Sir Fergus stared at Laird MacIvor in shock. “Have ye gone to his side then? Is there naught but betrayal in these lands? I thought ye were a mon of your word. Ye have certainly deafened me with the claiming of it for hours.”
“I am on my side, laddie. Ye are the one who had no intention of keeping his word. Did ye nay listen at the walls? I gave Angus my word that Sir Artan would be returned alive. I mean to keep it. If that means I step aside from ye, weel, so be it.”
Sir Fergus took a step toward the opening of his tent only to find Ian standing there. “Nay, laddie. Ye will find no aid there. Two of ours stand guard.”
Now Cecily could see the fear creep over Sir Fergus. He realized he had no ally and was trapped in his own tent by Sir Angus and his men. If he had not been planning to murder her to satisfy his greed and kill Artan to satisfy his anger, she just might have felt sorry for him. Cecily did not like the idea of seeing him killed, however, but in some ways, she was just as trapped as he was. Well, she thought, she was the wife of a Highland warrior and she would undoubtedly see men killed from time to time. Best to get the first shock of it over and done with.
“So, ye mean to murder me, do ye?” Sir Fergus said.
“Och, nay, laddie,” said Angus. “Now, I would like naught better than to kill ye for what ye have done to my lad here and what ye planned to do to my niece, but I really just wish to get my lad and his lass back to Glascreag as quickly as possible.”
“She isnae his lass. She is mine!”
“Ye havenae got the sense to ken when ye have lost, do ye? Leave it be, lad. Keep your life and go home. The money isnae worth it.”
“’Tis a fortune, ye old fool, and this wench has to pay for humiliating me by running away with that Highlander during our wedding celebration.”
“Ye cannae spend a fortune if your corpse is rotting away in these lands, now can ye.”
“Nay, I cannae let him win. I cannae let her win. I had this all carefully planned.”
“Go home, Sir Fergus,” Cecily said. “If ’tis a fortune ye hunger for, then pry it out of my guardian’s hands. They were willing to give me to ye as weel as a near fortune just to shut ye up. Ye can still play that game with them. Just leave me out of it.”
“Nay, nay.” He shook his head and Cecily feared he had lost his mind, if only briefly. “I was humiliated. I willnae let that barbarian beat me!”
He lunged toward Artan even as he drew his sword. Angus, Ian, and Cecily all moved at once, which only impeded them all. By the time Angus broke free of the tangle, Sir Fergus was lifting his sword over Artan, who seemed too dazed to get out of the way. Cecily could neither move nor speak, terrified that she was about to see her husband murdered right in front of her eyes.
Then, suddenly, Laird MacIvor moved and swiftly settled the problem.
Chapter 18
Sir Fergus’s head landed right at her feet. Cecily stared down into his wide eyes and thought how surprised he looked. She wondered why she was not retching and decided she must be in shock. One minute it had looked as if Sir Fergus was going to succeed in killing Artan and none of them would be able to stop him. In the very next moment, Laird MacIvor was standing there with a bloodied sword in his hand and Sir Fergus’s head was touching the tips of her shoes while his body was sprawled out next to Artan.
“It is touching my shoes,” she whispered.
Angus picked her up and set her down again several feet away. “There now, lass. Just take a few deep breaths and ye will be fine.”
She did as he told her to and watched as he and Ian moved Sir Fergus’s body away from Artan and began to untie her husband. When Laird MacIvor calmly cleaned his sword off on Sir Fergus’s jupon, apparently unconcerned that that jupon was on a headless body, Cecily decided that she would probably never understand men. Sir Fergus deserved to die. She felt no remorse or sorrow about that. It was just the quick, cold way that it was done and how none of the men were troubled by having the body—both parts—right there in the tent with them.
“How are ye going to explain Sir Fergus’s death?” Angus asked Laird MacIvor.
“Weel, if I have to explain it at all, I will say that ye did it,” the man replied.
“Fair enough. I was certainly ready to do it. But what do ye mean byif?”
“I dinnae intend to be here when his men discover the fool’s body.”
Angus nodded. “I had wondered on that. All your men sitting outside the camp made me think ye were planning to slip away. ’Tis the first step to leaving, isnae it?”
“Aye, I should have left earlier, but I gave ye my word that the lad would come home alive and I meant to keep it. That fool let me ken that he didnae intend to keep his word. He was a bad one.”
“He was. Somehow I dinnae think his men will be crying for vengeance. Or his family.”
“Nay, do ye ken one of his men tried to tell him about how all of my men had moved out of the camp, but the fool wouldnae listen, wouldnae e’en hear what the mon had to say. Threw a tankard at his head and the man finally gave up. Mayhap if Fergus had learned to listen to others he wouldnae be dead now. Has me thinking hard, though.”
“Oh? On what?”
“On the way me and all the MacIvor lairds afore me have had covetous eyes on Glascreag.” He shook his head. “Look what I joined forces with just to get a chance to take it from you. I begin to think it has become a sickness with us, and truth tell, I cannae e’en remember why we think we have any right to it.”
