“I don’t mean to overstep my bounds…”
“Since you’ve been doing so all our lives, why on earth would you want to stop now?” Shawna inquired.
“Fine!” Mary Jane said, laughing. “You must realize, your great-uncle will be furious about the lost time.”
“Uncle Gawain will have to go hang.”
Mary Jane flashed her another smile. “I shall hope and pray that he does not decide to shoot the messenger.”
“He may grumble, but he’ll save his anger for me. Go quickly, please. I’m certain many of the men will have left for work already. Oh, wait!”
“Aye?” Mary Jane queried.
“You’ve been up and about awhile?”
“Aye, that I have.”
“And there have been no reports of anything unusual?”
“Like what?”
“Well, you know, the miners have been so nervous about the shaft.”
“Yes?”
“Well, has anything at all unusual occurred? Sightings in the graveyard? Reports of ghosts perhaps—or bodies lying about?”
Mary Jane shook her head. “Bodies lying about! Nay, Shawna, there’s not been a report regarding a single corpse, and that’s a fact!”
“No one has been reported missing?”
“Missing?”
“Aye, a villager who didn’t return home from the pub or the like?”
“Shawna, are you quite alright?”
“I’m…just concerned about what’s going on with the miners. That’s all.”
“You think there are ghosts in the mine shafts?”
“Of course not…I’m just looking for logical explanations.”
“I see. Well, we’ve no missing husband who lost his way home and fell into the mine shaft to beat against the walls. None that a wife will admit to, at that.”
With a last smile, Mary Jane closed the door to Shawna’s room.
Shawna walked up the steps to the balcony and looked out upon the day. The Druid Stones looked bright beneath the rising sun. Hills and valleys sloped and rose in emerald beauty, studded with the colors of wildflowers. The loch shimmered in the light, and the craigs and cliff rising from it to spread across the hilltops were caught up in glittering silver color, stalwart as steel. Cattle dotted the fields. The landscape had never appeared more serene. As if the tempest of the night could not possibly have occurred.
Yet knowing that it had, that David was out there somewhere, Shawna hurried down from the steps, approaching her washstand, ripping her nightgown over her head. She sluiced her face and throat with cold water, shivered, soaked herself again, and paused.
She had imagined nothing. The subtle, but unmistakable unique male scent of him lingered about her body. She trembled and grew warm, then picked up her water pitcher and doused herself with the chilly water from head to toe.
What in God’s name was she going to do?
What could she do? David had cleanly disappeared. There was no body by the loch. And if she betrayed him again in any way…
Yet, she could not believe that anyone in her family had set out to kill David.