Another crooked grin. Damn him. “Ye just have been staring at me rather intently for quite some time. I ken ye’ve seen me at my weakest, but I do think I could still best ye. Just in case ye were thinking of it.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Ye are in an uncommonly good mood. Did ye escape the Master Healer? Is that why?”
Ciaran spread his arms grandly, though he did wince slightly when the motion pulled at his shoulder.
“I have been freed from the healer’s tender care,” he said happily. “He says that in a few more days I’ll even be fit to ride.”
Och, it drove her mad that she was charmed by how happy he seemed at this prospect. But she was a Donaghey through and through, and she understood loving a horse beyond reason.
“He is a good horse,” she admitted, because she was annoyed with Ciaran, but not so annoyed that she would defame Shadowbane. And, like any good horseman, Ciaran grew visibly happier at the praise to his mount.
“It means much to hear that from a member of your family,” he said.
And, to her unending frustration, that madeherlight with happiness, too.
Before she could say anything foolish, the door to the Great Hall opened with such force that it banged against the wall, drawing the attention of everyone who had come in for their morning meal. Through the door rushed Ailsa, wee Jamie in her arms, a somber-faced Ewan at her back.
Ailsa looked terrified as she clutched at her son, though her expression dropped into stark relief as she spotted Eilidh.
“What’s wrong?” Eilidh asked, her verbal sparring with Ciaran forgotten in an instant as she turned to reach for her sister. Ailsa’s face was as pale as linen, and she looked liable to drop at any moment. Eilidh might have tried to take the babe to encourage her sister to sit, if not for the frantic way Ailsa held her son to her breast. Unlike Ailsa, who was practically trembling with fear, Ewan was radiating fury.
“Oh, thank the Lord, Eilidh,” Ailsa gasped, reaching out one arm to snatch her sister against her feverishly. “Ye were the last of us I hadn’t seen and ye weren’t in your rooms. I was afraid…”
The sight of her sister near to tears would send a spasm of fear through Eilidh. Ailsa had been stalwart throughout the entire ordeal with their parents’ murders, the various attacks from Gordon—through the entirety of the war. The idea that she might be driven to weep meant that something dreadful had happened.
“What’s wrong?” she asked again, pulling gently from her sister’s grasp so she could inspect her face. “Where are Davina and Vaila?”
“They’re fine,” Ailsa said at once, and Eilidh’s knees threatened to buckle with relief. It was only a hand at her back that steadied her in the crucial moment; without her realizing it, Ciaran had gotten to his feet and come to stand behind her. His touch was gone as soon as it had appeared, but Eilidh appreciated it nonetheless.
“But…” Ailsa interjected, pausing to kiss the downy hair atop wee Jamie’s head, as if she couldn’t bear so much as another breath without reassuring herself that her baby was fine. “My wine taster… she’s dead. Someone tried to poison me last night at the feast.”
“Oh, oh dear Lord,” Eilidh murmured in horror.
She had only spoken a handful of times to Ailsa’s wine taster, a man in his late thirties who had liked to joke that he had the best work in the Keep. It was unthinkable that he was now dead, poisoned, and that someone had tried to murder her sister.
Echoes of this news rippled through the dining hall; Ailsa’s voice had been tremulous, but it had carried. Expressions of outrage showed on the faces of the Buchanan clansfolk. Ailsa might not have been their lady for long, but she was beloved, and her people were loyal.
“Nobody else had been found harmed, which confirms that this attack was intended for my wife directly,” Ewan called in his steady Laird’s voice. He was putting on a courageous showfor his people, but his fingers were white where they clutched Ailsa’s shoulder. “We dinnae yet ken what villain perpetrated this attack, but two of the kitchen staff are missing.”
This sent another ripple of dismay through the crowd, some expressing shocked disbelief, others looking betrayed that one of their own would act so cruelly.
“Everyone within the Keep’s walls will be questioned,” Ewan said, his voice unyielding. “Ye’ll be interviewed by the guards about anything ye saw or heard before and during the feast.”
Eilidh didn’t blame Ewan for the way his eyes flickered to Ciaran, not when he was the new arrival at Buchanan Keep, but she felt an instinctive denial. It wasn’t him.
It couldn’t be him, could it?
“We will find out who did this,” Ewan proclaimed with a laird’s absolute authority. “And punishment will be delivered to anyone who thought they could try to harm my wife.”
“I had best not let myself get my hands on themhac na gallawho tried to poison my sister,” Davina said darkly as she launched a dirk at a target and caught only the outer ring.
“Davina!” Arran said scoldingly from behind where Mairi, Davina, and Eilidh were lined up to practice their knife throwing. Eilidh chuckled at her gentle sister calling anyone the son of an undignified female, but she guessed they had all been quite affected by the events.
Davina arched an eyebrow over her shoulder at her husband.
“Dinnae tell me that ye object to my language!” she scoffed, clearly not taking any reprimand to heart.
Nor did she need to.
