“Thank you,” Evelyn whispered, blinking free the tears held captive by her lashes. “I do not know what peace I would bring you either, but thank you.”
Angus nodded, squeezed her fingers a final time before releasing them.
But something the old man had said nagged at Evelyn. She was sure it was meaningless. But in her lessons learned of honesty and deceit by omission, Evelyn felt she must correct it.
“Dáire MacKerrick had two sons, sir,” she said.
Angus frowned and shook his head. “I’d have heard that news, had his wife given birth again.”
“Nay, you are correct,” Evelyn hastened. “She had only one birthing, but two babes. Boys. Twins.”
“That’s nae possible,” Angus insisted gently. “One son. You must be mistaken, lass.”
“I’m not. I’ve met Conall’s brother, Duncan.”
Angus shook his head, “It canna be. Lana MacKerrick birthed one son. I know this, lass.I know.”
“I’d not lie to you, sir. Why would you think that?”
“Because Minerva attended the birth, Eve,” Angus said. “While Dáire MacKerrick was ambushing us, my sister was hidden away in his own home without his knowledge and gave his only son his first breath.”
Evelyn knew her expression must betray her shock, and Angus Buchanan wore a similar expression of intense confusion.
“But,” Evelyn stuttered, “why would they claim—?”
Her question was interrupted by a commotion beyond the door and in an instant, a group of Buchanan men burst through it, holding three captives in their midst—two men and a woman.
Andrew Buchanan shoved a man forward onto the dirt floor and spat on him. “Caught lurking north of town.” His eyes found Evelyn. “Looking for our gel, they are.” Andrew’s voice was unmistakably possessive.
The man on the floor raised his face.
’Twas Conall.
Chapter Twenty-One
She was more beautiful than when he’d last seen-her. Bedraggled and weary looking, undoubtedly from the journey, but safe and healthy and luminous and…Eve. God, how he had missed her face. How he loved her. Thank God, thank God she had made it. He was so proud of her.
But she was staring at him as if she had never seen him before, and Conall knew a shiver of cold fear.
“Why have you followed me here?” she asked quietly.
The stocky, dense-looking Buchanan who’d man-handled Conall gave his shoulder a shove with a booted foot, causing Conall to fall to his chest in the dirt. Behind him, he heard Lana cry out against this injury.
“Explain yourself, interloper. Who are you and what business have you trespassing on Buchanan lands?” the oaf demanded. Duncan let loose a string of vicious threats.
Conall raised himself slowly to his hands once more and then gained his feet carefully, not wishing to be attacked again. Eve’s eyes never left him, wary, hurt.
“I am known,” he began, “as the MacKerrick. I have come for my wife.”
A collective, outraged roar erupted behind Conall at his statement, but he did not take his attention from Eve, even at the ring of sword against scabbard, at the hands once more seizing him.
Eve’s eyes left his and went to the floor, and ’twas only then that Conall noticed the old man rising slowly from the chair on her left.
“Cease!” he commanded in a voice that belied his obvious age. The din quieted. “Andrew, release them and leave us.”
“But, laird,” the cocky one protested, “they are MacKerrick!”
“Go,” the old man ordered and then looked at those gathered. “All of you. I have nae fear of this pup or his kin.” When the fists gripping Conall did not relent, the old man boomed,“Heed me!”
