Jamie’s eyes burned and he turned away, headed up the stairs to his chamber, leaving Toran and his platitudes behind. Netta was smart and if she could, she would take care of herself until help arrived. If she could.
Vision dimmed by tears, Jamie didn’t see the person he bumped into in the upper hall.
“Jamie! What’s amiss?”
Caitrin’s voice was a balm to his tortured soul, as was her touch on his arm, gentle yet firm enough to stop him in his tracks. She was here, safe, and with him. And he needed her more than she knew. “Netta is missing in the woods,” he choked out. “All day.”
“Ach, nay,” Caitrin said and gripped both his shoulders. “Those voices we heard…”
“Aye, ’tis whatfashesme.” He wiped his face, trying to dry the tears on his cheeks.
Before he knew it, her arms were around him, and she urged his head onto her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Jamie. I ken how hard it is to wait for news.”
“The laird sent searchers,” he said against her neck. Her scent filled his nose, soothing him enough to raise his head. “But he willna allow me to join them.”
“They will find her.” A noise on the stair startled them. “Come, let’s go in yer chamber. Ye dinna need others?—”
“Nay, I dinna. I need ye.”
“Then let me care for ye as ye have cared for me.”
Caitrin sat with him while he paced, and talked to him. He remembered none of what she said, only the soothing sound of her voice and the fact of her presence, trying to help him through his fears. Finally, exhausted, he sat on his bed. She pushed him flat, covered him with a blanket and stayed in the chair by his bed until he fell asleep.
Late the next day, the searchers returned with his sister’s body wrapped in several plaids and tied over the back of a horse. No one would let Jamie see her, but he heard enough to sicken him. She’d been attacked and abused in all the ways evil men can abuse a woman alone. Her bloodied body bore the marks. Proof, he was told by someone who overheard the men who’d found her talking later that evening, of what was done to her before she died.
Jamie spent the time until they buried her in a rage, but the feverish intensity of it left his body as they lowered hers into the ground, still wrapped and hidden from his sight. He hadn’t even been allowed to see her face. In place of the rage, cold fury sank into his bones, chilling him. He knew in that moment that he dared never give in to it, or he would not be responsible for his actions. For the rest of his life, he would be a danger to all around him. He would gladly have died in his sister’s place. Instead, he would have to live with the knowledge of what happened to her. Of his guilt that he and Caitrin had failed to bring back the leaves the healer sent Netta for. And that his warning to the guard captain had no effect. He would alwaysblame himself. He knew his sister went often to the glen for Cook. He should have told her about the voices, too, but he was too captivated by his outing with Caitrin and the closeness they’d shared.
Toran found him on the practice field, firing arrow after arrow into the targets set up against the outer wall.
“Jamie, stop,” he commanded.
“I canna,” Jamie told him as he drew and released again. “I have to get rid of the beast within me.”
Toran took his arm. “There’s nay such thing,” Toran told him. “’Tis only yer grief, and it will pass in time.”
“Will it?” Jamie dropped the bow and faced his friend. “I dinna think so. I want to kill something. Kill the men who did this. I fear I always will.”
“My father has forbidden the lasses to leave the keep. And he’s sending Caitrin back to Fletcher. He fears he canna protect her here.”
Jamie would have expected such news to be a body blow, but he felt nothing. Still, he didn’t want her to go. “So soon?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“He canna do that. She’ll be in greater danger on the way.” Jamie felt the beast within him raise its head.
“She’s going with twenty of our best warriors. She’ll be safe.”
“She would be safer here. Netta should have been safe here.” He half expected Toran to clasp him on the shoulder, but his friend had better sense.
“I ken it. I’m sorry.”
Jamie walked away, leaving Toran to collect the bow and arrows. “Sorry doesna bring her back,” he muttered. Or keep Caitrin with me, he told himself.
The next morning, as promised, twenty men mounted up with Caitrin in their midst. When she saw Jamie approaching, her eyes widened. Did she really think he would let her leavewithout a word? She reached out a hand from her seat on one of the Lathan’s most reliable horses and the sight of the fresh bandage wrapping it nearly stopped his heart. Had it been so few days since everything changed?
“Who told ye?” Her frown said she already knew.
“Toran.” He glanced aside to where the laird and Toran stood speaking to the head of Caitrin’s guards at the front of the double line of horses. The wider spread of the horses around her made it look like a snake that had eaten a mouse.
