Page 3 of Outlaw Ever After

But she had. But to admit that meant admitting she’d disobeyed… It was a small price to pay to free an innocent boy.

At supper, again she tugged his claes. Again, she whispered that he was wrong, and she wished to tell him why. Same that eve as again, they sat vigil with their mother. Again , he silenced her. Her heartache grew.

She waited for darkness to thicken outside like the priest’s cloying incense had thickened the air. She strummed her lyre and sang the Samhain song, her shutters open to the chill to watch the granary, upon which her mother had taught her to play the songs of Irish Sidh and wood nymphs. And when a horrible dream awakened her, knotting distress in her belly, she could bear the anguish no more.

She had to do something in the face of her family’s grief and this injustice.

In her sleeping gown, she crept down the corridor, past the solar where arguments still raged between Seamus and others. A voice spoke beyond the key hole.

“The Comyn heir should be hung at first light.” Kendrew MacGregor? “Then we can decide who commandeers his castle.” She’d once thought him so handsome, long locks of dark hair and cool green eyes, until she’d seen him dragging the prisoner today.

Now he was ugly.

“Aye, but my mither is right. He should at least be given a trial. He is but a lad.” Seamus’s voice.

“Nay! He should hang!” chorused others.

“Ye are the heir who should make decisions in yer sire’s stead, nay yer mither.” A man’s voice she didn’t recognize.

The lad was to die ? She froze on those damning words. Seamus argued that the new castle should be his while Kendrew, eight and ten and freshly spurred, argued that it should be his .

Swallowing, she cracked open the door.

Seamus’s eyes flicked to her. She motioned to him to come to her. On an exasperated exhale and a rub of his eyes, he did, as the chamber fell into debates in his distraction.

“Pegs, sweeting.” He forced the words through gritted teeth. “Nay more of yer begging that I’m wrong, eh?”

“But Seamus, ye canna hang him. He’s innocent.”

“Why do ye keep saying this? Why are ye nay on Da’s side?” Seamus growled.

“ Seamus ,” she gasped.

So dismissive. So eager to blame. He’d always looked up to their sire, and as their parents’ only son to survive infancy, he’d always felt it his duty to become as mighty.

He squatted, gentling, and reached for her with a pained brow, but this time, she backed away. He hung his head.

“Ye were nowhere near it, Peigi. None of this Sight nonsense, either.”

She pushed the words to the edge of her tongue. Closed her eyes tight for courage. “I disobeyed.”

“What?” he fumed, brow darkening, as a tall man with short dark hair stalked up to them.

“I chased Mildred. I saw the lad with a knife, aye, but—”

“Because he killed them, Peigi,” the man said, one blue eye and one green narrowed angrily. “I saw it happen, I was right there. Are ye calling me a liar?”

Who is he? She shivered.

“Naybody is calling ye a liar, man,” Seamus growled, pushing up to face him, even if he were a few inches shorter still. “And ye’ll speak gently to my sister.”

“Seamus, put the lass to bed already. Her interruptions are distracting us from what needs to be done.” He flicked his hand dismissively as if she were a fly on his trencher.

She backed up another step, heart racing.

Seamus dragged a hand through his hair and looked at her.

“Go back to bed, Margaret.” He employed her given name wearily, like an old man.