Page 45 of Taming the Highland Misfits
But don’t do anything rash, Finley. I hate him, and I know you do too, but he is a cunning man and will use any means to stop us bringing him to justice. There is no good in charging in and hoping to force him to do what we want. I know him, and he is as stubborn as a mule.”
Finley rubbed his forehead, feeling a headache coming on. “Well, I willnae stop until I bring him tae justice, Isla, so one o’ us is goin’ tae be hurt either way. Nothin’ an’ naebody is goin’ tae stand in my way, an’ I will kill anybody that tries. If that means your father, then so be it.”
Isla saw by the look on Finley’s face that he meant what he said. However, she felt that later he would repent of his words. He had been serious when he said he would turn his back on his old life, and she knew he was speaking in the heat of the moment.
She would discuss it with him later, she decided. However, now they had another problem to solve. “What are we going to do with these two?” she asked, pointing to the two men.
Finley did not even glance at them. “They can stay here,” he said in an indifferent tone. “Nae doubt somebody will find them in the mornin’.”
“Nooo!” Iain yelled. “There are rats an’ mice an’ other beasties down here! Let us go an’ we willnae tell a soul, we promise.”
“On your word o’ honour?” Finley asked, raising his eyebrows.
“Aye,” they answered in unison.
Finley threw back his head and laughed till the tears ran down his face. “Did ye hear that, Isla?” he asked. “That is the funniest thing I have heard in ages! Honour? You two? Ye dinnae even know what the word means!”
With that, he marched out of the cellar, followed by Isla, then he locked and barred the door behind them.
19
Once outside the door, Finley listened to both of the Crawfords yelling at the tops of their voices that they wanted to be let out, and he felt a sense of unholy satisfaction. With any luck, they would not be discovered until a new barrel of ale was needed, and that could be many hours, if not days, depending on how busy the Lonely Shepherd was. Even now, although he could still hear them, their voices were becoming fainter and as they ascended the stairs they faded away then disappeared altogether.
“They will likely be rescued before too long,” he grumbled. “An’ nae doubt we will be hunted, Isla.” He stood for a long time, trying to take in what Alec Crawford had told him.
When he had first heard of his mother’s death, a blessed numbness had settled on him, making it easier for him to cope for a while, yet it did not last. One night when there was no moon, his candle had burnt out and the window shutters were closed, he had woken up in total darkness. It had taken him a moment to remember where he was.
Then suddenly the realisation that he would never see her again had hit him like a punch in the middle of his chest. He had hugged himself and turned his face to the pillow then wept.
Never again would she fold her arms around him to comfort him when he had been having a bad dream. She would never spoon porridge into his mouth and blow on it to cool it lest it burnt him. She would never again bandage his skint knees and elbows when he fell over and hurt himself, or tell him fantastical bedtime stories with happy endings.
Those were all things she had done for him when he was much younger, of course, but even when he had reached his teen years she had fussed over him and made sure that he was clean and tidy before he walked out with one of the village girls. Agnes McGill had always made sure that his standards never slipped, and never stopped being his supporter and protector. She had been the best mother in the world.
‘Where are ye when I need ye, Mammy?’he thought with a sadness that burned inside him like a flame too close to his skin.
Nothing seemed real. The moon, not quite full but still bright, looked as thought it was laughing at him, and the hiss of trees blowing in the breeze sounded like some malevolent creature of the night. He felt as though he was trapped in another world, one where everything looked familiar, but was eerily dissimilar to his own. What had happened to him?
Was this what occurred when you were possessed by an evil spirit, he wondered? Was everything just—not quite right? If such an entity had managed to enter him, it was a demon of rage; he could never remember being so angry before in his life.
“Finley?” Isla’s soft voice broke into his reverie, and he was startled back to awareness.
He looked around at her and saw her soft dark eyes pleading with him. “I think we should think about this for a while.” She stepped up to him and cupped her hands around his face, then stood on tiptoe to press a soft kiss against his lips. “You are angry—of course you are, and I am too, but you cannot just go to my father without any kind of strategy. He has guards and servants all around him—we have nobody.”
Finley tried to quench the fire inside him, but it would not die down, no matter how many happy thoughts he tried to think. He felt as though he would never be calm again, as though the flames would consume him, and eventually he gave up the fight.
Isla could not take her eyes off him; the look on his face terrified her, and even as she kissed him, which she hoped would calm him down, she knew it was not working. The tension in his body was palpable; she could feel him shuddering as he held onto her arms. She tried to pull him close but he resisted her then pushed her away.
Isla staggered a little as she stumbled backwards, but she did not fall, and even if she had done, she doubted that Finley would have noticed, since he was so intent on his mission of revenge. She scrambled to her feet and tried to run after him, but she could not match his strength or his speed, and a moment later he had leapt onto Duff and was urging him in the direction of Isla’s house.
Finley was propelled by rage, and as Duff’s hooves settled into the steady rhythm of a gallop, so did his thoughts.‘I will kill him, I will kill him, I will kill him…’He saw again the tall figure of Robert Thomson with his lank, dark hair and the malevolent glint in his deep brown eyes. He could never remember Isla’s father smiling at him; he had always looked at Finley the boy, Finley the youth and Finley the man with an expression of disapproval and disgust. It was as though he regarded him as nothing better than dirt to be scraped off his shoe.
‘Well, no’ any more,’Finley thought viciously.‘Tonight is goin’ tae be the last time you look at me—ever. The last thing ye ever see will be my face, an’ I will be smilin’, because I will be the winner. I will have beaten ye. Aye, Robert Thomson. In another wee while ye willnae be able tae see anythin’ at a’. The fires o’ hell will have blinded ye.’
He urged Duff on, only slowing down when he sensed that his poor horse was exhausted. He could see the silhouette of the Thomson house in the distance and noticed that there was one lantern burning in an upstairs room. It was still too dark to see properly, and he could not remember the locations of all the rooms in the big house, but he knew that Robert Thomson’s room was at the front. Could he be looking at it right now?
Presently he stopped, then realised that Isla had caught up with him. He felt a little annoyed that her little mare Raffy had kept up with his big stallion, but he had seen how fast she was before. He wondered if her father had given her such a beautiful mount, then decided that he was not capable of such generosity. She must have been a gift from her lovely mother, of whom Finley still had fond memories. Robert Thomson had no noble feelings at all, except perhaps for himself.
Finley dismounted from his horse and stood gazing over at the house where the object of his hatred lived. He saw Isla coming over to him but he barely acknowledged her, so focused was he on the light in the window.
