Page 66 of Dark Side of the Laird
I wasn’t going to back down.
The old crone growled and I thought for a moment to feel a wallop on the back of my head like my nurse had done when I was a child.
“What is your name?” I asked her.
“Hilde.”
I grunted and took another sip of whisky.
“Will ye be satisfied with a hole in the wall?” she asked.
I nodded, knowing anything more than that would mean my death and possibly Emma’s and the old woman who was determined to help me.
The two women whispered as I crawled to the wall and worked to stand, using the stones to balance me. Emma rushed over and put my arm around her shoulder again. Then they scurried me along, stopping anytime they heard a noise. The corridors in the king’s dungeon were short and windy, and we quickly came to a damp stairwell lit with a single torch and covered in rats.
“The warden sees fit to keep the critters around for the benefit of the residents,” Hilde said with a short, bitter laugh.
Having worried they’d climb the table to nibble my toes, and fairly certain one or two had, I was not amused. Emma stifled a sound I knew was close to a scream as she meandered the steps with me adding to her weight. When we reached the top, Hilde held her hand up, stilling us both.
“All right, now ye go,” Hilde said and scurried round the corner to the left.
Emma and I followed her into a darker corridor, only the light from the top of the dungeon stairs guiding our way. Moments later we were pitched into dark, as she grabbed hold of my hand and led us through a door and up a narrow, equally dark, stairwell. Servant’s stairs most likely.
“Step lightly, now. We’ll come to the top and then I’ll take ye to a place to look in.”
At the top of the stairs, she opened a door and our eyes quickly adjusted to the new light of a well-lit corridor. A dark green, woven carpet lined the corridor, silencing our footfalls.
Voices called to and fro, and Hilde stopped moving, issuing us a, “Shh…”
I took the reprieve to catch my breath. My heart pounded, blood rushed and breath was labored. So many stairs and so little strength to surmount them. I felt weak, cowardly. This wasn’t me. I loathed my brother all the more for bringing me so low.
“Now,” Hilde said, yanking us forward across the hall. “Against the wall. Slide down five feet and then slip into the alcove. Ye can see from there.”
I did as she instructed with Emma by my side. Inside the alcove, I felt along the darkened wall until I found a little nob, and I pulled it back. Six inches into the wall was a hole cut away and light filtered through. Closing one of my puffy eyes, I could barely see into the room. But seconds later as my vision adjusted, I could see very clearly. The king’s prone body on a bed. His hands folded over his chest as he lay in state. His best robes of red and gold, his jewels and crown adorning him. Eyes closed, James looked more peaceful than I’d ever seen him before in my life.
Priests walked back and forth along the length of him, swinging their silver balls of incense and murmuring prayers.
He was dead. The king, my brother, dead. And I was rightfully king.
But I didn’t want it. Wouldn’t take it. I’d rather sink quietly back to my keep and live my life in peace with Emma.
I was reminded then who awaited me at the castle—Isabella—and what she’d done to me before I left.
I had to tell Emma the truth, it was imperative she know. Especially now that I’d recalled all of what happened during our interlude. The wretched MacDonald woman.
I turned to Emma then, wanted her to have the choice of leaving me here if she felt the need to, though nothing had occurred, other than a woman trying to play me false.
I faced her in the dark, sensing where she was. “Emma…”
“Oh, Logan, I’m so glad you’re alive,” she whispered, kissing me lightly on the lips.
“I have to tell ye something.”
“It can wait,” she replied.
“Nay, it canna. ’Tis about Isabella.”
In the darkened of the alcove, I felt rather than saw her face falter, the energy somehow leaving her.
