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Then she ran.
It was a castle under siege. There was no where for her to escape, was there? But perhaps she meant to give some sort of signal to our enemies.
“Guards!” I cried again, giving chase.
Flying down the staircase, her fair hair flying free of its bonnet, Brenna called back to me, “Who do you think they’ll believe? A good girl like me or a scheming strumpet whose witch of a sister keeps poisons in the physiker’s laboratory?”
“They’re going to believe me,” I said, entirely sure of it. And finding strength in myself because I was sure of it. Leaving a trail of blood behind me, I staggered after her as she ran out—not into the castle courtyard, but towards the sea wall, where a cold wind blew fiercely underneath clear winter skies.
Maybe she did have a plan of escape. Was there a boat waiting for her at the sea gate? How deep did the conspiracy go? I caught her by the hair just as she reached the first no
tch in the wall, and whipped her back against the stones. She grasped me too, trying to throw me from the wall.
In this, she was foiled by two things.
First, though I was bleeding badly from the injury in my side, I was too strong for her. Second, we’d come upon Arabella at the sea wall, watching for Davy’s corpse to wash up, as was her daily habit. And upon hearing my shrieks, my sister sprinted toward us, shouting, “Brenna! What are you doing?”
“She’s the traitor,” I cried over the wind, while Brenna scratched and bit and kicked at me.
Arabella saw the blood on my dress, then her eyes narrowed at Brenna. “It was you? You vile, tattling, little rodent!”
“That’s rich coming from the other castle whore,” Brenna spit. “Fortunate thing that Davy died with a good name before he could marry you and sully it.”
In a flash, my sister hurled her fist like a man and cracked Brenna in the nose. The blow should have felled the maidservant. Truly it should have.
It haunts me to this day that it did not.
Because in her desperate jealous fury, Brenna twisted and turned, trying to shove me off the wall with all her weight. And when I let go and ducked down…she went right over.
I heard her howling scream.
I heard the horrifying thump of her body on the rocks below.
I didn’t look to see where she landed.
When I did look up, it seemed every guardsman in the castle had come running. Not just them, but the laird and Ian, too. And seeing these men, my heart sank, for both my laird and Ian were bleeding from the nose and mouth as if they’d been in a fight for their very lives. Had they been battling each other or was the entire castle under attack?
“Heather!” both men called to me in distress.
God help me, I felt a tenderness for them both.
But the heart does not lie in such moments.
“My laird,” I cried, panting, on the cold, hard, ground. “You’re bleeding.”
His face was a mask of terror and grief as he dropped to his knees by my side. “Oh, lass. Lass! You’re bleeding. Oh, my Heather…”
“She’s been stabbed,” Arabella snapped, shoving him out of the way to press her hands against the wound. “No thanks to you, laird.”
“It’s not his fault,” I whispered, but I felt my breath tighten and shorten as the laird squeezed my hand. “But the child…”
I trailed off, my eyelids seeming very heavy suddenly.
“Don’t close your beautiful violet eyes, Heather,” the laird commanded. “Stay with me, Heather. Stay with me.”
Stay with me.
Those seemed the only words I had ever wanted to hear from him, but were they too late now? Moments later, Malcolm was on the sea wall, eyes flashing for danger he could use his sword to conquer. “What’s happened?”
