Page 27 of The Highlander's Captured Bride
He sailed them down the river then angled the boat into a side stream that, though following the main river’s course, took them into a mangrove. The water was silent and dark under the cover of trees that had barnacled roots arching up over the water’s top. Other trees had thickly bearded wisps that swayed eerily on the nearly non-existent wind.
Ethan had stopped rowing, but allowed them to drift through it. Captivated by the sporadic glimpse of sunlight she could see through the treetops and the reflection that glittered over the water’s top, Violet could not decide if the place was enchanting or eerie.
“Ye come here a lot?”
“When I had time, aye,” he said, head swiveling side to side, “I dinnae ken I will have much free time from now on, though.”
The indirect reference to him taking up the lairdship had her inquiring, “Ye told yer faither about it all, dinnae ye? This morning, at the table he gave me a look that had me almost sure that ye told him how we found Miss O’Bachnon.”
“I did,” he said, “and got him to promise to only tell yer faither about whatIhad discovered.”
“I hope Faither will believe it was all ye,” she said while daring to pry her fingers away from her seat. She dared to dip her fingers in the water over the side. “He has a way of seeing through things.”
“If he dinnae have that gift, then we wouldnae have called him here to help with Finley,” Ethan said while using the oar to push the boat away from a tangle of roots.
They sailed into a wider part of the stream and the tide had them flowing a bit easier. “Faither went off to Perth to see if he would find any more leads on her,” Violet mentioned. “I hope he gets something solid there.”
When the boat was angled to a mossy bank she wondered if they would be stopping on their sail. They rounded the moss to find that the other side was dry and rocky. Ethan used the oar to halt their sail. “Violet, look there.”
As her back was facing the stream, she twisted and looked up the hill were Ethan directed and saw a rock shrine jutting up at the crest. Rounding it, were smaller stones, and if she peered harder, she spotted runes carved into the stone. “Is that a druid’s shrine?”
“Aye, one of the last that the church dinnae find and destroy,” he said. “I dinnae ken if anyone worships here or nay, but I wouldnae be surprised.”
“I’ve never seen one before,” Violet said in awe as she dared to lean on the edge of the boat. It dipped but Ethan slid to the side to counteract her shift. “I’ve heard about the druids, but I never saw any physical marks of their presence.”
“They are few and far between to find,” Ethan said as he pulled the oar away and the boat drifted away from the hill. “But they are there.”
Moving away from the hill they sailed out from the cove, and when emerging back into the loch, Violet blinked at the harsher sunlight. Looking over her shoulder she could see why the old mages had chosen to worship in the secluded cove; there was an air of mysticism and mystery inside there.
Ethan began to row back up the stream and this time, working against the flow, he had to put all his effort into it. His arms were moving with smooth power and finesse. He made sure to, again, stick to the banks where the flow was not so fast and arduous. They soon got to the pier and near to the tethering pole. When Ethan leaned to cast the line over the jutting rock, she braced her hands on the seat as the boat rocked.
When they were tethered, he came to help her off the boat. She did not need him to carry her over to dry ground, but she did mourn the lack of his touch. Her hand was still in his but she lost all breath when he shifted to lace their fingers together. She tried to meet his eyes but he was looking across the loch, wistfully.
“Hoping ye would have time to come back soon?” she prodded, knowingly.
“Aye,” he said and then his thumb—unwittingly?— began to stroke the back of her hand. “I hope so.”
Turning, they went to the horses and mounted them, her with Ethan’s help, and they moved off back to the castle. They walked instead of urging their mounts into a trot. Unwillingly, Violet hoped, to get back to the castle where the magic of the past hour would fade away.
“Ethan,” Violet asked, “if we do find this woman, and she gives us what we need to find who killed yer brother, what would ye dae to her?”
His sigh was audible. “I cannae tell ye. She might be imprisoned in the dungeon if she kent exactly what was going to happen to me brother, but then…if she does have a son like Daivdh said, maybe we can put her in isolation. Her bairn doesnae deserve to have his mother taken away. But she will be punished; why else would she have carried the sleeping draught if she dinnae ken that this would happen to Finley?”
She understood what he was saying, and even more, felt his pain, but she had to correct him. “Ethan, sadly, there can be some distance between all these events. We ken she can make the potion, and we ken she took Finley out of the tavern, but nay one said that she took the potion with her or even gave it to him. Sometimes, some things are nay as linear as they seem. Someone could have interfered somewhere along the way.”
“Ye believe that?” he asked, doubtfully. “Seems straightforward to me.”
“It’s nay what I want to believe,” she replied quietly. “But Faither and I learned the hard way that there are some very cunning masterminds out there that will make someone look so guilty that it cannae be refuted.”
He angled his horse that much closer. “And how did ye find that out?”
Digging into her memory, she told him about a case she and her father had been called into in Glasgow. “A man was working on a way to improve on an ancient Roman and Egyptian steam engine machine. From the day he had started, he was under a constant accusation of another inventor that he had stolen his idea. When the accuser got the authorities to search the man, they found a manual, written in the accuser’s hand, and he sank into disgrace. A few months later, he was found dead and the man who was crucified as the murderer…”
“The accuser,” Ethan added.
“Aye,” she agreed. “And he was sent to prison for it. But lo and behold, a few months later, someone else made the machine. It was the apprentice of the accuser. We found out that he had broken into the first man’s home, copied the man’s work in his master’s hand, framed him, then went back to kill him and let his master take the fall. He then made the machine and got rich until he found himself at the bottom of a bottle and spilled his secrets. He was arrested and sentenced to death.”
His face twisted with the troubling idea. “So there might be someone else other than the woman and the man who killed him we will have to search for.”
