“Aye, but you’d have to lay your old vendettas to rest, once and for all. Bury them deep, and say good-bye to them forever.”
Angus frowned uneasily. “What is it you’d have me do, Duncan?”
His friend regarded him with shrewd eyes. “I’d have you form an alliance with the English. Go to Fort William and tell Colonel Worthington of Murdoch’s plans to raise another rebellion. They’ll come down on him like a hammer.”
Angus sat down and stared into the flames in the hearth. “Betray another Scot to the English army?” He shook his head. “I couldn’t do it, Duncan. You know how I feel about the English.”
His sister had been murdered by a redcoat. His mother’s death at Glencoe was the result of an English order.
Angus shook his head again and sat forward. “Nay, I cannot do it. I must handle this myself.”
“How?” Duncan asked. “As you said, you have no army. Any warriors who are loyal to you are either dead or imprisoned inside Kinloch. How do you suppose you’ll be able to conquer your brother-in-law, who has already brought in his own forces?”
Angus rested his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands together. “By asking a favor of you. I know I have no right to expect any generosity after what I did two years ago, and you certainly don’t owe me anything, but I must ask.”
Duncan regarded him knowingly, then pinched the bridge of his nose. “Bluidy hell. You want to borrow my army.”
“Aye.”
Duncan sat back in the chair and thought about it. “I cannot go with you,” he said. “Not when I have a child on the way.”
“I understand. I’ll lead them myself, if they’d be willing to follow me.”
Duncan sat forward and nodded. “I’ll make it so.”
Angus felt a strange, hesitant joy inside himself. He supposed he was afraid to feel anything that invited hope.
They clinked glasses and drank in a sober, wary silence until Angus realized that hope had very little to do with anything at the moment. He had an army to lead and a castle to invade. That was all that mattered.
He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees again. “I don’t suppose, in addition to the men, that you have a battering ram I could borrow?”
Duncan chuckled and downed the rest of his whisky.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Gwendolen’s bedchamber felt like a cold tomb in the deepest, darkest hour of the night, as she lay in bed unable to sleep, staring tensely at the silk canopy above.
It had been four days since Angus escaped the noose and vanished like a ghost into the forest, and four days of heavy, soul-crushing agony, for she did not know if he was dead or alive. After his escape, her brother’s men had returned from a fourteen-hour search that had yielded no results. There was no sign of Angus in any direction—north, south, east, or west. For all she knew, he could be dead from the poison she had given him. He might have fallen off his horse somewhere and rolled down the side of a ravine. Or he could have drowned in a river or loch, and no one would ever know what had become of him.
Morbid thoughts, all of them, but it was impossible not to imagine the worst. Her entire existence was tightly coiled around the fear that she might never see him again. And even if she did, would he believe she had not, from the beginning, set out to betray him? She had done nothing here for the last four days except play the part of a sister who had accepted her brother’s rule, and had therefore earned her freedom from imprisonment.
A successful reunion with her husband, therefore, would depend on the unfolding of events over the next few days. If everything went according to plan, there would be a great deal of activity at Kinloch, and her allegiance to her husband would be revealed.
She rolled to her side and rested her cheek on her hands. Perhaps that would be proof enough to convince him that she loved him, and that Raonaid had always been wrong with her prophecies.
Perhaps there was still hope, as long as her brother didn’t kill her first—which he might very well do, once he learned what she had done.
***
Three hours later, a faint gray light from the dawn sky spilled across the floor of Gwendolen’s bedchamber. She sat up in bed, startled awake by the sound of a horn blaring in the bailey.
They’re here.
She tossed the covers aside and rose quickly, hurried to her dressing room and pulled on a plain woolen skirt, stockings, and stays. With fast fingers, she tied the ribbons in front, then slipped her feet into shoes. A moment later, she was racing up the tower stairs to the rooftop, where the pink sun was just striking out from beyond the horizon.
A few MacEwen clansmen were leaning over the battlements and arguing with each other. Dissension and fistfights were breaking out in all directions. Men were shouting at each other, while the ground beneath her feet shook with the deafening crash of a ram at the gate.
It was all so familiar, and yet none of it was the same. Last time, nothing could have stopped her from picking up a weapon and joining in the fight to defend her home.
