Page 68 of Highland Sword
Everyone in the courtroom watched in silent disbelief as Lord Ruthven rose and scuttled off. No one moved for a long moment. Then, suddenly, the courtroom erupted in shocked cries.
Aidan turned to Sebastian. “Sir Rupert was willing to surrender the field, rather than have Wemys’s testimony go into the record.”
“That worked out well,” Sebastian responded.
Friends surrounded the two weavers, whose faces showed that they still didn’t believe they were free.
Aidan drew Sebastian aside. “Take care of our prize witness. Sir Rupert’s men may take a run at him before you get ten paces from the Tolbooth. Get him to Searc’s house. I’ll send these distinguished members of the press after you. We don’t want them to think they traveled all this way for nothing.”
“I’ll make sure they hear what Wemys has to say.” Sebastian took hold of Aidan’s arm. “Take care, big brother. You made a deadly enemy today.”
Suddenly, the roar of a crowd outside could be heard.
“What’s that?” Aidan asked.
“I believe your public has just learned the outcome of the trial,” his brother said wryly. “You’re a celebrity now, God help us.”
CHAPTER21
MORRIGAN
Morrigan had wanted to go to Inverness and watch the trial, but everyone had been adamantly against it. Isabella and Cinaed knew all about her brush with Sir Rupert.
Now, Aidan Grant was a hero across the Highlands, and soon his fame would spread throughout Scotland. He was the brilliant barrister who had cleverly bested Sir Rupert Burney and the most brutal judge in all of Britain in one trial. The Chattan brothers were free and had returned to Elgin to a hero’s welcome.
Aidan’s name would soon be in every newspaper from Inverness to London. The same journalists who’d interviewed Wemys were also going to print the court proceedings. They were planning to publish additional articles about the government’s underhanded methods of coercion and entrapment. One of the reporters told Sebastian that a Glasgow printer was publishing a pamphlet about a spy there named Alexander Richmond. Now, to be sure, there would be more. And in every publication Aidan was to be proclaimed as a champion of the people.
Even though she admired Aidan’s accomplishment, now that he’d returned, Morrigan kept her distance from him. Since the night of the Samhain celebrations, she’d avoided speaking to him. She was careful that they wouldn’t be caught alone.
It hurt her that their lives had to be like this, but she knew it would be less painful in the long run. Aidan was leaving for Edinburgh, and Morrigan didn’t know when he’d be back. She didn’t know if they’d ever see each other again. And even if they did, she had her doubts that their friendship would survive what happened on the night of Samhain.
It was only a kiss, she kept telling herself. One that she’d ended in panic. But there was more to it, more going on between them. She couldn’t quiet her emotions, didn’t know how to stop thinking of him. The affection she carried for this man had no future, but Morrigan didn’t know how to push him from her heart and close the door.
At dawn on the day he was to leave, she fled her room and went out to the training yard. The sky was steel grey and threatened rain. It didn’t matter. She needed to let out her frustrations, and the battered pell took another beating from her. Every attack, however, every blow—right and left, slash and kick and stab—only managed to trigger another memory of him. No matter how hard she hit, no matter how breathless and light-headed she became from the exertion, she couldn’t push Aidan’s face from her thoughts.
Every look they exchanged was charged with meaning. She would never forget their fight in the alleyway. Or the way he came after her the first day he arrived at Dalmigavie. Or the morning when the two of them sparred with dirks and she again blackened his eye. His cleverness enchanted her. His wit at Barn Hill caught her offguard. He never forgot a conversation. Every word she said to him came back on her. Morrigan was never as well read as Maisie, or as accomplished as Isabella, but Aidan made her feel smart. Capable. He challenged her to think beyond the training yard.
She’d miss him when he was gone. She already did.
Frowning at the increasingly mangled post, Morrigan finally paused to catch her breath. A cold rain was now falling. She hadn’t even noticed.
“You still rely too much on a two-handed grip. While I am gone, perhaps you could practice more using only one hand.”
Morrigan’s chest tightened. She looked over her shoulder at Aidan standing beneath the overhang of the weapons shed. His face was in the shadow, but she could see his long legs were sheathed in breeches and boots. He was ready for his travels.
“Anything else I should work on?”
He crossed the yard to her.
Morrigan stared into his handsome face. For the first time in her life, she understood what the poets and novelists meant when they described someone as “smitten.” She was definitely smitten, unfortunately. Painfully, dangerously, irrevocably smitten. Blast.
“Practice your lunges and recoveries.” He came to stand next to her. “Your footwork could be faster. You need to work on your agility.”
“There is nothing wrong with my agility.”
“You should also train with a sword in one hand and a dagger in the other.”
Morrigan liked his idea, but she wasn’t going to admit it. “When did you become an expert in training?”
