She looked to Mam now. “Tavish is your only child. If someone killed him and then fled the land to escape their deserved punishment, would you not exhaust every coin, every resource, for the rest of your life hunting that person down to see that they paid for what they did?”
Mam’s face was pained. “Tommy didna—”
“You don’t know that, Harriet,” Glenna interrupted, her words nearly a shout. “You weren’t there when Cordelia Hargrave died—none of us were. You want to believe that the man whose child you bore was good. That he was not capable of the heinous crime of which he is accused. But what if Thomas Annesley did kill Hargrave’s daughter? What if it was even an accident? What if Vaughn Hargrave only wishes to accomplish what he told me—which is to stop Thomas Annesley from hurting anyone else, even beyond the grave.” She paused. “Harriet, he says Thomas gave Roscraig to my father. Before I was born.” Now she turned to look at Tavish. “And if he testifies to that before the king, your inheritance is worthless.”
Tavish stepped forward. “Did he also tell you that it is he who has been paying the taxes on Roscraig all these years? If he testifies before the king, aye, it could temporarily save your place at the Tower—until he demands repayment.” He made sure to meet her gaze.
“You’re absurd,” Glenna scoffed. “You really would do anything to keep Roscraig, wouldn’t you? The more I learn about you, Tavish Cameron, the more I am certain you favor your sire. You would use me, just as Thomas Annesley used your mother. The only difference between Harriet and me is that I am not so foolish as to have fallen in love with you.”
Mam bowed her head for a moment, and then she looked up, her chin lifted, her face proud. “I’m sorry if I am foolish, milady. If loving a person makes me a fool, then so be it. I could do little to save Tommy from Vaughn Hargrave thirty years ago, but I wanted to do all I could to protect you now. Please excuse me.” She crossed the floor between them and struggled with the bolt only a moment before escaping the room.
Tavish felt his anger flare and was glad for the burn that cauterized the wound he felt.
“I’ve never used you, Glenna. Had I wished to truly ruin you, had I not cared a whit for you, I would have taken you fully a score of times already,” he accused. “It’s not as if you didn’t want me to.”
Glenna shrugged. “That has little to do with love. Fortunate for me you were too much of a coward to go through with it. Learned at least one lesson from your old da, did you? Careful you don’t leave a bastard behind?”
“Aye, I did learn that lesson from Thomas Annesley,” Tavish shot back. “I can only imagine the hell Mam went through for my sake. My earliest memories are of Dolan Cameron beating her until she couldn’t walk, couldn’t see. But she had nowhere to go with me, and so she stayed and took the beatings. She took them until I killed Dolan Cameron.”
She was staring at him, and he let her, unable to snatch the confession back. He hadn’t wanted her to know the violence he was capable of, lest she compare it to the crimes of which Thomas Annesley was accused. Somewhere in the back of Tavish’s mind, he thought much the same as Glenna—perhaps Thomas Annesleyhadkilled the girl. Perhaps hehaddouble-crossed Iain Douglas. But even if those things were true, Tavish knew beyond any shadow of doubt that Vaughn Hargrave was a liar, and a very real danger to the people most important to him at Roscraig.
“When you were sixteen,” Glenna guessed.
“Aye,” he said, knowing she was putting together the clues. The rest didn’t matter now. “I came upon him in a temper, flogging Mother with a baton. I think he would have finally killed her that day. At least, I feared he would. I was sick of it. And I was bigger than him by then; stronger. I took the baton from him; hit him but once. I was so horrified at what I’d done—patricide—I’d decided to turn myself in. But Mam…Mam told me he wasn’t my real father. And, just like that”—he snapped his fingers—“Dolan Cameron became nothing more than a stranger who had been allowed to abuse my mother for my own sake.”
Her expression had softened somewhat, but her cat eyes were still glittering. “How did you explain his death?”
“I explained nothing. His body was found at the docks with his purse strings cut.”
She nodded vaguely as if agreeing with the course of action, and Tavish wished in that moment that he had taken Glenna, planted his seed in her. The very imagining of it caused his heart to beat in a funny rhythm, for he knew there would be no running for Tavish. The idea that he could leave Glenna and their child, no matter if it meant that his life was threatened…
The regular paths Tavish’s mind took when working a problem suddenly vanished, and a new, barely discernible trail through deep woodland was the only track available as a new idea pressed him toward the unknown territory.
If Hargrave had now decided to transfer the guilt of his daughter’s death from Thomas Annesley’s to Tavish’s own head, did that mean Glenna would be in danger as long as she was connected to him?
Perhaps Thomas Annesley had not only been preserving his own life in leaving Mam the way he had—perhaps he had been protecting her. It hadn’t been some band of anonymous swords come to find him—Thomas had known the woman by name.
Meg.
And he’d told Mam about Roscraig. That didn’t sound like a man whose only goal was saving his own skin.
If Tavish stood aside and let Glenna’s plan to leave at dawn on theStygianplay out without protest, he knew that Muir would keep her safe. Hargrave could never know where she had gone and would never think to look for her as the wife of a sea captain. Glenna would be beyond the king’s scrutiny and judgment, and away from the rumored talk their cohabitation at Roscraig had generated. In another country, she could get what few people were granted: a new life.
“Will you come back to the hall?” he asked, hoping that she didn’t hear the insecurity behind the query. There was no way she could know the weight her answer held or the unspoken questions it would answer.
“Nay,” she said, her gaze meeting his across the breadth of the room. She stood up and went to the bedside, fussing with the furs that covered the old man, and did not turn to face him when she continued. “I don’t know how long my father has left, and shame on me should I choose such pompous, heartless parasites over him. If it means that you cry foul on our bargain, so be it. You may add it to the long list of grievances you have against me to air before the king when he arrives. I’m certain the court will be thrilled to hear the details of it.”
Tavish felt his jaw clench and a wave of foreign emotion wash over him. He couldn’t identify it beyond the similarity it bore to the many moments in Edinburgh when he had been made to feel less than the burgess and his cronies; when he had been forced to tolerate the thinly veiled allusions to his class status, and when the burgess himself suggested how odd it was that Tavish did not resemble Dolan Cameron in the least.
But Glenna Douglas was not shaming him for what he was not; she was merely holding up a mirror so that for the first time since his arrival at the Tower, Tavish could see himself as the laird of Roscraig he had become.
“Don’t go…don’t go outside the hold without alerting me,” he said quietly, and then added, “Please.”
Her motions stilled, but she did not turn around. “I’ll be in this chamber until dawn.”
Tavish swallowed.Dawn.He should let her go. Just let her go with Muir and let him keep her safe.
“I hope that what you said to Mam was untrue. I hope that you do care for me.” He turned to the door, but paused with his fingers gripping the handle, gathering his courage, his pride about him. “God dammit—I’ll not marry Audrey, Glenna.”
