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Rogene cocked her head. “Of course. Check as much as you want.” She looked at Angus. “Perhaps, in preparation, I could look over the marriage contract of your father and mother? Just to be sure what I write is similar in style. I’ve never worked on a marriage contract before.”

“Aye, Lady Rogene,” Angus said. “I can show ye.”

He should have checked with Laomann, but he didn’t. Although the meal was not yet finished, he stood up and, not even waiting for anyone’s approval, gestured for her to follow him. He thought he heard Euphemia’s teeth cracking, but he didn’t care.

Chapter 7

She didn’t dare to touch the vellum. Even though it was already thirty-eight years old, it was so fresh and so new, and there were barely any signs of aging—well, not compared to seven-hundred-year-old documents that were in the museums and archives, preserved in pristine conditions, guarded from direct sunlight and kept under the right temperature.

And here it was, the contract written in Medieval Latin between Kenneth Og Mackenzie and Alexander MacDougall, who was the father of Morna MacDougall.

“This indentur made at Eilean Donan, the fifth day of the moneth of Marche, the yheir of our Lord a thousand twohundreth and LXXV, betuyx Kenneth Og Mackenzie and Alexander MacDougall.”

The letters were written in black ink in medieval calligraphy. Carefully, feeling like she was touching history itself, she brushed against them with her thumb, noting the tiniest indents and bumps formed by ink under her finger.

She would need to write like this. She’d be the one who’d seal the fate of Angus and Euphemia through that contract.

She both loved and hated that knowledge.

Angus’s gaze burned her skin. She looked up. He was so handsome in the semidarkness of Laomann’s lord’s hall. It was one story up from the great hall in the castle keep. The room was like an office with a table, probably to discuss clan matters, she guessed. There was a fireplace and small slit windows with a foot-thick windowsill. The table was situated by the window so that the daylight fell on it. In the chest by its side were documents. That was where Angus had taken the contract from. Unable to read, he’d shown her the documents one by one, and she’d read aloud their titles until they’d found this one. There weren’t many things at all in the chest—mostly letters to Laomann and the previous chief, Kenneth Og, registrations of land deeds, rent collections, and such. She itched for her phone, in the purse that was right there with her. She’d need to sneak in here alone somehow and photograph all the documents.

And yet, that didn’t mean she’d be any closer to proving that Bruce did come here to give up and not to gather forces.

And time was ticking. She had to get back to finish and defend her thesis soon.

“What does it say?” Angus said.

She pursed her lips. Thankfully, she’d had to study Medieval Latin for her PhD. However, her modern mind recognized that what she was reading was strange, foreign. It was the weirdest thing. Like speaking a foreign language, she supposed. Her mind understood everything, and was able to reproduce it, but at the same time recognized it as foreign.

She smiled. Angus was dashing in his rough, masculine handsomeness, leaning on the table, his hand pressed against the edge right next to hers. If she’d only moved her pinkie an inch, it would touch his thumb. She swallowed. The room was full of crackling electricity again, and the air seemed to have disappeared from it. Heat radiated from him, and perspiration covered her forehead.

“It says, your mother’s tocher, or dowry, includes a few islands south of Skye, and fifty marks. Your father paid two hundred marks to conclude the deal.”

Angus nodded and frowned. He let go of the table and straightened up, turned away, and stared out the window. “Aye. Those islands belong to me. I am to move there with my future wife.”

With his future wife… The thought stung, and to distract herself, she consulted the contract. The land, indeed, was to be given to one of the male heirs. Studying marriage contracts wasn’t one of her fields, so she didn’t know if that was typical. But she had read somewhere that a marriage contract could, in essence, have any conditions that the clans wanted to put there.

“How did ye learn to read and write?” Angus turned around, his tone suddenly different—light, curious, and…did she hear a tad of envy?

“Um. My father considered it important and insisted that I learn.”

He looked out the window again, nodded, and chuckled. “Yer father must have been a good man. Since ye fled north to yer mother’s family, I assume he’s passed away.”

Rogene swallowed a hard knot and blinked to will the burning in her eyes away. “He has. My mother has, too. She, too, insisted that I always learn and always improve myself.”

He looked at her, and a pain in his eyes made her chest tighten. “Ye were lucky to have a da and a ma like that.”

She looked at the contract in front of her. Kenneth Og Mackenzie was his father, and this document, essentially, was the beginning of his life.

“What was your father like?” she asked.

His mouth curved downwards within his beard. “’Tis nae good to talk badly of those who are deceased,” he said. “So I wilna say anything.”

His voice rasped, and she heard suppressed anger underneath. “What did he do?” she asked.

He turned to her completely, cold and distant. Pain raged in his dark eyes as he tucked his fingers between his torso and his arms.

“He did what he did, and I”—he gritted his teeth—“did what I did.”