them. And for that, there was only one solution.
He turned to the lads. “Where is Hallie’s husband? Where is Archibald Scott?”
Gellir and Brand exchanged a silent, significant look of solidarity. It appeared there was no love lost between the brothers and their sister’s new husband. And whatever grudge they might have held about Colban leaving them without a proper goodbye was gone now.
They detected the underlying threat in Colban’s words. They knew his capacity for violence. And they wanted to be a part of it.
“He’s gone to the crannog,
” Isabel volunteered. “The ruin on the loch.”
“Alone?” he hoped.
“Nay, with Ian.”
Colban’s gut churned. He ground his teeth.
“I’ll go with you,” Brand said.
Colban glanced over at the lad. For an instant, his heart wrenched. How he’d missed the Rivenloch siblings. Only three months had passed, but it looked like Brand had grown another inch.
“I’m going as well,” Gellir chimed in.
“Neither o’ ye are comin’,” Colban told them in no uncertain terms. “’Tis somethin’ I need to do on my own.” He couldn’t let these honorable young lads to see was the dishonorable death he intended to deliver to their sister’s husband.
“I’ll fetch Hallie,” Isabel offered.
“Nay!” he roared, making the lass gasp and recoil in fright.
But that was good. She should be frightened. Hallie was the last person he wanted to see. The last person he wanted interfering in his plans for justice.
Colban might do unsavory things to the villain before he killed him. And he didn’t want her witnessing that or, even worse, defending the monster.
Frustration made the siblings curse him as he took off alone.
Honor made them do his bidding.
He took his claymore and left his satchel behind in the courtyard. Inside it was the notebook he’d stolen from Ian. It seemed trivial now. For what he intended, he wanted no burdens, and he needed his arms free.
But he knew in his heart, if he achieved what he set out to do, he wouldn’t be returning for his things. They’d belong to a different man. A man who would never slay a person in cold blood. A man worth of the title an Curaidh.
Nay, he wouldn’t come back for his belongings. Not for a long while. Perhaps never.
He’d been to the crannog before. Isabel’s friends had taken him there to catch trout on a clear fall afternoon. Today, with its broken timbers swathed in white fog, the ruin appeared to hover above the still water like a gray storm cloud. It seemed less like a congenial fishing spot and more like an ominous hiding place for dark and secret sins.
Mist blanketed the grassy slope and concealed the uneven ground, but it also softened the sound of Colban’s progress as he stole toward the walkway of the crannog.
From the verge of the mossy bank, he crept carefully across the bridge of cracked planks, dodging the places where the wood had rotted through.
The door of the crannog was missing. He was able to peer into the entrance, through the mottled shadows where gaps in the walls occurred. At the far end, beneath part of the roof that was open to the sky, he could see the dark figure of a man close to Ian, set in sharp relief against the silvery loch beyond.
Stealing into the crannog, he heard the soft murmur of their voices bouncing off the misty water. Ian’s young, inquisitive tones. The man’s slick and patronizing responses.
The lad stood at the edge of the platform with a fishing pole, pointing down at something in the loch.
The man hadn’t spotted Colban yet. But as he drew closer, from the dim interior of the crannog, Colban could see Archie clearly in the eerie overcast. His worst fears were realized.
The man stood behind Ian, to one side. His trews were unlaced. With one hand, he fondly rubbed the back of Ian’s neck. With the other, he fondled his own lavishly greased prick.
Too sickened and enraged for words, Colban let out a snarl that startled both of them.
Archie jerked back, knocking over a clay vessel that splattered his boots and trews with the same kind of shiny yellow grease that coated his cods.
Ian dropped the fishing pole and spun around. He furrowed his brows, confused by both Colban’s sudden appearance and Archie’s curious condition.
Colban hesitated. Perhaps nothing had happened yet. Perhaps Ian didn’t understand Archie’s intentions. If so, he didn’t want to destroy the lad’s innocence. He didn’t want to be the one to explain Archie’s villainy to him.
In the next instant, he regretted that moment of hesitation.
Archie panicked.
He’d been caught with his trews down. Something that had never happened before. Not in Sir Geoffrey’s sheltered world.
And this stranger clearly didn’t approve. He was vexed. Worse, he looked as powerful and threatening as an angry ox.
Archie racked his alarmed brain to think of a reasonable excuse for his situation. A plausible reason for him to have exposed himself.
There was none. Words failed him. So in the end, he had to rely on the only leverage he had.
Ian.
Sweeping the lad up into his arms, he backed away toward the loch.
“I’ll keep you safe,” he murmured to the lad. “Don’t worry.”
But the visual message he sent to the intruder was altogether different. Narrowing his eyes, he skewered the man with a glare that reflected his dire warning.
If the stranger didn’t back away and forget what he’d seen here, Archie would toss Ian in the loch. Considering the ice crusted along the edge of the shore, the lad wouldn’t last long in the cold depths.
“Get back!” Archie screamed at him, eyeing the surface of the black water.
The man clearly got his message. He froze, lifting his palms in surrender.
“But Archie…” Ian protested, wriggling in his arms.
“Be still!” he hissed. “He’s got a sword.”
“But that’s Colban. He’s my friend. He wouldn’t—”
“Hush!” he ordered.
So the little whelp knew his savior. That was unfortunate.
“Let the lad go,” Colban said.
Archie wasn’t about to yield his hostage. Especially now. He retreated with Ian another step, inches from the splintered edge of the wood planking, and bit out, “Back away.”
His threat had some effect. The Colban fellow took a judicious step backward. But the man still had a claymore slung across his back. A huge blade that could cleave Archie in half from his shoulder to his ballocks, which were beginning to pucker in the chill air, despite a thick layer of wool grease.
“Take off your sword,” Archie said.
The impatient lad began to struggle in his grip. Archie almost lost his balance on the wet wood.
“Nay, Ian!” Colban barked. “Don’t fight him. Ye could slip and fall.”
The lad went still, all but his incessant mouth.
“’Tisn’t true, is it, Colban?” Ian said. “You don’t mean to hurt anyone.”
“Nay,” Colban lied. “Not unless they deserve it.”
But the silent rage burning in Colban’s smoldering eyes told a different tale. The man knew exactly what Archie was up to, and he’d kill him for it.
For the moment, however, Archie held a valuable hostage. They both knew it. Without further prodding, Colban slowly unbuckled the swordbelt draped diagonally over his shoulder and let the weapon drop to the ground.
Archie was no fool. “Your dagger as well.”
The twitch in Colban’s eyes told Archie he’d guessed correctly. The man had hoped his surrender of the claymore would lull Archie into complacency. He was wrong.
As the man yielded his dagger with a scowl of frustration, Archie felt some of his self-assurance returning. Things were going to be all right now. He was regaining control. Recovering his wits.
He could sort things out. For Ian’s benefit, he would say it was all a simple misunderstanding. He was only doing a bit of research. Ian would back him up. After all, he helped the lad with his research all the time. Surely, he could convince Ian he had his best interests at heart.
As for this meddling fellow, who would the clan believe? Hallie’s husband and brother? Or a stranger who’d burst upon them?
Eventually, of course, he’d have to tie up the loose ends of his indiscretion, as Geoffrey was often obliged to do. He’d send someone to silence the interfering Colban forever.
Archie quirked up a corner of his mouth. Already, he felt himself becomin
g Geoffrey’s Old Cock again.
Hallie might not have shared Colban’s urgency as he fled the castle, but she had a long stride to match his. And the instant Isabel came running to her—wringing her hands at the knowledge she was breaking her word to Colban and praying he would forgive her, and then revealing that he’d set out after Archie with fire in his eyes and his claymore on his back—Hallie grabbed her sword and followed in his footsteps.
What she expected to find, why Colban was after Archie, she didn’t know. But Archie was her husband and a member of the clan now. She owed him her protection.
She heard raised voices coming from the crannog before she even reached the walkway. She hurried forward, straining to hear their words.
In the past, her cousin Feiyan had remarked that Hallie’s one weakness was that she was more like hail than mist. Hallie preferred to meet challenges head on, striking hard, rather than using wiles and stealth.
Her cousin Jenefer thought Hallie’s vulnerability came from her careful consideration of all outcomes before she took action. A fire might rage around her while she froze in indecision.
But the instant Hallie saw Archie dangling Ian over the icy loch, she proved them both wrong.
Drawing her dagger, she stole through the shadows of the crannog. When she was within striking distance, she saw three things that made up her mind instantly.
Archie’s trews were open, his genitals on full display.
His jar of wool grease lay overturned on the floor.
And Ian was squirming in his arms.
Before she even finished fully calculating the significance of those ugly facts, Hallie pinched the dagger blade between her thumb and finger and fired it forward.
Time slowed as the dagger flipped through the air.
For a protracted instant, the only sound was the whistle of the blade before it sank into Archie’s thigh, followed by his long, shocked gasp. Then his face paled, his eyes widened, rolling white, and he emitted a high-pitched thread of sound as the pain registered.
Bride of Ice Page 29
