“Ye!” Isobelle stopped dancing and gathered her skirts as if she might run up the steps. “Ye drove me Morna to her death! Murderer!”
Gaspar was grateful Isobelle whispered her rantings. If others came to the stairs, they could not continue to deny her presence.
The Gordon man screeched and drew a dagger from his belt, then pushed Gaspar off balance and slipped between him and James. Gaspar jumped down the steps to stop him. Isobelle danced away down the hall, laughing, but moving quickly just the same.
Gaspar got hold of the other man’s plaid sash and was able to slow him at least, and when the man surged forward to escape his grasp, the sash came free and the little man flew forward. He grunted when he hit the dirt floor, then stilled.
Gaspar warily turned the man onto his back and found the handle of the little dagger sticking at an odd angle out of his left side.
The man grinned up at him. “Ye see? She is real. Why else would ye fly to her aid?”
Voices approached from the stairway, and he and James exchanged an anxious look. Then together they dragged the little man down a corridor, out of sight of the stairs.
“What shall we do with him?” James asked.
“Stop the bleeding as best we can.” Gaspar knelt over the little body and took hold of the blade’s handle. The man hissed as the dagger slipped from his body.
“A shallow entry,” Gaspar announced. “He will live.”
Isobelle stood behind James where the Gordon man couldn’t see her. Gaspar shook his head slightly and she disappeared again. Mhairi came forward with a basket of herbs and strips of cloth.
“Weel, now,” she said cheerfully. “What have we here? Laird Gordon’s son getting into mischief? I saw what happened, of course.” She tisked. “A bit light in the head, are ye, Cinead Gordon? To go and attack the big man just because he has the same red hair that our Isobelle once had? And ye accused him of being Isobelle herself?” She shook her head, tisking again. “What will yer father say, I wonder. He’ll wish to ken his son isna right in the head, I’m certain. So he can tend after ye carefully, aye? He favors ye so, does he not? Surely he’ll be most gentle.”
Cinead glowered at the woman even as she cleansed his wound and dressed it. It didn’t take long.
“Yer a witch,” he hissed. “The kirk shall hear about ye, and those who keep ye.”
Gaspar couldn’t hold his tongue any longer.
“Allow me to introduce myself. I am Gaspar Dragotti, Special Investigator to The Patriarch of Venice and Special Investigator for The Church. I have found no witches at Castle Ross, only a man who believes he has seen the dead. Indeed,thatwarrants an investigation. Though I was hoping to be on my way…”
If Cinead Gordon understood nothing else, he realized that they would all stand together against him.
“I would return to the hall now,” he grumbled.
“Here now. What is amiss here?” Ewan entered the corridor and frowned down on the wounded man. “Gordon? What has happened here? And why are ye in me cellars?”
Gaspar lifted a brow and waited for Cinead to make whatever claim he dared.
“I slipped on the stair, Ross. And landed on me own dagger, ‘tis all.”
Gaspar inclined his head and the fellow relaxed a bit, though he was not a happy man.
“Daniel!” Ewan shouted and his man came running. “Help Gordon here to the hall.”
“Aye, Laird.” The young man lifted Cinead’s arm to help him rise, but the man was far too short to get a shoulder under. “By yer leave,” he finally said, then picked the man up in his arms like a baby. They all bit their lips to keep from laughing as the red-faced Gordon was carried away.
Gaspar found Isobelle shaking like a dry leaf in a winter wind, cowering against the wall further down the corridor. Gaspar hurried to her and pulled her up into his arms. He held her until the trembling eased. Then he spoke low against the top of her head.
“We will not go, if you do not wish it.”
She nodded into his chest, then took a breath and shook her head instead. “I wish to go. I wish to see my family again. I will do whatever it requires to travel there, as long as ye’re with me.”
James laughed. “The journey will not last as long as ye might think.”
She reached over and touched James’ arm. “Will ye come along with us, then? To show us the way?”
James grimaced, then nodded reluctantly.
