Page 17 of Tangled in a Highland Conspiracy
Moreover, Ailsa had no idea if the man who had attacked John was still waiting in the shadows outside to finish them off. She began to think about the implications of his death. The Ormonds were going to think that the McBains had committed the murder, since it was, after all, the logical assumption. She had to admit that if it were a member of her family who had been killed, her first suspicions would have landed squarely on the Ormonds.
“Did you not think it would be rather dangerous to meet a strange man at a desolate spot in the middle of the night?” Ramsay asked suddenly. His voice was sharp with suspicion.
“I did,” Ailsa answered. “But I have met John a few times and I felt that he was a good man. He was polite to me and did not treat me as if I were an empty-headed idiot the way many men do. Sometimes you have to rely on your instincts, and although I did not know him very well I had a good feeling about him.”
Ramsay looked down at his brother’s shrouded form and then stroked the shape of his hand under the cloth. For a moment, he said nothing, then he looked up at her. “I am not convinced you are telling me the truth.” His voice was almost a growl. “How do I know that it was not one of your family who shot my brother? Your father left my Aunt to marry someone else. Perhaps he has a secret agenda...”
“After all these years?” Ailsa asked in disbelief. “I am nineteen years old. Why would they wait to act so long? You know that my family will immediately be blamed for this whether it was our fault or not, and the last thing we want is a war. We have been trying to avoid one for years.”
“You are not the only ones who will be blamed.” Ramsay’s voice was bitter. He stood up and went to look out over one of the ruined walls of the cottage. The moonlight was spilling onto the pale sandstone and he was silhouetted against its cold glare. “They will blame me too.”
“But you came to guard him.” Ailsa was puzzled. This did not make sense. “Why should they blame you if you were trying to help?”
“Because I am usually blamed for everything, whether it is my fault or not,” he replied. His voice held a note of throbbing rage. “But this time it is my fault. I should have talked him out of it. I should have tied him up. I should have done something,” he thumped the flat of his hand against the stone in frustration. “I failed him, and this time I will deserve my punishment.”
“I do not understand this,” Ailsa shook her head. “Why are you blamed for everything? Surely not everything that goes wrong is your fault? I think you are just feeling sorry for yourself.” Her voice was harsh, but the moment the words were out of her mouth she wished she could take them back.
Ramsay’s face looked so stricken that Ailsa felt deeply ashamed of herself. This man had just lost his brother, for god’s sake! She was about to open her mouth to apologise when she heard him sigh before he began to speak.
“John was my father and his mother’s first-born child, and he is—was—the heir to the estate. He was the apple of my father’s eye, born when he was already quite a mature man of forty-four, and his mother was a young lady of impeccable birth, the daughter of a baron.”
Then his tone changed abruptly. “I don’t even know who my mother is,” he said angrily. “My father, like so many other men of his status, had an affair with one of his servants, and I am the result. I always knew that I was the Laird’s son, but when I looked at the way John was treated compared to the way I was treated, I realised that I was somehow different.
I knew this from a very early age. John was always dressed better, and his clothes always fitted him. My clothes were usually a little ragged or patched, sometimes both, because they had belonged to someone else, and were always either too big or too small.
One of the only privileges I was given was a nanny since my mother died giving birth to me. She looked after both John and me. She was never cruel to me, but she was never affectionate either. It was she who gave me my name, Ramsay, for no other reason than that she liked it, but…” he shrugged. “I suppose that is as good a reason as any. John was the only person who ever loved me.
He always treated me with dignity since the first moment I was conscious of knowing him. He could have looked down on me; he was born within a legal marriage, even if it was an unhappy one; my father and John’s mother had an arranged marriage and came to detest each other. I am a bastard, and everyone knows it. I hero-worshipped John when we were boys and he was a bit bigger than I was, and when we both grew to manhood and were the same size we became great friends.
We may only have been half-brothers, but to John, it made no difference.” He stopped and looked Ailsa straight in the eye. “He was the only person who ever loved me.”
Ailsa listened to his monologue, which was delivered in a matter-of-fact tone, without any trace of self-pity. Her heart ached for him. “You have no one now,” she declared. “no one to love and no one to love you.” She felt bitterly ashamed of herself for her earlier insults. “Forgive me for my harsh words. I spoke hastily without thinking of your feelings. I understand now that you are in a dreadful position, Ramsay; whichever way you turn it seems that someone will blame you for something that was not your fault.”
Ramsay was silent for a moment, then he said, “Thank you for understanding. But I should have stopped him from leaving, even if I had to lock him in his chamber, or even tell my father. There would have been hell to pay, but at least John would still have been alive.”
“But how could you do that?” Ailsa asked. “He would probably not have believed you, and I think John is—was—strong enough to stop you from locking him in.”
“I could have forced John to show him the note,” Ramsay said angrily. “All I had to do was keep him in his room till after midnight. It was not such a difficult task to accomplish, but I failed!” He sounded absolutely furious with himself, and once more, Ailsa felt a profound pity for him. It seemed as though he had the world on his shoulders.
“This was not your fault.” Ailsa’s voice was gentle, and she had to stop herself from moving towards him to put her arms around him, but both of them were still in a state of shock, and she had no idea how he would react. “It is the fault of whoever wrote those letters, and whoever shot the arrow. And ultimately it is the fault of whoever started the feud between our families that has been simmering for so long. Is a piece of disputed land worth all this strife and bloodshed? I am not an expert in these matters by any means but I do not think so.”
Ramsay had been on the edge of breaking down again, but for some reason talking to Ailsa was calming him in a way he had never felt before. She had accused him of self-pity but had redeemed herself by apologising, proving a lack of self-centredness, a willingness to admit mistakes that showed enormous strength of character. Suddenly, almost before he realised he was doing it, Ramsay found himself pouring his heart out to her.
“I have never been able to understand it either,” he agreed. “But this has made me think that perhaps I have no reason to stay here any longer. I was no use to the Ormond family, or yours, so perhaps I should go somewhere I will find a purpose. I loved John; he was all I had in the world, but now that he is gone I have no reason to be here anymore. There is nothing for me, and I feel even more worthless than I did before, so I will leave.”
“Have you thought how difficult that would be?” Ailsa asked. “You cannot go back to Balmuir to fetch your belongings; you would be captured at once when they find out, and even if you did manage to escape, how are you going to survive without money? As well as all that, you will be hunted, and I do not think Laird Ormond will give up until he finds you.”
Ramsay nodded slowly, knowing this was true. There seemed to be no way out of his desperate situation, but that was not the most pressing of his concerns. His heart was aching for the brother he had lost, and at this moment he felt that whatever happened to him was of little concern. He was despised by Laird Ormond, who would think nothing of ending his life, even if it was proved that he had not killed John.
“I think I might just go and give myself up,” he told her. “Without John to support me, I really have nothing to live for.”
“That is just not true,” Ailsa replied. “Look at me, Ramsay.” He looked up, and she leaned over to take his hands. “I know that we do not know each other well, but I feel that we are in the same predicament in a strange way. John’s death affects us both badly, you because you might be blamed for it, and me because I will be forced to marry the new heir. His name is Larry Ormond Jamieson, the Laird’s nephew, the son of his sister Moira Jamieson. I despise him, and I would do anything to avoid marrying him, so we must think of some way of solving this situation that would benefit both of us.”
“Why do you despise him?” Ramsay asked curiously. He had met the man once or twice and Larry had treated him with the same off-handedness as everyone else did, so Ramsay could not see that he was any worse than they were.
“Because he treats me as if I do not have a brain,” she replied bitterly. “In fact, he treats most women that way, but I think he reserves most of his patronising treatment for me, for some reason best known to himself. He thinks I’m no better than a pet dog.”
“I see,” Ramsay said dully. “All the more reason for us to find the killer, but how? There is no one I can count on to support me, and I have no resources of my own.” He shrugged in despair.
