“No, it’s not Miss Keane,” Tavish said.
Glenna pulled away slightly. “Why would Miss K—”
“Audrey wasn’t in her chamber this morning,” Tavish explained. “All her things are still there. I’ve searched the entire village for her. It’s as if she’s vanished from the earth.”
“And now we find Frang Roy dead,” Glenna breathed, her green eyes wide.
“Something else you must know, laird,” Alec said. “There’re trumpets on the road, just now.”
“The king,” Tavish said grimly, and he felt Glenna’s hold on his tunic tighten. “I’ll take you back to your father and Mam.” He looked to Alec. “Help Dubhán cut this man down, then gather our most trusted and start searching the beaches. Have a dinghy sent ’round to this side of the point to search the rocks below. Send word to me at once if you find anything. I alone,” he emphasized. “I’ll join you as soon as I am able.”
“Aye, laird.” The man walked toward the cliff, drawing his sword as he went.
Dubhán’s smooth hands were pressed together before his chest, as if he had already begun praying for Frang Roy. “What would you have me do with his body, laird?”
“Put him in the ground,” Tavish said. “He was trouble when he lived, and I cannot help but think that word of his strange death upon the king’s arrival will taint the court, on the same day Audrey has gone missing. Did you hear nothing in your cottage, Dubhán?”
The black man shook his head, his expression grave. “Nay, laird.”
Tavish remembered the feeling of being watched after he’d hidden his coin chest below the cliff. “Think you he was trying for the cave?”
Dubhán’s normally generous mouth was pressed into a thin line. “It is possible. With all the rain, the path has been nearly washed away.”
“Stupid bastard got caught in the vines,” Tavish muttered.
“An accident?” Glenna asked. “But what about Audrey? And the blood I saw at the doocot?”
Before Tavish could answer, the monk thrust a bandaged arm from his voluminous sleeve. “’Twas my accident, Lady Glenna,” he said with a serene smile. “I was careless with my own blade in making cuttings of branches for the doves, nothing more. I regret to have caused you distress.”
Tavish tucked the pale Glenna beneath his arm and turned her toward the cliff path. “If anyone from the village should come, Dubhán, let’s keep this incident quiet lest we cause a panic among the guests.”
“Aye, laird,” Dubhán called after him. “Not to worry. The lord will keep us all, of that I am certain.”
Chapter 18
Glenna followed Tavish down the path away from the cemetery, her hand clasped tightly in his much larger palm. She was grateful for his insistent urging, his deliberate silence; her knees felt too fragile to support her should she come to a halt. Her face tingled with the shock of what she’d seen, her ears buzzed with snippets of conversation from moments ago, days, weeks, even years into the past. The words, the circumstances all whirled together as if in a cyclone until no voice was clear, no meaning evident.
Look closely at the portrait in the hall and you’ll see it. You’ve been lied to you all your life.
Frang Roy was dead. Audrey Keane had vanished. And the king of Scotland was at their very threshold.
The pouch of poison still hidden behind her wardrobe…It’ll take longer that way, mayhap a pair of days.
Even though the gentle cliff path was just as real and solid beneath her feet as the wide and commanding presence of Tavish Cameron before her eyes, in her mind she still stood in the graveyard staring at the farmer’s rough-clothed body, swaying in the brisk wind of the Forth.
I’ll already have all the coin I could ever want.
Tavish led her around the village, although if it was an attempt to circumnavigate the residents, his effort was in vain. Glenna heard the loud chatter of the crowd even as they came up the path toward the Tower, and when they at last were in view of the Tower road, Glenna could see that the village side of the moat was lined with onlookers. She kept her head down as Tavish pulled her through the crowd and barely heard Tavish’s responses to the calls of those gathered. The abrupt, echoing blare of trumpets seemed to fill the air, causing Glenna to flinch, and in the next moment they were nearly running over the span of the moat.
The darkness of the entry corridor swallowed them up, and Glenna let out a sigh, unaware that she had been holding her breath. Tavish released her and charged toward the courtyard, calling out orders to a handful of men loitering about the portcullis. Glenna herself looked around at the clusters of women servants with their heads ducked together, whispering. Glenna didn’t know if their gossip involved her or not, but it didn’t matter; they were retainers in her house—while it was still her house—and their king would arrive at any moment.
“You there,” she said to the nearest group, marching toward them while she flung out an arm toward another clutch near the east stairwell. “You all, as well. If you wish to remain household servants, you’d do well to act as such. You, straighten your cap; retie that apron—you look as though you’ve just come from the privy. You—straightaway to the kitchen with the order to prepare refreshments.”
“But, miss, I wish to see—”
“Go,” Glenna insisted. She felt a lock of her hair being tugged, and she turned with a gasp to see a young maid with a small, plain wooden comb in her hand.
“Beg pardon, miss. Your hair…”
