Angus searched the man’s sporran, belts, and scabbards, then stood up and donned his own shirt and kilt. “He doesn’t have a key on him now. Someone must have let him in.” He belted his sword around his waist, then went to the door, which was slightly ajar, and looked up and down the corridor. “How many keys are there to this room, and who has access to them?”
“Besides the one you carry, there is only one other key, and my mother keeps it.”
He looked at her fiercely. “Would she want me dead?”
“Of course not! She encouraged our alliance from the beginning.”
He came back inside, and Gwendolen regarded him in the strangely sinister light from the candle. She felt as if she were falling headfirst into a nightmare. He had that look about him again—the ice-cold fury she had seen in his eyes on the day he invaded Kinloch. It was a callous bloodlust, and it sent a chill down her spine.
Nothing of the lover she had known since their wedding night existed in the man before her. Here stood a dangerous warrior, filled with fury, and she was frightened by his intensity.
“You cannot stay here tonight,” he said. “You’ll come to my bedchamber. I’ll put a man at the door to watch over you.”
“Where will you be?”
“I’ll be looking into how this enemy got into my castle in the first place.” He glared at her with steely wrath and held out his hand. “Come.”
She put her hand in his and let him lead her out of the room, but first she had to step over the dead man on the floor.
His eyes were still open. Her stomach rolled with nausea.
***
Angus banged repeatedly on Lachlan’s door until it opened. Gathering a loose gray blanket about his shoulders, Lachlan squinted through the flickering torchlight and stepped into the corridor.
“Get dressed,” Angus said.
“Why? What’s happened?”
“I woke up to the blade of an assassin.”
Lachlan’s eyes narrowed with concern. “Bluidy hell, Angus. Are you all right? Where’s Gwendolen?”
“She’s fine, but I must speak with Onora.”
A few minutes later, he pushed his way through his mother-in-law’s bedchamber door, and Lachlan followed him in. Onora sat up in bed and pulled a sheet up to cover her breasts.
“Have you been in here all night?” Angus asked.
“Of course,” she replied. “Why? What is going on?”
Angus paced around the room like a tiger. “A MacEwen warrior just entered your daughter’s bedchamber and tried to murder me in my sleep.”
“Good Lord!” She tossed the covers aside and rose to her feet, where she stood naked before them. “Is Gwendolen all right?”
He regarded her shrewdly, looking for signs of deceit or treachery. “She’s safe. The assassin got into the room by way of a key. Gwendolen said you are the only other person at Kinloch, besides me, who keeps one.”
“Aye.” She hurried across the room to a cabinet with heavy doors, which contained a small chest. She carried the chest back to the table where a candle was burning, then opened the lid and sorted through a number of trinkets, mostly jewels and hair ornaments.
“It’s not here,” she said. “Someone must have taken it.”
Angus strode around the bed and seized her by the wrist. “If you are lying to me…”
“I’m not!” she shouted.
He had half a mind to drag her to the dungeon and employ more ruthless tactics to draw the truth out of her, because something told him she was keeping secrets.
He glared at her in the dim candlelight, while she wet her lips and took in a shaky breath.
