“Then the clan is yours.”
“I appreciate the offer but I am far too old to make a good laird.”
“Then choose my replacement for me. If the king doesn’t exile the entire clan, of course.”
Lachlan looked more serious than he had in a long time. He took Jock’s hand in his own, looking him right in the eye. “You just make sure you come back.”
Jock shook before saying one final thing. “I doubt it will even work.”
The keep felt different when he walked into it. There was something in the air that he couldn’t put his finger on, like the sensation just before a lightning strike in the worst of the winter storms.
He paused inside the entrance hall. Two floors below him, under the stores, Robin sat in the darkness. He needed the truth from him before the king arrived if he was to keep his head and save the clan from ruin. Did he really have time to be chasing after women?
It won’t even work, he told himself, looking at the key by the light of the candle skewered on the sconce beside him. The key might have worked to send her wherever she’d gone but it would be madness to think it might work for him.
He would try it, nothing would happen, then he would go and talk to Robin, find out where the clan’s money had gone.
With the key in his hand, he made his way up to his bedchamber. Reaching the corridor, he was brought up short by a figure in front of him.
“My laird,” William said. “Come quickly, your father is ill.”
Jock followed the guard up the next flight. The door to the top chamber was open and inside Eddard was sprawled the length of the floor, eyes tight shut, shallow breaths the only sign that he was alive.
“Father,” Jock said, kneeling beside him. “What happened?”
William stood beside them. “It happened after supper. Morag slept so Eddard ate alone. Then he just collapsed.”
Eddard’s eyes opened and fixed on his son. He reached up, grabbing Jock’s baldric with superhuman strength.
“The barefoot man,” Eddard said, his voice strained. “He returns. I feel him again.”
“What? Who’s the barefoot man?”
“He comes for the key. Dinnae let him take it.”
“But who is he?”
“He needs the key to get to the future. He tried with your grandfather and with me. He returns for you. I feel him like poison in my veins. Take the key, my boy. Hide it. Hide it well. The one you love will protect it and you from him.
“I thought him gone forever but he returns. He is coming.” Eddard’s grip slackened and he fell back, his eyes closing once more.
“Get him to the infirmary,” Jock said to William. “With the utmost haste.”
“Aye, my laird. What of your mother?”
“Where is she?”
“She sleeps still.”
“Then let her remain there. Send a replacement guard for yourself. You will protect my father until I come to the infirmary. I shall not be long.”
The guard lifted Eddard into his arms and headed out the door. It pained Jock to see his father like that. Should he go to him at once?
He shook his head. No, there was nothing he could do that Alan could not. He thought about what his father had told him. Take the key. Hide it from the barefoot man. Whoever he was.
Jock crossed to the bedchamber, observing his mother resting well, peace upon her face. Would she even know Eddard was gone when she woke up?
He would have given all the money in the treasury, the key, anything, for his parents to be back to normal.
