“She’s verra fast to have found yer room in the short time from when I left her and when I watched ye depart to go to her,” Brice commented.
She looked away. “Aye, she must be verra quick,” their mother mumbled.
“She’d have to be,” Brice said. “And she’d require the ability to vanish like a ghost.”
Callum frowned, and their mother whipped her gaze back to Brice. “What do ye mean?”
Brice squatted beside Callum and picked up the longer of the two daggers on the floor. “This is my dagger,” he said. “And it was in my chamber when I left for the great hall. And I went to my chamber after I left ye to wash before supper. Unless the lassie can make herself unseen, she did nae come to my chamber and take this dagger, which means someone else did,Mother.”
The news didn’t surprise Callum, nor did his mother’s eyes popping wide or the tense look that crossed over her face. Silence stretched the room, and Callum chose to let his mother squirm in her seat for a moment and think seriously about how she wanted to proceed.
“Tell me truth now, Mother,” Callum ordered. “I’m sorry to have done things in the past to make ye so verra fearful that I’ll make a greedy choice now, but ye dunnae need to fash yerself. I will nae ever put my desires above the needs of the clan again.”
His mother stared back at him, her hands twisting together furiously in her lap. Suddenly, Maria shoved past him, snatched his mother by the arm, and hissed, “Listen carefully, old woman. If ye dunnae spit out the truth, I’ll curse ye!”
His mother gasped. “Ye’ll curse me?”
“Aye,” Maria replied, her eyes shining bright. “I spent some time in the company of someban-druidh,and I ken well how to deliver a curse that will haunt ye for the rest of yer life.”
Callum couldn’t tell whether Maria was being truthful or not, but his mother had gone white as snow. She wrenched her arm free. “She wanted to leave!” she wailed. “And I wanted her to, as well.” His mother swung toward him. “Callum, Son, I could sense she would ruin everything for ye, for our clan, so I, er, I demanded she depart, and she said she was only too happy to do so. But she refused to without weapons and coin.”
Regret for all that had occurred, all that could have been for him and Marsaili, assaulted him. He clenched his hands by his side, struggling to keep his emotions within. “Why, then, would she hit ye on the head if ye brought her what she asked for?”
“How am I to ken the woman’s mind?” his mother wailed.
Something in her demeanor, perhaps the way her eyes kept darting about, made him certain that she was not offering the entire truth. “Consider this: if I discover ye are lying, I will break ties with ye. I will set ye away from me and ban ye from the castle to dwell in a cottage on the outskirts of my land to live out yer life alone and miserable.”
His mother’s hand fluttered to her neck. “Ye would banish me over a lie intended to protect ye? One born out of love?”
“Lies are nae born of love, Mother,” he bit out, his conscience niggling at the fact that he had not told Marsaili the truth of his feelings for her. But that was different. It did not endanger her to be ignorant of it, and he could not change their future anyway. “If ye are purposely putting Marsaili in peril—”
“Enough!” his mother shouted. “When I came to bring her the daggers and coin, I found her struggling with a man.”
A cold knot formed in his chest, and his hand went directly to his sword. “The man hit ye?”
His mother nodded. “So I kinnae say what happened to Marsaili,” she mumbled, her tone defensive.
“Mother,” he clipped, the urge to shake her senseless strong, “what did the man look like?”
“I couldn’t say,” his mother muttered.
Callum studied her. She was perfectly still, yet her eye twitched as if she was using great effort to repress things. “Mother, ye are lying.”
Her nostrils flared, and very slowly she said, “I believe he had a shaved head and gray eyes.”
“Lucan!” Maria cried out. “Yer mother just described the Black Mercenary who seized us, brought us here, and wagered us away.”
“Ye were stolen?” Callum growled, realizing belatedly he never had gotten Marsaili to reveal how she had come to be here. “How did the man manage to breach the Campbell hold and snatch the two of ye?” It was an important question, as it seemed the man had also slipped into Urquhart Castle unnoticed.
“He took us when we were nae in the castle,” Maria said.
“For what purpose?” Callum asked. “Had he intended to travel here for the tournament but did nae have coin to wager so he thought to use the two of ye?”
“Nay. He was hired by the Steward’s wife, Euphemia, to take Marsaili.”
Callum frowned. “What grudge does the Steward’s wife hold against Marsaili?”
Maria shrugged. “Marsaili said the only thing that she could think of was that her sister, Lena MacLeod—”
