Page 40 of Outlaw Ever After (Highland Handfasts #3)

A new cabinet sat in the window niche. Large and deep, it was big enough for a man to hide within…so long as it was empty.

He moved to it like a wraith, avoiding the plank nearest the hearth out of habit, where a telltale squeak had always resided, and opened the cupboard door.

Christ

! Too narrow for his broad frame and stacked with ledger books. Alex pried open the other cupboard door.

Victory!

Empty, and wider.

He climbed in, knotting himself into the niche as it groaned beneath his weight. Hunched over his folded legs, he pulled closed the door as softly as he could, unable to close it completely, just as light splayed into the chamber as the door was thrust open.

Through the crack, he spied Seamus turn to Lady Elizabeth and drop a kiss to her cheek. “Go to bed. I’ll come to ye soon. I need speak to Kendrew about an important matter.”

He cupped his bairn cradled in her arms, a smile softening the hard angles of Seamus’s shaven face. For a moment, he looked nearly human. A father and husband who loved his woman and babe. Not a monster who lashed bairns within an inch of their lives.

“Nay be late.” She smiled, then swished from the chamber.

Seamus strode in as MacGregor closed the door.

“Ye mean to say that he was alone with Peigi all eve in the village?” MacGregor launched into a conversation that sounded as if it had already been in progress before Donegal had interrupted them.

“Aye, and furious with me, saying I was terrorizing those folk. I’ve only reaved them once and it was back then

, but he seemed willing to risk taking my sword for them.”

Such bullshite! Only once? Alpin and the villagers had jumped into action as if having done so a hundred times.

“But what did he say that made ye suspicious?” MacGregor pressed.

“He said that the Grants were good at taking heads.”

Silence. Alex’s skin prickled with gooseflesh.

“There’s only one head that a Grant has ever taken,” Seamus continued.

Alex’s blood rushed, primed for the damning answer that he feared was about to seal his fate.

“Yer sire punished the Comyn laird by beheading,” MacGregor said.

Alex’s breath froze in his lungs, to hear MacGregor speak so easily about the moment his life had been upended forever. “Which is when that wee whoreson knifed yer sire and mine so badly, mine died on the spot and yers bled out…” Lies!

Alex’s jaw clenched as MacGregor perpetuated the biggest lie of all in this entire mess. A dark-haired man had blamed him

as he’d run to his sire’s lifeless form despite his mother begging him not to.

“Ye think it’s him? The outlaw we’ve spent a lifetime searching for?”

“Indeed,” Seamus replied. “Tell me, why would he hearken to something so specific unless he’d been there to see it?

The folk in the village tonight were depending on him, too.

Everyone here seems to bloody like him. He kenned the Burning Sticks today when Peigi specifically picked these folk’s traditions. ”

“ My brother mentioned that the Archbishop of St. Andrew hired a new deputy comptroller this summer,” MacGregor said. “A brash warrior from the Hebrides whom Arran hopes will help unify more Highland clans, and a young lawyer of no title, who distinguished himself at King’s College.”

“

And now he works for the treasurer. And he’s here.”

“Auditing yer castle loans.”

“The charter granted to me was legal, as restitution for my sire’s murder.

” Alex’s teeth gritted. He bet Seamus’s sire received an honorable burial, too.

“I have no reason to be worried. It’s only recently my clan has come back from the brink of starvation,” Seamus said, “after I recouped my grievances from the MacDonalds. They’re mostly repaid now. ”

Alex had learned from Peigi that her clan had ailed for coin over the years. Surplus money was hard to come by, when an estate cost much just to maintain, and Seamus controlled

two

castles.

“Aye, but defending Scotland against the Sassenach Henry VIII and Highland warring has been expensive and the Crown is ailing for coin. I sent a runner to the city last night with questions and he returned this eve. My brother says the treasury is cracking down and the comptroller’s first order of business is to review charters made by the late King James V.

If this comptroller is the outlaw, then he found a way to retaliate and see yer charter rescinded, until he realized the castle was up for grabs. ”

Seamus was pacing in and out of view through the crack in the sideboard as MacGregor continued.

“I saw him at Lughnasadh, working for MacLeod of the Hebrides.”

Seamus, seemingly thinking, said, “Aye, ye said he’s the MacLeod’s Reaper?”

“The moment he arrived yesterday, I recognized him. He was the Demon of the Seas’ cocksure warrior, delivering final judgment on his victims

with that war scythe.”

They could think that if they wanted. It’s what everyone thought. Even if contrarily, Alex rarely took a life. Death was final, and a wrongful death couldn’t be undone once delivered. He should know.

“Nay difficult to see why Arran wanted to hire him, as subduing the Highlanders is proving easier when he brings them into the fold instead of waging war on them .”

“We all ken MacLeod’s reputation as a warmonger,” MacGregor sneered.

“Tormund?” There was surprise in Seamus’s reaction. “I used to think so, too, but nay be too hasty to judge, my friend. MacLeod is afeared aye, and yet, he’s proving to be a loyal ally to my brother-in-law, James MacDonald, the two of whom were once bitter enemies.”

Alex’s ears perked at Seamus’s opposing response. Odd for him to be so levelheaded.

“In fact, according to MacDonald and Aileana, MacLeod is innocent of the crimes MacDonald once believed him guilty of. They’ve forged a reconciliation, as have I with him. No surprise why Arran wants them both at his peace summit.”

“Are ye suggesting ye might… trust

the MacLeod?” There was an edge of shock in MacGregor’s voice.

“I nay ken him enough to judge his character. But I trust MacDonald’s judgment, and he stands by MacLeod publicly. If MacLeod once employed this Stewart fellow, we might be wise to ken his reasons.”

MacGregor scoffed, then it looked as if…he pulled out a parchment? He handed it to Seamus. Through the crack, it was hard to decipher in their feeble light but looked an awful lot like…the soft green ribbon Alex had sealed around a missive for his songbird.

“Then judge that.” MacGregor tapped it proudly. “It seems our comptroller wooed yer sister and promised to handfast her. Left her love missives like this one begging her to wait an extra sennight for him because he was taking up an employ in Edinburgh.”

MacGregor

had found and stolen the missive he’d left for Peigi? His blood raged fire. It meant MacGregor had seen them stealing away to their secret greenwood…

What had she said as she’d helped him yestereve? That MacGregor had told her everyone had left?

He’d lied to her.

If he’d stolen Alex’s missive, then he’d…let her believe she’d been abandoned. And it had precipitated a maelstrom of hurt—

“What the hell is this?” Seamus snapped angrily. “Where did ye get this?”

MacGregor’s composure crumbled to anger. “I give ye damning evidence that that Stewart bastard ye think is the outlaw has wooed yer sister, and ye yell at

me

?”

“Ye’ve had this for three bloody months and never gave it to me?”

“I nay believe this,” MacGregor fumed, tossing up his arms. “It’s nay as if I see ye every day.”

“Ye were right there at the faire with me

with

this in hand!”

Seamus paced angrily away, whipping open the missive to read it again, slowly scouring his jaw, when he seemed to freeze in thought. Seemed to be thinking hard on something that wasn’t on the parchment. Finally, he spoke, but it was eerily composed and measured as he turned back to MacGregor.

“My apologies.”

“Apology accepted,” MacGregor softened smugly. “I should have softened the blow. She is, after all, yer beloved sister.”

“Ye think he wanted this castle all along?” Seamus said.

“Likely he was always angling for it, and using Peigi. Is that nay the feeling ye get?”

The

lies

MacGregor was filling Seamus’s head with.

“Feelings are nay enough to go on,” Seamus said cryptically.

“But it’s signed with a

C,

” MacGregor said.

“Like the outlaw’s name. Caleb Comyn.” Well hell. When he’d written that missive, he’d been wrestling with Peigi’s request to be honest with her. He’d given an inch, desperate for her to hear and know his real name, who he really was. “Ye should thrust Alexander’s

arse in the dungeon.”

Seamus tapped the missive on the desk. “I have to verify this suspicion first.”

Alex’s eyes narrowed at the unexpected response. Verify? What was to verify? Their guts were telling them the truth about who he really was.

MacGregor scoffed. “This old argument again? Seamus Grant, too fair to act boldly? It’s how the outlaw got away in the first place. Ye, too worried to upset yer fragile mither who was begging ye for leniency, and Peigi’s strange supplications that ye free the cretin.”

Peigi had once begged Seamus to free him? Even as a wee lass of nine years she’d stood up to him?

“Believe me, I’m furious,” Seamus growled defensively. “But we can nay act in haste only to discover Alexander is the victim of uncanny coincidence.”

“After seeing his back this morn, there’s no

way it’s coincidence.” MacGregor sliced his hand.

“What of his back?”

“Those lashings didna put themselves there. I

did, when ye failed to hang him upon arresting him.”

Alex’s mind reeled. It hadn’t

been Seamus? He’d been so terrified then, so weak compared to the bigger, stronger lads exacting their anger in their slain sires’ steads. The granary had been dark. He’d thought it had been Seamus who’d struck that lash over, and over

, leaving him in the dirt face down, only to be roused later by a wee lass…