“It’s all in preparation for the king’s arrival,” she continued quietly. “Da, Tavish says…he says that you aren’t laird of Roscraig. That you never were. And that when the king comes, he will make a decision about us.”
Glenna tried to push down the emotion that was rising up within her at speaking all this aloud, at the anticipation of what she was about to say. But she knew her chin trembled, could feel her eyes swelling.
“He’s wrong, isn’t he, Da? Tell me he’s mistaken—youarelaird of Roscraig, aren’t you? Won’t the king tell him so when he comes?”
Iain Douglas’s eye began to leak a thin thread of tears.
Glenna sniffed. “And then there’s this.” She fished in her purse for the silver, double-barred brooch and held it out in her palm before his eyes. “It’s in that portrait—the one that hung in the west tower. The man in the painting wears it. Is it true? Is it Thomas Annesley’s?”
Her father continued to weep silently, and as she looked into his yellowed, dying eyes, the fissured ground that made up the foundation of her life began to tremble and crack. His chin jerked downward.
“Nay,” she whispered, the image of him growing watery through the thick wall of tears in her eyes. She sniffed and blinked, setting the sadness free to run courses down her cheeks while she took up his hand once more and turned it over, pressing the brooch into it and curling his thick, rubbery fingers around it. “Roscraig is ours. You are the laird here—you always have been,” she whispered quickly, like an incantation, hurrying to speak the words aloud so that they might be made true.
She doubled over in the chair and laid her forehead against her father’s hand, still clasped tightly in both her own. She squeezed her eyes shut, and her breaths were hard-won.
“Am I even your daughter?” she rasped.
The weak hand encased in her own flexed, and Glenna raised her face to look at her father. Even in his illness, she saw the fire of his answer there. He struggled to open his fingers against hers and then grasped for her hand. The brooch slid free and fell to the floor with a tumbling clink.
Glenna felt the weak tug, and she rose, bending Iain’s forearm up until their clasped hands were between their chests and Glenna’s face was only inches from her father’s.
His lips pulled apart slowly and with much effort. “My,” he exhaled, and his breath was hot and tinged with the smell of wet vegetation.
She wanted to reassure him with a smile, but it felt as though the corners of her mouth were hung with weights. “If the king grants Tavish Cameron Roscraig, we’ve nowhere to go, Da. Tavish—he seeks to wed another and doesn’t want me here. The king might see me cloistered, or wed to someone of his court. But you…” She broke off, unable to speak aloud the possibility that James could have her father charged with some crime.
“I’ve a friend, though—John Muir. He is captain of a merchant ship and, with your blessing, has offered to take us both from Roscraig. I trust Captain Muir; he feels for our situation and—”
“Go,” her father interrupted in a whisper. His head twitched in a weak nod. “Go.”
“He said he will take you, too. We only—”
Iain Douglas jerked his head to the side.
Glenna stared into his eyes for several moments, and the silent communication between her and her father was more painful than any words either could have spoken aloud.
I will not live long enough for the journey.
I can’t go without you.
I want to die at Roscraig.
But you’re all I have left.
“Da,” Glenna pleaded on a quiet sob.
His jaws made the chewing motion several more time, in fits and starts, before his lips peeled apart once more.
“Ann’sley,” he slurred. “Good.”
Glenna stilled. “You knew him?”
His head twitched in another nod, and this time his yellow eyes held a glint of the man Glenna remembered from her youth. “Good.” His jaws worked futilely for a moment and his next words were like a creaking wind. “You…go. Sssoon,” he slurred.
Iain Douglas was clearly not afraid of the judgment of the king, but he seemed to want Glenna away from Roscraig before the monarch’s arrival. Which led to another question burning a hole in Glenna’s brain.
“Da,” she began softly. “What happened to Mother?”
“Harr’et,” he replied.
