Jamie nodded, understanding. Their father had given him authority and position. It was easy to see how others might resent that a bastard had been given so much. He’d earned his way, but people saw what they wanted to see.
Jamie rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Who had something to gain?”
Duncan had been thinking the same thing himself with little success. Once he’d begun to consider that Jeannie had not been involved, it had opened up possibilities Duncan had not fully considered before.
They went through the list of men who Duncan could remember had slept in the tent that night. Of the handful of men besides his father and Colin, one of them had died in a battle a few years back, but there were a few others that Jamie would look into, including a man who Duncan had ordered punished for dallying with a lass when he was supposed to be watching the gate and Padraig—one of his father’s most trusted guardsmen—who thought he should have been named captain instead of Duncan.
The one name neither of them wanted to consider was Colin, but it lay between them like a beached whale rotting in the sun.
Duncan sensed that Jamie wasn’t telling him something. “Tell me about Colin. Where is he?”
Jamie’s mouth fell in a grim line. “Keeping himself out of sight if he’s smart.” At Duncan’s quirked brow, Jamie explained. He told him of the recent troubles with the MacGregors and of the circumstances of his own marriage—how Colin had led a battle against Caitrina’s father for harboring the MacGregors, during which her father and brother had been killed and her home destroyed. How Jamie had convinced her to marry him, Duncan couldn’t imagine.
“It wasn’t easy,” Jamie said, guessing his thoughts.
Then Jamie told him what had happened afterward—how the MacGregors had risen in revolt following the execution of their chief, Alasdair MacGregor, and how Colin had exacted revenge for the rape of a Campbell lass by ordering the rape of a MacGregor lass.
Duncan grimaced—not just because he found the act abhorrent, but at the thought of the brother he remembered doing something so dishonorable.
But it was worse: The MacGregor lass was not only Lizzie’s sister by marriage, but also the beloved of Niall Lamont—Caitrina’s brother. And Niall Lamont was scouring the Highlands for Colin right now with justice on the mind.
The question of how Lizzie had ended up married to a MacGregor would have to wait. “You’re sure?” Duncan asked. The rash attack on Caitrina’s family sounded like the hot-headed brother he remembered, but to order the rape of an innocent lass…’twas a dark side of Colin that he found difficult to reconcile. “That doesn’t sound like Colin.”
Jamie nodded. “There’s no mistake. You’ve been gone a long time. We’ve all changed, including Colin.”
“You can’t think it was Colin who did this to me?”
Jamie shrugged. “I don’t know. I’d like to think not, but I no longer know what he is capable of.”
“But it doesn’t make sense. Colin is the heir; he had nothing to fear from me.”
“He was jealous of you, or rather of father’s favoritism toward you.”
“Perhaps,” Duncan conceded. But could Colin really hate him that much? Would he have put their clan in that kind of danger because of a grudge? It seemed a stretch, despite the dark side of Colin’s temperament, of which he’d just learned.
“What about the lass? Wasn’t Colin betrothed to Lady Gordon? Yet you had a…” Jamie hesitated. “Relationship with her?”
Duncan shook his head. “Colin didn’t know about my involvement with Jeannie.”
As the hours passed, Duncan grew steadily more hopeful of Jamie’s support. Argyll’s Enforcer was reputed to be a man of uncompromising adherence to the law. By all rights, Duncan was a convicted traitor and should be arrested on sight. That Jamie was willing to hear him out at all was more than he expected. And Jamie did not appear to be immune to Duncan’s claim of innocence. If anything he seemed to believe him.
“But why didn’t you stay and defend yourself?” Jamie asked. “When you ran it made you look guilty.”
“I’d been tried and convicted. No one would listen to reason. Everyone seemed ready to believe the worst of me—Archie, Colin—and father was dead.”
“I would have listened,” Jamie said quietly.
Duncan nodded. But they both knew the word of a lad of seven and ten would not have held much weight.
Duncan finally asked the question that had brought him here. “Will it be enough?”
Jamie shook his head, a grim look on his face. “I doubt it. Archie still flies into a rage at the mere mention of your name or of Glenlivet. It will take more than a map and vaguely worded letter to convince him of your innocence.”
The surge of hope that had filled his chest deflated. Duncan had his answer. He didn’t need any more disappointment, but he couldn’t prevent himself from asking, “And what of you, little brother, do you believe me?”
A corner of Jamie’s mouth lifted in a half-smile. “It won’t matter if our cousin gets his hands on you, but aye, I do.”
But Jamie was wrong. It mattered. Quite a lot in fact. With Jamie and Lizzie’s belief in him, maybe Duncan wasn’t quite as alone as he’d thought.
