Page 36 of Confessions of a Highland Assassin

“My dearest Malcolm,”

My heart is aching as this will be the last letter, I ever write tae ye. Things have nae worked in our favor and my parents are insisting that I marry Tavish Cameron. They say he is a good man and that he will treat me well.

He’s long been asking for me hand and my father has finally agreed. This marriage will mean a long-sought-after alliance for our clans.

I cannae go against my father’s wishes. I tried tae tell them that I already love ye, but they said in time that I will learn tae love my husband. They willnae see reason where ye and I are concerned.

The memories we made will nae be erased, even when we marry other people. I will always love and cherish ye, only from a distance from now on. My heart breaks tae have tae say goodbye tae ye like this, but it has tae be this way…

I will never forget ye, Malcolm. Ye were me first true love and kiss. The moments we shared will forever be burned intae my memory and heart. Please ken that this will never change. Even if I have tae dae what is right for me family.

Yours forever, Caitir Macdonald, soon tae be Cameron.

Boyd sat staring at the letter in his hand. His mind struggled to grasp the concept of what he’d just read. Not only had his mother been forced to marry his father in a marriage of convenience for the clans but she had been in love with Cora’s father all along. He could feel the sadness of her words despite the shock he was experiencing. It could not have been easy for anyone involved in the situation. It must have been a struggle, even for Cora’s father…

He felt strangely uncomfortable and uneasy about the letter. If his mother had been deeply in love with his fiancé’s father, what would that have made them? They were still not related by blood, but it did connect them in a way that made him slightly ill in the pit of his stomach. It felt wrong on many levels.

Why had his mother allowed the betrothal to go on in the first place when she knew who Cora was? It couldn’t have been that she wanted to hide her love from his father. He did after all find the letter in his father’s desk.

His father must have known about the affair, Boyd thought. But when did he find this letter? Was it before or after they got married?

He sat thinking back over his parents’ marriage. As a child, he’d never seen them be affectionate with each other. Did they get married despite Tavish Cameron knowing his bride-to-be loved another? Or did he find this out after it was too late? According to the letter, his mother’s parents knew she was in love with another man but went ahead with the marriage despite their daughter protesting the arrangement.

Boyd checked the seal on the envelope. It was dated a few weeks before his parents had gotten married. But when had his father found the letter? Having more questions than answers, Boyd decided to check the drawers and see if he could find anything else that would shine some light on the matter. Reaching back into the depths of the drawer, he felt around until the tips of his fingers brushed something that felt like a letter. The paper was firmly stuck in place and would not budge without tearing.

Pushing back his chair and sinking to his knees in front of the desk, Boyd glimpsed a letter lodged into the wood at the back of the drawer. He jostled the drawer with both hands until the letter fell free, allowing him to retrieve it. He got back into his chair and recognized his mother’s handwriting once again with Malcolm’s name on the envelope. Boyd furrowed his brow when he noticed that the date on the letter was no more than a few months before his betrothal to Cora.

My dearest Malcolm,

I can nae longer pretend that this love we share between us can so easily be hidden. My passion burns for ye, brighter than it ever has ‘afore. Seeing ye at the gathering with yer wife and daughter was more than I could bear.

It should have been me at yer side, nae another woman. My marriage tae Tavish has never been what it should have. I should have fought harder when my parents said I must marry him.

Seeing Cora and Boyd get along as well as they did at the gathering warmed my heart, but it brings tae the surface the fact that we cannae continue with our lie.

The night of the gathering was a mistake, but how can something that feels so right, be so wrong? We swore we would never do it again since that last time, but it happened again and there is nae way around it now.

I tried tae convince Tavish tae nae go ahead with the plans for Boyd and Cora tae marry, but he said that the marriage will go ahead, and I will nae interfere. It’s for the good of the clan. I cannae tell him why the marriage cannae go ahead.

How are we tae stop this wedding, Malcolm? It should nae go ahead.

I will wait for yer response ‘afore making any further plans.

Yours forever, Caitir Cameron.

Boyd let the letter fall to the table as he stared at the stuffed owl on the opposite wall above the hearth. His mind was blank for a second as he struggled to make sense of what he’d just read. His mother had always been in love with Malcolm Cameron. She had never loved, or even wanted to marry his father. If the letters were anything to go by, they had an affair and slept together at least twice. Not only did his mother not want him to marry Cora, but she had stated that they needed to come up with a plan to stop the wedding from proceeding.

Did this mean that his mother and Cora’s father had something to do with the disappearance?

Boyd ran his hands over his face in frustration and raked his fingers through his hair, pulling a few of the blond strands loose. Sighing heavily and letting out his breath, Boyd’s mind went back to the day his mother had taken her own life. She’d been ill with grief ever since her husband went missing with the rest of the wedding party. He frowned again. But surely if she had anything tae do with the plot, she would have kent what happened and nae taken her own life…

“I am so sorry, Boyd,” she had said to him when he’d gone to check on her. The skin around her pale green eyes was puffy from crying all night. She looked as if she hadn’t slept in days. His mother had been a beautiful woman with delicate features and a slight hourglass frame. She’d always been the talk of the room whenever she entered a clan gathering, a fact that made his father proud to have her at his side.

Her once beautiful features were now drawn and hollow with grief and despair, a mere shell of the woman she once was.

“It’s nae yer fault,” he tried to reassure her. “Naebody could have kent this would happen.”

She had smiled sadly at her son and looked out the window at the soft rain blanketing the moors in the distance. Her beautiful long hair fell down her back and clung together in matted knots in desperate need of a wash.