Page 97 of Outlaw Ever After

She shook her head. The nightmares had eventually ceased. But being in these halls, Seamus thundering to the village like a reaver, that sensation the entire time she hid in the cave about the familiarity surrounding her, the uncorroborated inklings she was feeling about Alex being the outlaw, all must have roused these latent dreams.

“Are ye willing to listen?” She wet her lips, cleared the sleep from her throat.

“I asked, aye?”

She summoned a deep breath. They hadn’t argued about this in years. Mayhap the vengeance in his heart was finally softening enough for him to hear her. “Because of the Comyn lad.”

Seamus stilled.

She grabbed his hand. Squeezed it in supplication. “Because, brother, of the way he was hunted like a dog. I ken ye nay believe me, but he isna the one—”

His neck stiffened. “He had the knife in his bloodied hands.”

She bit her lip.

“Ye’re wrong ,” she whispered resolutely, for the first time in four and ten years.

“He did nay have a knife in his hand when Bale MacGregor found him?” Bale had found him? He was going to silence her. Again. She could read it in his posture. “Ye were nine years old chasing a pup.” He paced away as olden grief tightened his mouth. “Do ye mean to tell me, all these years, that I…” His words trailed away as he shook his head.

“ Are ye so blind ye can nay fathom that I’ve always wanted justice, too, just nay when it’s misplaced? As a bairn, ye couldna believe that a wee lassie might have something important to say.” She looked to her hands. “ This is why I wanted to elope with Alex.” Aileana and Elizabeth gasped to learn this morsel. “To escape this, this anger . This need for revenge ye’ve clung to all these years, and it’s why I canna stand Kendrew.”

The wind outside whistled.

Their Irish mother, like Joslyn, would have called it the fae folk playing tricks.

Tonight marked Samhain Eve.

He sat down on the stool beside the bed. Tipped her chin up to look at him, but she pulled herself free and pushed to her feet, her blankets falling away.

“If ye nay truly want to listen to me, then why finally ask me what’s wrong?”

He sighed wearily. Rubbed his temples. Then muttered cryptically, “ My pride swells too grand to ever hear the truth when it’s easier to believe lies…” He nodded and lifted a remorseful gaze to her. “I’m listening. Why do ye keep professing the lad’s innocence?”

“Because I—” She closed her eyes. “I disobeyed ye when our faither died. My pup ran away. I made chase, for I feared for her.”

“Pegs,” Seamus exhaled. “Yer fear is rooted far in the past. Hardly a concern now, for what am I to do about it? Punish ye? And it’s got no bearing on yer claims about the outlaw.”

“It does when it’s to the fray that I chased my pup.”

Aileana breathed a shocked exclamation. Seamus remained stone still. She summoned a deep breath.

“What did ye see?” Aileana pressed.

She swallowed. “I saw the Laird Comyn b-beheaded,” she gasped, pinching her eyes to push the horrid memory over her lips, but felt her sisters wrap their arms around her, “by ours and Kendrew’s sire. I buried my face in my hands, for I was frightened. But nay before I saw a hand fisting a knife raised. And a flash of a signet, some sort of rose. When I dared to uncover my eyes, the Laird MacGregor lay slain on the ground and our sire mortally wounded.

“The lad could still have done it,” Seamus grunted.

“Nay when it was after I saw their bodies down that I saw the lad running down the field, screaming for his da. And ours was moaning, ‘Ye betrayed him. Ye betray us all.’ Those are the words of someone he kenned close and dear. Tell me, Seamus, how is the lad to have done the killing, when he was nay even there? He found the blade and picked it up, and then ’twas dragged away.”

“By whom?”

“The man with the signet on his finger. Dark hair. But it was behind Kendrew’s horse I saw the lad being pulled.”

“A rose signet…” Seamus was thinking hard. “Who was the man with the signet?”

She shook her head. “I nay ken.”

Seamus’s face rested darkly in the candlelight, a furrow of genuine confusion on his brow.