Vaila bit out a word that was not at all ladylike, but far from unwarranted.
“This is not going to be good,” she said.
Ailsa shook her head. “No. We have to hope that they haven’t much support inside. I don’t think they will, though. Who would want a snake and a murderer as laird? No, our people are too clever not to see through whatever foolish promises Gordon has made them.”
“And if we’re wrong, we’ll die,” Vaila said with a forced cheer. Then she paused. “Should we leave Davina and Eili?—”
“You had better not even be about to ask if you should leave us out,” Davina said, riding up next to her sisters. “We’re not stupid. We know it’s dangerous. But we are sisters. We do this together.”
Eilidh, on Davina’s other side, was pale, but she nodded resolutely at this.
“Together or not at all,” she affirmed.
Ailsa perhaps should have turned back at the reminder of this threat to her family. But she knew that stopping now wouldn’t solve anything. The threat to her family was already here. And the Donaghey Clan was more than just the four sisters. There were her people in there, too. They needed her. She could not abandon them now.
Yet, oh, how she wished Ewan were at her side.
There was no time to dwell on that, however. She squared her shoulders.
“Right then,” she said, nodding decisively. “Let’s go.”
They began the slow, treacherous ride up to the castle gates. With every passing minute, the building loomed over them more and more. Ailsa could only pray that this was a sign of its defense of the Donaghey line, not a prognostication of doom.
Gordon’s men must have seen them coming, for the gate creaked open as they neared, the slow turning of the winch seeming to take an age. As soon as the opening gaped wide—a tactical error that Ailsa assumed she was meant to see as an insult, as a sign that Gordon didn’t consider her or her sisters anything like a threat—three men appeared in the entryway.
The middle one wore a slimy smirk and stood with a confident posture that belied his small stature. Ailsa could tell, however, that he was the one to watch from the way the other two oriented themselves around him, as if waiting for the central man’s signal. His dark eyes flashed with malice as the sisters approached.
“Ladies,” he drawled, the word somehow sounding like a slur. “Welcome to Castle Dubh-Gheal. I am Bruce McTavis, the Laird’s second in command.”
Vaila growled, though whether it was because she was being “welcomed” to her own home by this stranger or because McTavis referred to Gordon as the Laird, Ailsa didn’t know. Each was as bad as the other.
She didn’t bother feigning politeness.
“If you know us, then you know why we’re here,” she said flatly. “We need to speak to Gordon.”
McTavis’ smile grew wider, crueler.
“I gather that ye meanLairdGordon?” he prompted, his tone saccharine.
Ailsa offered him nothing to this.
McTavis was evidently confident enough in his upper hand to ignore the slight.
“Never ye fret, lassie,” he said. His overly familiar tone made Ailsa ache to slap him. “His lairdship will be more than happy to see ye.”
“Indeed I will.”
Perhaps Gordon had been waiting for his cue—a pathetic bit of showmanship that no true laird would ever indulge in, Ailsa thought acidly—for just then he stepped out from behind the cluster of people who had emerged from the inner castle to see what was happening. Ailsa recognized most of them and was relieved to see that they were well, even as she wished they were far from whatever violence was destined to unfold.
The members of Donaghey Clan cast Gordon looks of thinly veiled hatred as he strolled through their ranks to come face Ailsa. She had never seen him up close, but she saw now that, for all that he was tall and well-built, he lacked the handsome grace her father had possessed, no matter their mutual parentage. Instead, Gordon’s features were twisted with cruelty, like he might have been attractive if not for the poison in his soul that leached out through every inch of him.
And his eyes. They were like ice. Like he had never so much as thought a kind thing in his life.
“The prodigal daughters, returned home,” he drawled, looking up at the sisters on their horses with a sneer. “Of course, I have no use for you any longer, Ailsa, now that you’ve ruined yourself with that bastard Buchanan.” He grinned then, looking as though he could rip flesh from bones with that smile. “Tell me, is your dear husband enjoying his new position as laird?”
Ailsa was made of hate. It coursed through her as thoroughly as the blood pulsed through her veins. She just raised her chin, looked down her nose at this scum who took what he pleased.
Behind Gordon, her people were growing restless. She could see it in the way they held their bodies too still, the way their eyes tracked his every move.
