Instead, he’d had hours of time to wonder if maybe he was wrong. Time to wonder what would happen if she didn’t come back before the king arrived. Would she come back to find he’d already been executed? Did time pass at different rates for the two of them? What were the rules of all this anyway?
He decided it was better not to think about such things. Once he had returned to his own time, with a handful of pens to add to his collection, he settled at the table in his room, writing what might prove to be his last will and testament. Once that was done, he went to visit his father in the infirmary.
“How is he?” he asked Alan upon his arrival.
“I would be lying if I said well. He is fading, I am afraid. It is the strangest thing. I could have sworn it was poison. That is the only thing I know to have such an effect. Look at the protrusion of veins there in his arms, the tightening of the muscles around his neck.”
Jock looked down at the figure underneath the blankets. That was his father, the man who had been known to split logs with a single blow of an ax, the only man ever to swim all the way to Kirrin Island and back in under an hour. He was little more than a shade of his former self.
“Poison,” the parrot called out from the preparation room. “Poison, poison, poison.”
Alan crossed over the room and pulled the door closed, muffling the sound of the bird. “I will do what I can for him,” he said when he returned. “You have my word.”
“Call me the moment he wakes,” Jock said, taking a last look at his stricken father before leaving the infirmary. Next, he visited the dungeon and tried his best to get Robin to confess.
The man had an inhuman ability to withstand pain. No matter what Jock did to him, he said nothing, only laughed bitterly and mocked his laird for his foolishness.
“You should let me go before it’s too late,” Robin said, spitting out blood while Jock wiped his knuckles clean. “I will put in a good word for you with the king. Tell him you spent it all and beg his forgiveness on your behalf.”
“Why are you doing this?” Jock asked. “Have I not treated you well over the years? And my father before me? Why would you betray your own blood? I dinnae understand.”
“People change,” Robin said, grinning up at him.
“I trusted you. The clan trusted you. I cannae believe you are the man my father trusted to take care of our finances.”
“Your father?” Robin spat, his voice suddenly deeper than usual. “I will have my revenge on him and on you.”
He said nothing else, no matter what Jock said or did. In the end he left the financier to the darkness and headed upstairs.
He returned to his room and took up the MacGregor clan book, his pen at the ready to add a few paragraphs of his own. He had barely written a sentence before the door opened behind him and he heard a woman’s voice.
He turned and there she was.
They talked for hours. He told her all about Robin and how strange it was that a man he had known and trusted for years would be capable of such an act of treachery. He told her how Robin was refusing to talk, how angry that made him.
He told her about his parents, about their rapid decline over the last year. He even told her what he knew of the barefoot man, the few snippets of information he had gleaned from his father. He ended by passing her the letter he had received.
“The key to her heart,” Daisy read out loud. “Is that what you think?” She looked at the silver key, smiling as she did so.
“I think I’m glad you decided to come back.”
“Let me get all this straight. If you can find the lost money, you can fund the king’s campaign and keep your head. It doesn’t matter if Robin talks or not then, does it? As long as you find where he’s hidden the missing treasure.”
“Aye, I suppose not but how else could I find it without his confession. It could be anywhere.”
She stood up, crossing to the window in time to see the sun rising over the mountains. “It’s truly a beautiful place here,” she said, turning to face him again. “Isn’t it?”
“I suppose so. I’ve never really given it much thought.”
“Do something for me.”
“What?”
“Tell the king you have the money.”
“But I havenae.”
“You will have.” She crossed the room to the door and unlocked it. “I shall be back as quick as I can.”
