“Tell me all the Dowager Avrie said to you,” Finnan demanded tersely, “before she died.”
“I already have,” Jeannie replied with false calm. Finnan could hear so much in her voice now—all the emotions that filled her heart, varied as the colors of this glen he loved. He heard fear and longing and determination like iron.
She sat curled on the stones above his head, working furiously with his father’s dirk to loosen the mortar around the shackle that secured his left wrist to the floor. How much time did they have? Surely Deirdre would not leave them together long, unmolested. She and her husband would soon come. Sweat broke out all over his body at the very thought.
“Why did she tell this thing to you?”
Jeannie’s attack against the mortar never ceased:ding, ding, ding. Would they hear her beyond the scorched doorway?
“She wanted to destroy my hope they would trade her for you. She wished me to know she believed in her cause—that her son and grandsons claimed full right to this place. She seemed to think the blood gifted the claim.”
“So it does.” Finnan’s voice wavered in his own ears. Blood was blood, his own father had taught him that. And what value legitimacy? Could he say the heart had no right to choose? His lips twisted. Feuding was an old game in the highlands, but not usually among blood kin.
Softly, Jeannie went on, “She said your grandfather had promised Gregor a share, but when he died there was no bequest.”
So the vassals had remained vassals, and ire had soured the old woman’s heart. Finnan could understand that. “Stuart, Trent, and I are cousins,” he mused. “As are Stuart and Deirdre. Aye, well, cousins wed often enough in the highlands.” It explained why Gregor had thrown off the bonds of loyalty, so many centuries strong.
He found it difficult but not impossible to imagine the Dowager capable of the kind of passion he and Jeannie shared. Yet if he had learned anything these many days past, he had learned that love came as it would, and could not be gainsaid.
He looked at the woman huddled on the floor and felt his heart struggle within his breast. Whatever happened to them—however terrible—he knew at least the love would endure.
Upon the thought, he heard the sound he had been dreading all the while, that of approaching footsteps.
“Jeannie, Jeannie, they come.” He implored, “Kiss me one last time.”
She complied and bent to him, her lips warm and tender.
“And,” he pressed then, “promise to follow as I lead.”
“That, my love, I can pledge to do—always.”
****
Jeannie’s heart beat in sickening thuds as she heard her captors approach. How long had she and Finnan been here together? She could only guess, but the sun had moved over to the west, creating a pool of shadows on one side of the room. She secreted the dirk in her waistband at the small of her back and shoved the second weapon she had taken from the hidey hole—a longer, bone-handled knife—up her sleeve. Then she stumbled to her feet and backed away from Finnan.
She could barely look at him, for the wounds he bore. Wrists and ankles seeped blood where he had fought the shackles. The older wounds at his shoulder and down his arm had broken open, and many new cuts had been laid.
At the same time, she could not keep her gaze from him. For she knew each glance might be her last.
He loved her. Her laboring heart struggled and bounded in her breast. One miracle, at least, had occurred: the hatred he felt for her on Geordie’s behalf had transmuted into this unbreakable bond. Might they not expect yet another such miracle?
The scorched and flame-darkened door opened, and Jeannie prepared herself for what she expected to see: both Avrie brothers and a troop of their men, set on murder. But she saw only Deirdre Avrie with a knife in her hand.
Tall and straight as a spear, Deirdre moved into the room and closed the door behind her.
“Well, Brother? Have you decided how you will die?”
Finnan reared up and met his sister’s gaze. “Have you come to kill me by your own hand? Is your hatred so very bright?”
Deirdre had no chance to answer. The door opened again, and Stuart Avrie stepped in. He, too, came armed, still wearing his sword and, no doubt, with a dirk secreted somewhere about him. His face wore an expression of cautious consternation.
“Wife…” he began.
Deirdre shook her head as if she knew already what he meant to say.
“There has been pain enough,” he told her. “Let it be done.”
She answered, without ever taking her gaze from her brother, “Aye, so it will be, this day. But first he will suffer. I want him to choose. He must make an impossible choice, even as I did.”
