Page 66 of Highland Jewel
Hearing the sound of footsteps, he sat up and staredat the door. At first, he thought he was still dreaming. The door was partly open.
Niall jumped to his feet and moved across the cell. He looked out the narrow opening. A guttering candle in a niche at the foot of the stairwell threw wild shadows on the walls. A Mackintosh fighter had been stationed here to guard him. After Maisie left, Niall had seen the man sitting on the bottom steps of the stairwell, a blanket pulled around him.
He now lay in a heap on the floor, as silent as the grave.
Niall slowly pulled the door open. The Highlander didn’t move. His mind clear of the nightmare, he thought of everything that was wrong here. A trap. An ambush. Anyone coming down those stairs would cut him down before asking any questions.
Listening for any sound coming from above, he crossed over to the man. He was alive, but he had a bloody lump on his head the size of a goose’s egg.
Something by the cell door caught his eye. The light of the candle glinted off the blade of a dirk. Someone had opened the door and left a dagger for him.
Niall’s only friend in the castle was Maisie. But she couldn’t have overwhelmed the guard. He’d seen her drive the flag like a lance at the dragoon in the Grassmarket, but this wasn’t her work. Despite everything that they’d spoken of yesterday, the truth had been lost in a thick fog that swirled between them. There was much that he hadn’t revealed, and he guessed she knew it.
But someone had cudgeled the man and unlocked the cell door. Someone who wanted Niall to finish his mission now that he was at Dalmigavie.
Niall slid the dirk into his sleeve and climbed the stone steps.
At the top of the stairwell, he looked out cautiously and then moved like a ghost through the castle corridors. At a narrow window he stopped and peered out. It was early morning. The sound of several milk cows lowing in a shed came across the courtyard, and people were just beginning to stir. He moved cautiously toward the laird’s study, keeping out of sight.
He had to find Cinaed.
Niall had seen a training yard beyond some of the outbuildings. If this son of Scotland intended to lead men against the British Army, he’d need to be drilling his fighters. But Niall couldn’t go out in the open. He’d be spotted immediately.
Near the entrance to the Great Hall, he found a dark corner formed by a stairwell leading down from the upper floors. He melted into the shadows. It was his only chance.
Two young kitchen workers came in the door from outside, rolling a cask of ale along the wide corridor and arguing about a wager of some sort. They disappeared into the darkness, leaving him alone again.
Niall’s thoughts turned to Maisie. Fate was playing tricks on them. He’d never imagined finding her at Dalmigavie.
He’d not gone back to Edinburgh after the last time he saw her. Lord Sidmouth’s informers were driving a sword into the heart of the reform movement. Entrapments and arrests were rippling through every city. Niall had no idea that their house had come under attack. He didn’t know that Archibald Drummond was dead.
Niall longed to talk to Maisie. To ask her questions. To find out what they’d gone through to get here. He wanted to shut out the world and breathe in the scent of her hair. To hold her body against his. He wished that the two of them could simply disappear and never look back again.
Pain shivered through him because he knew that might never happen.
Forcing himself to focus on what he needed to do, he drew the dirk from his sleeve and waited.
It wasn’t long before he heard the sound of two men descending. A moment later, the Mackintosh man called Blair stepped down into the corridor. Cinaed immediately appeared after him, giving directions about the day’s work.
Before Niall moved even an inch from his position, however, the son of Scotland paused, alert as a shepherd’s dog. He didn’t have a chance to react, though, for Niall was on him in an instant, his blade pressed to the Highlander’s throat.
Blair spun around, his long hunting knife flashing in the morning light.
“Don’t,” Niall barked, stopping the fighter in his tracks.
Cinaed held up a hand to his man to wait.
“What do you want?” he growled. “If you mean to kill me, get on with it. Blair will have your head on a pike within the hour.”
“Well, that’s just the point,” Niall replied coolly. “I have no desire to kill you, in spite of what you’ve heard.”
“And why would I believe that?”
“Because if I meant to kill you, you’d already be dead.”
Before Cinaed could answer, Niall lowered the blade and released him.
“But I need to talk to you, and it has to be now.”
