“I will do whatever I please, for I remain the laird of this clan,” he thundered. “Mayhap Katherine proved herself a traitor while she was a guest of the Oliphants, and mayhap she did not. Either way, she should have shown solidarity with her sister, and her clan by resisting them every way she could. She should have passed that time in a cell next tae ye, rather than gaily cavorting around the castle and making a spectacle of herself in the villages!” He jabbed his finger at Katherine again. “Yer sister suffered while ye supped and laughed with the vermin who imprisoned her. Now it is time foryetae know how she felt, languishing in that cell for months. And ye shall remain there for as long as I decide!”
Katherine was too stunned to respond. Her head felt as though it was full of angry hornets, and her legs felt like lead weights beneath her.
The guards who stood near her seemed likewise shocked by this turn of events, but given how furious their laird sounded, they did not dare refuse his commands.
As they seized her and started to drag her toward the dungeons, however, Aitken stammered and sputtered indignantly. “Laird Angus, this-this is outrageous. Surely, this cannot be necessary, thisbarbarism, against yer own daughter!”
Angus turned to face Aitken, livid. “Ye have been here all of two minutes, sir. Do ye already presume tae tell me how tae rule over my clan? Ye do recall my conditions with regard tae this arrangement, do ye not?”
Aitken’s lips drew into a tight line, and he nodded once, stiffly.
“I should bloody well hope so,” Angus snarled. “Ye are here tae observe, nothing more. Remember that, and dinnae ever question a command I give tae my own people, or ye shall find yerself expelled from these lands at once without the luxury of a horse tae transport ye the rest of the way tae Castle Oliphant. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”
“Ye do indeed, Laird Angus,” Aitken replied quietly.
Angus nodded, then watched his men lead his youngest daughter to the cells beneath the stronghold. Aitken followed a McGregor servant inside, looking as though he would be most eager to retire to his room; away from the vengeful laird.
“Ye are aware, Father, that he will surely write tae the Oliphants at once and tell them of this?” Romilly said. Her tone was calm, but her eyes were filled with bewilderment and dismay.
“I am counting on it,” he chuckled darkly.
“We have only just struck an accord with them,” she pressed. “We have only just returned home, and already ye seek tae provoke them? Why?”
“Ye may not have seen the looks which passed between the captain of their guard and that slattern,” he sneered. “ButImost certainly did. Either something improper went on between them during her stay there, or they both wished that it had. Now he shall receive word that she has been imprisoned, and there will be nothing he or his smug laird can do about it, not without breaking the truce we negotiated.”
Romilly was appalled by his machinations. “And if they choose tae act anyway?”
“Then we shall have war after all,” he retorted, patting her shoulder, “and I shall engage in it with my loyal oldest daughter at my side, so that our odds of prevailing will increase a hundredfold. Come now, Romilly. Ye did not truly believe that our score with those scoundrels was settled, did ye?”
20
Romilly stood at the highest window of the McGregor Stronghold, observing mournfully as the messenger rode off into the distance with the missive from Aitken. The sky was stained a deep and tragic shade of scarlet, and it made Romilly think of the blood that would likewise stain the valleys from there to the Oliphant lands if her father’s war came to pass.
How could he genuinely wish for such senseless carnage? How could he deliberately drag their people into a conflict they had no chance of winning, and all in the name of his terrible pride and arrogance?
Most of all, how could she have misjudged her father’s character so completely all these years?
As she looked away from the window and began to pace the chamber fretfully, she had the bitter realization that the last question was far too easily answered. She was a grown woman and had been for quite some time, but she had spent her entire life seeing her father through the loving and awestruck eyes of a child. Even after she had grown to almost his height, he had continued to tower over her in her mind and heart. He was themighty laird, his will was law, and he was utterly infallible. Every action he took, every word he spoke, every order he gave, all were only ever in service to the McGregors and their way of life.
She had seen him, never as a man with flaws and petty hatreds, but as a colossus standing astride his clan.
Now, at last, she saw him for whom he really was. And the reality of it threatened to break her.
Angus might demand that Romilly join the battles to come, for he had spent so many years teaching her the ways of the sword, the bow, and the target and dirk. Or, afraid for the survival of his precious legacy, he might insist that she remain within the relatively safe confines of the stronghold to watch the fighting helplessly from above.
Either way, Romilly knew that it amounted to much the same thing in the end: She would be forced to bear witness to the utter destruction of her clan. Her entire way of life would be eradicated in front of her, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
Was there?
As she bleakly pondered these outcomes, the messenger rode through the day and for much of the night so that he could deliver Aitken’s letter to Castle Oliphant. Aitken had informed him of how urgent the missive was, but that was not the reason the rider hastened, for his loyalties were to the McGregors and not some wayward Oliphant.
Rather, the messenger had been charged to travel with all possible speed by none other than Laird Angus, who wished to ensure that the Oliphants were informed of his actions as soon as possible. He was eager to provoke Laird Alex, and to witness the results of that provocation.
Sure enough,when the rider was ushered through the gates of Castle Oliphant barely a day after Katherine’s homecoming, it raised Bryan’s eyebrows. What news could be so crucial that it precipitated such a hurried message from Aitken?
Bryan’s mind swirled with the worst conceivable scenarios: That some terrible fate had befallen Katherine on the journey back to the McGregor lands; that she had been harmed or even executed by her own father upon their return to the stronghold.
He muttered an excuse to his second in command upon the ramparts and ran into the castle. He reached Alex’s study just in time to see the McGregor messenger step inside and close the door behind him.
