Dand then reached into the sack he was wearing against his hip. “I’ve brought you something, although perhaps I shouldna give it to you. I doona know if it shall please you or set you off in a rage again.” He withdrew a long, slender object, wrapped up in a dingy old piece of cloth—Lachlan recognized it as one of Mother Blair’s rags—and offered it to Lachlan.
Lachlan took it with a frown, and he could tell it was a blade by the feel of it even before unwinding the cloth revealed the shallowly engraved, dinged, and darkened metal sheath. Several grubby knobs of frazzled cording hung from the back edge of the sheath and at the grip, as if it at one time had been decorated with tasseled fringe. It was obviously quite old. He looked up at Dand.
“Where did you get this?”
“Archibald’s house,” Dand said, resting the sole of one boot on the trunk of driftwood still between them, leaning forward to cross his forearms over his thigh. “Ma’s nae shut up about moving into Archibald’s since he died. I was taking some things over for her last night, late, when who do I come across inside by lamplight?”
Lachlan shrugged and looked down to examine the sheath’s engravings.
“Harrell,” Dand said. “Near to tearing the place to splinters where the chief slept. I surprised him, coming in on him like that. He made some nonsense about losing a brooch at the funeral.”
“Hmm.” Lachlan ran his thumb over the swirls and angles cut into the metal and turned to sit on the driftwood facing the bay. Although he’d never laid eyes on the dagger before, the design seemed familiar.
The trunk dipped as Dand sat down next to him, facing the town. “He ran out of there like his hair was afire—you know Harrell. I saw a dark place in the wall behind a post of Archibald’s bedstead; Harrell had just been shoving at the thing when I got there, and I don’t think he’d seen it yet. It was a hidey-hole, and that was in it. It had to have been what he was searching for.” He paused in his account. “Lach, look at your wedding brooch.”
Lachlan stilled and then rested the dagger across his thigh while he reached up for the metal that fastened his shawl across his chest. He unhooked the pin and held down the sizable disc next to the sheath, then looked up at Dand.
“The pattern is the same,” Lachlan said. “This is Carson steel.”
Dand nodded. “So the question becomes, why would your grandda have a Carson dagger hidden in his house?”
“Sure, and why would Harrell be looking for it?” Lachlan added.
The driftwood shuddered again as Dand found his feet. “Someone here is bound to know.”
Lachlan half-turned on his hip. “What did Marcas say about it?”
Dand shook his head and said quietly, “He’d have had to show it to the fine.”
Lachlan realized what his brother had done for him then, and felt doubly like an ass.
“I’ll be getting back,” Dand said.
Lachlan, too, stood as a foreign wave of disappointment washed over him. “Stay. Come up to the cliff house with me; I’ll show you what I—”
But Dand was already walking backward up the damp, brown flat, shaking his head. “I’ve more to do than daylight left to do it in. Harrell’ll be suspicious when he discovers I’ve come, and Searrach’ll surely tell him when she canna find me. He mustn’t think I’ve found what he was looking for, else I’ll nae be able to shut my eyes in me own bed.”
“Even as his future son-in-law?” Lachlan couldn’t help the barb.
Dand’s face screwed into a mask of distaste. “Searrach’s too eld for me. Like tonguin’ Ma’s sister.” He gave an exaggerated shudder, then grinned. “There’s nae betrothal for his dear gel now, and it’s put him in a humor of sorts. He’s leaving soon to take some of the sheep down the valley with the younger men to sell at market because Carsons are grazing half our pastures now. He seems eager to go, but Searrach is quite disappointed that her da’s forbidding her from making the trip.”
“Kirsten Carson will be sore disappointed herself that she didna get to see you today,” Lachlan baited.
“Sure, she saw me,” Dand called back. “And see more of me she shall, have I my way.” He raised a hand, showing Lachlan a glowy pink shell before placing it carefully in the jagged end of a buried trunk sticking out of the sand. “If you should happen to see her.” Then he turned away from the beach, trotting up the flat, hopping over driftwood, zigzagging around boulders on his way to the path. From Lachlan’s point of view, he still appeared to be the young man just out of boyhood he’d been a moon ago.
But he was no longer a boy, and Dand’s journey to Carson Town this day to give Lachlan the dagger proved it.
“Thanks, brother!” Lachlan called out, too late he knew, but Dand raised a hand in acknowledgment even if he didn’t turn around again.
He had one friend yet then, at Town Blair. And one here on the edge of the sea in Finley Carson. Lachlan looked down at the dagger again.
“The truth will come,” he murmured to the waves, and he didn’t know if it was excitement or fear that caused the seabirds on the beach to start to the low, gray sky with shrieks.
Chapter 9
Finley didn’t oversleep again, but when she joined her father and Lachlan Blair in the barn the next morning, she was promptly dismissed, by Rory Carson himself no less.
“You go on back to the house and help your mam with the meal,” he ordered gruffly, barely sparing her a glance as he and Lachlan struggled with the yearling lamb. “We’re nearly done here.”
