Page 130 of Highland Spy

“I’d planned to leave,” she confessed.

“Aye,” he said seriously. “And I’d hoped to change yer mind.”

Anise held up a mug of ale between them. “Drink, laird. There’s much to discuss.” Up close, she was even younger than Ariana had assumed. Her face was untouched by the lines of age and her eyes held a helplessness only the young possessed.

“Did my da find ye?” Anise asked.

“Renny.” Connor’s voice came out in a deep scrape of gravel. Only Ariana knew it had nothing to do with having been poisoned.

Anise nodded, and the white cap she wore fluttered over her brow. “Aye, he saw ye in town and said he’d follow ye, so ye’d know we were here.” Her eyes were rimmed with emotion. “All this time, we’d thought ye were dead.”

Ariana glanced toward Connor, but he did not meet her gaze.

“Renny followed me, but I dinna know.” He drew his palm down over his face and let his hand fall away. “Anise, I’m sorry to tell ye this, lass. He’s—”

“No.” She shook her head and her eyes went wide. “No. It couldna be. He was too strong, too brave.”

Ariana backed slowly away to give the young woman her privacy. But the obvious pain on her face pulled at something deep down in Ariana. The woman had clearly loved her father. She’d mourned his passing in a manner Ariana had been unable to, yet always wished she’d had the opportunity to.

Connor put a hand on Anise’s shoulder, as he often did to all the women at Kindrochit when he wanted them to know he was being serious. “We brought him back with us and buried him at Urquhart.”

Anise lifted her head and offered a brave smile. “Ye’re a good laird. Even after all this time.”

Ariana winced inwardly, knowing Connor would disagree with the statement and how deeply it would cut him.

He paced the small room, like an agitated beast stalking the length of its cage. “I’d assumed ye were all dead. I dinna…” He pursed his lips. “I dinna come check myself. I couldna stand the pain of discovering what I thought I knew. I left ye to fend for yerselves.”

Anise shook her head. “We havena had to fend for ourselves.”

“But the people outside,” Ariana interjected. All eyes in the room turned toward her. “The crowd of people who were starving and in need of clothing.”

“No’ us,” Anise replied solemnly. “We’ve been well cared for all this time.”

Connor stopped pacing and turned toward her. “By whom?”

Anise regarded him with surprise, as if she assumed he already knew the answer. “Why, Laird Kenneth Gordon, of course.”

• • •

Kenneth Gordon.

Connor stared at Anise, his thoughts momentarily paralyzed by the name which had haunted him the last few months.

The friend, the betrayer…and now the savior of the very people Connor had failed.

Kenneth Gordon.

He did not have to turn to know Ariana was staring at him intently. The weight of her gaze was too heavy on his back. He could not bear to face it head on.

“The Gordons were responsible for the fall of Urquhart,” Connor said. The disbelief he’d tried so hard to mask came through far too clear.

“His da, the late laird—he was the one who took Urquhart.” Anise nodded toward the guards.

They stepped forward, almost as one. For the first time, Connor noticed they were identical. Tavin and Tavish, the brewer’s sons who were once the scrawniest fourteen-year-old lads Connor had ever laid eyes on. The past three years, and the harrowing circumstances, had clearly turned them into men.

“We dinna want to believe it at first either,” Tavin said.

“But he’s helped us,” Tavish finished his brother’s sentence the same as he always had. “He wants to help those in this town as well. It isna easy with politics.”