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Page 42 of Outlaw Ever After (Highland Handfasts #3)

The wedding dances were joyous! Peigi sang! Twirling with Aileana, Michaelmas daisies woven into their hair flashed lavender petals as they spun to the bodhrán and pipes.

Her aunt, a blushing bride. The lush grass of this heavenly isle so soft beneath her bare feet…

Then the shouting…

Swords. Scrambling.

Seamus grabbing her, thrusting her to safety in that cottage.

Mildred running away, tail wagging and tongue lolling. Poor Mildred had to be saved, too!

Then…

The dark-haired man loomed, ring glinting, arms raised, knife in hand.

“Da! Da!” Terrified screams as a lad ran toward the fray.

The bloodied knife dropping from the lad’s confused hands…

“Peigi!” Her mither was howling as she covered her eyes. “Peigi! Peigi…”

“Peigi…Pegs…

Sister

!”

A stern voice resonated as her head lolled, so restless.

“Sister, ’tis only me—”

She jerked away from the broad grasp. Blinked open as wind howling against her shutters replaced the chaos of her dream.

“It’s only me,” Seamus said more gently.

Elizabeth’s lilac water as she dipped the bed ropes, brought Peigi fully lucid.

“Ye were having a nightmare,” Aileana said as she pressed a cloth to her head.

“Yer cries roused me and I dashed for Seamus,” Elizabeth said, still dressed in her nightshift, worrying her lips and taking her hand.

The last of the screaming receded into the hollows of her mind. A tallow candle flickered. Seamus stood stoic.

“Ye havena had one of those in years.” Seamus’s jaw pumped.

She sat up. Sweat had soaked her shift and plastered wisps of hair to her neck and temples. Her mother had once said her nightmares were her gift of Sight vying to be heard.

“Why?” he hedged.

She shook her head. The nightmares had eventually ceased.

But being in these halls, Seamus thundering to the village like a reaver, that sensation the entire time she hid in the cave about the familiarity surrounding her, the uncorroborated inklings she was feeling about Alex being the outlaw, all must have roused these latent dreams.

“Are ye willing to listen?” She wet her lips, cleared the sleep from her throat.

“I asked, aye?”

She summoned a deep breath. They hadn’t argued about this in years. Mayhap the vengeance in his heart was finally softening enough for him to hear her. “Because of the Comyn lad.”

Seamus stilled.

She grabbed his hand. Squeezed it in supplication. “Because, brother, of the way he was hunted like a dog. I ken ye nay believe me, but he isna the one—”

His neck stiffened. “He had the knife in his bloodied hands.”

She bit her lip.

“Ye’re

wrong

,” she whispered resolutely, for the first time in four and ten years.

“He did

nay

have a knife in his hand when Bale MacGregor found him?”

Bale had found him?

He was going to silence her. Again. She could read it in his posture. “Ye were nine years old chasing a pup.” He paced away as olden grief tightened his mouth. “Do ye mean to tell me, all these years, that I…” His words trailed away as he shook his head.

Are ye so blind ye can nay fathom that I’ve always wanted justice, too, just nay when it’s misplaced? As a bairn, ye couldna believe that a wee lassie might have something important to say.” She looked to her hands. “

This

is why I wanted to elope with Alex.” Aileana and Elizabeth gasped to learn this morsel. “To escape this, this

anger

. This need for revenge ye’ve clung to all these years, and it’s why I canna

stand

Kendrew.”

The wind outside whistled.

Their Irish mother, like Joslyn, would have called it the

fae folk

playing tricks.

Tonight marked Samhain Eve.

He sat down on the stool beside the bed. Tipped her chin up to look at him, but she pulled herself free and pushed to her feet, her blankets falling away.

“If ye nay truly want to listen to me, then why finally ask me what’s wrong?”

He sighed wearily. Rubbed his temples. Then muttered cryptically, “

My pride swells too grand to ever hear the truth when it’s easier to believe lies …” He nodded and lifted a remorseful gaze to her. “I’m listening.

Why do ye keep professing the lad’s innocence?”

“Because I—” She closed her eyes.

“I disobeyed ye when our faither died. My pup ran away. I made chase, for I feared for her.”

“Pegs,” Seamus exhaled. “Yer fear is rooted far in the past. Hardly a concern now, for what am I to do about it? Punish ye? And it’s got no bearing on yer claims about the outlaw.”

“It does when it’s to the fray that I chased my pup.”

Aileana breathed a shocked exclamation. Seamus remained stone still. She summoned a deep breath.

“What did ye see?” Aileana pressed.

She swallowed. “I saw the Laird Comyn b-beheaded,” she gasped, pinching her eyes to push the horrid memory over her lips, but felt her sisters wrap their arms around her, “by ours and Kendrew’s sire.

I buried my face in my hands, for I was frightened.

But nay before I saw a hand fisting a knife raised.

And a flash of a signet, some sort of rose.

When I dared to uncover my eyes, the Laird MacGregor lay slain on the ground and our sire mortally wounded.

“The lad could still have done it,” Seamus grunted.

“Nay when it was

after

I saw their bodies down that I saw the lad running down the field, screaming for his da.

And ours was moaning, ‘Ye betrayed him. Ye betray us all.’ Those are the words of someone he kenned close and dear.

Tell me, Seamus, how is the lad to have done the killing, when he was nay even there?

He found the blade and picked it up, and then ’twas dragged away. ”

“By whom?”

“The man with the signet on his finger. Dark hair. But it was behind Kendrew’s horse I saw the lad being pulled.”

“A rose signet…” Seamus was thinking hard. “Who was the man with the signet?”

She shook her head. “I nay ken.”

Seamus’s face rested darkly in the candlelight, a furrow of genuine confusion on his brow.

“Ye speak the truth?” he finally bit out. “Are ye saying that all these years, we labeled an innocent lad an outlaw? It’s been four and ten years. Ye were so young. Could it be ye were confused?”

“I ken

what I saw, and it has lived in my mind forever in these horrible dreams.” She lifted her eyes to his.

“Are ye saying Bale lied?” he gritted out. “I must ken yer true answer.”

“I nay even ken Bale. But are ye saying I’m

lying? What motive would I have to lie?”

He stared at her, though it was clear he was conflicted. Believe his sister who’d only been a child? Or believe his long-time ally and friends, who’d also suffered the same loss as him? Then he scoured his face, not saying what he clearly wished to say.

“Or what motive would Bale have…” he pondered cryptically.

“Seamus, ye were so bent on punishment ye wouldna listen to anything but yer anger.”

“I

did

want to listen, but I never got the chance to question the prisoner because he vanished, the granary window opened for him to climb right down the ladder.

And who had helped him? One of ours? A rogue Comyn who had somehow snuck into Urquhart?

I could never figure out which man would act so treacherously as to help free a murder suspect. ”

“Because it was nay a man who freed him,” she rushed out before she could bite her tongue.

Sakes

, would he be furious with her?

“What are ye saying…” His words trailed away, his deep brown eyes in the candlelight narrowing with realization. Her sisters’ arms tightened around her.

She lifted her chin despite the sudden chill that made her shiver with uncertainty.

“’Twas a

lass

who nobody would listen to,” he finally said.

“And here she is before ye. How many nights do ye think the widowed Comyn lady cried herself to sleep in this verra chamber over the loss of her husband and child before she passed? How am I to be happy here amid her ailing spirit?”

A knock on the cracked door sounded.

Peigi grabbed her robe from the chair beside the bed and swung it around herself as everyone’s attention turned. “Enter!”

Sir Donegal pushed it open. “Many of us heard a cry.”

“I have what ye’re looking for,” Kendrew MacGregor added, remaining outside the door. “I was just on my way back to the solar at Peigi’s outburst.”

Her skin prickled, taking him in as his eyes darted from her to Seamus, a few servants peering around him.

Seamus nodded and turned back to the door, not looking at her again.

Just like that? She’d confessed what she had seen and done, and he had nothing more to say?

Hurt lanced her with each breath.

Aileana squeezed her hand. Elizabeth cupped her head to her shoulder, but Peigi disengaged from their fretting and dismissed them.

She couldn’t go back to sleep. She

had

to know if that laddie was Alex. She thought on what Joslyn had said about the Lady Comyn having once had a book of music. She dug out the one her brother had given her years ago, her fingers tingling, and opened the cover.

Music for a lyre. Had it come from Freuchie’s gallery? His mother had used to play

that

lullaby for him.

She slid on her slippers, snagged up her candle, and floated out the door.

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