“Da killed her this time!” Tears streaked down his face. “He’s killed my mum.”
Margaret swallowed. She was afraid to go into the boy’s cottage with his violent, drunk father there, but his mother might still be alive. “I’d best go see.”
“Nay!” Brian said. “I don’t know how soon he’ll be back, and he mustn’t find ye there.”
“Your father’s gone?” she asked. “Where?”
“To bury her,” the lad choked out. “Said he knows a place where no one will ever find her body.”
Good God.Margaret’s hand went to her throat.
“Da said he’ll tell everyone she left him, and if I say otherwise, he’ll kill me too.”
“I’ll get my cloak and take you and Ella to the castle at once,” Margaret said. “You’ll be safe there.”
“I’ll not be safe so long as Da knows where I am,” Brian said, shaking his head violently. “I’m going to go as far away as I can.”
Margaret eased Brian onto a stool and tried to calm him. Ella still clung to him with her face pressed into his chest and her tiny fingers clenched on his bloody shirt.
“Come, Brian, ye can’t manage on your own,” she said. “How will ye live?”
“Ye know I’m a hard worker. I can find a place on a ship,” he said. “I’ll go to sea and never come back here.”
Margaret could not blame him for wanting to escape to a different life.
“But I can’t take care of Ella too.” His eyes pleaded with her for understanding. “Will ye take her?”
“Take her?” she said.
“Please!” Brian said, fighting tears.
She was not sure what he meant. “As I said, I can take her to the castle, where my sister and the laird will—”
“Not the castle! People in the village work there,” he said. “They know Ella, and Da will find out and get her back. Ye must hide her from him.”
Margaret looked up to see Lizzie listening raptly from the doorway.
“With no proof of murder and the only witness gone,” Lizzie said, “David will have no justification for keeping Ella from her father.”
“David will do it if I ask him to,” Margaret said.
“Da would find a way to steal her back, I know it,” Brian said. “My mum always said how kind ye were. She’d wantyouto have Ella.”
“Me? Have her?” Margaret was taken aback.
“I know you’re fond of Ella, and you’d take good care of her,” he said, his voice cracking. He rubbed his cheek against the top of his sister’s head. “Please, can’t ye be her mother now?”
Ella looked up at her then with wide blue eyes, and the air went out of Margaret’s lungs in a rush. She would not allow the violent man who murdered this sweet child’s mother to ever have her back. A fierce determination filled her to do whatever she must to protect her.
When Brian lifted his sister onto Margaret’s lap and the exhausted child leaned heavily against her chest, Margaret’s decision was made.
“Of course I’ll take care of Ella,” she said.
“I can’t stay any longer,” Brian said. “If Da catches me trying to leave, he’ll beat me—or worse.”
“I’ll take care of you as well,” Margaret said. “We should stay together.”
“Ella and I have a better chance of escaping him apart,” Brian said. “Da will travel the roads and search everywhere, asking after a boy and a wee girl.”
