Tavish turned his back to the rough wall behind him, his boots feeling mired in the rocky soil among the straggling tufts of weeds. He stared out over the firth.
The breeze had turned cold.
* * * *
Glenna pushed open her father’s door and peeked inside. Harriet Cameron was seated in a familiar-looking piece of furniture next to the window, chattering away as she took in the view. The old, ornate chair had still been in her own chamber this morning, as far as she could recall; before that it had lived for years in the old guest chamber, along with the damning portrait now hanging above the hearth.
Apparently the chair had been moved here, to die alongside the other ancient artifacts of Glenna’s life after Tavish Cameron’s invasion: a small wooden table, a dented metal basin, Iain Douglas. They had all been relegated to this highest tower chamber, imprisoned together for the crime of steadfastness, of daring to remain loyal to Roscraig all these many years. She’d never asked why her father had kept such seemingly arbitrary furnishings when he’d sold most everything else, and now she thought that if she had only guessed at their implications, she would have burned the lot.
Iain Douglas appeared to be staring at the handsome old woman, and Glenna hoped that he was in fact lucid, although his mouth still pulled dumbly to the right and the room smelled of sour sweat.
“Good morning,” Glenna said and entered the room fully, leaving the door standing open to encourage the breeze from the window.
“Oh, good morning, milady.” Harriet stood with a warm smile. She held a small hoop in her hand, the stitchery obviously forgotten in her cheerful monologue to her captive audience.
Glenna walked to her father’s side and smoothed her palm over his forehead. “How are we today, Da?”
His eyes jittered to the left to find her, a good sign of his mental clarity, but the whites were sickly yellow today, and the sight of them shocked her.
“I’ve likely talked him deaf,” Harriet admitted and joined Glenna at the bedside. “But he’s taken quite a bit of broth and some mead. What man refuses mead, though, I ask you? The likes of none that I’ve ever met.”
Glenna smiled at her father and turned to Tavish’s mother. “Da does fancy a”—her words faltered as she looked into Harriet Cameron’s face and saw the deep tears glistening in her eyes above her smile—“he fancies a mug of good mead.”
Harriet was nodding enthusiastically. “And he should have all that he wants, I say.”
A thorny lump grew in Glenna’s throat. What the old woman had feared, what she had warned Glenna of when first taking over Iain’s care, was manifesting; had manifested in the night. While Glenna had been sating her erotic curiosity of Tavish Cameron in her bed, her father had begun dying in earnest.
She forced down the lump and gave her own nod, but she had to clear her throat before the words could struggle through that scratchy cocoon. “I will stand at the ready,” she said.
“Well, then,” Harriet said briskly while gathering up a tray of discarded bowls and linens, “I’ll just pop down to the kitchen and see about things. Is there aught I can fetch you, milady?”
“Nay,” Glenna said. “I—I haven’t any need at all. Thank you, Harriet.”
Tavish’s mother paused, the tray in her hands, as she looked to Glenna with an expression of pained sympathy. “Very well, milady.” Then she whirled and left Glenna alone with her father.
She turned back to the man who still watched her with his yellowed, bloodshot eyes, the flesh of his face sagging on his skull. She opened her mouth to speak some inanity—what, she couldn’t say—but then closed it again as her father’s eyes beheld her. His gaze was more intense, more purposeful than it had been since he’d fallen ill—almost fever-bright—and yet his forehead had been cool to her touch.
He was listening, she realized. He was listening for what she would tell him. And now she must tell him all.
“I think I’ll steal Mistress Harriet’s chair,” she said to him with a small smile and squeezed his stick-thin forearm gently.
Only it wasn’t stick-thin any longer, she realized with a start. She glanced down and saw that her fingertips had left dimples in the smooth, spotted flesh, like footprints in wet sand.
Glenna walked around the end of the bed and dragged the heavy chair away from the window to move it closer to the side of the bed. Iain’s eyes followed her as she positioned her seat and sat down on the edge of the threadbare and faded cushion.
“After you woke,” Glenna began, “you asked me who was here. I put on as though I misunderstood what you were asking.
“By now, Mistress Harriet might have told you that she has come with her son from Edinburgh, where they tended a shop. As I know it, that is very true. However…” She paused a moment, struggling to order her words as best she could. “That is not all of the truth. When Harriet arrived at Roscraig with her son, Tavish Cameron, they begged shelter from a storm. But Master Cameron also had business to address at the Tower, and he requested audience with…with the keeper of Tower Roscraig.”
Iain Douglas’s gaze did not waver, nor did it dull. He was still listening.
“I am ashamed to admit that I granted them entry in exchange for the handful of coins he offered in payment. If I had known…” She broke off, swallowed. “Perhaps not. I’m sorry for it though, Da.” She reached out then and took hold of his fingers, spindly and yet at the same time seemingly encased in a thin leather glove that had been filled near to bursting with water.
“He carried a document with him. A document that says he has inherited the Tower from his father, the rightful laird of Roscraig. A man called Annesley.”
Iain’s left eye widened almost imperceptibly, and his lips seemed to flex as his jaw made a series of chewing motions. A strangled hum came from his throat. Glenna waited for him to speak, but his chest only rose and fell rapidly beneath the coverlet.
Glenna went on. “He has taken over the Tower in your illness. Brought in servants and workers. Done wonderful things for the keep, really. I—I wish you could see the hall. There have been feasts for days—grand ones.
