Page 68 of The Highlander's Captured Bride
Violet, hold on, wherever ye are, I’ll find ye.
24
Huddled into a corner of the dungeon, Violet tried to breathe out the stale air from her lungs through her mouth. She had a bare assumption of time as the pitiful daylight that came through the tiny square above was barely different from the same light that came out at dusk.
The guard that had taken her down to the dank depths that night had come through on his words and had taken her a dry dress, not one of hers as the hem had barely gone to her shin but she had been happy and dry. When her water-logged dress had dried out the next day, she had changed into it before he had arrived and handed the borrowed frock back to the man with deep gratitude.
From there, he had carried water and bread to her for a midday meal and a bucket for her bodily needs. Violet still could not believe that Mister MacFerson, the genial, mild-mannered academic had killed his nephew, but the reality of it was a cold block on her chest.
Logically, many others could have committed the act but the more she thought about it, put the pieces together and followed the timing, she was sure the man had killed not only Finley, but also Miss O’Bachnon.
His convenient disappearance to Perth that day, where her brother had told her she had lived days before her death, was incredibly suspicious and then, forcing the boy to write that damning note was even more so.
But why?
The words kept circling her mind in unending loops. She could understand why he would poison Miss O’Bachnon; she was the only person who knew exactly what had happened the night before Finely had died and could tell why she had done it. What would the man have to gain from his killing hisnephew?
To get back at his brother?
No, they might have arguments in the past and even current—the one about Laird MacFerson being drunk sprung to mind—but she did not see that as cause to kill the man’s son.
To teach him a lesson?
But what lesson? Mister MacFerson had ranted that his brother and nephew knew little on how to make their home and its land prosperous, but how could bloodshed resolve that?
As she leaned on the cold wall, Violet felt that she was nearing on the solution but the pangs in her stomach overrode her thoughts. Hunger was chased and overridden by fatigue and as she slipped off to an uneasy rest, she could only pray that someone—Ethan, his father, Mister MacTyre,anyone—would come and find her before MacFerson decided to harm her or remove her.
When she woke again, it was in the dead of night. Her sleep rhythm had been thrown off from the night arriving at the castle worrying about her father, and sleeping on an uncomfortable, cold, gritty rock made everything worse. She closed her eyes as it made no sense to look around as it was all various shades of black.
“Ethan…where are ye?”
Surely, he must have come back by then and have realized she was missing. She knew that nothing much slipped past Ethan. She appreciated that he had an eye for the minutia. He saw the barest shifts in a horse’s actions, the flow of a river’s tide and the shift in the wind. How could he not see her absence? It was either that he was not there or that he was being stymied from finding her.
She only had her body to rely on for warmth as the guards—new ones she realized— had been forbidden from giving her a blanket or a simple sheet. Violet could only assume that Mister MacFerson had ordered a continuous change in the guards to not have any of them give her some sympathy or do her any favors.
She lived in constant fear of what would come next. Was she imprisoned, only to wait for when MacFerson found her father, and then, both of them would be shipped off to some desolated work camp or, worse, executed? The charge of harming a Laird’s son was a heavy one and would carry with it, grave consequences. If MacFerson’s allegation of her father killing the Laird was added to her ‘crime’ and if the people believed him without any contradiction from the Laird himself—a man who could not be found—the noose was inescapable.
She wanted to get out of this place and quickly. But how? The door at the mouth of the dungeon was locked with a key from the outside and she was not nearly strong enough to overpower any of the guards who came to give her food and sweet-talking was not her forte.
No one was going to let her go against the MacFerson’s orders and, if by any miracle she was set free, she would be laughed to scorn if she dared accuse the man of killing his nephew without anyone to back her up. Her only hope was Ethan and he was absent as well. Sighing through her nose, she pressed her head on the smoothest part of the wall and tried to think. Why would he do all those heinous acts?
A thought ran through her mind—Finley is dead and buried, which one of ye is going to be next, ye or yer younger son?
Finley was the heir apparent; his father was the Laird and Ethan was— the ear-jerking grate of the door had that thought breaking in half and she sat up, expecting a guard to come, only to see Callum MacFerson coming closer. Dread filled her chest with ice and she clutched at her bosom in fear.
“What dae ye want?” she asked.
“Oh, humor me, Miss O’Cain,” he said with humor in his voice, “I came to see how ye were doing. Three days late but what does that matter?”
“It matters because ye’ve framed me for a crime,” she replied, “One that nay one with a speck of sense would believe.”
“And why would they nay believe it?” he asked.
“All I’ve done—all me faither and I have done—was to aid ye and Laird MacFerson in the mystery of who killed his son,” she swallowed and braced herself on the wall. With a calm voice and steady tone, she dropped her winning card, “But ye kent all that already as ye were the snake we were looking for, hiding in plain sight.”
“I ken I should take offense to those unfounded accusations,” he said simply. “If I had the faintest inkling of what ye mean.”
“Are ye going to force me to say it?” she asked incredulously.
