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He reached the top step and gazed down at her. "I would call you many things Meara of the Fold," he said. "Fool would not be amongst them."

"Why such a swift return?" she repeated.

The top of her grizzled head barely reached the cat-eyed sporran that hung from his shoulder, but there was a force to her and a crackling intellect that warned one and all to watch his step.

"Tell me, old woman, what do you think happened to me brother?" he asked.

"You think I know?"

"I think you know a good deal."

"So mayhap I have plotted some evil against him?"

"How would Isobel rise to her rightful place?"

It was her turn to start in surprise. Then she nodded down the narrow hallway. "Come," she said and waddled off.

Taking a square, iron-bound lantern from a peg on the wall, she pushed open a door and stepped inside.

Gilmour followed. The old woman raised the light and its mellow glow flickered off oiled portraits, gleaming from one to another until Meara stopped in front of a vast, gilded painting.

The woman portrayed there was young and bonny.

Her hair was the color of summer wheat and her lips bowed up in a winsome expression, but it was her eyes that captivated him.

They were Isobel's eyes, and yet they were not.

"Anora?" he asked.

"Nay," said the old woman. " 'Twas Lady Senga, their grandmother."

He thought for a moment. "So you had some loyalty to this Senga," he said, "and now her estranged granddaughter has returned, looking so like her kinswoman that you cannot bear to see her act the servant. But how, I wonder, do you plan to elevate her station?"

"You listened in on our words," she said.

"How?" he asked, ignoring her accusation.

"You think I would sacrifice Anora so that her ragged sister might take her place as lady of this hall?"

He shrugged and followed the course of the wall, glancing at the portraits there. "Mayhap you feel some guilt for your part in Isobel's past."

"There is blame aplenty." She sounded weary, and when he glanced her way he saw that she had taken a seat not far from a half-finished tapestry. The loom stood silent and waiting.

"You regret your actions?" he asked, turning toward her.

"I regret idiocy."

He raised his brows.

"Superstition!" she spat. "Fear! They make fools of men."

"But not of women?"

She shrugged, looking weary and ungodly old. "Often enough they make martyrs of women."

Something cramped in his gut. "So 'tis best that Isobel was sacrificed."

She scowled at him. "Isobel was not born to be a sacrificial lamb. Isobel was born to survive."

"And to take Anora's place when that lady falls?"

She creaked with surprising speed to her feet. "There was a moment when I thought you had some intelligence, MacGowan. Try not to dissuade me now. Why did you return so speedily from the widow's cottage?"

He watched her as he milled Ailis's words about in his mind. "Why did your lady wed me brother?"

She seemed surprised by his question. "Have you not heard the prophesy?"

"Aye. It just so happens that I care little for the tales of old wives."

"So that's what the prophesy is to you? Naught but a tale spun by idle tongues?"

He lifted an appeasing palm and she snorted. "Mayhap I was entirely wrong about you, lad."

"In what regard?"

"Mayhap you are not in the least bit cunning."

"And mayhap you could answer one simple question put before you, old woman," he said and stepped toward her. "Why did she marry me brother?"

"Because she could not live without him."

Gilmour stopped in his tracks some six feet from her. Meara glared up at him.

"How so?" he asked.

"She was not complete without him."

"So she found Ramsay... appealing?"

The old woman tilted her head like an aging crow. "Appealing?"

"She was... attracted to him."

Meara snorted. "Hell lad, I was attracted..." she began and stopped abruptly. "What did the widow tell you?"

Gilmour cleared his throat and Meara cackled a laugh.

"So that's what she says to lure bonny lads into her bed these days? That the woman he truly desires will never desire him?"

"I know not what you speak of."

"I speak of Ailis's lies," she croaked and pointed her staff at him with vengeance.

"She knows not that the lassies be born of the same womb, thus she must think of another way to spill suspicion on them.

But I never thought that a MacGowan would believe.

.." She paused again, eyeing him like a hungry raven. "Did you couple with her or nay, lad?"

The question took him back a pace. " 'Tis none of your concern."

"All that concerns me lassies concerns me," she rasped. "So tell... But wait. You were not gone long enough, not if your reputation was honestly earned."

He folded his arms across his chest and glared at her. Never in the past had his reputation irritated him more. In truth, it did nothing but bedevil him these days. "After all your years upon this earth, you must surely know that rumors are rarely true."

The old woman's eyes brightened even more. "What are you saying, lad?"

"Only that you should not believe all you hear."

Not for a moment did her arrow sharp gaze leave his face, and then she mumbled something. Something he could not quite hear.

"What say you?" he asked, canting his head.

She grinned toothlessly. "Aye, it takes power to do what you have done. And surely with your bonny looks, you are sorely tested." She nodded and chuckled. "Aye. You are lovable. But of the other..." Her voice drifted away.

"What are you mumbling about, old one?" he asked, but she merely shuffled toward the door.

“Time will tell," she muttered. “Time and circumstances."