“I lost my mom, too,” he said, his smooth voice seeming to encircle her. “But I hope to find her.”
“She’s nae dead, then?”
He shook his head. “No.” The word was fierce. “She can’t be.”
She understood the adamant denial in his tone. She recalled looking at her mother’s dead body and feeling the same way. She hoped the outcome would be different for McCaim. “Are ye looking for her, too, then, along with Shona?”
An indecisive look briefly swept over his features before he nodded.
“I’ll tell ye how to get to Perthshire,” she said.
He frowned. “What will you do?” He released his hold on her and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Go back to that castle and try to mend things with your fiancé?”
There was that word again. “Nay. That can nae be mended. He’ll nae want me, as I said.”
A half smile, one that made McCaim look devilish, pulled the right corner of his mouth up. “You don’t sound sad.”
Her face heated with embarrassment. “I admit I’m nae. But my sister and brother will be verra vexed. I need to return to Kinghorn, so my actions do nae harm them.”
McCaim arched his dark eyebrows. “Your actions as in, what? Releasing me?”
“Aye.”
“Why’d you do it?” he asked. “Why risk yourself to help me?”
“Well, it was my fault ye were in that dungeon. Had I nae lied… Well, ye know. Are ye nae vexed at me?”
“Hell no,” he said with a chuckle. “I am still breathing because of you, and I still have both my hands, too, which—” he glanced toward Loxton, and she could not help but follow the turn of his attention “—I need to use to bury this man.”
“Loxton,” she said. “His name is—was—Loxton.”
“Yes, sorry,” McCaim said, looking at her. “That reminds me… My name is Rhys. McCaim is my last name.”
“Yer clan name, aye?”
“Yes,” he answered.
She rolled his name in her mind. She liked it. “Why do ye nae have a Scottish accent nor know yer way around if yer clan is from Oban? ’Tis nae so verra far from Kinghorn.”
“I’m not from Oban,” he replied, bending down and picking up Loxton once more.
She did not avert her gaze this time. Instead, she stared hard at Loxton, his words about destroying her brother’s hopes coming to mind. What had Loxton been referring to? Her wedding to Baron Bellecote? She didn’t know, and she suspected she would not get an answer to that until she saw Yearger face-to-face.
“Yer clan is from Oban, though. Are ye estranged?”
He started walking toward the woods, and she followed him. “No,” he said, not breaking his stride. “I’ve never been part of the McCaim clan. Well, not the larger one.”
“I do nae understand,” she said, watching him gently set Loxton back on the ground. He had selected a place where there was more dirt to dig and trees all around. Rhys’s thoughtfulness for a man he did not know, one who had tried to kill him, touched her.
The intense expression he bestowed upon her made her still. “I don’t want to lie to you, Maggie.”
“Then do nae lie.”
He let out a long sigh. “You won’t believe the truth. I barely believe it.”
“Let me decide if I believe ye or nae.”
“You already decided,” he said, frustration in his tone. “Remember how I told you that Shona was my mother?”
