“What do ye mean by a message?” he asked, his voice still a bit more gruff than he’d intended. “Just get on with it.”
The young man nodded, holding his hands out in front of him as he wrung them more forcefully.
“The distillery, me Laird,” the steward stammered. “Someone just arrived from Thrums. They said the whisky’s been ruined.”
Archer had pushed out of his chair before the last word had been spoken, his worries about Emilie driven out of his mind entirely.
“Does Marcus ken?” he asked, crossing the room in strong, purposeful strides.
“Aye, me Laird,” the steward mumbled, trotting to keep up with Archer as they exited the room and made their way down the corridor. “He’s the one who sent me to tell ye. He said he’s readyin’ yer horses and will meet ye in the courtyard in front of the castle.”
Archer nodded. “Thank ye.”
There was nothing else for him to say. Despite his anxiety, the steward seemed to realize the dismissal in Archer’s voice, and he fell behind. Archer lost sight of him entirely as he turned a corner, walking as quickly as he could toward the front of the castle where the steward had said Marcus would meet him.
Sure enough, the moment that Archer threw open the front doors of the castle, stepping out into the sun, Marcus was sitting atop a horse, waiting for him.
Archer stalked forward wordlessly, grabbing the reins of his own horse from Marcus’s hands and immediately climbing into the saddle.
“Do we ken anythin’ about what’s been done?” Archer growled, kicking his feet to spur on the horse beneath him into a gallop.
“Nae many details,” Marcus explained, speaking loudly so that his voice carried over the wind rushing by as they rode. “The messenger only said that somethin’s happened with the supply and ye needed to come quickly.”
“Do we ken what caused it? Or who?”
Marcus shot him a knowing glance over the neck of his horse, both of them keeping their body low to fight against the press of the air.
“Ye think it was him?” Marcus asked, cocking one brow in question.
Archer couldn’t bring himself to answer, though. Not as the fury rushed up to engulf him.
He just shook his head, bending lower over the neck of his horse and spurring him to go faster. Marcus followed suit, all conversation dying between the two of them as they rushed for Thrums.
Faster than Archer thought possible, the border of the town appeared on the horizon. He noticed the church in the center of town first, the massive spire reaching up into the sky, the cross at the top of it piercing the clouds.
I wonder if Emilie got the chance to see it. If she noticed it when we were ridin’ in the other day.
Archer cursed internally, immediately stamping down on the thought.
How had she done this to him? How had her presence rooted itself so deeply inside of him that he was thinking of her even now?
Days after mostly ignoring him, he still couldn’t get the taste of her, the sound of her, the smell of her out of his mind. Even now, with something pressing weighing so heavily upon him, it was she who continued to pop into his mind.
“Focus,” he growled to himself, the sound of the wind and the thumping of hooves drowning out the word as they rushed into the boundary of Thrums.
In what felt like no time at all, Archer laid eyes on the distillery. Alistair, the man that he paid to watch over and manage the building, was standing outside the front door looking frazzled.
Alerted by the sound of the hooves coming through the streets of the town, Alistair’s eyes flicked up. A mixture of worry and relief filled his face when he realized it was Archer and Marcus who approached.
“Me Laird,” Alistair said the moment Archer’s horse stopped in front of the building. “I sent the messenger for ye as soon as I noticed.”
Throwing his leg over the side of the saddle, Archer climbed off his horse, his boots hitting the packed earth with a thud. Beside him, Marcus did the same, the two of them striding toward Alistair with purposeful steps.
“What happened, Al?” he asked, not wasting any time as they walked toward the door.
Alistair fell into step with them. He was as large as both Marcus and Archer, but where the Laird and his cousin were filled with bulging, well-defined muscles, Alistair was a bit more portly. His belly was a bit more round, a clear side effect of the whisky and ale that he so favored.
“I noticed that one of the barrels was leakin’ this mornin’,” Alistair explained. “And I ken that couldnae be right, because I checked everythin’ last night and it was dry as a bone. Sure enough, when I looked at it, the seal had been popped. And, what’s more, the whisky seemed to have gone sour.”