Page 35 of Highlander’s Haunted Past

“Did the messenger name her?” Rob asked.

“Not yet,” the queen replied, disappointed, “but he is still being questioned.”

“Then ye’ll forgive me if I refuse to accept a single letter as enough evidence to be convicted of something as serious as treason. There are many Gordons in the world, in this city even, and I am sure there is a fair number who share the letter ‘K’ with my wife.”

“Sir! Ye must be reasonable!” the advisor cried in exasperation.

“Laird Lockhart,” the Queen said, her voice quiet but firm, “please speak only if ye have something worth saying.”

Laird Lockhart quieted with a pale face, sinking a step back as if hoping to hide amongst the tapestries adorning the walls.

“I agree, one letter is not the evidence required. Stay here, both of ye, and we will continue to have the messenger questioned, as well as a few others, until the path forward becomes clear,” the Queen said before she spun and left the room.

She wanted them dead, and she wanted them dead soon; it was easy to see. But she couldn’t do it without proper evidence, not with Rob’s threat from a few days prior still lingering in her memory. No, she needed overwhelming evidence if she wanted to see them dead and maintain control of the Fraser army.

The advisors flocked behind her, Lockhart taking up the rear in his shame, and once more Rob and Kenna were alone.

Rib waited for his wife’s thanks, for her apology for putting them in this situation again, but every glance of hers that he managed to steal seemed to be spiked with poison rather than regret.

They sat there for hours; Kenna was practically a statue. Rob was the opposite, moving here and there, standing to pace and then collapsing back onto the couch as he tried to think of fresh arguments that would free them.

The woman could at least speak to ye, he thought.

He preferred her spark, her anger, her words that tore into him like a knife; he preferred anything over this wall of silence.

Queen Mary returned at dawn, her face pale and lines of exhaustion creasing her face. Her advisors looked as if they had just come off of a battlefield. Their clothes were all rumpled, their faces ashen and downcast. They had discarded their finery, no longer dripping in golden chains and gem-studded rings. They were ordinary men, beaten and lost.

Rob took that as a good sign.

“The messenger has not revealed a name,” the Queen announced. “At least not yet.”

“But ‘tis highly improbable that it was someone other than Lady Kenna who wrote this,” Laird Lockhart said, having apparently risen back to the Queen’s favor at some point in the past few hours, though he still looked as downtrodden as the rest.

“There is still—” Rob started, but he was interrupted by the entrance of another, one of the Queen’s maids who was shaking ever so slightly with fear.

“Please forgive my interruption, my Queen, but Lady Florence Fraser has arrived,” the maid announced softly, with a nervous glance toward the Queen.

Florence swept into the room in a bright yellow dress, the skirts stuffed so full of petticoats that she required a large berth. Despite the early hour, her red hair had been twisted back into an ornate bun, a bit of hair still loose to sweep down over her shoulders.

“Yer Majesty.” Florence dipped low. “I just came to pick up my brother and his wife. My father wished fer us all to break our fast together since we have been apart fer so long.”

The advisors blanched at her boldness, and Rob felt his throat close as he looked between his fool of a sister and the already enraged queen.

“Well, ye shall have to tell Laird Fraser that such family pleasantries must wait. A message was intercepted last night, and we believe that it was sent by Lady Kenna,” the Queen replied through gritted teeth, pulling the letter out and throwing it onto the table beside Rob in punctuation, her patience with Clan Fraser clearly now worn to the thinnest of threads.

Florence cocked her head, confused, “‘Tis impossible. I never let the lass leave my side from the time she arrived in Aberdeen—‘til she returned to my brother’s company, that is. She was never alone long enough to pass a letter to a messenger, let alone write one.”

With Florence making such a good point, Rob took the letter silently and opened it once more, starting to examine its contents. It was far more wrinkled than it had been a few hours before, surely from being passed through so many hands that thought they could find the “truth” of it. He was now one of the many, but he only needed to disprove one of their notions, not solve the entire mystery.

“She could have written it while on the road, while hidden in her tent,” Laird Lockhart challenged, “and passed the letter without yer knowing.”

Rob held up the letter, shaking it in the air as his mind forged a connection.

“No! Whoever wrote it was in Aberdeen. There are names listed here, names of lairds who were not with us on the journey from Inverness. They took up the Queen’s call and came here instead; we hadn’t known their names, let alone their numbers, ‘til after we arrived in Aberdeen.”

The advisors found renewed energy and began to yell and shout over one another, one coming and tearing the letter from Rob’s hands to confirm it himself.

“Lady Florence could be lying!”