Trying again, she gave the hilt a twist. Stone ground against stone and triumph surged. With one more hard tweak, she pulled it free. The effort sent her stumbling back against the opposite wall, and she held the sword aloft with a victorious grin. All six inches of it.
“Sometimes six inches is all ye need, or so I’ve heard.”
Aila steadied the tip at the opening of the slot and jabbed it in. Whatever she hit within gave way without a sound and Sir Clinksalot did a sidestep to the right. “What the…?” She pointed the light from her phone at the floor to find that the statue had shifted far enough to reveal an opening beneath the base. With a good shove, she was able to see that it was big enough for a person.
And intended for such if the ladder were any indication.
Dropping to her hands and knees, she stuck her head through the opening and used her phone to look around. A pitch-black tunnel of indeterminable length extended back toward the western tower. That was it. Lifting her head, she found herself nose-to-nose with Rab. “I dinnae suppose ye can climb a ladder?”
He panted merrily, tail swinging from side to side so hard his entire back end shifted with the effort. A garbledwoo-woo-wooand Rab licked his chops before his tongue lolled out one side of his mouth.
“Excited, are ye?” She scratched his ear with a grin. “I am, too.”
Aila sat back on her heels and looked toward the stairs. Finn hadn’t returned yet. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t shortly. When he came back, she wanted to be there. Besides, it would be better to wait until she rendezvoused with Tris and Brontë and had Finn at her back before she went down there.
“We’ll come back later when the others can come with us. Tris and Brontë will want to see this. Finn, too.” She patted Rab’s head and climbed to her feet. He looked up at her with what might have been construed as a frown. “Nay, it disnae have anything to do with how dark it is down there.”
One more garbled howl and Aila swore under her breath. Rab might not be able to climb a ladder.
But he could jump.
Chapter 33
Finn paused in the antechamber, out of sight from those within. Questioning a passing footman on the way to the solar, he’d been able to confirm that a Lady Etteridge accompanied Lord Etteridge to Inveraray. It gave him little satisfaction to have his suspicion proven correct.
He could think of no way to explain it other than that Marta had indeed lied in the letter she’d left for him and staged her own death to run away with the earl. What he couldn’t understand was why. Perhaps theirs hadn’t been the happiest of marriages in those final years. In the beginning, Finn had considered it a love match. He’d been taken by Marta’s delicate beauty and desired her greatly…or at least as greatly as he was aware a man could desire a woman at the time.
Her family and dowry were both pleasing, so he’d done what any noble gentleman did when he wanted a young reputable lady. He’d courted her long and hard, offered for her, and married her after an extended betrothal. Marta had teased his desire but put him off until after their vows had been said. She’d been as enthusiastic as he once they’d found their marriage bed. There was no way he’d mistaken that. Niall and Effie had been born in quick succession, less than two years into their union and only ten months apart.
True, his focus had turned away from being solely hers in the years after. Becoming a father had brought Finn the greatest joy of his life.
Marta had not felt the same.
Ian had been right about her. Finn’s memory glossed over the myriad disagreements they’d had over the intervening years. His wife had been like Effie in the aftermath of her illness — implacable, testy — without an ailment to blame. She didn’t like to share his attention. Finn did his best to make her happy. Or at least content. As for himself, he’d thought the state of their marriage adequate, if lacking the bliss of those first years.
When he’d gone off to support Prince Charlie first in Edinburgh then at Culloden, he knew she’d been glad to see him go.
It had never occurred to him that Marta had been so despondent that she would take a lover. Had she talked to him, he might have tried harder.
Och, Aila might have a point about talking over one’s feelings. There was much about that would make sense to him today if he’d taken the time to understand Marta’s problems.
There was little she could say now that would appease him. No motivation that would suffice. Staging her death had been a heartless thing to do. To him. Especially to Niall and Effie. What kind of woman lurked beneath the one he’d thought he’d known so well that she could have done something so brutal to her children?
Nay, he wasn’t here to hear her side of things. There was nothing that could excuse her actions. Not rape or abduction if that were even the case. Not when she sat there now of her own free will, alive and well, with no message ever having reached him with the news. She’d allowed him and their children to wallow in grief, allowed him to plot revenge and spend a year of his life toward its execution. Her actions had cast him adrift, lost to darkness, and prevented him from embracing the future…and Aila…with a free heart.
Her selfishness had nearly cost him everything.
And would still if he hadn’t been here today.
There would be repercussions for her actions. For Etteridge’s part in it, as well. The sort he’d spent more than a year contemplating would suffice. In part, at least.
Hands clasped behind his back to prevent him from pummeling the man, Finn stepped into the solar. “Ye wanted to see me, yer grace.”
A gasp sounded across the room, echoed by a low, male curse. Finn kept his gaze affixed to the duke though he couldn’t stop his teeth from clenching.
Argyll waved a glass in his direction. “Rossmore, so good of you to join us.”
The pure pomposity in his voice grated on Finn’s nerves. Politics aside, here was a man who’d sided with the English King George against his own countrymen. Granted, he had not personally raised arms from his lofty perch overlooking the Drummossie Moor during the battle at Culloden. Nay, he’d sat by the side of the Hanoverian commander, the Duke of Cumberland, and watched while the Redcoats — with his men among them — squelched the Jacobite rebellion in less than an hour. The blood of thousands of Scots was on his hands. Taking employment with him, even as a means to find his revenge, had been the hardest thing Finn had ever done.
