James rose with dignity and walked across the room without a word. At the doorway, he paused. “Call him what you will, my lady. I would die for David Douglas, so if you plan on getting by me, you will have to kill me.”
James exited her room. Shawna stared after him. “I’m so sorry!” she whispered.
She dressed quickly.
There was one benefit now to the fact that David had been slipping into and out of her room at night at will.
She wasn’t exactly sure where the secret panel was.
But it existed.
And she was going to find it.
“I’d been duly chastised,”Alistair said, “and I was, you may believe me or not, wretchedly sorry for what I had done. I told Father that I should go straight to you, but he was uneasy. He wasn’t certain that you would take matters into your own hands without going to the law. Anyway, my father knew you would have the contracts under which I had fraudulently managed to get myself paid in either your office or the master’s chambers. All he needed was time. We needed to have you diverted. And actually…”
“Aye?” David said coldly.
Alistair stared at the fire. “I don’t think that Shawna wanted to deceive you. But she was readily willing to lure you from your room.”
“What you’re telling me so far, I’ve basically deduced. How did I wind up on that ship?”
Alistair exhaled. “You were supposed to do no more than pass out in the stables. That was the family plan. I was the cause of it, but I wasn’t even a part of it. I had gone down to the village of Wickshire to gamble and drink—and drown my sorrows. I was a black sheep then, you know. Blacker than ebony, as you can imagine. I had tarnished the name of the clan. Anyway, a group of constables was going through the village, looking for a fellow who’d escaped his guards and run north from Glasgow. He was bound for hard labor for the murder of a young lass—well, you know the history of the man. I gambled with a few of the constables and heard the time they were having searching for the fellow—he knew the Highlands, and they did not. When I left the tavern, I was attacked in the woods just beyond Castle Rock. The fellow was tough. He put up one hell of a fight. I was very nearly killed myself, but just when he was about to slit my throat, I wrenched my dirk from the sheath at my calf and caught him almost directly in the heart with my blade. Just at this same time, I saw the stables on fire. I came riding here as fast as I could. When I went into the stables, I found Shawna and you. One of the beams had crashed down on you.”
“A beam? I was knocked out by a beam?”
“Wait—a beam wielded by a cloaked figure. You see, I got Shawna out first. Then, when I went back for you, that was when I first saw them.”
“Saw who?”
Alistair shook his head.
“The figures,” he said. “The cloaked figures. They hadn’t seen me because they were concerned with burning down the whole of the stables, creating a massive blaze of it all. There were so many of them…I hid behind a haystack, and all I heard was one of them saying that it was fine, that the Douglas must die—ifhe came from the fire alive, they would kill him another way. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I was terrified. And I’m not sure why I was quite so terrified. I had my share of fights. I fancy that I’d meet most any man in a fair situation…but there was something so determined and evil in their intent! There were far more of them than there were of me, and there was no one else about at all as yet—not my father, my uncle, my brother, or my cousin. I didn’t stay. I set you over my horse and went running back into the woods. Then I ran into the constables, and…”
He hesitated. “I didn’t think that I could be hanged for killing a murderer in the woods, but the entire stables were ablaze by then, and I didn’t want it to appear that I might have been involved with what had happened there, and I didn’t want to admit that I’d killed a man, and quite honestly, I was certain that you would be killed if the men in the stables discovered that you were still alive. The constables were looking for a living man, and I had you. The men at the stables wanted a corpse—and I had one of those as well. I gave you over to the constables. And I put the corpse in the stables. When it was burned beyond recognition, I dragged it next to the place where I had left my cousin.” He hesitated again, staring at David. “Naturally, I was afraid for my own kin as well.”
“In what way?” David queried.
“My father. My brother. I was afraid they might have been among the cloaked figures, and that, if you awoke safe and well in the morning, we’d have a great deal more to pay for than my petty thievery.”
David, still leaning against the mantel, stared at Alistair incredulously.
“Well, then?” he queried.
“That’s—it. That’s my story,” Alistair said.
David shook his head. “Are your father and brother involved with the figures in the cloaks?”
A pulse ticked at Alistair’s throat. “I—don’t believe so.”
“You don’t believe so?”
“I don’t know,” Alistair admitted. “But I don’t believe so.”
David didn’t move. “What about the child?” he asked.
Alistair frowned. “What child?”
“Shawna’s child. My child.”