Page 81 of Wed to the Highlander
“What would Grand-da Angus do, Brother?” Duncan asked, very close to a hiss.
They both knew that over a century prior, Angus had defied the courts and the crown during war and mounted a traitor’s decapitated head on a pike outside the gate.
“You would no’! I’m yer kin!” Lachlan said, nostrils flaring.
“’Tis what you deserve,” Duncan growled.
Lachlan shoved him with both hands square in the chest. Duncan rocked on his heels but stood his ground then pushed back.
The crowd circled as the two men grappled. Duncan landed a blow to his brother’s ribs then another to his jaw. Lachlan swung wildly, clipping the laird’s chin.
Fists thudded, blood flew, and there was a crunch of bone at least once. But the man betrayed was stronger, faster, and burning with righteous fury. Duncan drove his smaller opponent to the ground, pinning him with a knee to the chest.
“You endangered our people,” he snarled in his half-brother’s face. “You betrayed your kin. All for wealth and power.”
MacLeish stepped forward, flanked by two of their stoutest men. “I’ve sent for the sheriff.”
With a look of disgust for his brother, and one last hard shove, Duncan rose, chest heaving. “Take him away.”
Lachlan barked a bitter laugh. “See? Soft! That’s what the old men of the clan say. A laird with no stomach for hard truths.”
“No,” Duncan said, voice cold and certain. “I’ve become a husband. A father. A laird who puts the best interests of the clan first, not his pockets. And a better man than you’ll ever be. Get him out of here,” he said to his steward. “I canna stand tae look at him.”
“Happy to, laird. I’ve asked that mucking out the sty wait. The traitor can keep the pigs company and be nice an’ ripe when the law arrives.”
The two strapping young men hauled Lachlan to his feet and toward the door. Ian MacPherson spat at his boots as he passed. Allistair, who was pushing eighty and had seen almost everything life could dish out, made an unflattering comment in Gaelic, then decreed, “Ye’re no MacPherson. No’ anymore.”
Agnes stood near the hearth, tears streaking down her face. She looked at her son—bruised, bloodied, defiant—and turned her back. Standing beside her was Angus, Lachlan and Fiona’soldest child. “Say it is nae true, Da,” he whispered, red-faced and shaking.
Only then did his shoulders sag.
Duncan didn’t speak again. He watched with a hole the size of a dagger in his heart as they took Lachlan away. When the door slammed shut behind them, it echoed through the keep like the final fall of a gavel.
Chapter 26
No one spoke of Lachlan without a shadow crossing their face. The betrayal had cut deep—not just of Duncan but the clan itself. This was a man they’d broken bread with, fought beside, and trusted. And yet, for all the anger, there was sorrow too. Fiona bore the weight of it quietly, with a kind of grace that made the silence around her feel heavier.
Lachlan was held in the two-cell constable’s office in Kilbrae. He awaited transfer to Inverness, a day’s ride away, where the busy High Court wouldn’t hear his case for months, according to Duncan. His charges had been read aloud in the town square: conspiracy, arson, attempted murder, property damage, and a host of others. Duncan expected penal servitude for life to be his sentence.Maggie had difficulty summoning sympathy for the man—his crimes were neither petty nor impulsive—but the thought of a lifetime spent toiling in the harsh prison workshops, the tedium of oakum picking, or the brutal monotony of breaking rocks under guard was almost too much to fathom.
Fiona had gone to see Lachlan twice. Once alone, returning with red-rimmed eyes. The second trip was with her sons, who’d been asking to see their da. Ever since, the previously rambunctious boys had been quiet as church mice.
Duncan had been to see his nephews and assured them they would always have a home with him and the clan, but his furyrenewed along with the desire to pummel his brother bloody again for what his selfish greed and hunger for power had done to those precious lads.
The day after the plain cart, flanked by four men with long rifles, had taken Lachlan away in chains, Fiona’s baby arrived. A girl she named, Eilidh, Gaelic for light, with a robust set of lungs and hair dark as peat. As Maggie had hoped they would, the women of the castle gathered around her.
Agnes had held the child once then left without a word. One morning, she didn’t arrive for breakfast; by midday, when someone went to check on her, her trunk was gone and so was she. Duncan and his men went in search of her, finding her back with the Camerons, where she intended to stay. Maggie took the news with a mix of relief and genuine sympathy. The shame had been too much, the whispers too sharp. Some wounds, she knew, could not be mended.
Duncan carried on. Fewer urgent messengers arrived, and the nighttime knocks at their door had all but ceased. He was still very busy, now managing all his duties without a second, with the added task of overseeing thetearing down of the north wing and tower, board by board and stone by stone. His cousins, Fergus and Hamish, were both vying for the job of second after falling all over themselves to apologize once it was learned that Lachlan was behind the constant chaos in the clan and that they’d wrongly laid blame at the laird’s feet.
“Will you choose one of them?” Maggie asked one morning over breakfast. After tiring of their boasting and arguing over who he should pick, he had sent them off with a task meant to keep them busy—and out of his hair.
“Likely no’. They’re eager, but very green, with a lot to learn. I’ll need tae make a decision soon, though. Before we return to London for the end of this session of Parliament.”
Her husband had returned to his calm, deliberate demeanor, but sometimes, Maggie caught him staring out over the hills, his eyes distant, his thoughts unreachable. The betrayal had cut deep. He wouldn’t speak of it, wanting to look to the future. But she saw it in the way he touched Jamie’s head, in the way he lingered at the nursery door.
Jamie thrived. He laughed as the wonder of his world was revealed, tugged on his father’s beard, tangled his fingers in Maggie’s hair, and cooed and babbled nonsense that made his nursemaids giggle. He was joy incarnate, untouched by the storm that had surrounded his birth.
Maggie was fully recovered from the toxicity and childbirth but had forever sworn off tea. The coffee the Scots favored was bitter and strong, requiring equal parts milk and too much sugar to get it down. After a week of trying, she settled on warm milk with breakfast, and Fiona’s ginger wine when she wanted something more than water from the well. An Englishwoman giving up tea was a sacrifice, but for Maggie, it was more a quiet reclaiming of control.
