Page 95 of Devil Black

“Now,” Dougal told him, “we will have a confession. You will recite all your sins—well, I doubt we ha’ time for that, but give us the major ones. Start with what you did to Aisla.”

“That craven bitch,” MacNab said.

Dougal struck him, a sweeping, openhanded wallop that knocked him over, and then hauled him up again by the rope that encircled his neck.

“You will tell what you did to her, and fairly. How she suffered and died. These folk,” he swung his sword at the listeners on both sides of the burn, “are your council who will help decide your fate.”

Bertram said nothing.

“Come, man! Is that not justice?” Dougal shouted at him. “I want to kill you now, my blade thirsts for it, but I give you, here before witnesses, the chance you did not give her.”

“She was weak,” Bertram said. “From the moment I took her, she wept and moaned. She did not deserve to live—only the strong deserve to live.”

“She was a child,” Dougal cried, “a lass of sixteen when you took her. What need had you to torture her?”

“I shall tell you, MacRae, why I treated that bitch the way I did, if that is what you want to hear,” Bertram spat up at Dougal. “’Twas because she loved you. And once, when I rutted with her, she was foolish enough to call your name!”

Dougal sagged where he stood. Isobel, watching, saw the strength go out of him, precisely as if he had been stabbed to the heart. But his blade remained steady at Bertram’s throat.

“And then you came to save her,” MacNab went on, “fancying yourself the great hero. I could no’ let you have her, could I? Nay, I wanted your shame! And do you know, MacRae, she died soon after—still with your name on her lips?”

“Kill him,” said Catherine in a harsh voice, making Isobel jump.

“Aye, kill him,” agreed one of Dougal’s warriors, beginning a chorus. “He deserves it!”

Dougal’s blade trembled visibly at MacNab’s throat—with eagerness, Isobel fancied.

“Kill him,” said the scribe, Campbell.

Dougal raised his head and looked at Isobel. By some trick of the moonlight, she could see all of what filled his eyes—blinding pain, the lust for revenge, and a question.

“Leave him live,” she voted after a moment’s deliberation. “But make certain he never finds pleasure in raping another woman—anywhere or at any time.”

Slowly, Dougal grinned. At that moment he looked so like a devil Isobel shivered. But at the same time something within her responded to that look and gloried in it.

“My wife has spoken, MacNab,” he cried. “And despite all you ha’ done to her, she chooses mercy.”

“No!” MacNab howled.

“I think you should kiss the ground in gratitude to her. Kiss the ground, MacNab!”

He struck Bertram again, a thunderous blow that sent him tumbling sideways in an awkward sprawl. Bertram’s bound hands moved to protect his genitals, but Dougal’s blade moved more quickly still and laid the grievous wound. Bertram howled, like a pig at the slaughter, into the night sky.

“You should have killed him,” said the scribe mildly. “Now he will hate you twice as much.”

“There is still time for him to bleed to death,” Dougal said levelly. “Just you be sure, Campbell, you write down the fact that I granted him mercy, and left him alive.”

Campbell looked round at the assembled company and gave a tight smile. “Aye, so—left him here beside the burn, bound and in the same condition he left his stronghold. I do no’ know how he came by that last crippling injury.”

“His word against ours, and yours—I like that, fine!” Dougal grinned again, turned, and sprang back onto his horse. Bertram had ceased writhing and lay motionless on the ground.

Isobel looked again at her husband—wild-haired, calm-eyed, and with an ease about him that argued he had shrugged the weight of the world from his shoulders.

He splashed his horse across the burn and held out his hand to her. “Let us, Wife, go home.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

“Bertram MacNab has been taken into custody by the King’s guard,” said Dougal, paused in the doorway of his wife’s bedchamber. “They say he languishes even now in a dank cell.”