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Adelaine looked at her father. “Lord Harold Watson, do you accept these charges that might assign mercy to you?”
He looked directly at her and his gaze was stony “I accept my charges but there will not be any mercy for me because I will ask for none, nor do I regret what I did. Peter was an embarrassment to me, so I had to remove him by any means necessary. All Scots are dogs and bastard sons of dogs, remember that, Adelaine, when this mongrel turns his back on you. I regret nothing!”
Grimacing, she hid her face in Caelan’s neck. “Caelan… take me home.”
Epilogue
Sentenced to Death
That w
as the ruling the court had declared over Adelaine’s father. The evidence of the Earl’s crimes had been stacked higher than the Scafell Pike Mountain. The tribunal had read the condemning letters, written in the Earl’s own hand, and then had heard the spoken testimony of Robert Duglas who had faked his death to save himself from the Earl’s persecution.
“I was honor-bound to investigate Peter’s death,” Robert had said before the esteemed men. “When I found the letters, my only hope was that Lady Adelaine would find the few where I placed them in the beloved tree she and Peter used to play in.”
They had deliberated over the act of hiring a man to kill said son, the crime of taking an innocent prisoner as a cover-up for his crime, and then the aborted mission to kill his daughter had been presented. All in all, the sentence of death was inescapable.
Caelan, who had opted to stay behind after the battle in the town’s square, had watched Adeline waver between anger and grief for so many days after her father was put to death. One night, as she cried grievously in his arms, he had asked her to leave England and come to Scotland with him—for good.
She had accepted without hesitation and acted on it the very next day. As the remaining heir, she had asked the steward to oversee the estate and the Earldom and when the time came to get the King to assign another to take control of the territory. She had then called Islington and met with him to formally break the engagement. The Viscount had been taken by surprise, but took her refusal with understanding.
“You have another, I take it,” she heard the man say.
“I do,” was Adelaine’s reply, “and he is the one who has my heart.”
When all the preparations for the estate were finished, they had set out for Scotland, with Adelaine deciding to leave England behind her. The night before, Caelan had asked her if it wouldn’t better to take her carriage as she had a whole fleet of them at her disposal but she had refused.
“I want to see Scotland how you would see it,” she told him. “Martha and my luggage can come by carriage later on.”
“It's going to be a long journey,” he’d said.
Adelaine just smiled, “I have you with me, don’t I?”
It took them time but they got to the Highlands. Caelan made sure to take her to the most beautiful places in his lands. They were mostly snow-laden but she could see the high, rugged mountains as they passed through the soft-rolling valleys. She spotted a deer darting through the trees and the snow hares hopping through the underbrush.
He pointed out the few evergreen trees, the circles of rocks where his ancestors would worship and the wide paths. When sunset came, they stopped to let the warm, reddish-pink rays wash over them. He took her the way of the loch and she got to see the deep, blue-black depths of the majestic mile-long loch.
“It’s like a dream,” Adelaine sighed as she brushed her fingers over an icy twig.
When they finally did get to the McLagen seat, the hill under the castle, Adelaine stopped her horse so she could stare. The sprawling castle, made from purely-black rock, chiseled out from the mountains beyond, was still awe-inspiring even though he had lived there his whole life. The red-roofed keep jutted up from the lower buildings, and stood like a beacon, an unmovable monument that Caelan hoped would stand for generations to come.
“Your home?”
“Aye,” he smiled as he urged his horse forward. “Me home, and yers too.”
They had been received by a crowd, all shouting and reaching for their missing Laird. Adelaine was crushed into him and he had tried to shield her to no avail until a bellowed order had the people parting like Moses before the Red Sea.
Artur came marching out and hugged him with a relieved gaze. “Yer finally here…” his gaze the slid to Adelaine. “And ye must be Lady Adelaine, eh?’
“I am,” she said nervously. “Were you the one who sent me that letter?”
“Aye,” Artur had bowed. “And I cannae tell ye how much I appreciate yer help, going so far as to free him so he could come home…well mostly home.”
Caelan’s eyes went dim. “Was it just Rogan? Did the other two…”
“Rogan and Gregor were wounded, aye, but we are all right as rain now,” Artur said. “Let’s get ye inside, I kent ye must be tired. Dinnae ye worry, I’ll have them leave ye alone until mornin’.”
“Aye, send Hella up to make me bath ready but first, there is someone ye need to meet,” Caelan said. He guided his hand down on the small of Adelaine’s back. He took her down a corridor to a room where he knocked twice on the door and then entered. Seeing who was inside, Adelaine stepped back, and he knew she was unsure about what to do.
