She nodded. “I—I felt I had to leave.”
“Why didn’t you stay away?”
She hesitated, knowing she couldn’t bear to tell him the whole truth.
“Alistair found me.”
“Alistair again.”
“All I did was go to Glasgow. I didn’t think that anyone would mind much that I had gone away. But Alistair…”
“Alistair what?”
“He eventually convinced me that I had to live on despite the past, that I needed to come home because Craig Rock needed someone to really see to the everyday lives of the people here. He said that aye, he and my uncles and other cousins could easily manage the properties, but that none of them had the heart to keep the character of a Highland village in proper shape and warmth. And I was…I was ill at the time. So, I came home again.”
“You were ill? With what?”
She shrugged, staring at the ground again. “Shock, despair, melancholy—I suppose.”
“Despair?” he queried, a harsh note to his voice.
“I don’t intend to continue insisting that I never meant you any ill. If you don’t believe me by now, you have become an embittered madman.”
“My lady, it’s quite a miracle that I’m not a madman—seeing as how I’ve lived life for another while I lie here charred beyond recognition.”
“I don’t know how you came to be where you were!”
He stared at her a moment, then turned away. He lifted the lid back on top of the coffin, fitting it into place, managing to set each nail more or less back into its slot.
“You are always questioning me,” Shawna said very softly. “And always refusing to answer me when I ask you questions. David, please, I realize now that someone managed to switchyour body with that of a convict, but you owe me more. Please, what happened to you?”
He set down the steel bar he had been working with. Hands upon his hips, he stared at her.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“You woke up that night, next to a corpse. I woke up days later, on board a convict ship with men sentenced to hard labor for murder and other such crimes. I insisted over and over again to the good captain that I was not the murdering bastard he thought me, but by then, news of the ‘death’ of David Douglas had traveled far and wide, and the fool didn’t believe a word I said. I worked his ship in chains for two years, and then I broke rocks in a quarry in Australia for nearly another two before I managed to escape and, with the help of a friend, began to make my way back here. No matter what I said to anyone in all that time, no one believed I was David Douglas, especially not that good captain. But I don’t blame him. I supposedly slit the throat of a poor young girl in Glasgow, and apparently, I was spared the hangman’s noose because I appeared to be good for heavy labor. I imagine the captain of that ship would have killed me if it hadn’t been for a friend with whom I escaped.”
“A friend?”
“Aye,” he said dryly, “a fellow who managed to keep me alive by convincing me I might find my revenge against you if I did manage to live long enough to escape.”
“You’ve had your revenge these last five years and beyond. I will pay for that night until the day I die,” she assured him.
“Will you? Then I can’t possibly let you die as quickly as it seems you are trying to do, running about on your own when you know that there is foul play afoot!”
“I cannot just sit still?—”
“You will sit still in the future. I promise you.”
“Are you quite finished with your corpse?” she demanded as she spun around and hurried to the gate.
Suddenly David was beside her, and his whisper sounded against her ear. “Nay, lady, shush, listen!”
Shawna held very still. She heard footsteps in the corridor beyond the vaults. Footsteps.
At least two sets of them.