“Go back to them,” Glenna said, flinging her hand toward the door. “Lot of two-faced, greedy hypocrites. You deserve each other.”
“Children,” Mam interrupted sharply. “That’s quite enough—you’ll disturb the laird with your bickering.”
The scolding caused Tavish’s gaze to skitter reluctantly to the still figure on the bed. Iain Douglas appeared as though nothing could disturb him—his mouth gaped, the bony prominences of his throat reached for the ceiling. He was clearly dying.
“Forgive me,” Tavish said in a low voice.
Harriet arched a sparse brow. “That’s better. Now.” She turned to walk toward the window and indicated the armchair with a flick of her hand as she passed it. “Milady, if you’ll make yourself comfortable, Tav will mind the door for us.” She reached the stone sill and leaned against it, taking an obvious look at the ground far below. Apparently satisfied with what she saw, she turned to face the room once more, settling her back against the wall along the window, closest to Iain Douglas’s side. She looked at both Tavish and Glenna in turn before speaking again.
“I saved Tommy Annesley’s life. Saint Brigid herself delivered him to me on her own feast night, and ’twas she who gave me the knowledge to heal him and the courage to keep him hidden in me da’s barn all those weeks without being caught.” She looked at Glenna, and her expression softened somewhat. “I know what Hargrave must have said to you, milady; that was Tommy killed his daughter. Cordelia, her name was. But he didna.He didna. He wouldna tell me exactly what happened—if even he knew, but he did tell me that Hargrave had a hand in it.”
“Lord Hargrave killed his own daughter?” Glenna asked. “Did Thomas Annesley say how? Did he have proof?”
Mam dropped her eyes to the floorboards for a moment. “He was just a boy,” she said softly, wistfully. “A beautiful boy—ten and eight. And I,”—she chuckled here—“I was even younger. He cried himself to sleep in my arms for his sweet Cordelia, and then would wake in a terror, screaming her name, sobbing ‘the blood, the blood.’” She covered her mouth with her hand for a moment, then looked up again, this time at Tavish. “He was scared. Scared that Vaughn Hargrave would somehow find him, even in the hinterland Scots haymow he was hiding in. I’ve never seen a person so afraid in all my days since.”
“Perhaps he feared justice,” Tavish couldn’t help himself from positing.
“His fear was that there would be nae justice,” Mam snapped. “Someone did come to the farm for him. A band of ruffians led by a woman, of all things.” She looked back to Glenna now. “A woman with blond hair and green eyes. I remember hearing them arrive at the cottage, and I crept to the top of the stairs to listen. They’d been to the village asking about Tommy and the horses, and someone told them my father had recently acquired such a pair as was runnin’ wild in our wood. When she mentioned the name Hargrave, I knew Tommy was in great danger.”
“Why?” Glenna asked, her expression almost painfully intense; it seemed to Tavish that her features were carved from the finest alabaster.
“The woman never said Tommy was wanted as a criminal. She referred to him as Hargrave’s own beloved son, whose return was sorely desired after a horrible row. A family spat, said she.
“Well, I knew right away that if they found Tommy, if he was made to return to England with that woman, he was as good as dead. I heard the woman offer Da coin to let her see the horses and search the barns, so I crept back upstairs and went out the window. It was raining, and my hands slipped from the sill and I landed badly on my leg.”
Tavish was taken aback. “The one you limp on?”
“Aye, me bad leg. It wasna broken, though, thank the lord.”
Tavish found himself frowning at the imagining of his mother as a young girl, injured so, yet desperate to warn Thomas Annesley.
She continued. “I told Tommy about the woman and the men, and he whispered one word. ‘Meg,’ says he.”
Tavish’s gaze went to Glenna again as he recalled the intricate grave marker on the cliff overlooking the firth.Margaret Douglas. But Glenna said nothing, her expression stony.
“Tommy left out the back of the barn with the black horse, just as Da opened the front doors. There was no way out for me, so I hid down in the hay, way in the back, praying they wouldna search there, but they did. They overturned what seemed to be every piece of hay. It was clear someone had been living up in the mow, and Da saw that one of his fine new horses was missing.”
Harriet paused, and the intervening years seemed to accumulate on her ashen face all at once, so that she aged before Tavish’s eyes. “I doona think Da would have beaten me so if they had left that horse. But he took a flail to me. Threatened to kill me if I didn’t tell him where to find Tommy so he could claim the reward. I fell down the slot trying to get away from him, and that’s how my bad leg got bad. I wasna allowed in the house again from that night forward. Within a fortnight, I was wed to Dolan Cameron and moved to Edinburgh, and I never saw me da again. Never wished to, either.”
Glenna at last spoke. “Did Dolan Cameron know that Tavish was not his son?”
“He was a sharp man,” Mam conceded, and although the stony look had fallen from her face, it had left behind a sagging expression of exhaustion. “He could not have succeeded so well with the shop were he nae. So, aye, he figured it out soon enough. It would have been in his rights to turn me out or have me da jailed, but he was cruel enough; telling me that if the bairn was a girl, he would throw her from the highest building on Market Street and dash her brains against the stones.” She looked up at Tavish. “But it was Tav, of course. A good strong lad that Dolan was happy to claim as his own.”
“Hewascruel,” Tavish corroborated. “And I thought that monster was my father until I was sixteen.”
Mam dropped her eyes to the floor for a moment. “I thought that was best for your future. I daren’t so much as breathe the word ‘Roscraig’ lest it somehow lead back to Tommy.”
“What made you decide to tell him about his true father when he was sixteen?” Glenna asked.
“To warn me,” Tavish said, cutting off his mother’s reply. “What has your tale to do with the issue at hand, Mam?”
“To show Lady Glenna—to show you both—that Vaughn Hargrave has been out for Tommy’s blood for more than thirty years. He has waited all this time in the hope that someone connected with Tommy would surface, and it seems that ’twas Tommy himself who alerted Hargrave by turning himself in. He didn’t come here to wish either of you well.”
Tavish looked away from both women toward the darkened window, not wishing to repeat the vulgar and lascivious comments Hargrave had made about Glenna.
“Perhaps,” Glenna said in a thoughtful tone, “he is nothing more than a father who was devastated by the murder of his daughter.”
Tavish looked back at her quickly as she rose from the chair.
