He heard a woman’s gasp behind him. He turned to find his sister staring at him. But that wasn’t what distracted him. It was the two people standing beside her.
“We’re right here, Eoin.” The smile on his wife’s face and the way she was looking at him made him wonder how much she’d overheard.
He was stunned. “I thought you left.”
Her mouth curved wryly. She looked down at their son and gave his hand a loving squeeze. “Well, someone reminded me that running away never solved any problems, and that MacDowells are fighters.”
“Even against pigheaded, humorless, too-smart-for-their-own-good horses’ backsides,” Eachann said proudly.
Margaret gasped, looking down at her son in horror. “You weren’t supposed to hear that.” She gave Eoin an embarrassed shrug. “I was talking to myself.”
Relief and an outpouring of happiness the likes of which he’d never felt swelled over him. He grinned. “Obviously louder than you realized.”
So focused on his wife, Eoin didn’t see the threat until too late. Beaten and bloodied, Fin lunged toward Margaret.
A flash of silver flickered in the torchlight.
Oh God, he had a blade!
Eoin cried out a warning, but it was too late. Fin snaked his arm around her waist and held the blade to her throat. “You already robbed me of a son, now I’m being cast out—”
Fin’s words were cut off as his eyes widened in horror. A moment later he dropped to the ground, landing with a deadly thud. Only then did Eoin see the hilt of his sister’s eating knife sticking from the back of his neck.
29
IT WAS EVENINGbefore Margaret had a chance to speak with Eoin alone. He had to tend to his shocked and traumatized sister, while Margaret did her best to ease the fears of their son, who’d nearly witnessed his mother’s death before seeing his aunt’s killing of his uncle.
She knew it would be some time before the events of the day were forgotten, but warm milk, a butter cake with sugar and cinnamon, and lots of hugs had gone a long way to soothe the boy’s distress. Eachann was sleeping peacefully by the time Eoin entered their chamber.
A look in the direction of the antechamber was his first question.
“He’ll be fine,” Margaret answered. “I’m not sure he understood exactly what was happening. Frankly, neither did I.”
Eoin looked exhausted, wearily removing his weapons and tossing hiscotunon a bench before sitting down on the edge of the bed opposite her chair before the brazier. “How much did you hear?”
“Enough to know that you were coming for me.” She looked over at him, her eyes wide in the firelight. “You realized I was telling the truth?”
“If I had been thinking rationally, I would have realized it earlier. But thinking rationally and you have never gone very well together.” He explained what had happened when he’d reached Dunstaffnage and Fin’s part in it.
“How is Marjory?”
Eoin shrugged. “In shock, which is to be expected. But I think it is something of a relief. She understood the depths of Fin’s resentment and bitterness better than we did. She lived with it every day and wasn’t surprised that it manifested in violence. I still thought of him as the friend I fostered with, but the war, time, and disappointments had shaped him into a different person.”
“I can’t believe he hated me that much.” She repressed a shiver, and then frowned, recalling what he’d said to her. “What did he mean, I robbed him of a son?”
“I think he must have put some of the blame for his failure to have a child on your knee.”
“Yet he told Marjory she was barren.” She bit her lip. “Do you think it’s true?”
“I suspect it was more in his head than in reality. I think you were an easy target for his rage.”
“He blamed me for coming between you.”
He acknowledged the truth with a nod. “Which was wrong, as we would have grown apart anyway.”
She gave him a long look, arching a brow. “Because of the Phantoms?”
Eoin’s mouth twisted. “You heard that, did you?”
