And the traitor. He wouldn’t forget the traitor—that was, if Declan hadn’t killed him already. Neacal had never been one to trust others. His father had tried to beat it into him at an early age, causing Neacal to endure his fists and the whips on his back until he showed him that he was strong enough to be laird.
But he had always thought that he was a good judge of character. When Lennox had shown up at his keep, wanting to give him what Neacal desperately wanted, he had thought that the understanding was there.
Apparently, he had been wrong. Lennox had in turn stolen his intended, and now Neacal wanted his head. His brother had recognized it immediately, but he had been far too stubborn to admit that he might have been wrong.
When Lennox failed to deliver Edna to his chamber, Neacal knew that he had been wrong. Declan had set out to find them both, with instructions to kill Lennox if he put up any fight.
Now he was ready for his vengeance. The moment his brother returned with his intended, Neacal would wed and bed her within an hour. He already had the elder primed and ready for the marriage ceremony, and once she was his in every meaning of the word, he would send word to Erik that he was now part of the McGregor clan.
A grim smile crossed Neacal’s face. His father had never been as cunning as he was. He could already see what the future should be, how their clan would latch on to another and then slowly infiltrate the clan until Neacal was named laird.
And he wasn’t afraid to do what needed to be done to accomplish his goal. After all, his father hadn’t died of natural causes.
The doors opened, and Neacal pushed himself out of his chair, clasping his hands behind his back. Instead of his brother, however, two of his warriors approached him, and he felt the first shake of worry course through his veins.
“Well?” he asked.
The warriors looked at each other before the taller of the two stepped forward, bowing his head. “’Tis yer brother, mah lord,” he said, his voice soft. “We found his body.”
For a moment, Neacal couldn’t understand the words. Declan was dead? No, he would feel it in his bones that his brother no longer walked amongst the living!
“Are ye certain?” he asked tightly.
“Aye,” the warrior stated. “His body is outside.”
Neacal was already moving through the great hall and out the doors himself, his blood running cold as he saw the huddled form under the blankets in the back of the wagon. That couldn’t be his fierce brother!
But the moment he threw back the blanket and found himself staring into Declan’s unseeing eyes, he knew it was his younger sibling.
Stifling a cry, he flicked the blanket back over his brother’s face. “Take him and prepare him for burial,” he said tightly, keeping the emotion out of his throat.
“Aye, mah lord,” the other warrior stated, bowing his head. “We will.”
Neacal drew in a breath, keeping the stoic expression of the laird that his father had raised. “I want those that are responsible,” he growled. “I want them brought back tae me. Take all the warriors ye need, but dinnae come back until ye have delivered his killers!”
The warriors scattered after that, and Neacal forced his feet to move back into the keep and to his chambers, passing the great hall and all those that were staring at him. The air was cold, the fireplace unlit, but Neacal didn’t care, instead finding the nearly empty whiskey bottle on the table where he had left it earlier.
He didn’t even bother with a tin mug, drinking greedily from the bottle until it was empty before throwing it at the fireplace, the satisfying crash of glass following a moment later. It did nothing to dim the grief in his chest, the gaping hole that would never heal, given what he had lost. His brother had been the last of his kin, and now that he was dead, Neacal was all alone.
He had no one to trust.
A sob escaped him, and he braced his arms on the table, attempting to pull himself together. His brother wouldn’t want him to waste any tears on his death but rather to focus on what he could do to avenge it. He would burn his brother’s body, sending him back to the gods, and then wait for the day that those responsible would be brought to him.
A thought crossed Neacal’s mind, and he grinned through his grief, deciding a different path for his wayward intended. If he couldn’t have her come back with his warriors, he could make certain that anyone that found her would bring her back to him to stand trial for his brother’s death.
As his killer.
Edna woke the next morning feeling warm and content. Her fire had warmed her chambers wonderfully during the night, and she had never felt so comforted in a long time.
Wait... Edna’s eyes opened slowly, and the barn came into view, the sun slicing through the cracks in the wood. She became acutely aware of the arm slung around her midsection, and the warmth that was pressed up against her back wasn’t her fire at all.
It was Malcolm.
Edna froze, feeling every part of their bodies that touched, how his hand was splayed across her abdomen, the way that his breath moved her hair every time he exhaled. Edna had thought that them sharing a warm bed together would have been easy enough, but finding herself in his arms, she wasn’t so certain.
Still, warmth spread from head to toe, but there was something more, something awfully familiar from the first moment that she had met Malcolm.
It was those butterflies, that excitement that she had never experienced before. Even James had never made her feel that way.
