“By all the Saints! It is you, Laird David!” Hamell said.
“Aye,” David said, turning his attention back fully to Fergus. “There’s only one thing I want from you, but I swear, if I don’t get it, I’ll leave your entrails draped across this room.”
“Aye, aye, what?—”
“The boy. Where did you get the boy, Danny?”
“Why, ’twas my daughter, Gena?—”
“You lie!”
The sword was out, its point at Fergus’s throat.
Gena let out a cry, racing forward. “The girl from the castle brought him to us. We were told that it must appear that he was one of ours and that it would be deeply appreciated if we were to keep the secret.”
“What girl from the castle?” David demanded.
“The girl—woman—who has worked for Lady MacGinnis forever. The lady’s maid. She brought the child, brought him while Lady MacGinnis was still away, and it seemed all of the place was in mourning. He came with gold coins, Laird Douglas,” Fergus sputtered out at last. “And when he come so, we knew that we must keep the secret, as we were told. We knew who it was who really wanted the secret kept, of course.”
“Who?”
Fergus, though terrified, was honestly puzzled. He cringed, very afraid that David Douglas’s sword might well rend him in two at any minute. “Why—why, Lady Shawna, of course.”
Stretchedout in the master’s chamber of the castle, arms folded behind his head, Hawk watched as his wife paced back and forth before the door. Though he had eaten fairly heartily of the fine venison stew Anne-Marie had brought on a tray from the kitchen, Skylar hadn’t touched their food.
He watched another few minutes, then grew impatient. “Skylar, come to bed.”
She kept pacing. He might have been no more than a bee buzzing on a spring day.
“Skylar! Quit that and come to bed.”
She turned to him at last, silver eyes wide, blonde hair streaming brushed and beautiful down the length of her back.
“Hawk, your brother is in grave trouble?—”
“And is seeing to things in his own way. Skylar, I would do anything for David, my god, I risked your life today, which I never intended, but what lies between him and Shawna now, I cannot solve. And you should quit bringing it up. I’m incensed each time I think of you assuming that I was spilling children about the world without a care.”
Skylar flushed. “I didn’t really think?—”
“Then you spoke with careless haste.”
She arched a brow, nearly replied, then thought better of it.
“So—is it my brother’s fertility we’re discussing here—or your sister’s?”
“Well, she is my sister. Hawk, there is such friction between them! What I can’t fathom,” she said, “is how it could have possibly happened.”
Hawk patted the bedsheet. “Come on over. I’ll show you.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Neither of us knows what happened. And for tonight, Sloan has asked to speak with Sabrina himself.”
“We should be demanding to know?—”
“Skylar, we need to be grateful tonight that Sabrina is alive and well and with us again!”
“Oh, sweet Jesus, yes, but this on top of the other?—’’