“Of course.”
The brother and sister walked in silence again as Magnus reflected on a miserable and wasted eighteen months.
“She stirred trouble among the women, but it spilled over to the men. Part of what she did was make the women competitive and envious aboot their husbands’ prowess in and out of their beds. The men grew combative outside of the lists, and more accidents started happening in the lists. Seamus and I couldnae reason why until the men talked to me. Things returned to normal once everyone realized what happened, but it meant many were hostile to Louisa the next time she visited. Women snubbed her, so she turned her attention to the maids. She would threaten them if they didna tell her any gossip they knew. She forced one maid to steal from Caroline, then turned her over to Seamus and Caroline. She stood witness against the poor lass. It was Henry who saved the lass. He’d been playing by the hearth while Seamus and Caroline heard the case against Mary. Henry climbed onto Seamus’s lap and whispered in his ear. Then Seamus conferred with Caroline. Turns out, Henry heard Louisa ordering Mary to go into the lady’s chamber. He’d watched, too scared to let Louisa ken he could see from the narrow crack of his open door. Louisa held a knife to Mary.”
“But why?”
“Because she could. Louisa is nae a well woman. In fact, she’s barmy, a complete bampot. But it took time for people to believe what others already knew. I was away from the keep for the incident with Mary. I missed most of what happened in the village, hearing aboot it secondhand from the men.”
“Using Mary so ill is still so extreme. There had to be a better reason for Louisa’s plotting than that.”
“She thought it made her indispensable. Rather than be of use in the keep and help Caroline, she thought manipulating everyone into depending on her was better.”
“What were Caroline and Seamus doing aboot it? Ye must have discussed breaking the betrothal.”
“We did. But I was away from the keep more often than I was home for nearly a year. We were nearly at eight-and-ten months since the floods began. Most of the illnesses had cleared, but it decimated our crops that year. We had people near starving since the weather drove much of the wildlife away. There was naught to harvest and naught to hunt. Once the crofts were repaired and people had clothes and the things they needed for their day-to-day lives, I worked in the fields. I went from village to village, helping to dig drainage ditches to push the water out of the fields. But it took months before the sun was enough to dry the waterlogged earth. We had infestations of bugs from the sitting water. We had people filling buckets and carting it off to the Minch to dump there or into lochs. But that wasna ideal since they’d all swollen their banks too.”
“Why didna ye tell us it was this bad, Magnus? We could have helped more. It hurts to ken ye’ve waited this long to tell me. Did ye think we wouldnae help?”
“Nay. It wasna that. When Seamus negotiated the betrothal contract, things were horrible. But we never expected it would carry on for so long. One term Laird Matheson insisted upon was we honor their alliances with the Macraes, Donalds and Mackintoshes. He insisted we strengthen those alliances by asking them for help first. The last thing Seamus and I wanted was for us to be indebted to those three. Ye and the Sutherlands had already offered help, but he pushed for us to nae look to ye or the Mackays for help unless we used his alliances first.”
“But the Mathesons are allied with the Sutherlands. Ye never asked for more from Hamish.”
“If we had, it would have gotten ye involved, which is what Matheson didna want.”
“Why did ye and Seamus allow Matheson to rule ye?”
“Because they had the men to help us defend against the Rosses and Roses. Ye ken with the Rosses come the Campbells.”
“Ye dinna have trouble with the Campbells.”
“We would if things got worse with the Rosses. Monty and Brodie are as close as Brodie is with his real brother, Dominic. I wouldnae put it past Laurel to ride into battle between Brodie and Dominic. The woman both fascinates me and terrifies me. I havenae ever met someone so quick thinking and sharp tongued. If she hadnae married Brodie, I might have fallen in love with her maself.”
“Can ye imagine the red hair yer bairns would have? With her strawberry-blonde hair, it would have looked like a fire riding toward ye.”
“Aye. Our trouble with the Rosses brought the Roses in. The Rosses seized the opportunity to encroach on our land because they kenned eventually it would be good arable land again, but we were struggling to defend it. Seamus and I could defend our land with just the Mathesons at our backs. We didna have to involve any of their allies.”
“Was Louisa’s dowry that big?”
“Aye.”
Siùsan fell silent as she and Magnus stood at the loch’s banks. She leaned toward him and rested her head against his shoulder as she wrapped her arm around his.
“I still wish ye’d told us. We would have helped. Mayhap ye could have broken the betrothal sooner. What was the last straw?”
“She tried to force me.”
“Force ye? She was pressuring ye to set a wedding date?”
“Nay. Nae that kind of force. That would have been fine.”
Siùsan pulled away and stepped in front of Magnus to look at him.
“What did she do?”
Magnus recognized the simmering anger in Siùsan’s hardened gaze. He might be more than a foot taller than her and riddled with battle scars, but he almost took a step back. As renowned as the Sinclair men were for their military prowess, the women were known for their familial protectiveness. It was a fool who ran afoul of the five Sinclair women. Mairghread was doubly so since she was a Sinclair by birth and a Mackay by marriage.
“She slipped a sleeping draught into ma ale at the evening meal. I still dinna ken how she did it. It took Seamus and her uncle to get me up to ma chamber. She must have waited an hour, but it was a powerful brew. I didna hear her or feel when she lifted ma arms. She tied them to the headboard.”
