Rory dropped his head and turned toward the house, his arm pulling behind him, still in Finley’s grasp. “Come inside. There’s much to tell, and I’d have your mother know before I return to the storehouse for our share.”
“Our share of what?” Finely demanded. “Da!”
But he pulled free of her fingertips without looking at her again, and Finley was left standing on the path alone while her father’s stooped form disappeared into the darkness of the house. Her eyes were drawn up over the rooftop to the crumbling stone of the old house, carved from the steep cliff that sheltered their bay. The afternoon sunlight poured into its roofless depths, casting sawtoothed shadows through blackened, empty windows.
He could have been chief. Mam’s husband could have been the Carson, if the Blairs hadn’t killed him. Mam could, right now, be living in the old house.
Nay, the grand house, Finley corrected herself. It was grand once. Their town had been grand once, too.
For some reason, memory of the Blair who had been spying on the English knight near the bridge came to her mind, and she wondered if he was proud of what his clan had done—felt pride at that terrible massacre. He was older than Finley, but still too young to have lived through that bloody time.
She shrugged it off. It did no good to be bitter. Finley hadn’t ever known Carson Town to be anything other than what it was. And she didn’t expect it to ever change. Even if her own life was about to.
She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and walked into the house.
* * * *
Lachlan came awake with a start, his breath hanging around him in a cloud. It was just morning, the light through the storehouse door faint and gray, the green sparkling black and frosty white. The lamp had gone out , and although Lachlan was sunk into the pile of hay that had been his bed through the night, the tip of his nose and his feet felt frozen through.
The air was silent, crystalline, like the skin of ice on the loch in first winter. What had woken him so abruptly?
He sat up fully and blinked in the shadows, the pages of Thomas Annesley’s confession sliding to the floor. Then he noticed that something was different across the green: The Blair’s door was open, the interior still dark.
But there—there was a wash of orange light, like a torch being swung. There it was again, only steady now, and growing larger. A man walked out: Harrell, carrying a lamp. And another man, with white hair. Archibald, so soon recovered?
Nay, ’twas Marcas, a bundle clutched in his hand. Harrell turned toward the Blair’s house and held the lamp higher while Marcas strode to the wall. Lachlan saw the hammering motions before he heard the ricocheting barks across the green. In a moment, Marcas stepped away from the longhouse, and let what appeared to be some sort of banner or cloth hang free where it was suspended.
Archibald’s shawl.
Lachlan gathered the fallen papers into his fist, then pushed himself to his feet and walked toward the half-open storehouse door as if in a dream. He struggled blindly with the latch, not daring to take his eyes from the dingy fabric fluttering in the weak dawn light, then emerged onto the green just as Harrell and Marcas turned. Lachlan strode forward in starts and jerks, and all around him the sounds of doors scraping open echoed over the green. He walked on toward that thin length of shawl as if entranced.
Yer nae grandson o’ mine…
From a traitor’s loins you sprang…
Dead to me…
He passed between Marcas and Harrell to stand before the Blair’s shawl, and he stared at it as if he’d never seen the thing before, instead of having set eyes upon it every day of his living memory.
The Blair was dead.
Movement to his right drew his attention, and a line of townswomen were filing solemnly through the Blair’s door, one of them his own foster mother, carrying lengths of cloth.
The winding sheets. Because the Blair was dead. Lachlan’s grandfather was dead.
Yer nae grandson o’ mine…
His breath caught painfully in his throat.
Neither of the men behind him broke the silence, and Lachlan knew why: There was naught they could say. Archibald Blair was dead, and he had disowned his only grandson before the entire fine just before he’d died. There would be no reconciliation, no time to think things through differently. His damnation of Lachlan was eternal.
A rumbling sound, like many hooves, vibrated in the air, and Lachlan turned in the same moment as Marcas and Harrell to behold the group of riders just coming onto the green. They stopped at the far side of the pitch, the mist from the forest seeming to have followed them through the wood to swirl around the feet of their mounts.
Carsons. And they were armed.
The red-bearded man Lachlan had confronted just last night urged his mount forward. “We’ve come to collect our due.”
Lachlan swung his gaze to Marcas, whose expression was stony as, behind them both, Harrell addressed the man. “The Blair is dead, Murdoch. You’ll have to wait.”
