“Outside the wall,” Grant said. “A bit of a ride from the keep. On the other side of the woods to the west.”
Grant could envision the cairn as if he had stacked the stones as recently as yesterday. While he hadn’t agreed with the choice then, his loyalty and respect for the church had kept him from going against it. And as the priest noted, it had been four years. What stirred her now?
“It is either the bell tower on her favorite garden…” he said, bristling at one other thing it might be. “Or my happiness with the woman I love and the blessings of my precious wee bairns.”
“Or all of it,” Malcolm interjected. He gently batted Abby away from cleaning the blood off the cut in his scalp. “As I remember, verra little pleased that woman. Ever.”
“Aye, she never wished to be here.” Grant returned to his seat and frowned down at his ale, remembering the sting of Merideth’s bitterness and contempt. “She said she loved another.” He took a deep draught of the drink to wash away the foul taste of her memory. Words between them had never gone well. Until close to the end when she suddenly turned uncharacteristically kind.
“If she never wished to be here, why did she agree to marry you?” Lyla asked.
“Her father arranged it for an alliance between our clans, and the match seemed tolerable enough to me.” He rapped his empty mug on the table, then lifted it for more. A servant hurried to fill it. “Once we married, she came to my bed thrice, then claimed herself with child. Until my bairns began resembling their Reddoch ancestors, I wasna all that certain they were mine.” He rubbed his gritty eyes that burned with weariness. “But I always loved them, regardless.” A curt, bitter laugh huffed from him. “Merideth entertained guests in her chambers quite often before the illness of her mind made that pastime impossible.” After another long draught of ale, he added, “I resigned m’self to it. After all, I didna want her any more than she wanted me. Not with her repeated reminders we would never know peace of any kind while living under the same roof.” He rolled his shoulders, trying to rid himself of the tensed stiffness. “Except at the end. Right before she took her life. Somehow, she changed. Behaved as though she wished a companionable marriage. Next thing I knew, she dangled from the end of a rope.”
“God help ye.” The priest made the sign of the cross in midair, then bowed his head.
“Well, if He is going to, I wish He would get on with it,” Grant said.
“Chieftain!” Father Rubric held up the cross hanging around his neck, glaring at Grant as though he had sprouted horns.
“You said she loved another,” Lyla interrupted. “Do you know who it was?”
“She never told me the man’s name.” Grant shook his head. “What good would that do us now?”
“If you find him and bring him here, maybe he could talk her off her rampage.” Lyla turned to her sister. “Don’t you agree? If it would have worked while she lived, it might work now that she’s dead.”
“Anything is worth a try.” Abby rinsed out the bloody cloth and picked up her needle and thread. “It has to be stitched,” she told her husband.
“Woman—can it not wait?” Malcolm leaned to one side, trying in vain to dodge her. “Where is wee Violet? I feel the need to see my daughter.”
“You can see Violet once I’ve sewn your head back together.” With a dark brow hiked at a threatening slant, Abby held the needle like a weapon that would not be deterred.
“Give it up, man,” Grant advised, then sidled a glance at Lyla. He offered her a knowing grin. “Ye canna fight them.”
She rolled her eyes. “Back to Merideth’s long-lost love. Is there anyone here she might have confided in?”
Grant thought back to those miserable years. His first wife had not got on well with any of the women of the clan. She preferred either solitude or the men she invited to her bed. The pair of maids she had brought with her were long gone. One died of the flux and the other moved away. “Her father is dead. Her mother died when she was a wee bairn. I doubt her brother would know.”
“What about her personal maid?” Lyla asked, flinching with every stitch Abby jabbed into Malcolm’s scalp.
“One dead. The other?” Grant shook his head. “Moved away, I think, but I dinna ken where.”
“I wonder if Besseta or Mrs. Fintrie would know?” She waved down the servant, wiping the tables running the length of the great hall in two long rows. “Janet, please find Besseta and Mrs. Fintrie, and ask them to come here.”
“Aye, m’lady.” The young girl tipped a nod, then hurried away.
“I just hope her true love was real,” Lyla said, staring off into the distance with an intense frown puckering her brow.
“How could he not be?” Grant recalled how the woman had shouted it often enough. Not a day had gone by without her throwing it in his face. At least, until the point that he moved her from her bedchamber that adjoined his to the second floor. That move was made soon after she announced she was with child. After that, he had naught to do with her other than to coax her to pay attention to the bairns. “She seemed quite adamant. Why would she lie?”
“To hurt you.” Lyla shrugged. “Especially if you attempted to make the marriage a real one.”
He looked away, ashamed to admit he had tried to make his first wife love him. Even though that was long before Lyla arrived, the thought of wooing another made him feel unfaithful to his lady love. “I tried to make the marriage bearable,” he corrected.
She reached across the table and covered his hand with hers. “As you should have.”
He lifted her hand and kissed it. Whenever she touched him, whenever he lost himself in her eyes, everyone else in the room could just be damned. Others ceased to exist.
“Ye asked for us, m’lady?” Mrs. Fintrie, tall and gangly as a Tatty-Bogle scaring birds from the oat fields, stood at attention beside the table. Besseta waited a few steps behind her, looking as if she was headed to the gallows.
