Rory heaved a sigh.
“The house at Killin is almost finished, and Catriona won’t want it now that she’s marrying the Munro,” Sybil said. “After the wedding, let’s go there. Just you and me, like your parents used to do.”
“That sounds perfect,mo chroí,” Rory said, and kissed her softly on the lips.
***
Sybil hummed to herself as she arranged the flowers she had picked earlier. She wanted everything perfect when Rory arrived for their first night at Killin since it was rebuilt.
She had left Castle Leod first thing this morning with servants, rugs, dishes, and bedding to finish setting up the house. She surveyed the main room, pleased with all they had accomplished. All was ready, including wine and a simple supper waiting on the table, so she sent the servants off to the new servants’ cottage behind the house, telling them they could have the evening off. She could not help grinning when she told them she could make a passable porridge, so they could sleep in as well.
For the tenth time in an hour, Sybil looked out the window hoping to see Rory. He promised to be here before supper, and she hoped he would beat the storm. Though it was midafternoon, storm clouds darkened the sky to the west, and the wind was picking up.
She closed the shutters on all the windows, lit the candles on the table, and then went into the bedroom to fluff the pillows again in anticipation of the night ahead. She was looking forward to having her husband all to herself.
But she was not good at sitting and waiting. She drummed her fingers, then sprang to her feet when she remembered something she had been meaning to do for a long time. Catriona said she hid the Eilean Donan ledgers in her mother’s secret hiding place, a wooden box buried in the barn. Sybil wondered if there was anything else in that box.
Sybil smiled at the two guards posted outside the door to the house—she knew better than to try to dismiss them—and breezed by them on her way to the barn.
It did not take long to find the wooden square flush with the dirt floor where Catriona had swept aside the straw. Excitement stirred in Sybil’s belly as she knelt and tugged the top off. She saw nothing, which was disappointing, but it was too dark inside the box to see all the way to the bottom. She reached inside, hoping she would not find a rat.
“Aha!” There was a cloth bag down there. The box was so deep she had to stick her head inside as she strained to grasp it and pull it up. The bag was light and felt as though it contained papers.
The wind whistled outside the barn, reminding her of the coming storm, so she decided to take the lost treasure back to the house. Back in the bedchamber, she sat on the floor to examine her find. Dirt spilled onto her skirts as she unfolded the bag and pulled out the contents.
There were two parchments. The first one appeared to be a letter to Rory. She set that one aside—and gasped when she saw what the other one was. She had never seen a papal bull before, but the heavy lead seal with the heads of Saint Peter and Saint Paul on one side and the pope’s name in Latin,Iulius II, on the other told her this had to be it.
Her heart raced as she read that his holiness the pope declared the marriage of Rory’s parents valid and the three named children by that marriage legitimate in the eyes of God and the church.
She could not wait to show it to Rory. This would lay to rest any whispers about Rory’s birth and right to the chieftainship. Heart singing with joy, she picked up the other parchment again. Should she read it? She was burning with curiosity, and Rory would ask her to read it to him anyway, so she gave in.
Oh my God.Once she read it, she was sorely tempted to hide the letter and never tell Rory about it. She had promised never to deceive him again, but she was afraid of what he would do.
She was so absorbed in what Agnes Fraser MacKenzie had written to her son that she almost failed to hear Rory open the front door. She quickly placed the two documents back inside the bag, slid it under the bed, and ran down the stairs to greet him.
He must have gone to look for her at the back of the house, but he’d left the door open, and the cold wind blew through the house, threatening to blow out the candles. He must be anxious to see her. Smiling, she shut the door and spun around to find him.
The scream caught in her throat. Hector’s eyes were wild, and he held a dirk dripping with blood.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” she said, inching her way back to the door. “Rory ordered ye never to set foot in Eastern Ross. He’s on his way. Ye ought to leave before he gets here.”
“Ye made a mistake coming to Agnes’s house,” Hector said, stepping toward her. “I knew this is where I’d find ye.”
***
The first drops of rain pelted Rory’s face as he galloped through the fields.
He opened the door to the house and shook the rain off. Sybil must be upstairs. He barely noticed the supper on the table. He was hungry, but not for food. He took the stairs two at a time, hoping to catch Sybil in the bedroom before she came down.
Candles and fresh flowers were on the small table by the bed, and the pleasant smell of fresh-cut wood from the new bedframe filled the room.
“Sybil!” he called as he went back downstairs. She could not be far. She would not have left candles burning with no one here, at least not for long.
As he paused to examine the room more closely, his heart thudded in his chest. A chair had been pushed over. Her cloak was on the back of the door and her boots beside it. He opened the door and saw what looked very much like the scratch marks on the new doorframe.
In his mind’s eye, he saw Sybil clawing at it as she was pulled from the house. His heart pounded in his ears. Where were the guards? He had been so anxious to see his wife that he hadn’t even noticed they weren’t there.
After he found their bodies on the side of the house, he ran to the servants’ cottage. The servants said they saw Sybil come in from the barn a quarter of an hour ago. He had just missed them!
