Highland Devil

by Hannah Howell

  “Hilda!” snapped Manus. “Dinnae forget he will be your laird!”

  “Nay mine,” Hilda muttered as she watched Manus put Mora in a cell and slowly lock the door.

  “Are your new friends coming for ye, lass?” Manus asked.

  “Nay, but I wouldnae tell ye if they were just so ye could prepare all the men to kill them.”

  “Ye would let our men die?”

  She looked around the cell she was in, then said, “Aye, but I will say this, my friends would try to talk to someone, try to sort it all out and keep blood from being spilt. From what I just saw of my uncle, he willnae care. And, if ye two are right, and he clings to all the lies his son has told just to save face and some long-held false hopes he wants fulfilled, he is near as mad as his foul son.” Out of the corner of her eye she saw Hilda nod.

  Manus marched off shaking his head, but Hilda looked at her. “Who are your friends, lass?”

  “The Murrays on either side of ye and the Camerons.”

  “Oh, my. A handsome lot of friends ye have found. My spit boy is the nephew of the laird’s cook,” said Hilda.

  “Oh, that’s nice.” Mora wondered what that had to do with anything.

  “It could be, lass, it could be a verra nice thing indeed. I will be down in a few moments with a meal for ye.”

  Mora sat on the narrow, hard bed and sighed. It had seemed like a good idea. Come and talk to her uncle, a man she could recall as being nice, funny at times, and welcoming. She suspected it was that memory that had pushed her to come as her uncle was no longer any of those things. She did not think it was all caused by the illness, either. Her uncle had had things go very wrong in his life and had been abed long enough to brood on them.

  Why would he think her mother was a liar? Her mother never lied. And what did he mean by calling her mother a ruined woman? Mora clenched her fists and fought the urge to get up and stomp out her fury. He seemed to think matters had been ruined between him and his brother yet, if that was so, why did her mother take all of them to visit him?

  She ran her hand over the stone wall behind her, discovered it was surprisingly dry, and leaned back against it. It was not an easy thing to do since it had been an ugly confrontation, but she carefully thought over what her uncle had said. The third time she did so, she abruptly sat up, seeing what was firmly stuck in his memory and tormenting him. It was not that her mother had been ruined but that his brother had married her anyway. It all had little to do with her mother. It had to do with his father, with the brothers’ bond breaking until they were little more than coldly polite strangers.

  Her uncle had been the man who had ruined her mother. David was the one who had married her, giving her back the honor his own brother had stolen from her. Mora suspected it had been a rape, harsh and ugly. There was the unworthy man her mother had referred to when she had given Mora the talk about women and men. Mora had to wonder how hard it must have been for her mother to see Tomas, even if the visits had been rare. Then she had an alarming thought. Had her mother been left with child? Was one of her brothers actually her cousin?

  “Idiot,” she muttered, and shook her head, trying to push away such thoughts. One thing she was sure of concerning her mother and father was that they had loved each other, had loved all their children. It might have been started by something ugly, but it had become beautiful and stayed that way until the day Robert had killed them.

  Her poor father, she thought, and closed her eyes to push back the tears. How had such a sweet, gentle man come from such a family? A man who could carve such beauty into a piece of wood most would have just used for kindling should have had a better lot. She thought of him showing a fascinated Andrew about carving and then smiled. His second family had given him a better life.

  Robert had stolen it, ended it before its time. For that alone Robert had to pay. Even if she could not escape the trap she had walked into, she would do her best to make sure Robert paid dearly for the innocent blood on his hands.

  “Here ye go, lass,” said Hilda, holding a large tray while her husband unlocked the door. “A nice full meal and dinnae try to say ye are nay hungry. Nay matter what is happening one should always remember it could change.”

  “Things could get better?” asked Mora in a disbelieving tone as she looked over what was on the tray Hilda set down on the bed beside her.

  “Ye can ne’er ken and ye willnae want to be swooning with hunger just when ye should run.”

  “Och, nay, that would be bad.”

  “Hilda, what are ye babbling about?” asked Manus.

  “Nary a thing, love. Someone will be by in a while to take away the empty tray.”

  Puzzled by the woman, Mora shrugged as the door was locked again and the couple walked away. She tasted the chicken and found it very palatable. Then the sound of a disturbance echoed down the stairs.

  She watched as Hilda came running down the stairs, then thrust her hand through the bars. Mora frowned at what the woman was holding out to her. What game was the woman playing?

  “Take it,” hissed Hilda, and Mora took what revealed itself to be a piece of parchment, a pen, and a tiny bottle of ink. “Write out what has happened to ye and hide it in the napkin. Ye have about an hour at best before some lad is sent to collect the tray.” Hilda then dashed back off up the stairs.

  Mora set it aside, tucking it just under the very thin blanket on the bed, and ate her meal as she thought on what to write. When she finished the afters of stewed apples, she turned her full attention to writing a letter. She had no idea what Hilda planned to do with it, but the woman was acting very secretive, so she would just do as she was told and see what happened. Carefully folding the letter into the napkin, she prayed it would not smudge badly.

  A young boy, perhaps just entering his teens, came to take the tray. She wondered if she should feel insulted that they believed she was not worth a bigger, well-armed guard. It would not be too hard for her to trick or overpower the thin lad but she did not. It would humiliate him and she could not do that. She simply hoped she would not deeply regret that restraint later.

  Lying down and wishing she was bold enough and felt safe enough to strip for bed, she stared up at the ceiling, studying the shadows cast by the torches. She was not sure what her uncle had planned for her but suspected it would not be good. The anger and mean spirit in the man appeared to have been strengthened or freed by the poisoning. Yawning, she closed her eyes and forced herself to stop thinking so hard. What was happening made no sense, so she needed to cease trying to sort it out or understand it.

  Instead, she thought of Gybbon. He was going to be so angry about this. And, if her uncle and cousin physically harmed her, she could be certain they would pay very dearly. Slowly, feeling oddly reassured by that, she fell asleep.

  * * *

  A loud clattering startled Mora awake. She sat up and stared at the bars. A sneering Robert stood there with a stick, running it along the bars. Behind him stood his three brothers. He obviously kept them on a very tight tether, she thought. None of them looked happy. She did not think she had ever seen such a sullen, miserable lot.

  “Ah, Cousin, weel met. Ye decided it was time for ye to torment the prisoner?”

  “I thought we could have a wee talk before ye are hanged.”

  “I cannae think of anything ye could discuss that I would be interested in. But, hanged? Ye dinnae believe I will win at the trial?”

  “Trial? What trial? Why should time and effort be wasted on such a trial?”

  “The law?”

  “Did ye forget? My father is the law here. He was declared so years ago. He is also the laird and rules this land.”

  She studied him for a moment. “’Tis a shame that I willnae be around on that day when he discovers all your lies. Just how many people do ye consider an obstacle or an enemy and have ye managed to get the mon to kill them all for you?” There was a flash of shock on all three of his brothers’ faces, and she felt sad, for it was
confirmation that he had done just that.

  “What does that matter? And, the mon is dying.”

  “He didnae look like it when I saw him and he spouted all your lies at me.” Robert looked so proud of that she was tempted to spit on him.

  “Enough talk.”

  “Oh, dear, and it was all so riveting,” she murmured, and while his brothers quickly grinned, Robert glared at her.

  “I will be standing right up in the front of the crowd when ye hang.”

  She watched as he strode away. His brothers looked at her before following him, and the sadness in their eyes told her she would get no help there. Murdoch looked close to tears. And she prayed he had the wit to hide that quickly.

  Mora laid back down and sighed. There was nothing she could do. Her uncle was not interested in hearing the truth about his heir, so he listened to only lies. She had been a fool to think she could cut through that kind of blindness just because she was armed with the truth.

  She should just go back to sleep, she thought, but that seemed a waste of what little time she had left. All she could do was keep stating the truth and pray there was at least one person at Wasterburn who would be bold and step up to at least cause the laird to wait until he made absolutely certain that she was guilty of what she had been accused of. Mora knew it was foolish to rest any hope on that. Her mother had often complained that her brother by law too often thought he was a king and not just a laird.

  Closing her eyes, she thought on Gybbon. She really wanted to go back to him but feared she never would. Nor would she see Andrew or Freya ever again. It seemed odd to her that when she faced the end of her short life, all she could think of was the people she would miss.

  Or never know, a soft voice whispered in her mind. That made her eyes burn with tears, but she refused to let them fall. She would never know her child, never be blessed with one. The fact that the child who came to mind was a lovely boy sired by Gybbon made her even sadder. That would never happen. She would never even learn if he cared for her as more than a bed warmer.

  Mora decided she would pray for whatever scheme Hilda was so happy about to actually work. The woman appeared to think she could do something that would help, but Mora did not know her well enough to judge if that confidence was warranted. Hilda could be one of those people who always thought they had a good plan only to watch it fail and then they would come up with another one. Whatever the woman thought she could do, Mora feared there would not be enough time to do it, but she had some time to pray that the kitchen maid had really come up with an idea that would work. She would add the hope that her uncle could be deterred long enough to make that happen.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Gybbon looked around the keep and wondered why people were keeping their eyes down and others appeared to be looking for something. He followed Harcourt to the door and a frantic Annys met them in the hall. Then he heard a strange scratchy yowl and frowned.

  “What is that noise?”

  “It is Freya. She is shut in Mora’s bedchamber and is nay happy about it.”

  “Where is Mora?”

  “I dinnae ken. Harry in the stables said he saddled that mare for her yesterday as she said she was going to practice her riding and she ne’er came back. We sent men out to look but there was nary a sign of her. We were just about to begin the search again when ye returned. I shouldnae have let her go. She has trained, but she wasnae trained enough if there was trouble.”

  “She wanted to go. I doubt ye could have stopped her. She just would have found another way.”

  “That cat has been in a frenzy since she left.”

  “That why it sounds so scratchy?”

  “Nay. She didnae make many sounds as a cat does, but she has been doing that constantly since Mora rode off. Without her.”

  Gybbon ran up to Mora’s bedchamber and cautiously opened the door. He barely managed to dart inside before the cat was there. He looked all around and the sight of her bag made him frown, for some of her things were missing, yet she had to have carried them in something else. He had never seen her without that bag. The more he thought on her disappearance, the more he felt sure he knew what she had done. He went to the door and sighed when Freya leapt onto his shoulder and wrapped her tail around his neck.

  “Dinnae get comfortable because ye are nay coming with me,” he said, and hurried back down to the others. “I ken where she went.”

  “To talk to our uncle,” said a small voice from behind him, and he looked at Andrew.

  “Did she tell ye that?” Gybbon asked as the boy reached up and took Freya in his arms.

  “Nay, but she felt she should do it, so I figured that was where she slipped off to. Mentioned it a few times and one of the boys we played ball with yesterday is kin to one of the Ogilvy guards. He told me he saw my sister ride into the keep just before the gates were shut for the night, so I kenned I had guessed right. She wants to tell Uncle the truth.”

  “That is what I fear she has done, too,” Gybbon said.

  “Oh, nay. That old mon willnae listen to anything she says, especially if it is a criticism of his eldest son. She will ne’er convince him that Robert lies or killed her parents and tries to kill her and Andrew,” Annys said, and shook her head. “If she had just mentioned what she planned, I could have told her, given her good solid reasons for why I think it, too. She has put herself in danger with no chance of success.”

  “I have to go after her. If the mon still has the sense to give orders, she has walked into a trap. Robert will make sure she cannae leave and will allow his da to kill her for him.”

  “I will come with ye and we can stop at the manor and pull in Sigimor,” Harcourt said.

  “Why do we need Sigimor?”

  “Aside from the fact that I promised I would tell him if something new happened about all this mess, he is keen on getting the old mon to finally see what his son is. His clan has lost some animals to the mon and so have others. All our allies. The laird just willnae listen to the truth—that ’tis the son’s doing. There are also Camerons at the keep, as men-at-arms, and some in the village. And at the manor are some guards we may be able to make use of. Robert willnae be able to get many of his men to face off against Sigimor’s. Plus, he probably has a few MacFingals with him.”

  “Then I will get Freya and let us ride to get Sigimor.”

  “Why get the cat?”

  “She will want to see it when she is freed and I think all that scratchy yowling might be bothering Annys.”

  “Ye get the cat then and I will get Andrew so she can have both when we get her free.”

  * * *

  “Aiden! What are ye doing here, laddie?” asked Annie, Dubheidland’s cook, as she hastily dried her hands so she could hug the boy.

  “She brought me.” He pointed toward the woman standing behind him.

  “Hilda? Why have ye come here so early? Ye ken I love to see the lad, but today isnae a good day. I am just finishing the meal to break the night’s fast, then I must pack up things as we will return to Dubheidland today.”

  “I need to speak with the laird.”

  “Weel, I fear ye may have to stand in a line and wait as we already have visitors and more stepped in just as ye did. Ian popped in to tell me.”

  “If the visitors are who I think they might be, then I may speak with them, too?” She reached out and ruffled Aiden’s bone-straight black hair, which too often fell into his eyes. “Are ye ready, lad?”

  The boy held on to a piece of paper and nodded, then looked at his aunt. “Is the laird in the hall, Aunt Annie?”

  “Aye, but ye cannae go there. He has men with him and they are doing whate’er it is men born higher than we are do when they get together.”

  “I have to. I have an important letter for him.” He walked out of the kitchen and Hilda smiled at Annie.

  “Hilda, he shouldnae be interrupting the laird!”

  “Dinnae fret. The laird willnae care after he reads the let
ter.”

  “What is in it?”

  “Wheesht, how would I ken that? I cannae read. Now, what can I help ye with?”

  * * *

  Niall frowned at the manor as he and David were about to ride past it. “That doesnae look empty anymore. I wonder whom Sigimor allowed to live there.”

  “Himself,” David replied, and turned his mount toward the large stone house when a tall, red-haired man stepped out. “Those guards must have told him about us riding by. Hope nothing happened to Dubheidland,” he said as he reined in before Sigimor.

  “Nay, save for the fact that all my people fell ill with something, so I brought my wife and bairn here. I am looking and I am sure I ken who ye are, but no name is coming to mind. Havenae broken my fast yet. Ye arenae kin, are ye?”

  David dismounted as he laughed. “Only verra distantly. David Ogilvy.” He held out his hand to shake Sigimor’s as Niall dismounted and came to stand beside him.

  Shaking Niall’s hand, Sigimor then turned and opened the door. “Guards didnae recognize ye, either, so I will take some comfort in that. Come in. Food will soon be served. I fear I have some verra bad news for ye.”

  As they followed him in, David said, “We have heard it. We talked to Morag Sinclair. She told us but she also had some good news. Aunt Maggie made it to her sister’s. She had some burns though, so will be staying there for a while.”

  “For the best. Things are nay right here as yet. Now what?” he grumbled as a boy walked into the hall and headed straight for Sigimor. “Who are ye, lad?”

  “I am Aiden, the cook’s nephew. I have a letter for ye.” He thrust it toward Sigimor.

  “What does it say?”

  “I dinnae ken. Cannae read, can I. Ye can. Ye are a laird.”

  “Who sent it?”

  “A lady. Our laird has put her in the dungeons.”

  Sigimor just grunted as he watched Jolene hesitate briefly in the doorway before she walked toward him. “A lady in the dungeon? Hurry and read it, Sigimor.” She smiled when the boy bowed to her, then she sat down next to Sigimor and whispered to him, “Why is there a scullion boy in here?”