Lachlan turned his gaze back to Marcas while the fire between them danced and popped. It was the only sound in the dark longhouse while the seemingly impossible implications wheedled their way into his brain.
Thomas Annesley, Englishman. Murderer.Carson.
Lachlan’s blood was the same as some of the men who’d only just left this house; blood of the clan he held in contempt.
“I doona see how this changes anything,” Lachlan said abruptly. “Tommy was dead to us yesterday, he’s just as dead today. I’m still the Blair’s grandson, and when I become chief—”
“Nay,” Archibald rasped. The old man’s body, face, were as still as the granite cliffs; only his thin, pale lips moved. “Edna put herself on that maggot when he was my prisoner. When he died…” The old man paused, and hatred flared in his eyes. “When Edna tol’ me she was with child, I tol’ the town they’d married in secret. To save her honor, though there was little left to salvage.”
Harrell smirked at him over the fire. “Annesley wasn’t Edna’s first, Lachlan. Hell, I coulda been your da.”
“Fuck you, Harrell,” Lachlan spat, and he started to rise.
Marcas’s strong hand wrapped around Lachlan’s arm, staying him, centering him.
“That gel was always trouble to me,” Archibald continued on a wheeze. “That’s why I gave ye over to Marcas and his wife. I wanted a proper heir at last. One with some sense. Some dignity.”
The damning remarks about his mother struck Lachlan like fists. “I’m still your heir.”
“Yer nae grandson o’ mine,” the Blair lisped, and his hollowed cheeks trembled. “I believed his death had saved us, same as everyone else. But he ran like the coward he was. And so this is how I shall pay for my lie, by at last speakin’ the truth: ’Twas from a traitor’s loins you sprang. Dead to me—the three of you, at last.Dead to me.”
Lachlan rose to his feet. “Grandfather—”
Harrell rose up and laid his palm on Archibald’s pate. “That’s enough, Archie. Sure, you might say something you later wish you hadna.”
“Get out,” Archibald commanded hoarsely, closing his eyes. “Get out and doona return. Drive you from the town, mongrel dog.”
“Grandfather!” Lachlan demanded, the first real spirals of panic beginning to twist his insides, just like when he was eight and Marcas had made him ford the falls for the first time on his own. The slippery rocks, the cold, crashing water…
And there was Marcas again, taking hold of his arm. “Come on, leave it for the night, Lach,” he murmured. “Give him time.”
“Get out,” Archibald muttered, rocking his head on his thin pallet, his eyes still squeezed shut. “Get him away.”
Lachlan was in such shock that he let his foster father move him toward the door, the other men rising and following them through the longhouse. The crisp air was no longer springlike on the green, but pushed into his nostrils with the lung-searing iciness of December, and Lachlan felt the exquisite chill as Harrell stepped through the door and faced Lachlan. He knew all the eyes in the group were on him.
Cold water rushing over his head, flooding his throat, his fingers and toes numb…
Be the Blair, Lachlan.
Lachlan squared his shoulders and looked around the group. “I wasna present for the whole of what the Englishman had to say. But the words on his fancy paper mean nothing. English law doesna rule us.”
“Yours is the only English blood in the town,” Harrell interjected, and his gaze was cool, level. “English, and Carson. And ’tis nae the paper that has damned you as much as the Blair himself.”
Lachlan clenched his teeth together. “The chief only needs time,” he ground out, clinging to the words Marcas had murmured to him. “In a few days, all will be as it was. Certainly by the wedding.”
But Harrell was already shaking his head. “I’ll nae be shackling my daughter to a Carson’s bastard.”
Lachlan lunged for the man without thought, and it took both Marcas and brawny Cordon Blair to hold him back.
“Mind what you say to me, Harrell. I’m the same man I was when you promised Searrach to me. She’s to be mywife.”
“I’ll say what I’ve a mind to, pup, and naught a word less. I could have truly been yer da but for the chief’s stubbornness, and we’d be havin’ none o’ this now. Shame.” Harrell turned back to the Blair’s door. “I’ll watch over him through the night, lest he take another turn.” And he disappeared inside.
Lachlan shook off the hands that held him, his vision throbbing with the rage that pushed blood against his eardrums.
Cordon placed his hand on Lachlan’s shoulder. “Doona worry yourself. It will all be as it should. We will raise a cup together, you and I, when you are chief, Lach.”
Lachlan nodded, but he could not answer his friend.
