Page 2 of Outlaw Ever After

“When blessings made and curses cast are open to the Sight, can the souls lost through the years be found on Samhain night.” Peigi crooned, soothing Aileana.

“…toss him in the loch with rocks about his ankles!”

“Throw away the key! Fie, fie, murdering bastard…”

Shuffling and grunting scraped in the yard. Always a conflict, always a skirmish surrounding them. Never peace. Trembling but singing still, Peigi couldn’t resist unhooking the shutters to glimpse the man who was widowing their mother.

“The first spell is a blessing made with veils betwixt us thin,” she sang.

The shutters flew open and a chilly breeze soothed her damp cheeks.

Peigi strained on her tiptoes, looking over the sill.

She peered down at the undulating sea of soldiers, weapons, horses.

“…forced to walk the whole way, he was… Nay enough punishment. He deserves worse…”

Kendrew MacGregor, Richard MacGregor’s son, was dragging someone behind his horse. The prisoner? Desperation clawed at Peigi to see.

The door to the granary in the bailey was thrust open. Peigi continued smoothing a hand over Aileana’s hair, even though she only had nine years to her name. A roar rose up among soldier and servant alike as MacGregor shoved…a laddie into the granary?

Her hand on Aileana’s hair stilled. That wasn’t the man whom she’d seen with the ring. That was the boy who’d run to the fray, screaming for his da, the laird who’d tried to run them off, who had been slain. Her own da had lain on the ground, mortally wounded, beside Kendrew’s sire. Why had they captured him ?

“Sister?”

Peigi glanced down to see Aileana staring wide-eyed up at her.

“What is it?” Peigi whispered.

“Ye stopped singing.”

…

Incense choked her sire’s chamber. The priest burned oils and chanted Latin over his supine form. Menfolk gathered in the corners and argued of retaliations, debated ownership of a new castle seized. Freuchie, it was called? Peigi fretted. This wasn’t right. The boy wasn’t guilty, and everyone was saying he was. Now they were going to take the lad’s castle?

Her mother pulled her against her breast, her eyes swollen, still wearing her Michaelmas flowers. Peigi wiped her mother’s eye, pressing a kiss to her cheek as the priest continued his incessant chanting.

“Ma wee Peigi, always kenning when others need ye,” her mother spoke in her soft, lilting Irish weighted down with the world’s burdens. “The gift of Sight, ye have. A fine lady ye’ll make.”

“Maw,” she breathed. “The laddie nay did it.”

Disappointment sank deeper in the hollows of the woman’s cheeks. Her gaze shifted toward Seamus. “I fear there’s no turning these men from their anger. Seamus is so much like yer faither … So single-minded. But ye, I beg ye use that Sight within ye that kens right from wrong. Sometimes what is right…is wrong, but ye must stand firm anyway.”

Thinking on that, Peigi bit her lip, crawled down, and crept to Seamus. Always shy, she never interrupted the menfolk, but she tugged on Seamus’s doublet now.

He squatted down and forced a smile as the intimidating faces continued arguing above her. She leaned into his ear, cupping her hand, and whispered.

“Ye’re wrong.”

Seamus frowned. “Peigi. Nay interfere.”

“But that lad is nay the one, I—”

“Go back to Mither, lass.”

“Seamus—”

“Enough .” His face turned to stone. “Ye couldna possibly ken. Ye nay saw it happen.”