Page 99 of Outlaw Ever After

“I agree,” Seamus replied.

“Then what’s the plan? Apprehend him?”

“Nay. Carry on as normal so as not to upend Peigi’s tournament with more violence. We stay the course. I shall go to Edinburgh under pretense to fulfill ‘Stewart’s’ summons and…acquire reinforcements of my own to have on hand to capture the true murderer when all is done. Ye will remain here to keep an eye on our outlaw.”

Kendrew nodded, an uncharacteristically wide smile on his lips. “Fine. We’ll pretend we nay suspect.”

Peigi withheld her gasp! Nay, he couldn’t. After what she’d just professed about the truth of that day, Seamus was still bent on disregarding her? She had to talk to him and beg him to stay. She would do so when Kendrew wasn’t whispering influence into his ear.

“What was Peigi’s nightmare about?” Kendrew asked.

“About the wedding.”

“Her wedding? She shouldna fear, for when I win, I intend to spirit her to Edinburgh where Bale assures me the Archbishop would waive the banns and allow me to provide her a proper kirk ceremony.”

Kendrew spoke of his winning as if it were guaranteed.

Seamus tensed. “The wedding from years ago.”

“Hmm. When she feared the skull on that pamphlet?” Kendrew stroked his chin. “I nay realized those still plagued her.”

She furrowed her brow. That’s not what her nightmares were about. She’d just told Seamus as much. Yet he didn’t correct Kendrew.

“Tonight’s was the first one since she was a bairn.”

“She was a wee thing,” MacGregor said. “I’d have hoped her fears would have healed by now. Of course, if ye’d let me have my way, the outlaw would no longer be a burr in our saddle.”

“Nay, I still disagree with that harshness. He was only twelve years, man. He deserved to have a trial.”

Her brother thought that? But Peigi had seen the pamphlet. She’d seen the calls for the outlaw to turn himself in using his sire’s skull as bait. She’d heard the menfolk arguing about a hanging. Had her brother argued…for leniency?

Yet he was going to Edinburgh for reinforcements?

Seamus returned the manuscript to the shelf.

“A shame we never found that skull,” MacGregor lamented. “These folk likely stole it away, or the outlaw returned for it right under yer nose…”

The skull had gone missing?

She stepped back into the niche as they breezed out of the gallery. She held her breath, heart thudding, until she heard their discourse recede down the corridor, then muffle into silence as they wound down the stairs.

She exhaled. Slipped into the gallery. Found the tinderbox on the mantel, and relit her candle. She scoured the shelf where she’d seen them return the manuscript.

Taking it to the lectern, she opened it. A copy of Castle Freuchie’s deed?

Gifted by Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scotland, to an Alexander Comyn upon reaching majority? A young miller knighted and styled Baron of Pitlochry, upward of thirty years ago by the late King James IV in thanks for the miller reporting to him a traitor he’d overheard at an alehouse. Married to Esther Comyn, née Stewart, Alexander received the castle keys at age eight and ten years, Esther, only five and ten. So young.

Alexander Stewart . That was the name Alex had announced for himself. Which happened to be the Comyn laird’s given name and his wife’s maiden name. No children were listed upon this deed, so their son hadn’t yet been born. Peigi’s arms shivered with gooseflesh. The names could be a coincidence.

Coincidences are what we call fate when we nay understand what it’s trying to tell us.

She twisted her promise ring around the tip of her pinkie where she’d been toying with it ever since she’d gone to bed. Flipped through the manuscript, but there were few other details. It was a record of prior deeds, before her brother’s acquisition.

She slid it back onto the shelf, opening the portfolio next to it. Slid it back onto the shelf, too. Slipped out another, and another, until she huffed and pulled out the last one on that shelf:

The Histories of the Battle of Flodden Field In Northumberland of England and Alexander Comyn’s Title of Baron and Ascendence to Freuchie Stewardship.

Hmm. This was the battle in which Alexander Comyn had been knighted by King James, who’d then been slain at Floddin shortly after. She opened the cover of the manuscript. Leafed through it. Skimmed dates of battle, numbers of casualties, preliminary tensions leading to King James’s decision to invade England, his slaying, aftermath and trials of treason conducted by his widowed queen, when the name of a traitor caught her eye.