Chapter Nineteen

“What do you mean they ha’ gone ahead wi’out me? Wi’out you?” Frustration once more clawed at Malcolm’s throat, nearly choking him. He’d reached the accursed end of his journey following delay after delay, only to find the members of Catha’s household guard riding back to meet him. “And you let them?”

“I did try and persuade Mistress MacGunn to wait. My lady insisted. What was I to do, Sir Malcolm?”

“What were you to do? Overwhelm her. Hold her by force if need be.” Malcolm fought the desire to throttle the man. “Were you no’ meant to keep her safe?”

“Aye so. Yet were we not bound to Dun Ballan all the while, with the aim of going inside?”

“She was to go in my company!”

“How was I to know—”

Malcom fought down his rage and pain. A slaughter now would avail him nothing; these three men made up his only allies.

Yet his stomach turned within him as he asked, “And the wee lass wi’ the black hair went with her?”

“Aye.” Lionel seemed to view that as a good thing, for he brightened slightly. “At least she has a companion.”

Indeed, a scrap of a lass. A witch. One who might well, under the right impetus, demonstrate her abilities imprudently.

Malcolm had a sudden vision of Tansy strapped to the wall of Latham’s dungeon, the very place he had been, enduring the same fate. Ah, he’d saved her from the Royal Commission only to dump her in equally cruel hands.

How could he have let her come along? For the sheer pleasure of bedding her? Now look what his selfishness had wrought.

Aye, and that would teach him. He’d gone through most his life putting others before himself—his Da, his men, Mercien…even Catha. The very first time he took something he wanted, it came back on him.

And on her.

Was he willing to admit he wanted Tansy Bellrose Gant? Ah, perhaps he hadn’t realized how badly until the moment she rode beyond his reach.

He swallowed down his sickness. He’d been willing to sacrifice Catha, whom he loved, for Mercien’s sake—had fully intended to deceive and betray her. Why should Tansy be any different? Just because he’d held her, tasted her, felt her explode with passion in his arms?

“We will wait here for morning,” he told the men. “Then I will gain admittance to the dun.”

“But I gather Mistress Catha and the wee lass ha’ a plan they mean to put into effect.”

“Bugger that. I shall need to come up wi’ one o’ my own.”

****

Smoke from the fire hung among the rafters of the great hall, seasoning timbers already stained dark and making the place resemble Tansy’s imaginings of hell. Not that she gave the contents of hell much thought, unless believing it might be wherever the Royal Commission sat.

Men thronged the place, mostly guards, and their number made her heart sink. A few women, presumably servants, circled among them: clearly she and Catha had interrupted supper.

And Latham himself? Tansy’s eyes were drawn to a man seated not at one of the tables but in a great chair set up on a dais across the room. He lounged there as might a king, and the sight of him once more set all Tansy’s instincts to howling.

Uncanny how often that now happened to her; she could scarcely remember such feelings back in Slurt. Of course, Slurt was known—safe, if she might so call it. Now she balanced on the very edge of peril.

And the disquiet she’d sensed when first laying eyes on the keep stemmed from this man, no question.

Yet he looked nothing like what she’d imagined. Not above a score and ten years, he had a burly build and dark red hair, confined in a long braid. An orange beard obscured the lower half of his face. She stood too far away to see his eyes, but his countenance did not look particularly unpleasing.

Ordinary, save for the way he made her feel inside.

She reminded herself this man had tortured Malcolm and still held his brother somewhere in the bowels of this place. God only knew how he would treat Catha.

He needed to die.

She fixed her gaze on him and repeated the thought, putting a small push of magic behind it. Aye, she’d ill-spoke Ranna in the past. That had been but practice for this.

As if in response to her ill-will, Latham got to his feet. But his gaze centered all on Catha. Tansy would wager he did not even see her.

“Mistress MacGunn.” He smiled. “Well come.”

The smile made Tansy want to back up a step, but she refused to admit to such cowardice.

Latham stepped down from the dais, as everyone in the room stared, and approached Catha the way a fox might track a hare. Now that Tansy saw him better, he had the look of a fox about him, a particularly well-fed fox that killed for sport rather than hunger. A very large fox indeed, for he towered over Catha and positively dwarfed Tansy. The padded tunic he wore increased his breadth, and he brought with him a scent of pure male.

His gaze, all over Catha and gloating, gleamed with avarice. “Indeed, I maun confess I did no’ expect to see you here yet. I did no’ expect that lack-wit Montgomery to accomplish the task I set him quite so speedily.”

Catha lifted her head and straightened her narrow back. From her position, Tansy could not see her face well, but that posture spoke aloud. “Forgive me, Master Latham. I do no’ ken what you mean.”

“To be sure, you do not.” Latham’s eyes, as Tansy could now perceive, were a tawny dark brown and dangerous as murky water. “You ha’ just happened by, to visit me by chance.”

“No.” Catha stole a look around the vast room. “I ha’ come to speak wi’ you, but not before all this company. May we no’ be alone?”

“It is, Mistress MacGunn, the dearest wish of my heart.”

“To speak, I mean.”

“That may be arranged. Do you no’ want some supper first? And some wine. You maun tak’ wine. Never say you ha’ ridden all the way from Castle Gunn alone?”

“You know very well I have not. Your guards would no’ admit my men.” Catha now sounded shaken. She gestured to Tansy. “And nay, I ha’ no’ come alone.”

“Who is this, then?” Latham focused on Tansy, and she felt the impact of it like a physical blow. Again, somehow, she kept herself from stepping back. She could not abandon Catha, or their scheme.

“Mistress Gant is my companion.”

Latham eyed Tansy curiously before giving a half shrug as if he found her unimportant. Fool. She would prove very important indeed to him when she achieved his downfall.

****

How would Malcolm ever endure the night? Aye, that thought had been with him many a time when Latham’s men came to the cell where he was held, with their flaring torches and their instruments of pain, when Latham came with that accursed half-smile on his face, to watch. He’d asked himself the question when he hung in his chains listening to Mercien being tortured in the next cell, which had been even harder to bear. But now he paced in the darkness—free yet not free—eyeing Latham’s fortress and waiting for the dawn.

A punishment this was, he had no doubt of it. This was unquestionably the return God sent him for planning to turn Catha over to Latham. Aye, and how could he have even contemplated such a thing? A woman who had trusted him from childhood, whom he admired to the heavens and beyond.

Yet…how could he have done aught else? Mercien—as his father insisted—must be his first, his only consideration. Could he leave his brother in Latham’s hands to die a slow and merciless death?

And now…now he must face the loss of Tansy also.

He paced through the long hours, while Catha’s men took some rest, and flagellated himself again and again. Lionel had spoken truly: if he’d always intended to escort Catha within, to trade her safety for Mercien’s—this vile act of which he should have been ashamed, one Mercien would never condone—could he carp too much over the fact that Catha had taken it out of his hands, entered the keep without him and by her own will?

Aye, but Tansy…

He saw her again as he had last night, by the light of the single candle in the room they’d shared. Rearing up over him, naked but for that wealth of black hair streaming around her, and the look in her eyes: wild and wanton and…

His mind groped helplessly for the other word he sought, the one that might fit. Tender. There had been tenderness in the witch lass’s gaze and in her touch when she coupled with him.

Now she’d gone into the very heart of danger. He knew what happened beyond those walls. Latham might value Catha too much to harm her. But Tansy?

The thought of what could befall her made him want to heave in the bushes and left him drenched with sweat.

Aye indeed, God repaid him well for seeking to betray Catha, with the exquisite pain of seeing Tansy go where she should not and imagining her fate.

For she’d gone where he could not protect her. But by all that was holy, Satan himself would not keep him from following, come morn.