She trailed off, shaking her head.
“She had me fooled, too.”
He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. Something nagged at his mind, something warning him that there was more to her visit than simple commiseration.
“You knew her well, did ye not?” he asked her. She nodded, then shook her head at once.
“Well, I thought I did,” she murmured back. “I… we spent a lot of time together, but I suppose she was just using me to get to know this place better so she could make her escape, ye ken?”
He nodded. He supposed he had no reason to doubt Effie. Perhaps it was just his paranoia, after Amelia had fled, that was making him approach all of this with such doubt. He wanted to search for something, anything that didn’t fit, so he could unravel all of this and bring her back to him, back to his arms, where she belonged.
“But the way she talked to me, I should have known that there was something… no’ right about your marriage, if I may say so, my Laird.”
His head snapped up.
“Wit do you mean?”
“I mean… she told me that the two of you had not yet shared your… marital bed,” she explained. He frowned at her. Why would Amelia have said that? Had sharing a bed with him not been part of her plan? And if it had not, why had she done it anyway?
“That’s no’ true,” he shot back sharply, his tone a little more harsh than he had intended it to be. She stared at him.
“It’s what she told me.”
“It’s not the truth,” he snapped back. “We were…”
He trailed off. Effie was staring at him with a sympathetic expression on her face.
“You dinnae have to lie to me, my Laird,” she assured him. “I understand that men have… needs. And if you were ever to need someone to fulfil those needs for you, well…”
She reached out for him, planting a hand on his knee. He stared down at it for a long moment, nonplussed. He had never noticed Effie so much as casting a glance in his direction before, but now, here she was, taking advantage of the absence of his wife at the first opportunity she had gotten.
Almost as though she had been planning it.
He brushed her hand aside and shook his head.
“I dinnae. She fulfilled everything for me. More than I could ever have asked for.”
A flash of anger passed across Effie’s face. She looked furious.
“She’s an outsider,” she snapped back. “She could never have really understood you, as someone from this land could have…”
“You seem sure of who she is,” he replied, his voice as even as he could make it. “What else did she tell you? What else did she say about where she’s gone to?”
Something shifted in her expression when he asked her that. Whatever composure she had been clinging onto, it seemed to vanish in the blink of an eye.
“It doesnae matter where she’s gone to!” she exclaimed. “They have her, and they’ll be sure that she’s defiled by now, so you’ll never want her back…”
She clasped her hands over her mouth, clearly wishing she could reel the words back in. He rose to his feet, knocking over the whiskey, sending the amber liquid trickling across the floor.
“What do you know?” he demanded as he grasped her by the collar, pulling her up to her feet. She scrabbled for purchase on the floor, tearing her gaze away from him.
“Nothing!” she cried out. But she could not look him in the eye as she spoke. He knew she was lying. And he knew, all at once, that whatever she knew was crucial to finding Amelia again.
If whoever had taken her hadn’t managed to flee with her for good.
18
The cold wind tore at Arran’s skin, the sound of galloping hooves filling his ears. Yet, all he could focus on was the MacAllan keep in the distance, how close they were drawing towards it, and how desperate he was to reach it before they inflicted any harm on Amelia he knew he could not undo.
