“Where is Talia?” Seona asked.
“Where have you been?” Murray growled, his glare shifting to Keegan.
“Haldane MacKay captured me. Then, thanks be to God, Keegan and his friends came to my rescue.” She gave a quick glance at Wentworth’s sullen face, where he stood stiffly by the tavern’s back door. Simply looking at him made her cringe.
Keegan dismounted and helped her down.
“Where is Talia?” she asked again.
“Inside. Holed up in the storeroom,” her father grumbled. “Go in and talk her into coming out.”
“What do you meanholed up in the storeroom?”
“She’s blocked the door, and she has a knife. She stabbed two of my men in the hands already. She’s gone mad!”
“I see.” ’Twas true that Talia was belligerent. Even if her actions got her into worse trouble, she would keep rebelling.
Seona headed toward the tavern’s back door, Keegan and his friends following.
Her father and Wentworth entered the dim room behind, along with five Murray guards. “I want to talk to you over here, Seona,” her father said in a stern tone.
She gave Keegan a quick glance. His firm mouth, hardened jaw, and icy glare said he was ready to stab someone. But none of them had drawn swords yet, thank the saints.
Her father and Wentworth waited twenty feet away, near the tavern’s huge cold fireplace.
When she joined them, her father asked, “Haldane, you say? Is he Griff MacKay’s youngest son?”
“Aye.” The men had already told her father how Haldane had ambushed them several times on the journey here, trying to kidnap her.
“Did he rape you? Seduce you?” her father demanded.
“Nay.”
“I don’t believe her,” Wentworth muttered between his crooked, yellow teeth. “She doesn’t have the look of an innocent to me. She probably already carries another man’s bastard. I withdraw my suit.” He strode from the tavern, slamming the front door on his way out.
Seona’s heart lightened with a moment of happiness. Marrying that man would’ve been hell on earth. But she was surprised to see her father didn’t attempt to stop him.
“’Twas not Haldane who compromised you; ’twas that one there.” Her father sent a sharp, lethal glare at Keegan.
Seona held her breath, waiting for a battle to break out. But everyone remained silent and still.
“How did Haldane MacKay capture you?” her father asked. “You had to be outside the castle walls. We know the guards were drunk on whisky and not at their posts. You slipped out, did you not?”
“Nay.”
“You’re lying, you little whore,” he muttered, too low for Keegan to hear. “One of the maids saw you slipping out of the kitchen with Rebbinglen. And six of my men saw you in the chamber upstairs with Keegan MacKay. Naked. You sicken me.”
We are married. I love him. He is my husband, she almost said. But she couldn’t yet. She had to take her sister to safety first.
“Where is Talia?”
“There.” He swung his thumb toward an alcove with a closed door. “Get her to come out.”
Seona approached the rough door, made of wide planks. “Talia? Are you in there?”
Silence.
Seona knocked. “Talia? ’Tis me, Seona.”
