“Och, it’s a churchman I brought back to marry us tonight.”
Gillian smiled to herself but asked, “So it’s done?”
He didn’t say anything, and when she glanced up at him, his mouth was grim.
“Nicholas?” Gillian said, worried now.
He stopped and put his hands on her shoulders. “It’s done. She was executed. I stayed to make sure she was really dead this time.”
A great weight lifted from Gillian’s heart, and relief settled over her. “So it really is over.”
Nicholas looked around warily. “Unless she returns to haunt me.”
Gillian’s eyes narrowed. “I thought you didn’t believe in ghosts.”
He took a deep breath, then put his arm around her and led her through the hall. “That was before.”
“Before what?”
“I told you Catriona tried to poison me, but I didn’t tell you how I knew the whisky was poisoned.”
“Aye, you did. The doll.”
He gave her a sideways look. “That’s not all.”
He led her into his chambers and shut the door. He seemed so uncertain, so unlike himself that Gillian was both bursting with curiosity and uneasy about what he wanted to say.
He licked his lips and took another deep breath, then he faced her and said, “I saw my son.”
Gillian sat on the bed. “Yousawhim.”
Nicholas nodded. His face was tight, his palms pressed together in front of him, “You were right. He put the doll in the whisky. He knew his mother was trying to kill me. He . . .” Nicholas briefly closed his eyes and swallowed hard. Composed again, he continued, “He’s been watching over me all this time. I would dream about him coming to my room at night to watch me sleep, except . . . I think I knew in my heart he wasn’t a dream. But to contemplate my own child . . . such a wee lad, haunting Kincreag . . .” He shook his head and stared at the floor. “I suppose it was just too much for me to bear.”
Gillian went to him and stroked a hand up his arm. “I don’t think he was haunting Kincreag. I think he was waiting.”
He looked up at her, confusion and hope marring his brow. “Waiting?”
“Aye, to protect you. And now that the danger is gone, I haven’t seen him at all.”
“You think he’s gone on to heaven?”
“Aye. I looked for him, to help him to the light, but he’s nowhere to be found. Even Tomas hasn’t seen him.”
Nicholas took a shuddering breath, hands braced on his hips, gaze again directed downward. He nodded. “Good,” he said, then nodded again, his throat working. “Good.”
He crossed to the cabinet against the wall and poured water into the basin. “Who’s Tomas?”
“Tomas Campbell . . . he was haunting Kincreag until recently. I meant to ask him how he died. . . . Nicholas? Are you all right?”
He’d been splashing water from the basin over his face while she talked, but had stopped, the water dripping down his dark skin and glistening in ebony whiskers. His eyes were wide with shock. “Did you say Tomas Campbell?”
“Aye. Did you know him?”
Nicholas swiped the water off his face with a towel and sat heavily on the bed. “Aye . . . I knew him.”
Gillian joined him. “What is it?”
He let out a loud breath. “Jesus, Gillian . . . Tomas Campbell was the carpenter . . . the one that Catriona brought with her when we wed . . . the one who built the dollhouse. The only one of her men I thought I killed.”
