Isla turned her horse toward home with a jerk.
“We should go back and confront Glenmore now,” she said. “Drag Morlich to the gate and make him admit what he’s done before the whole valley.”
“And what then?” Edward asked. “Glenmore will deny it. Call Tom a liar. Say we are making mischief to distract from Alistair’s debts. He has influence. Men will believe what suits them.”
“I do not care what men believe,” she snapped. “I care that he set my home on fire.”
“As do I,” Edward said. “But if we accuse him without proof, we give him the chance to bury this. To send Morlich away. To silence other witnesses. If we are to bring this to daylight, we must do it carefully.”
She glared at him. “Carefully is not satisfying.”
“Satisfying is punching him in that smug mouth,” Edward agreed. “I am very tempted. Effective is another matter.”
Her grip eased a fraction. “You are saying we wait.”
“I am saying we gather more from Tom,” he said. “We speak to Alistair. We look at Glenmore’s accounts, if we can. Men do not burn their neighbors’ stables without motive. When we understand why, we will know where to strike.”
She ground her teeth. “I hate that you are right.”
He smiled faintly. “It happens occasionally.”
She looked back at Tom, who trudged along with his bundle, exhausted.
“We will make him pay,” she said. Not a question. A vow.
Chapter 26
The rage came on her like a Highland squall fast, sharp, leaving her breathless. Isla paced the length of what had been the Strathmore morning room, fists clenched at her sides. The walls were smoke-stained, one window had cracked from the heat, a starburst of lines distorting the view of the hills.
“Nigel Blackwood,” she said, tasting the name like poison. “Burning my home. Sending his son with oil and straw as if we were a house of vermin to be smoked out.”
Alistair sat in the one surviving armchair, elbows on his knees, soot still ground into the lines of his knuckles. He looked, for once, older than his years.
“We do not know that he ordered it,” he said. “Morlich is an idiot. He could have …” His voice trailed off. Even he could not conjure a harmless explanation for pouring lamp oil in another man’s stable.
“His idiot son does not fill his own cans,” Isla snapped. “And Glenmore knew. He bragged of sending men to save our horses. He dismissed the man who burned his hands for him. It is all of a piece.”
She stopped pacing, drew a breath that tasted of ash, and forced her hands to unclench. Fury was a luxury she could not indulge in long; there was too much to do. Too many people to shelter.
“Then there are the love letters.”
Alistair growled in his throat, as though unwilling to even think of it.
“It does not prove anything,” he said at last, but there was no conviction in it. “Mother received letters from every idiot who fancied himself in love with her.”
“And kept none of them,” Isla pointed out, “but she kept his.”
Alistair’s jaw tightened. “It does not mean she … that they …” He could not quite finish.
“It means,” Isla said more gently, because his eyes were starting to look raw, “that Glenmore once wrote to her as if he had some claim. And now he sets a match to our stables and has his men rescue the horses as if he is a benevolent neighbor. He swore revenge, Alistair. He told her so.”
“You do not know that,” he objected.
“No,” she admitted. “But I intend to.”
He looked at the letter again. “If Father knew …”
“He would have torn Glenmore’s throat out with his bare hands,” she said. “Which may be why Glenmore waited until Father was in his grave to strike.”
