“So that’s why he plans to rob the tax train then,” Jessica said more to herself than to her fellow prisoner. “It’s funny. I never knew that word was so old.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind. Just talking to myself. Why are you looking like that? There’s something else isn’t there?”
“He’s been doping the Laird and Lady. It was the only way he could get them to stay in hiding. He’s going to blame the Laird for the crime, go tell the King that Cam stole it all.”
“Why do that?”
“Because then Cam gets his head cut off for the crime and Ronald can claim the Lairdship for himself. It’s funny, I never thought he’d have the brains to come up with something like that. He never seemed that smart.”
“And he put you in here to stop you talking?”
“Aye but I reckon he’s forgotten about me. He said I’d be dead by the next day and yet here I am, surviving on the mice and rainwater.”
“We need to get out of here, tell the Laird and Lady of his scheme before it’s too late.”
“We are locked in a dungeon, lass. There is no escape until the door is unlocked.”
“I’m a private investigator. I’ve been locked in quite a few places in my time. Just give me a minute to think.”
She got up and walked around the room, examining it in detail before turning back to her companion. “I have an idea.”
Chapter Eleven
Eddard sat cross legged on the floor of the cell, preserving his energy. He had no idea how long he might be down there or how often food might be provided, if at all.
The steward had spoken of execution and he knew exactly what that entailed. He had seen a hanging once before his exile. He remembered nothing of the crime committed, only that it must have been very serious.
The condemned man stood at the top of the steps, his hands bound behind his back, his eyes wild with fear as he begged for someone, anyone in the crowd to help him, to save him from what was going to happen.
Eddard stood with all the others. He didn’t want to but his father had made him. What he remembered was the trembling of the prisoner’s legs as he was walked to the spot. He was lifted onto the stool, his legs bound.
“It’s so he can’t kick,” Eddard’s father told him. “Sometimes they struggle.” The noose was wrapped around the man’s neck as he continued to plead for mercy.
The priest intoned a loud prayer for the soul of the condemned and then the sight Eddard could remember as if it were yesterday, even though the man’s name had long left his memory.
The stool was kicked away and in that moment the man locked eyes with Eddard. It was for the briefest of instants before the rope went taut but it was long enough.
In that look Eddard saw only abject terror, the like of which he had never seen before or since.
In the cell of MacGregor Castle he had time to think of that man. Had he been held in the same cell? Perhaps pacing back and forth? Perhaps muttering prayers or curses to himself as he waited.
Eddard was silent. If execution was to be his end he would accept it. What he would not accept, what he would never accept, was the execution of Jessica. She had committed no crime. She had done not a thing wrong since she arrived in his life. All she wanted was to go home.
He had brought her here, he had lied that she was the Laird and Lady’s daughter, he had used her to get back into the castle. He had put her in danger.
The thought pained him far more than any fear of execution or torture. She was only at risk because of him. Her life would have been infinitely better if she had never met him.
He cursed his own idiocy. How could he have been so stupid? To have thought he could simply wander back into the castle after all these years and pick things up where he left them, get rid of the man no one else could, as if he were savior of the clan. He was an arrogant fool and perhaps he deserved his fate.
His fists clenched without him realizing. He pushed them into the rotten straw underneath him, ignoring the smell, ignorant of the feel of decades of filth under his fingers. An anger rose in him, a righteous anger that he would do at least one good thing before his end.
No matter how many came for him, no matter how soon, or how slow. He would save her. He had no idea how he would do it but that mattered not. He would rescue her and get her home, away from all this danger.
Maybe she was from the future. Maybe the key would work. He would leave that to fate. What he could control, he would. For now that meant controlling his temper and conserving his energy.
He tried not to think about how close they had come to succeeding. When he had punched Ronald on the jaw, he should have knocked him out, not rushed past into the castle.
