“Would you drink with me, David?” Alistair asked.
“Aye, that I will,” David agreed carefully.
Alistair came forward, pouring himself a glass full of fiery whiskey from the decanter on the table. Alistair swallowed downall the whiskey, shuddered, and set his glass back down. He looked at David.
“I need to talk to you.”
“And you seek courage to do so, so it seems.”
“Aye, that’s true.”
“Talk to me, then, Alistair.”
“I should have told you the truth—that truth which I know—when I came upon you and your brother in the tunnel.”
“Any truth you have to tell me now, I’ll be glad to hear.”
Alistair hesitated only a moment longer. “Well, I was not surprised to discover that you weren’t dead.”
“Why was that?”
“Because,” Alistair said, and he held his gaze steady with David’s, “I’ve known since the morning that charred corpse was discovered it was not yours, and that somewhere, you were alive.”
“How could you have known that?” David demanded.
“Because I was the one who switched your body with that of the convict. I was the one who carried Shawna from the stables before the flames could consume her, and I was the one who saw to it that the convict’s body was charred beyond recognition before placing it there beside her.
“And I was the one who made sure that the convict, Collum MacDonald, was buried in the crypt below, in a coffin bearing your name.”
CHAPTER 22
James McGregor sipped brandy, enjoying the comfort of the Queen Anne chair before the fire, his legs stretched out on the footstool before it. The flames warmed his face, and he offered Shawna a smile that managed to make his ugly little face somehow beautiful.
But though he’d accepted her invitation for a brandy, and though he sat so comfortably in the chair, he looked at her and said, “You know, Lady MacGinnis, I cannot tell you a thing. Not a single thing. It isn’t my place.”
Across from him, Shawna frowned. “Not even where he has had the wee lad taken?”
James leaned forward. “I swear, he’s quite safe—will that help you?”
“‘It will help. But what that tyrant has asked of you is quite cruel, you know.”
James smiled, swirling his brandy in his glass. “The lad is healthy, well-tended, and in fine health.”
“How do you know?”
He glanced at her, startled. “Why…I was a physician, my lady. In a different life. The lad is well, and your Sabrina willbe fine as well. I could have tended her tonight, but you wanted your friend here.”
“It was important to me. Edwina practices witchcraft, but she is not among these awful people. I know it.”
“So, it’s good that she came tonight,” he agreed and shrugged. “I met Laird Douglas upon a ship that was taking us both away for a lifetime of servitude. I only escaped my fate because of Laird Douglas, and therefore, though I do not consider him a tyrant, I do his bidding and gladly.”
“I don’t know where my child is, so his bidding is wrong,” Shawna said.
James leaned toward her, swirling his brandy, enjoying the amber color. “You cannot imagine how fine it seems to sit in comfort and drink something of such quality,” he told her, and smiled.
“You are paying me no heed, Mr. McGregor.”
“Ah, but I am. I have been quite anxious to meet you, of course. In the very first moment, when Laird Douglas awoke to find himself called a murderer, he thought that you had been killed. And I think that he would have torn out the throats of captain, mate, and crew—before dying himself, of course—if he had not quickly realized that you were alive and well—he was the dead man.”