Shetiskedloudly. “He’s turning on you, Hamish. That man who you thought was your best friend. He’s betraying you.”
“Enough!” her uncle bellowed. “You are back but a few hours and look at the chaos you bring!”
“Only to those who will not answer the question!” she returned. “What does Hamish have that makes him more deserving than any other in the clan?”
Her uncle stomped forward, his expression ugly. “Ye will be silent, witch!”
His fist was raised, his temper boiling between them, but Iseabail did not flinch. Reuben was close enough to stop any blow. She had absolute faith that he would protect her. But it was not his voice that surprised everyone. It was Fergus’s.
“Nay.”
Loud and heavy, the one word dropped into the air like a stone. Her uncle’s head shot up.
“I am laird here!”
“Aye,” Fergus agreed. “But the witch’s spell stands. Do ye answer her question? We have all seen that he struck her when he had not the right.”
“I am her kin!”
“But she is wed, either to Hamish or to the Sassenach, we don’t ken. But she be wed fer sure.”
Her uncle drew himself up to his full height while his expression turned tragic. “Do you not see, Fergus, how she is destroying this clan?”
“I only see a question gone unanswered.” His eyes narrowed. “How was I unfit? How is Rudi less than a man?”
Her uncle shifted his stance, no doubt looking to see if he could storm out and regroup later. But he was surrounded on all sides by the clan. Hedged in and much too close to flee through them. As for his horse, well, Lizzy was walking it to Fergus’s barn.
So he fell back onto what he had claimed from the beginning. “I am laird here. I can strike any woman I want.” Then he pointed a hard finger at Hamish. “It is his fault! I trusted where I should not have! I believed—”
“You fecking bastard!” Hamish said his fists bunching at his side. He did not lunge yet, but he was ready to attack. He didn’t get the chance as Fergus stepped before him, slouching a bit as he stared at the man eye to eye.
“Answer the question, Hamish, and I swear to you that you’ll not be harmed by me. Not me nor any man here.” He looked back to cast his hard stare at the clansmen around him. When they all seemed to agree, he turned Hamish. “Tell the truth now, or we let him lay all of it at yer feet.”
“My feet!” Hamish growled. “My feet, when it was he who put the poison in his brother’s drink?” He glared at her uncle. “I got it fer ye, but it was yer hand what put it in.”
Iseabail felt the blood rush from her head. It was true. Her uncle had killed her father. Her mother had always said so, but there’d been no proof.
“And what of my mother?” she asked.
Hamish rounded on her. “She gave all her magic to you, so there was nothing to stop us, then, was there? Nothing to stop him.”
“Lies! Lies!” the baron screeched, but this time, Reuben was fastest. He pressed a dagger to her uncle’s throat as he hissed.
“Be silent. Let the clan hear everything.”
Her uncle tried to attack then, but it was Ashton who grabbed him on one side and Rudi on the other. And though the man struggled, they gave no quarter. Indeed, they stretched his arms back enough to make him whimper with pain.
“What did he do to Iseabail’s mother?” Fergus demanded.
Hamish spit into the dirt at Iseabail’s feet. “What she deserved. Then we filled her dress with rocks and cast her in the fen.”
Iseabail closed her eyes. She’d always felt it was true, but to hear it stated so clearly hurt. Indeed, the pain of it coursed through her like a thunderstorm, and yet she said nothing. She did nothing.
Once begun, Hamish would not keep the secrets inside.
“And for what reason,” pressed Fergus, “did you kill a good woman? One who tended our bairns as if they were her own?”
“He did it! I did it on his order!” He looked at Iseabail. “And for that service, he gave me her. Her magic would be mine, and her dowry too.” This time he spat at her uncle’s feet. “But there ain’t no five hundred gold coins, are there? Ye already spent it, didn’t ye?”
