Nicholas leaned forward. “Then I’m more certain than ever it was a suicide. What deranged servant would steal wine right in front of their employer? She must have been insane.”
Gillian didn’t reply. She pushed her food around on her plate, gaze fixed on the mess she’d made of her dinner. As he watched her his frustration increased. She was never this uncommunicative. Something was amiss.
“What is wrong with you?”
She met his gaze. “Why didn’t you tell me about the servants who were poisoned when your wife was alive?”
Ah. Resignation settled over Nicholas. He set his napkin over his plate and leaned back in his chair. “It’s not a very interesting story.”
Her mouth curved in a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “I’m interested.”
“You are a morbid woman.”
She did not reply, watching him patiently. Waiting.
Nicholas sighed. “After I married Catriona and brought her here, there were a few deaths. I don’t know that all of them can be attributed to poison or to Catriona, but certainly several of them were her doing.”
Gillian’s eyes widened. She set her knife down and leaned forward, resting her chin on her hand. She nodded for him to continue.
“I didn’t suspect her at first . . . if you’d known her, you would understand. She seemed so kind, so eager to please. But when I discovered she’d cuckolded me andthat the man she’d done it with died rather mysteriously, things began to look a bit grim. She, of course, denied it, and I believed her. The first time. It just seemed too fantastic. Why would she murder servants? Why murder her lover if I already knew?”
“Didn’t she try to poison you?”
Nicholas nodded. “Aye. My son Malcolm’s health was already fading, so when she tried to poison me and poisoned your father inadvertently, I locked her up.”
“Aye, my father told me.”
He looked down at his napkin, his jaw tight with regret. He often wondered how things would have turned out if he’d handled it differently. “I didn’t expose her because I thought I was protecting my son’s future. And then Malcolm died.”
His hand fisted on his thigh. Grief and fury trembled fresh in his heart, as if it had just happened. “At the time I was certain she did it. Now, I’m not so sure. Catriona loved no one and nothing, but she’d loved that baby.” He sighed. “I still don’t know.”
He swallowed hard, then looked up. “I went to the room where I’d kept her prisoner to . . . to . . . well, I still don’t know what I meant to do when I went to her. There was no reason for me to protect her anymore. Kill her? Maybe. But I didn’t. We argued. She continued her lies. I grew angrier. She ran. She fell.”
He watched Gillian in the ensuing silence, gauging her reaction. The story troubled her, that was evident in the line between her brows, but she didn’t look at him with fear or disbelief.
He gave her a hard smile. “The entire castle hadheard us screaming, had heard my death threats—and they weren’t the first I’d made within another’s hearing. I put the nails in my own coffin, to be sure. I’m intelligent enough to understand that changing my story and pinning all the deaths on Catriona after she ‘accidentally’ fell to her death would be incredibly suspicious.”
“But the king acquitted you.” Her voice was quiet, gray eyes steady.
“Aye, God smiled on me that day.” He rubbed a finger across his mouth thoughtfully. “I still don’t believe Cat’s death was an accident. She’d known what was coming. She knew she could no longer hide behind Malcolm. So she killed herself, knowing exactly how it would reflect on me.” He laughed, and it sounded rusty, bitter. “It’s almost poetic that I am still blamed for all her crimes. After all, I protected a murderess. I am as guilty as she.”
Gillian rose from the table and came around to stand behind him. She slid her hands around his neck and embraced him from behind, her face pressed against his. He closed his eyes, stroking her arms and losing himself in the comfort she offered.
“You loved your son and protected him, just like your father protected you. When you realized she was responsible, you stopped her. You cannot blame yourself, Nicholas. All the important people know that you did the right thing. The king knows. God knows. I know. That’s all that matters.” She kissed his jaw.
He turned his face and caught her lips in a lingering kiss. His fingers slid over her neck, soft as down. He exerted subtle pressure, and she circled his chair, movingaround to straddle him. He pulled her hair down. Sable curls flowed around them like a silken mantle. He removed her bodice and pushed her shift off her shoulders so he could touch her, stroke his fingers up the soft skin of her back and feel the muscles contract with pleasure, kiss her breasts and hear the soft sounds she made as she ground her hips into his. She was beautiful. She was his. He couldn’t lose her.
She was eager and ready, pulling at the laces of his breeks and settling herself on him with a gasp and sigh. He slid his hands beneath her skirts, over soft thighs, to grip her bottom as she rode him. She gripped the back of the chair, leaning over him to lick and suck his lips until he exploded, violent, mindless, clutching her to his chest as if she might slip away when it was over, like some succubus, come to steal his soul.
She laid her head upon his shoulder, her breath soughing soft and warm in his ear. God, he’d fallen hard. He loved her. She was his whole life now, just as Malcolm had once been, and he would not lose her, too.
Gillian heaved the heavy bar from the postern door with a grunt, getting splinters in her fingers in the process. It fell to the ground with a thump. She pushed the door open and stared at the wall of fog before her. She eased forward a few steps, then stopped abruptly. The ground fell away three feet past the door. Gillian’s stomach dropped and she backed up, pressing herself against the wall. She must have a care. She’d hate to fall and have her death blamed on Nicholas, too. Just thinking of that evil woman galvanized Gillian with anger.Catriona was dead now and couldn’t be responsible for the recent poisonings. Could she? Gillian wasn’t so certain. If a ghost could move a doll, surely it could move poison.
She edged along the narrow path, keeping one hand firmly on the stone wall to her right. At least she didn’t have to worry about collapsing anymore, thanks to Rose’s spell. Wind swirled the fog, and at times she could see several yards before her. The path was overgrown, but the tall grasses had recently been trampled flat in places. She didn’t chance getting too close to the edge; the sheer drop was enough to make her stomach plummet when she chanced peering over the side.
She didn’t know how far she’d gone when she finally encountered the cloaked and hooded figure in the fog. It stood at the cliff edge, as if looking out at the mountains, though it couldn’t possibly see anything in the soupy fog. Gillian’s mouth opened and closed, but no words issued forth, just a rough croak.
The ghost of Catriona. And Gillian had no headache, not even a twinge in her temples. Now that it was finally possible, she found herself too terrified to speak. She had so much to ask her. And if it turned out she was an evil ghost, then Gillian must find a way to exorcise her. Gillian bolstered herself, struggling to master her erratic heartbeat. Deep breaths. She could do this! But she must hurry so she could return to bed before Nicholas discovered she was gone. That spurred her more efficiently than any mantra—the thought of Nicholas’s disappointment.
