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Ewan gives a bitter jerk of his head toward her at once. “You,” he spits. “Aye, now we come to it. Ye’ve been filling my wife’s head and her hands with your filth. Teachin’ wives to defy their husbands.”

Maeve steps forward, eerily calm, Taskill keeping to her side without commanding the area.

“You struck Ellen,” she says. “And blamed her for this?”

The disgust in her face is like a knife drawn clean from its sheath.

Ewan gives a harsh laugh. “She was in on it. Dinnae tell me otherwise.”

“No, that’s not it. You thought name alone gave ya leave to put yer hands on a woman. Just like you do with yer poor wife. You are a great coward.”

“Maeve,” Ellen whispers, but Maeve doesn’t take her eyes from Ewan.

Instead, she lifts her chin.

“If there’s blame in it, put it on me.”

Maeve’s voice doesn’t change at all.

“I gave her the tonic. Ellen did not.”

Aileen lets out a tiny, strangled sound. “Maeve⁠—”

Maeve goes on as if she hadn’t heard. “And I’d do it again before I’d see her brought to childbed for a beast like you.”

Ewan surges, and had I not already been braced for it, he might have broken free. As it is, I drive the toe of my boot into the back of his leg and force him hard into the dirt.

He lets out a strangled curse and thrashes for a moment, too wild with drink and fury to do much but spit and struggle. Then, stubborn as the devil and twice as ugly, he hauls himself back to his feet.

Every man in the yard braces.

And still Ewan is brazen enough to turn toward Maeve with murder in his eyes.

He hisses between his teeth. “Ye meddlin’ witch.”

“Mind yer tongue,” Taskill says at last.

Taskill comes forward by easy degrees, his face unreadable, keeping to Maeve’s side rather than taking the words from her.

Ewan bares his teeth. “‘Tis between husband and wife, and yers got into it.”

“Nae,” Taskill says, calm as frozen winter water. “What matters most is that ye came onto Sinclair land fou wi’ drink, made a riot of yerself, and struck a woman before witnesses. Ye’ve not a damned thing to stand on but noise.”

That strikes true.

Not because conscience has found him, but because he knows truth when it corners him.

Patrick looks at Ellen again.

This time, guilt shows clean. In the drop of his shoulders, and in the way he can’t meet her eyes. In the swallow that works in his throat before he says, “That’s enough, Ewan.”

Ewan rounds on him. “Enough? They’ve meddled in my marriage, and turned my own wife against me.”

“And ye’ve made a shame of yerself, and of our clan,” Patrick snaps back, though not with half the force he ought to have had five minutes earlier.

James gives a hard, terrible laugh. “A shame? Is that what ye call it? If I’d done what you did to my Ellen, my father would’ve horsewhipped me in front of the household before throwin’ me clean through a stone wall.”

Patrick opens his mouth, but nothing comes.