Instead of responding, she nodded to Gavan, and left the men to set up the search. Keenan’s silence stung. He hadn’t defended her. He hadn’t spoken out to accuse her of anything either, but that was cold comfort. She had to forget him and concentrate. Where would Kyla have taken Máirín? It didn’t make sense for them to disappear. What if one of them was ill or hurt?
With that thought, she went back to the healer, but she still hadn’t seen them. Frustrated, Fenella returned to her chamber. Where could they be?
Hours later, Gavan fetched her. “The laird has summoned ye,” he told her.
The laird, not Keenan. That didn’t sound good at all. She nodded and went with him to the laird’s solar.
Keenan didn’t waste any time. “The nurse is back in the keep. She says she was in the village and didna have Máirín with her. She accuses ye.” His jaw flexed. “I once told ye that ye loved Máirín more than me. Is that why ye took her? To keep her, and to hurt me?”
“What?” Shock stole the strength from Fenella’s legs and she sank into a chair. “Nay! I’m the one who told ye she was missing.”
“According to the nurse, ye decided when we were to wed that ye no longer wanted to raise another woman’s child. That yers would be the MacNabb heirs.”
“Ye are daft. What difference would our wedding have made except to make her truly mine? Besides, yer first son will be the MacNabb heir, nay Máirín.”
“Is it daft?” Keenan’s stare was hard and penetrating. “Where have ye taken her, Fenella?”
Tears pricked the back of her eyes, but she refused to shed them. She glanced at Gavan, hoping to find some sympathy there, but he’d schooled his expression into one of granite. Had Marsali already told him she was thinking of fleeing to Murray?
Gregor scowled at her. “Or where have ye buried her?”
Keenan blanched.
Fenella couldn’t hold back a cry at that accusation. The image of Máirín’s wee body wrapped in a shroud and laid in a shallow grave undid her. Tears flowed and would not stop, no matter how she wiped them away. “Nay, please dinna let her be dead.”
Gavan’s hand gripped her shoulder at that.
Keenan remained behind his desk, his gaze sick and stormy.
Gregor had moved by the door, as if to prevent her from running through it. He, too, wore a mask of stone.
“Gregor, ye go too far,” Gavan objected. “Fenella raised the alarm. Why would she do that if she’d harmed Keenan’s daughter?”
Finally! Gavan’s forceful tone told her he believed her. She was thankful that someone did.
Keenan broke the tense silence. “I dinna want to think the woman I almost married capable of such an act, but I have been told ye are thinking of leaving MacNabb for Murray. With my daughter?”
His attempt to sound reasonable after Gregor’s awful attack told her he knew. Likely Marsali told Gavan, and perhaps he had tried to convince Keenan he was about to lose Fenella forever. And that was the reason Keenan now believed she could steal his daughter. No wonder he blamed her.
“Ye said Kyla claimed she was in the village, aye? But ye didna find her when ye went there?”
Keenan frowned and glanced over her shoulder at Gregor. From the sudden increase in tension in the room, she knew he hadn’t tried very hard.
“I went to her mother’s croft,” Gregor said. “She denied seeing Kyla since the day before. The men with me spoke to two women on the way. The village men are out in the fields.”
As if the village men would pay attention to Kyla’s comings and goings. If she’d gone there openly, the women should have seen her, even spoken to her. But if she’d snuck out of the keep before sunrise…
Hope filled Fenella’s chest, expanding it and giving her room to breathe, and to think. Something she’d overheard the wet nurse say a few days ago worried at the back of her mind. The memory wouldn’t come clear. “Someone is visiting,” she muttered, and suddenly she knew. “Someone who used to live here, who married away. Who is childless,” she said, raising the volume of her voice with each fragment of a memory she recalled. “I think Kyla took yer daughter to her friend. If we’re lucky, she hasna yet left the village to return to her home.”
“Where is the friend staying?”
Gavan asked the question, not Keenan, but a glimmer of hope flickered in Keenan’s gaze. She prayed she was right. He would not be able to bear having the hope she offered for his daughter dashed.
“I dinna ken,” Fenella admitted. “Ye must ask Kyla.”
“Gavan, find the nurse. I’ll organize the search of the village this time,” Keenan said with a frown at Gregor, surprising Fenella at his sudden, commanding tone. He, too, saw that Gregor believed she was guilty and hadn’t done a thorough search.
Gavan signaled to Gregor and they both left without another word.
