Chapter Eighteen
Mora looked to the table at the back of the hall. Her uncle looked much better than he had when she had last seen him, but he looked angry. That did not bode well for her.
Then she glanced toward her cousins. Robert was sneering in that way he seemed to favor, and the other three brothers looked miserable, especially Murdoch. Since her uncle was busy fumbling with a bunch of papers, she decided to have a look at the surprisingly large crowd that had come to see this.
She did not realize a hanging was such a crowd pleaser, she thought angrily. Then she tried to push the anger away, except it would not leave. This was so unfair and her uncle knew it.
Suddenly Robert tensed and looked behind them. It was enough to have his brothers looking, too, and there were almost smiles on their faces. Robert looked as if he wished he could take up his sword and go after whatever, or whomever, he saw.
Curious as to what they were all looking at, she looked over her shoulder. A faint smile curved her lips when she saw Gybbon, Sigimor, and Harcourt all sitting there with their arms crossed. The looks they were sending her uncle and his sons would certainly make her rethink whatever she was about to do. Unfortunately, all they could do was glare, as they would have been disarmed before entering the hall.
Then she noticed two men at Harcourt’s side in the same pose. It took her a moment to recognize them as, in the nearly three years they had been gone, there had been changes. She took a step toward them and Manus again tightened his grip.
“My brothers,” she whispered, and Hilda was suddenly at her side.
“Lass, ye have to face the laird.”
Then her brothers looked at her and smiled. It was not a dream. Somehow her brothers had arrived home, safe, just when she needed them. The roaring in her ears grew loud and, with a soft sigh, she gave in to the blackness sweeping over her mind.
Gybbon and Mora’s two brothers leapt to their feet, but they had to wrestle with a few of Ogilvy’s guards to get out of their seats. Gybbon was surprised when every one of the brothers save Robert also stood up, but it was Murdoch who acted. He moved fast, sliding on his knees over the floor until he could catch Mora. Sigimor moved the guards blocking them out of the way simply by picking up one and tossing him into the others.
By the time they reached Mora’s side, Murdoch had roused her and she stared wide-eyed at her brothers. “Ye have come home.”
“Aye, Mora. Ye have gotten yourself in a tangle, havenae ye?” said Niall as he chaffed her hand between his.
“Oh, aye, I have indeed. But I did get some friends that may help,” she said as he helped her sit up.
“We have met. Perhaps later we can have a chat about who that fellow Gybbon is.” He nodded when she blushed.
Mora suddenly had to get away from Niall as she was in no state to be answering any questions about Gybbon. That was a conversation she needed to have with all her wits clear and working at their sharpest. Finally getting on her feet, she hugged David as best as she could with her wrists tied together.
“Has Andrew seen ye?” she asked David.
“Aye, Harcourt brought him to Sigimor’s manor. We have been rather busy trying to get ye free of this trap. We ken he is protected and that is enough for now.”
“Is your little family moment done now?” Robert drawled. “Can we get back to the judgment?”
Mora gripped Niall’s arm when she felt his body tense and looked at Robert. “Aye. Let us get to this.” She went back to standing in front of the table where the laird sat. “M’laird.”
“Ye are here to answer for charges of murder and theft,” he said.
“I see. And who brought such charges against me?”
“Robert Ogilvy.”
“Of course, and ye believe him to be an honest source?”
He glared at her. “He is my son.”
“Aye, and I am but your niece.”
She just stood as he went through all the things Robert was trying to blame on her. Her brothers protested and several times Gybbon pointed out she could not have done that because she was with him or at Sigimor’s, but it still left enough to hang her with. Mora felt her heart sink as her uncle declared her guilty and read her punishment out. Even when one knew they were innocent, she discovered it was hard to be charged, convicted, and even sentenced to hang.
As Jonathan and her uncle stepped out from behind the table and proceeded to walk her outside, Mora noticed that her brothers, Sigimor, Gybbon, and Harcourt were gone. That five such sizeable men had slipped out so silently surprised her. She hoped they were not planning something too dangerous to free her. She did not want to be the reason that the tight circle of alliances that made the area so peaceful had been destroyed.
Once outside, she blinked at the sunlight. She had not realized how she had missed it, but was annoyed that she had been in the dark long enough to react badly to its return. She looked at the scaffold and resisted the strong urge to fight the hold the two men had on her arms.
Then she noticed all the men circling the scaffold and wondered why they were two deep. She was no threat. One of the men standing behind a man leaned around the man and winked at her quickly before ducking back behind the man. The man he was behind was shaking in a way that told her he was badly smothering a laugh. Mora was sure that had been one of the MacFingals that hung around Sigimor. Looking around at each of the ones with a man behind them, she realized that a lot of them had red hair, and from what she saw, a lot of them were actually having a pleasant conversation with their guard.
