‘Amazing how slack that Donnan’s tongue got when I put his brother under torture.’
‘You wouldn’t.’
‘I would, and I did. Those lads are in a bad way. They haven’t much time.’
‘You lie.’
‘Do you want to trust in that? Are your friends of so little value that you would sacrifice them for your pride? Their fate now depends on you, lass.’
Lowri sprang forward, jarring her ankle on the chains. ‘Where are they? What have you done with Donnan and Rory?’
‘They are a lot less comfortable than you,’ sneered Griffin.
‘Aye, the young one is crying for his mother,’ said Allard, with the glee of a child pulling the wings off a fly.
Desperation blunted Lowri’s pride. ‘Please. Let them go. They had nothing to do with this.’
‘They were reiving my cattle. Caught red-handed,’ sniffed Griffin.
‘Hang them high for all to see, I say,’ snarled the hateful Allard.
‘Too quick. Too merciful. We must make an example of these villains.’
She had to stop this. ‘It was my plan and mine alone. Laird Macaulay, you cannot hurt them. Please.’
‘So it’s Laird Macaulay now. Well, lass, I will think on it. In the meantime, you may reflect on your folly in crossing me. Think of a way to make it up to me, or their end will be slow and painful.’
‘How? How can I make it up to you?’
‘I am sure we can think of something,’ said Allard.
‘Aye, something that satisfies everyone,’ said Griffin, with a grin in his son’s direction. They exchanged a chilling look. Were they going to take her out into a cold dawn and murder her? No one knew where she was, and Griffin Macaulay was capable of it. Or did they have something worse in mind, something carnal? The leer on Allard’s face made Lowri’s stomach turn.
Griffin leaned in and put his palm to her cheek. ‘Aye, you are a bonnie little thing. Yet you will not sway the magistrate towards mercy after what you’ve done.’
‘Magistrate?’
‘Aye, lass. You need to answer for your crimes, and it just so happens he is a distant cousin of mine.’
‘Very distant, I hope,’ said Lowri, with defiance she did not feel.
‘Aye, but close enough that I have him in my pocket. He has taken a shine to my niece, Catherine, the bonnie one your brother turned his nose up at. If the verdict goes my way, he can have her in marriage, and we can all watch you get strung up as a wedding present.’
Lowri turned away lest Griffin see her horror. She had little faith in the decency of men, so if the magistrate’s lust stood between her and a noose, she was already dead.
With this parting cruelty, Griffin took his leave, but Allard lingered, his eyes roaming over her from head to toe.
‘Soon,’ he said with a smirk, and then left her to her thoughts – a far worse torture than their barbs. Her friends’ plight was all her fault. She had talked Donnan and Rory into raiding Macaulay cattle. She had laid the plan, which had gone horribly wrong, and got them all captured. Lowri squeezed her eyes tightly shut to banish the memory, but it demanded to be let in.
A moonlit night at Bluff Point. The Macaulays, complacent and arrogant, thinking no one would dare steal from them. Even now, she could still feel the sense of righteousness burning through her veins. Griffin Macaulay had grievously insulted her brother after he had refused to take a Macaulay bride for the sake of an alliance. And why should he? He was in love with the beautiful Cecily MacCreadie, and she with him. Oh, it was painful to think of them now, happy and unaware of her fate. And how could they know, when she was always going her own way, wandering off for weeks every time the walls of Fellscarp, and the bleakness of her life, started to close in?
The Macaulays had come out of nowhere and surrounded them before they could flee. Donnan had tried to fight them off, and so had she, but then Rory had been knocked off his horse, and when she had tried to go to his aid, she had been taken. She hadn’t seen either of them again in the confusion, and she hadn’t told anyone where they were going that night. Peyton would have stopped her if he’d known.
‘Don’t raise Macaulay’s ire. Stop and think before you act,’ he had said many times. But she had been arrogant, foolhardy, and selfish, and now her misguided attempt to champion her brother’s cause and avenge the insult to the Strachan name had led to her doom. Griffin Macaulay must want something from her, and if she didn’t figure out what that was soon, Donnan and Rory would die.
The punishment for reiving was hanging.
Lowri let the tears come.
