“Lass? Where are ye?” Diarmuid ventured across the threshold and into the chamber. The wind thrashed at the shutters, rattling them like it was some beast intent on ripping them free to get inside.
Perhaps the wind was carrying the sound from somewhere else.
There was a step behind him. He started to turn but pain jolted through him like lightning, a hard blow hitting his head. Diarmuid never finished turning. He crumpled to the floor.
Diarmuid’s other cousin Fingal emerged from the shadow at the end of the landing. He smiled, pleased with his evil deed. Fingal raised his hand, the thick pommel of his dagger catching a glint of light.
“Diarmuid? Are ye up there, man?” Barclay called.
Fingal grunted but melted back into the thick bed curtains.
“Sweet Christ, what were ye thinking to come in here?” Barclay exclaimed. He knelt down, trying to rouse Diarmuid.
His efforts failed. Barclay raced down to alert other members of the clan.
“I told ye it would work,” Ysenda declared gleefully after emerging from the other side of the bed.
Fingal nodded. “I need to finish him off.” He raised his dagger high, this time with the blade pointed at Diarmuid.
Ysenda caught his forearm. “If you spill his blood, they will know there was foul play. Let them think Brigitta has taken him for her groom.”
“He might recover,” Fingal warned her. “Better to make certain he is dead so I can be voted into the lairdship.”
“If Diarmuid is murdered, ye will be suspected of doing the deed because of what ye have to gain,” Ysenda insisted. “With just the right timing, we’ll have everyone believing that the curse has come for Errol and his blood line. After that, ye will be laird.”
“And if he wakes?” Fingal demanded.
Ysenda smiled. “I will finish him off with poison.”
“Give him the poison now,” Fingal insisted.
“Are ye daft?” Ysenda exclaimed. “I do not carry the vial about so I can be discovered. Do this my way. Ye cannot be suspected, even silently. Men vote without voicing their truest thoughts.”
Fingal sniffed but nodded. “Yer way.”
*
There was music.
Everything seemed hazy around him. Diarmuid tried to focus, but the music was the only thing that seemed clear.
He turned his head to one side, looking across the chamber. A woman sat there. She smiled sweetly at him while strumming the strings of a mandolin with slim fingers unmarked by the signs of hard labor.
“I am so happy you have come, my lord.”
She strummed some more, her hair and dress perfectly arranged. The chair she sat on was also placed to provide him with the best view of her performance. A table near her was draped with a fine tapestry. There were candles burning for light, but they also added the sweet scent of beeswax to the air.
A noble bride.
She was educatedand tutored in all of the fine arts so that she might offer her husband an evening of refined entertainment before he took his ease in her sweetly scented bed linens. No tavern companionship could compare.
Noble bride?
Diarmuid frowned. He needed to recall something important, but the music lured him away from thinking. It would be so simple to just return her smile and partake in the entertainment she was so happy to lavish upon him.
But…there was something important.
It needled him.
