Page 141 of Bride of Ice
“I knew it!” she cried, tearing across the courtyard, while Gellir and Brand followed at more dignified pace. “I knew you’d come back!”
Overjoyed to see The One, despite his haggard appearance, she wanted to order him a hot bath and a soft bed at once.
“I’m not here to stay,” he said gruffly. He had only one purpose in mind. Protecting them. And for that, there was only one solution.
He turned to the lads. “Where is Hallie’s husband? Where is Archibald Scott?”
Gellir and Brand exchanged a silent, significant look of solidarity. It appeared there was no love lost between the brothers and their sister’s new husband. And whatever grudge they might have held about Colban leaving them without a proper goodbye was gone now.
They detected the underlying threat in Colban’s words. They knew his capacity for violence. And they wanted to be a part of it.
“He’s gone to the crannog,” Isabel volunteered. “The ruin on the loch.”
“Alone?” he hoped.
“Nay, with Ian.”
Colban’s gut churned. He ground his teeth.
“I’ll go with you,” Brand said.
Colban glanced over at the lad. For an instant, his heart wrenched. How he’d missed the Rivenloch siblings. Only three months had passed, but it looked like Brand had grown another inch.
“I’m going as well,” Gellir chimed in.
“Neither o’ ye are comin’,” Colban told them in no uncertain terms. “’Tis somethin’ I need to do on my own.” He couldn’t let these honorable young lads to see was the dishonorable death he intended to deliver to their sister’s husband.
“I’ll fetch Hallie,” Isabel offered.
“Nay!” he roared, making the lass gasp and recoil in fright.
But that was good. Sheshouldbe frightened. Hallie was the last person he wanted to see. The last person he wanted interfering in his plans for justice.
Colban might do unsavory things to the villain before he killed him. And he didn’t want her witnessing that or, even worse, defending the monster.
Frustration made the siblings curse him as he took off alone.
Honor made them do his bidding.
He took his claymore and left his satchel behind in the courtyard. Inside it was the notebook he’d stolen from Ian. It seemed trivial now. For what he intended, he wanted no burdens, and he needed his arms free.
But he knew in his heart, if he achieved what he set out to do, he wouldn’t be returning for his things. They’d belong to a different man. A man who would never slay a person in cold blood. A man worth of the title an Curaidh.
Nay, he wouldn’t come back for his belongings. Not for a long while. Perhaps never.
He’d been to the crannog before. Isabel’s friends had taken him there to catch trout on a clear fall afternoon. Today, with its broken timbers swathed in white fog, the ruin appeared to hover above the still water like a gray storm cloud. It seemed less like a congenial fishing spot and more like an ominous hiding place for dark and secret sins.
Mist blanketed the grassy slope and concealed the uneven ground, but it also softened the sound of Colban’s progress as he stole toward the walkway of the crannog.
From the verge of the mossy bank, he crept carefully across the bridge of cracked planks, dodging the places where the wood had rotted through.
The door of the crannog was missing. He was able to peer into the entrance, through the mottled shadows where gaps in the walls occurred. At the far end, beneath part of the roof that was open to the sky, he could see the dark figure of a man close to Ian, set in sharp relief against the silvery loch beyond.
Stealing into the crannog, he heard the soft murmur of their voices bouncing off the misty water. Ian’s young, inquisitive tones. The man’s slick and patronizing responses.
The lad stood at the edge of the platform with a fishing pole, pointing down at something in the loch.
The man hadn’t spotted Colban yet. But as he drew closer, from the dim interior of the crannog, Colban could see Archie clearly in the eerie overcast. His worst fears were realized.
