Page 82 of Lady Len and the Mysterious Mac

“It’s all right here. Letters to a secret lover. And now she’s missing. Who was he?” Blair asked, grinning broadly. “One of us? Or someone she knew before?” He swung around to face the crowd. “Doesn’t matter. He couldn’t even keep a wife. He let your lands fall to ruin under his father’s leadership, a father who can’t even be arsed to come downstairs and name him tanist. If we went up to his chamber, would we even find the old man still breathing?”

Si barreled towards him once more, but Angus jumped in to drag him back with a ferocity he wouldn’t have expected from the farmer.

“I will kill him.”

“And I will sharpen your blade myself, but not today.”

Si caught the man’s eye and there was something earnest there. Like Angus believed in Si, and Si was letting him down—like he’d let her down. Like he’d been letting his father down for years.

Mrs. Kynoch, watching from the kitchen, had the very same fire burning in her eye, and his Auntie Alys, even the blacksmith.

“The laird is upstairs in bed,” Norval said in a bored voice.

Start as you mean to go on, Si’s father always told him. He took a deep breath. “No. He isn’t. You want the truth, I’ll give you all of it. Norval has been poisoning my father. Slowly. For weeks now.”

The steward paled. He’d never expected an outright accusation.

“I wasn’t certain until tonight, so I sent him away to keep him safe.”

“Lies,” Norval scoffed.

“It’s the truth. I put him in a carriage with my wife this very day, and if your son has interfered with that carriage, he’s not only endangered my wife but the life of his laird as well.”

Norval searched the faces of the silent crowd. “He’s as far gone in the head as his father,” he protested weakly.

“Am I? You brought that castor plant into our garden. And then you used the seeds disguised as incense—”

“Is this because you think they’d vote for Blair? You’ve always hated him, but I never imagined you’d make up such heinous falsehoods—”

“He was like a brother to me. And you to my father. He trusted you to take care of his lands and his people in his absence. But that was his greatest mistake of all, wasn’t it?”

Norval glowered, but Blair pushed into the crowd. “You’ve heard the phrase, ‘Don’t shoot the messenger,’ surely, Silas?”

“Aye,” Silas agreed. “But this messenger grew rich off the backs of his people, while their homes and this very castle crumbled around us all.”

A collective gasp went through the room.

“Don’t listen to him. He’s an impotent fool who cannot even please his wife.”

“I’ll thank you to stop speaking of my wife, unless you'd like a newly blackened eye to match the other.”

“Is she upstairs then, Si? Only, you did say you sent her away with your father,” someone asked. He couldn’t see who. It didn’t matter.

“Aye,” he admitted. “Blair’s right on that score.”

Si glanced at Angus, and his steward shook his head. In the kitchen doorway, Mrs. Kynoch crossed her arms, glaring daggers at him. But Si’s father had reminded him that he could always read a crowd, and the only recourse with this one was to tell the truth. They’d heard far too many lies already.

“He’s right. I couldn't please her. I haven't loved her so well as I should.” He swallowed, the words sticking in his throat like month-old bread. “You’ve but to look at her to see that she’s everything light and good and pure.”

“And what are you, Si?” his Auntie Alys called from the stairs. She didn’t look disappointed in him. Just sad.

“I’m… broken,” he admitted. “I grew up broken, and I left here broken, and I came back more broken than when I left.”

The crowd around him quieted, their murmurs replaced by uncomfortable shuffling.

“I haven't done anything so well as I should have, and I’ll be the first to admit it.” He didn’t just mean with Len, and he hoped they would understand on some level. “Because I was scared—that I couldn't be what she needed, that she was so fragile I’d crush her just by looking, that she’d despise me for my brokenness.”

He looked out at them all, pushing his shoulders back to stand straight and tall before them, and took a ragged breath.