Page 19

T he castle was never silent, not even during the darkest hours of the night, but it had never been as quiet or as dark as it was tonight.

The air was still, and the waters of Loch Dunvegan were calm when Cat rose from her bed, crept to her bedchamber door, and eased it open. She paused on the threshold, listening, but aside from the rhythmic wash of the waves against the rocks below, there was nothing to hear.

Yet it wasn’t an easy quiet, for all that the murmur of the water was as soothing as a lullaby. It was a wary, suspicious hush that did nothing to calm her ragged breaths or still her shaking hands.

She’d had the dream again tonight, but this time, her pursuer hadn’t been nameless or faceless.

He’d been an enormous marquess with blue eyes who’d chased her through the woods before succumbing to a poisoning—an accidental poisoning—and was now inside the castle walls, in the heart of her home, like a snake lying coiled and silent in a nest of baby birds.

It was her nightmare, come true.

Weren’t nightmares meant to lose their power once they came true? It seemed not, because here she was, tiptoeing about and peeking around doors in the middle of the night like a thief in her own castle while Lord Ballantyne slept peacefully two floors below where she stood.

It was so awful, so resoundingly dreadful it might almost have been laughable, but there was nothing amusing about finding herself under the thumb of a powerful marquess who could ruin her with a single word to the magistrate.

How had things come to such a sad pass, so quickly? Why, she couldn’t even leave her bedchamber without looking over her shoulder, waiting for the moment an arrogant marquess would leap out at her from the shadows.

Lord Ballantyne had retired to his bedchamber after their argument in the library this afternoon.

She hadn’t heard a single word from him since, but it was too much to hope he’d remain quiet for long.

No doubt he was plotting his next move, biding his time, and waiting for the best moment to strike.

There was no sign of him lurking in the hallways tonight, however. The corridor outside her bedchamber was deserted, and aside from the usual creaks and groans of the castle bracing itself against the wind, silent.

No whispered voices, no muted patter of creeping footsteps.

It was only a temporary reprieve, a stay of execution until he returned to full vigor.

He’d cause her no end of trouble then. Her day of reckoning was coming at the hands of the Marquess of Ballantyne, and like most reckonings, it was certain to arrive sooner than she’d hoped, and at the worst possible moment.

But it wouldn’t be tonight, it seemed.

A small mercy, that, but she’d seize it, all the same. She had a few matters to attend to—matters she’d just as soon keep to herself—and this would likely be the last chance she’d get to see to her business without Lord Ballantyne peering over her shoulder.

Yet she lingered inside her bedchamber still, one eye pressed to the crack in the door.

It seemed too much to hope—a miracle, even—that Freya and Sorcha had gone quietly to their beds after dinner.

After the dramatic events of the day, she’d been waiting for them to storm her bedchamber tonight, but there wasn’t so much as a shadow to be seen or a footstep to be heard in the darkened hallway beyond her bedchamber door.

She slipped through it, pulling it closed behind her, and made a mad dash up the staircase to the third floor, phantom footsteps chasing her the entire way. By the time she reached the alcove that led to the turret, she was nearly panting with dread, but there was no one there.

She was alone.

She darted into the alcove and ran up the narrow stairs inside the wall of the turret to the top floor of the castle.

Her workroom was just as she’d left it yesterday morning before she’d embarked on her ill-fated trip to the village.

Her flasks and bottles were scattered about her worktable.

Stray bits of maidenhair fern littered the floor beneath it, and a trace of the heavy, earthy scent of black licorice lingered in the air.

It seemed impossible that only a little more than a day had passed since she’d left here, their dwindling finances her greatest concern!

It was incredible how much havoc a single day could cause.

One small misstep had upended everything, leaving the bits and pieces of the life they’d cobbled together after her father’s death scattered at their feet, like a puzzle carelessly dropped on the floor.

She paused beside her worktable to light the lantern, but after turning the wick down low, she left it where it was, the muted glow leaving the corners of the room in shadows.

Instead, she let the pale moonlight through the window light her way to the other side of her workroom, her bare feet silent against the cold floors as she made her way to a set of double doors set into the stonework.

Despite being massive arched affairs made of thick slabs of heavily carved wood, one wasn’t likely to notice the doors unless they knew to look for them.

She’d locked those doors on the day of her father’s death, then she, Sorcha, and Freya had dragged a large cabinet in front of the door on the left.

Since then, none of them had set foot in the room on the other side of the doors. They’d closed them and walked away. If she’d had any other choice, she may never have darkened the threshold of the room again, but as it was . . .

Choice was rather in short supply these days.

She slid her hand into the pocket of her cloak and withdrew the heavy iron key she’d taken from a wooden box hidden on the bottom shelf of her dressing closet.

She fitted it to the lock in the door on the right, and it opened with a rusty groan of protest, leaving her just enough room to squeeze through the gap.

As soon as she stepped inside, a blast of stale air hit her in the face.

It was frigid on the other side, and musty, as well, as if the doors had been closed years ago and never opened since. The iron hinges were coated with dust, and the thin silk filaments of abandoned spiderwebs lingered in the cracks the passing of centuries had wrought in the wood.

She stood for a moment, inhaling the familiar scents of dust and old paper, but as she stepped over the threshold and into the room, she caught a hint of the sweet, powdery scent of the pipe her father used to smoke, and her chest tightened.

It was everything Rory, that scent, every memory of a childhood condensed into a single breath.

Memories of sitting on his knee as he shuffled papers about his desk, of hours spent tramping through the woods at his side, her small hand tucked into his much larger one.

The scratch of his bristled cheek against hers, his woodsy scent a part of him as surely as his arms around her had once been.

That scent was a part of her now, too.

Dear God, how angry she was at him!

And how terribly she missed him. It was as if an abyss had opened right in the center of her chest, and no matter what she did, or how hard she tried, there was no way to close it, and no way to fill it.

It was a throbbing emptiness, just beneath her breastbone.

Tears sprang to her eyes, but she dashed them away with an impatient swipe of her hand. There was no time for that nonsense, not with Lord Ballantyne breathing down their necks.

The room was just as she’d left it months ago.

Rory’s coat was draped over the back of his chair, and the usual mountain of papers was spread across his desk, a letter opener tossed carelessly on top of them.

A glass with a few drops of whisky stood on one corner, and on the other was the dirk he’d carried everywhere with him, its brass handle gleaming in the thin ray of moonlight peeking through the high, narrow window cut into the stone wall behind the desk.

She approached, took up the dirk, and slid it from its leather sheath.

It had belonged to Rory’s father, her grandfather, and Rory had cherished it. She’d never met her grandfather, as he’d died before she was born, but Rory had always spoken of him with hushed reverence. He used to spend hours cleaning and sharpening the dirk and oiling the leather sheath.

She ran her thumb over the blade. It was dull now, and the steel was discolored.

But she hadn’t come here for this. The time for indulging in fond memories had long since passed. She tossed the dirk and sheath onto the desk, swallowing the lump in her throat, and seated herself behind it in her father’s chair, taking in the chaotic mess of paper spread over the surface.

There were letters, bills of lading, rough drawings, and old maps, some of them worn nearly through at the seams, and others only fragments, bits of paper with torn edges.

To the untrained eye, it all appeared random and unconnected, but in his own slapdash fashion, Rory had kept meticulous records.

The trouble was, none of it made any sense to anyone but him. She’d have to go through all of it at some point and read every scrap of paper, one at a time.

Soon, but not tonight. Tonight, she’d come for something else.

That coin that Lord Ballantyne had produced with such fanfare from his pocket this afternoon, the Louis d’Or ten-piece . . . she’d seen that coin before, or one identical to it.

Had he noticed the shock on her face when he’d shown it to her? Dear God, she hoped not. She’d done her best to remain expressionless, but she’d recognized that coin the instant she laid eyes on it, and she’d never been a convincing liar.

There was nothing ordinary about that coin.

The Louis d’Or ten-piece had never been put into common circulation. It was a pleasure coin, a royal gambling piece made to be used only in court games.

It was rare. Exceedingly rare.

Lord Ballantyne had told her he didn’t believe in coincidences.

Neither did she.