“Good night, Bruce.” He closed the door, locking and then bolting it.
“What was that?” Heather asked, eyes half open.
“Nothing important. You sleep.”
She lay back down, rolling onto her side, knees curled up toward her chest.
He crossed the room and tucked the blanket around her, making sure she was sound asleep before returning to the door. He sat with his back against it, looking across the room at her as the candle burned down.
His men might be suspicious of her but it only took one look at her sleeping form to confirm what his heart already knew. She was no killer. She was no spy either.
That was good to know but it merely led to another problem. He was going to have to deal with the suspicions arising in the castle.
The best way to do that was to find the real killer. His eyes closed and he found himself thinking about Susanne. She had been working for him since his childhood. A good fifteen years older than him, he’d had more than one cuff around the ear from her while he was growing up, most often for stealing food from the kitchen while she was managing the cooks.
She was a good person. She had served the clan well. Never marrying, she had spent her life looking after the MacGregors and this was how she’d been repaid?
It was scant consolation to think she had been ensured a place in Heaven. His fists clenched as he thought about her last moments. No doubt they were filled with fear and bewilderment. Had she seen the killer’s face? Did she die knowing who had done it to her?
Had she any enemies? The only one he could think of was Keir, the man she’d rejected when he’d proposed marriage. That had been ten years ago though. Could he hold a grudge that long? It seemed unlikely but he made a mental note to question Keir in the morning.
Who else? Maybe one of the servants thinking she pushed them too hard.
There was always the possiblity that someone from the outlaw camp had infiltrated the castle. Should he go out and check the defenses? Make sure no one had cut the drawbridge rope or raised the portcullis gate to let them inside without a fight?
He dismissed the idea. His men knew what they were doing. They would keep good watch. And there was only one place he wanted to be. That was by Heather, making sure she was safe until the sun rose tomorrow morning.
When he fell asleep he dreamed of the siege, that it lasted a lifetime. He grew old and so did Heather, her blaming him for a miserable life stuck inside castle walls for all their lives, the clan starving to death around them. “You caused this,” she said, pointing a bony finger at him. She looked like the old crone all of a sudden. “You ruined my life.”
He woke up sweating despite the chill of the room, the image of her accusation fresh in his mind. He did not sleep for the rest of the night.
