Page 9 of The Highlander's Captured Bride
He could not think of what she was feeling. Her son that she had loved for twenty-nine years was gone. He waited until her breathing evened out and she was asleep. Leaving the room, he closed the door quietly, and took the corridor down the stairwell to the great hall. Hunger was absent from him, but he knew he had to eat something to sustain him through the hours to come.
The hall was mostly empty as a large portion of his clan had a unique custom to fast on the day of burials. They only broke at the twilight feast after the body was laid to rest. He passed through the hall and stepped into the kitchen, and instantly, his gaze dropped on Violet, who had a cup to her face and an empty trencher before her.
She looked up and her lips curled into a small smile. “Good mornin’.”
Taking a seat, he braced his elbows on the table. His emotions were still heavy on his chest, but he did not let them out. “Mornin’. How was yer rest?”
“Fair,” she said calmly. “But I havenae seen me faither this morning. I dinnae expect him to do any work today on this case, but I have a funny feeling that he is trying to keep me away from this case, but I dinnae ken why.”
“I might have the reason,” Ethan said. “Faither just told me that yer faither says ye get a little carried away with cases at times. He said ye once dressed as a lad to find a thief and as a stable boy to catch a man who was mistreating his master’s horses.”
Shaking her head softly, she laughed. “Funny enough, if I hadnae posed as a lad those times, the cases wouldnae have been solved. I used me body to me advantage, and with the right shirt, posing as a lad was easy.” She dipped her head and looked at her chest, “I dinnea have a very visible…er… bosom.”
He forced his eyes to stay on her face. “Were ye in any danger then?”
“I’m always in danger,” Violet said. “But I carry a dagger with me at all times, and I can run pretty fast.”
“A dagger… eh.” He leaned back and gestured for a servant to come over and requested some warm drink and food. “Have ye ever used it?”
Her eyes glimmered with slyness as she reached down to her feet, flicking the tail of her dress and plucked a sharp dirk from her boot. It was a simple dagger with a leather-wrapped handle, and when she pulled it from its sheath, a very sharp blade. She laid it on the table, “I never go anywhere without Shadow.”
It took him a moment to understand what she meant, then grinned uncontrollably, “Ye use it that so quickly, that it turns into a shadow?”
“Aye,” she smiled. “I’ve run into men twice me size. It’s a good thing to have a deterrent in hand.”
The servant Ethan had requested food from came over and set the trencher and cup before him. He drank first. “I would like to see that one day but today…” he grimaced, “…is the burial. I won’t be there all day, but I will carry the casket to the burial ground. May we meet after?”
“I’d love that,” she said and reached over to rest her hand on his arm. “Say goodbye to yer brother and take all the time ye need.”
He spun his hand over and clasped her hand tightly. Her look was deeply touching. “Thank ye. The ceremony will be at three o’clock today. Ye’ll hear the bell toll from the village, and if ye find a balcony to the back of the castle, ye’ll see the procession to the burial ground.”
“I’ll be on the lookout,” she smiled, and again, the feeling to cover her lips with his battered his mind but he pulled away.
“Thank ye—,”A thasgaidh.He bit back the endearing term before it could escape his throat. He had almost uttered the words meaning “me dear” to a woman he barely knew. Dipping his head, he busied himself with eating. Trying hard to not think of her or breathe in the soft freesia scent coming from her skin—but failing.
5
Perched on the back porch that Ethan had told her to find, Violet looked keenly down at the village in the distance. She felt the cold leather of the sheath against her ankle and smiled. Ethan’s face, when she had pulled that dagger from her boot, was priceless and was painted on her memory.
Her attention sharpened at the sound of a melancholy toll from the church’s bell, and she stood on the tips of her toes to see over to the street far off. She soon spotted men coming up the lane, a man holding a bell in his hand and behind him, eight men holding a wooden coffin, two of them Ethan and his father. Both were in dark shirts and thick plaids of the family tartan.
Villagers, she assumed, formed somber lines behind them, and she thought she heard a hymn being sung but was not sure which it was as the wind stole the notes. A thick coverage of trees hid them from her until they passed by it and emerged into the burial ground. She sat back on the seat and watched while footsteps had her looking over her shoulder. Her father was there, his clothes dark and his face solemn.
He stood with his hands clasped behind him as he looked on. “It’s a troubling situation, Violet. The clues to finding who killed Mister MacFerson are few and very far between. I dinnae ken if there is much we can do here.”
No!
Violet was on her feet. “Faither, no, please, we cannae leave them now. Nae at this juncture. Surely there is some other stratagem we can use to uncover what happened. Have ye spoken to the healers, and asked how Mister MacFerson had gotten the sleeping drought?”
“In deference to the funeral and this day of grief, I have decided to put the search off, but the trail is already thin, and with time slipping away, it might go completely cold,” he added. “I would like to speak to the healers and such and see if they ken anything about it. But that raises another question: as far as I’ve heard, Finley was loved by all around him, so why would anyone want to kill him?”
“Ethan, er, Mister MacFerson,” she swallowed nervously, “told me the same. In his words, he implied that his brother had a very good connection with all those around him. He even soothed-talked a neighboring clan to stop fighting with them and become their ally.”
Her father canted his head to her, “Ye’ve learned that much already?”
“He’s…easy to talk with,” she explained, trying to stop her embarrassment from warming her cheeks. “He does love his brother, Faither, it’s plain in his voice when he speaks of him, and so is his pain.”
They paused as the wind blew sounds from the burial over to them. It was broken, but she heard the words of the priest reciting a burial rite over the coffin. The sadness of the tone had her heart sinking within her, for those who were suffering from the loss. While she was looking at the procession, her fingers were crossed with the deep wish that her father would let them stay for a little while.
