Page 96 of A Highland Healer Captured
The talk she dreaded was put on hold.
Fergus announced from the doorsill that the council stood ready to proceed with the trial, and the hall shifted again—tables shoved back, benches lined along the walls, a cleared space by the hearth for judgment.
Cora was brought up from the cellars, pale as paper, hair tangled, wrists tied in front so she wouldn’t shame herself by stumbling. Skylar’s belly tightened at the sight of the wee bundle of a lass who had threaded poison through a home with the gullibility that follows love.
Zander stood. “We’ll hear her,” he said, not loud, not soft. Hamish watched, arms folded, a laird measuring another.
Cora tried to speak and failed. Her mouth worked, but sound would not come. She shook, small, miserable, eyes darting to Skylar, to Zander, to the empty space where Marcus’s shadow still seemed to stand.
Skylar moved before anyone else could. “May I?” she asked Zander under her breath, and when he gave a grim nod, shecrossed the cleared patch of rushes and knelt, so her eyes were level with Cora’s.
“Lass,” she said, gentle, “look at me.”
Cora’s gaze jerked to hers.
“Ye’re breathin’. Ye’re here. That matters. We’ll get through the tellin’. One sentence at a time.” She reached to take the girl’s bound hands; when the guard began to object, Zander’s quiet “Leave them” froze him silent.
“I…” Cora swallowed hard. “I thought he was right. I thought blood meant right.” Her eyes bloomed wet, but her voice steadied the way a bridge steadies once you trust your weight to it. “I was wrong. I kent it the first night I watched the bairn sleep after I’d done what I’d done.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “I’m sorry.”
The hall listened. What else could it do? Zander’s men had bled beside her. Katie, bandaged and wan, had bled because of her. Grayson’s name was a soft current shifting through the room without being spoken.
“Ye poisoned him,” Fergus said, not cruel, just true.
“Aye,” Cora whispered. “Because he bade me, and I was weak enough to obey. I would take it back. I would take it all back with me own blood if I could.”
Skylar squeezed her hands once. Zander’s voice rang out, “And last night?”
“I meant to run with him,” Cora blurted. “Marcus said he would storm the yard and cut anythin’ that stood in his way. He was meant to kill Grayson. I thought if I stole the boy first, I could save him. It was daft.” Her lip trembled. “But it was the only good notion I had left in a head I’d filled with bad ones.”
There was a silence.
Then Zander nodded once, the slightest dip of a man who had shouldered more weight than even he was built to carry. “I believe ye,” he said.
Murmurs. A hissed “Laird,” from Tamhas. A twitch from Fergus that might have been agreement or pain.
Zander lifted a hand and the hall quieted. “Believin’ is not forgivin’ the deed,” he went on. “It’s acknowledgin’ the truth as it stands in the mouth that speaks it.”
He looked to Katie. “Do ye speak?”
Katie swayed but lifted her chin. “She was at the boy’s bed, aye. But when it came to it, she didnae have the blade to him. She was lifting him out of the bed when I came in. And I’m still standin’ because of Lady Skylar. I’ll nae feed the gallows with a lass who finally chose right.”
All eyes swung to Grayson, who clung to Mason’s hand at the back of the hall. The boy swallowed, small chest puffing with the effort of being brave in public. “I daenae want her in the kitchens,” he said bluntly, “and I daenae want her by me bed. But I daenae want her dead.”
Hamish blew out a breath and nodded to himself, as if a verdict had just been delivered by the only judge who mattered. “Well said, laddie.”
Zander turned back to Cora. “Hear me,” he said. “Ye will nae hang in me yard. Nor will yer head be on a spike next to yer braither’s. Ye will nae bleed for Marcus’s sins. But ye cannae stay here.” Cora flinched, and Skylar braced her hands more firmly over the girl’s.
Zander’s voice gentled, not in pardon, but in pity. “This house will never be safe for ye again. Nor ye for it. I banish ye from Strathcairn lands. I’ll see ye given a small purse and a place on a cart headin’ south at dawn. Ye’ll nae turn north again while I live.”
Cora’s face crumpled—relief and grief, both too big for one body. “Aye,” she whispered. “Thank ye.” Then, to Skylar, raw with sincerity: “I’m sorry.”
“I ken it,” Skylar said. She rose and, because she could, because grace costs less than blood and buys more, she folded the lass into a brief, fierce hug. “Be better than the men who raised ye.”
Cora nodded into her shoulder, then let herself be led away.
The trial broke like a storm that never quite struck—low thunder, flashes of temper, then quiet. Men drifted to work that had waited all day—horses to rub down, children to find, messes to scrub with sand and vinegar.
Hamish clapped Zander’s shoulder, hard enough to make Skylar wince for the stitches beneath the clean shirt. “We’ll speak at supper,” he said. “But for now—ye’ve a keep that’s still standin’, man. That’s plain work well done.”
