"And I was the one who made sure that the convict, Collum MacDonald, was buried in the crypt below, in a coffin bearing your name."
Chapter 22
James McGregor sipped brandy, enjoying the comfort of the Queen Anne chair before the fire, his legs stretched out on the footstool before it. The flames warmed his face, and he offered Shawna a smile that managed to make his ugly little face somehow beautiful.
But though he'd accepted her invitation for a brandy, and though he sat so comfortably in the chair, he looked at her and said, "You know, Lady MacGinnis, I cannot tell you a thing. Not a single thing. It isn't my place."
Across from him, Shawna frowned. "Not even where he has had the wee lad taken?"
James leaned forward. "I swear, he's quite safe—will that help you?"
"It will help. But what that tyrant has asked of you is quite cruel, you know."
James smiled, swirling his brandy in his glass. "The lad is healthy, well tended, and in fine health."
"How do you know?"
He glanced at her, startled. "Why... I was a physician, my lady. In a different life. The lad is well, and your Sabrina will be fine as well. I could have tended her tonight, but you wanted your friend here."
"It was important to me. Edwina practices witchcraft, but she is not among these awful people. I know it."
"So it's good that she came tonight," he agreed, and shrugged. "I met Laird Douglas upon a ship that was taking us both away for a lifetime of servitude. I only escaped my fate because of Laird Douglas, and therefore, though I do not consider him a tyrant, I do his bidding, and gladly."
"I don't know where my child is, so his bidding is wrong," Shawna said.
James leaned toward her, swirling his brandy, enjoying the amber color. "You cannot imagine how fine it seems to sit in comfort, and drink something of such quality," he told her, and smiled.
"You are paying me no heed, Mr. McGregor."
"Ah, but I am. I have been quite anxious to meet you, of course. In the very first moment, when Laird Douglas awoke to find himself called a murderer, he thought that you had been killed. And I think that he would have torn out the throats of captain, mate, and crew—before dying himself, of course—if he had not quickly realized that you were alive and well—he was the dead man."
"So he has spoken of me."
"Indeed."
"What he has said cannot have been kind."
"We lived together, my lady, in the cruelest of conditions. In London, good Queen Victoria has created a reign of chastity and propriety, but in her search for goodness, she overlooks the horror of the tenements, of the poor—and once a man is condemned, by fair means or foul, his fate is hell on earth. You are aware, I imagine, that David was taken aboard a ship, and sent to hard labor camps. I have fought rigging with him in the fiercest storms, I have broken rock at his side. I have seen him do the labor for others to keep whips of sadistic guards off their backs—in fact, my lady, it was in fighting for me that he finally won our freedom. I was very nearly killed. I don't think that David intended to kill the guard. In the fighting, the guard's neck was broken. We freed ourselves and a number of the others, and escaped. I tell you this just in case you don't understand what his past five years have been. You must bear in mind that obviously, over such an amount of time, a man would brood. And his anger would fester hard within his soul."
"But I'm not guilty of all that he thinks," Shawna protested. "Surely, he knows that now. I don't know exactly what he's told you, but I only meant to save my cousin—"
"Ah, well, lass, the best of intentions do not always serve us well!"
Shawna pulled up her legs, resting her chin upon her knees.
She knew what had happened, aye. David didn't speak much of it; maybe there wasn't much to tell. He had served a convict's hard time. In chains. She understood that. She thought that she understood that. But she couldn't know what it had been like for him, day after day, days becoming months, months becoming years.
All of that time.
Waiting to come back.
The thought of revenge a life force like air to breathe.
She shivered. She still wanted to see Danny. To hold him. To keep him safe. To make up for all the lost years.
She couldn't begin to imagine anything as cruel as what David was doing to her now. Telling her that her son lived and then taking him away. Maybe she couldn't clearly imagine or understand all that David had been through.
But he couldn't imagine or understand what it had been like for her. Awaking to find herself alive, yet next to a corpse she believed to be the man she had loved. Then discovering that she was going to have a child. The months of living, of dreaming, of waiting, planning, not knowing what to do, knowing only that the child would be some small precious memory of him....
The hours of labor only to be given a pathetically misshapen bundle that was dead.
Danny had been special from the time she had first seen him. Oh, God, if she had only realized...
What had gone on in the past?
Would it ever matter? He'd wanted the boy taken away from anyone with the name MacGinnis. What did he intend? Surely, he could not mean to keep the child from her forever.
If they were to live long enough to have a forever.
How had the Andersons ever come into possession of her son?
She had to know. She leapt up suddenly. "I—have to go out."
McGregor arched a brow to her.
"I cannot let you go anywhere."
"But I must!" she exclaimed, staring at him. It was incredible. He would stop her. Whatever it took; he would stop her.
Unless she could devise a means of escape. She had to escape this room, no matter how rude or cruel a ruse she must devise.
"Why, you ugly, wretched little bastard!" she cried to him, wincing inwardly as she did so. He had been kind to her. No matter what David had said regarding her, he had been kind to her.
But she had no choice now. She had to get out—and demand the truth from the Andersons. Somewhere, there had to be a defense for her.
"Lady MacGinnis—"
"Oh, I don't expect you to understand!" she cried to him. "But I can't bear your presence a moment longer. Keep me prisoner—but get away from me while you obey your master's bidding."
James rose with dignity and walked across the room without a word. At the doorway, he paused. "Call him what you will, my lady. I would die for David Douglas, so if you plan on getting by me, you will have to kill me."
James exited her room. Shawna stared after him. "I'm so sorry!" she whispered.
She dressed quickly.
There was one benefit now to the fact that David had been slipping into and out of her room at night at will.
She wasn't exactly sure where the secret panel was.
But it existed.
And she was going to find it.
* * *
"I'd been duly chastised," Alistair said, "and I was, you may believe me or not, wretchedly sorry for what I had done. I told Father that I should go straight to you, but he was uneasy, he wasn't certain that you would take matters into your own hands without going to the law. Anyway, my father knew you would have the contracts under which I had fraudulently managed to get myself paid in either your office or the master's chambers. All he needed was time. We needed to have you diverted. And actually..."
"Aye?" David said coldly.
Alistair stared at the fire. "I don't think that Shawna wanted to deceive you. But she was readily willing to lure you from your room."
"What you're telling me so far, I've basically deduced. How did I wind up on that ship?"
Alistair exhaled. "You were supposed to do no more than pass out in the stables. That was the family plan. I was the cause of it, but I wasn't even a part of it. I had gone down to the village of Wickshire to gamble and drink—and drown my sorrows. I was a black sheep then, you know. Blacker than ebony, as you can imagine. I had tarnished the name of the clan. Anyway, a gr
oup of constables was going through the village, looking for a fellow who'd escaped his guards and run north from Glasgow. He was bound for hard labor for the murder of a young lass—well, you know the history of the man. I gambled with a few of the constables, and heard the time they were having searching for the fellow—he knew the Highlands, and they did not. When I left the tavern, I was attacked in the woods just beyond Castle Rock. The fellow was tough; he put up one hell of a fight. I was very nearly killed myself, but just when he was about to slit my throat, I wrenched my dirk from the sheath at my calf and caught him almost directly in the heart with my blade. Just at this same time, I saw the stables on fire. I came riding here as fast as I could. When I went into the stables I found Shawna and you. One of the beams had crashed down on you."
"A beam? I was knocked out by a beam?"
"Wait—a beam wielded by a cloaked figure. You see, I got Shawna out first. Then, when I went back for you, that was when I first saw them."
"Saw who?"
Alistair shook his head.
"The figures," he said. "The cloaked figures. They hadn't seen me because they were concerned with burning down the whole of the stables, creating a massive blaze of it all. There were so many of them... I hid behind a haystack and all I heard one of them saying that it was fine, that the Douglas must die—if he came from the fire alive, they would kill him another way. I wasn't thinking clearly. I was terrified. And I'm not sure why I was quite so terrified. I had my share of fights. I fancy that I'd meet most any man in a fair situation... but there was something so determined and evil in their intent! There were far more of them than there were of me, and there was no one else about at all as yet, not my father, my uncle, my brother, or my cousin. I didn't stay; I set you over my horse and went running back into the woods. Then I ran into the constables, and..."
He hesitated. "I didn't think that I could be hanged for killing a murderer in the woods, but the entire stables were ablaze by then, and I didn't want it to appear that I might have been involved with what had happened there, and I didn't want to admit that I'd killed a man, and, quite honestly, I was certain that you would be killed if the men in the stables discovered that you were still alive. The constables were looking for a living man, and I had you. The men at the stables wanted a corpse—and I had one of those as well. I gave you over to the constables. And I put the corpse in the stables. When it was burnt beyond recognition, I dragged it next to the place where I had left my cousin." He hesitated again, staring at David. "Naturally, I was afraid for my own kin as well."
"In what way?" David queried.
"My father. My brother. I was afraid they might have been among the cloaked figures, and that, if you awoke safe and well in the morning, we'd have a great deal more to pay for than my petty thievery."
David, still leaning against the mantel, stared at Alistair incredulously.
"Well, then?" he queried.
"That's—it. That's my story," Alistair said.
David shook his head. "Are your father and brother involved with the figures in the cloaks?"
A pulse ticked at Alistair's throat. "I—don't believe so."
"You don't believe so?"
"I don't know," Alistair admitted. "But I don't believe so."
David didn't move. "What about the child?" he asked.
Alistair frowned. "What child?"
"Shawna's child. My child."
Alistair's frown deepened. "The babe died in Glasgow. I hadn't imagined that... frankly, I hadn't imagined that she would even have told you about the bairn... since it never drew breath."
David stared at Alistair, wondering just what in hell to believe.
Alistair's strange confession solved one part of the mystery, and perhaps the strangest part. The fact that someone had wanted him dead—and yet he had been spirited away on a convict ship, made sense at last. But Danny was his child, and Shawna's, and the mystery of how he had come to live, here, beneath the shadow of the castle that should have been his inheritance, still seemed to loom before him. Old Anderson had been terrified tonight. He had spoken what he believed to be the truth. The girl from the castle had brought them the child. They had known then that they needed to keep care of the boy.
Because of the Lady Shawna.
"David—sorry, Laird Douglas, isn't it?" Alistair said a bit wryly. "I don't suppose that you can forgive me any part in all this—it was my foolishness that started it all. But I had to tell you my truth, and naturally, I hope that you don't wish to skewer me through, slice my throat, and set my head out on gate spike for all to see."
David hesitated, a half grin forming on his lips. "I'm not sure what to think. You did save my life. You took me from the fire. And you saved Shawna's life as well."
"Aye, that's true. I was a wretchedly deceptive human being, but..."
"But not a murderer?" David suggested.
"No, not a murderer," Alistair said somberly.
David continued to watch him. "Shawna's bairn did not die," he said at last. "Daniel is our child, born from that night."
"Danny!" Alistair exclaimed. Then he started laughing. "My God, and Shawna accused me time and time again of fooling with poor sweet Gena Anderson! Why, the little wench! My God, I don't—"
Seeing David's piercing stare upon him, he sobered quickly. "I'm sorry. I just, I—my God!"
"So, you're convinced that Shawna didn't know the boy was hers?"
"Quite," Alistair said, frowning then. "She was in sorry shape when she lost her babe. I thought—I was actually afraid for a time there that she would take her own life. Except that she's stronger than that, of course, but you cannot imagine how disconsolate she was, you gone, and the babe... and I didn't dare tell her the truth about you at that point. What made you think that Shawna would allow her own child to go to the Andersons?" he inquired.
His tone was such that David felt a searing of guilt within himself.
Yet, even now, did he dare trust Alistair? Alistair had told him that he had acted partly out of fear of and for his own family.
"Anderson himself," he said quietly.
"Fergus Anderson said that Shawna brought him the babe?"
"Fergus said that Shawna's maid brought the boy to the Andersons."
"Mary Jane?"
"I imagine. Has Shawna taken another woman as a personal maid?"
Alistair shook his head. "No, we visited her, and perhaps Mary Jane even came to help her now and then, but basically, she stayed alone in Glasgow. When she came home, naturally, Mary Jane was her lady's maid once again."
David pushed away from the hearth and started for the stairs.
"David?" Alistair said.
David turned back. "Let's go!"
"Where."
"I'm not waiting for morning. We're going to find Mary Jane."
"Oh, God, of course!" Alistair breathed.
David turned, ready to start up the stairway again. Alistair was at his back.
And for a moment, it seemed to David that his spine crawled.
As he hurried on up the stairs with Alistair behind him, he remained alert.
And wary.
Damned wary.
* * *
Shawna had no intention of being a fool, or being taken unaware. If she ventured out, she would be in danger. If she didn't venture out, she would never find the truth that she needed.
She was far from an expert, but she did know how to shoot, and she owned a pair of pearl-handled derringers that her father had given her years ago, and which she had kept in good working order for that very reason.
She was sorry that David had made such a disaster of her purple riding habit—it would have stood her well now, the color being so dark and deep to match well with the night. But digging deeply enough had brought her to a mourning gown, high-necked and prim, yet a day gown in which it was easy to tide. In her black attire she would be ready to grab her guns and ease herself into the passage in the wall—once she found the way in.
She
was so involved, tapping and pushing upon stonework and carpentry, when her door suddenly burst open.
She had stood near the balcony window; she quickly eased away from it as she saw that David had returned.
Towering in his black breeches, shirt, and boots, he filled the doorway. His green gaze flickered over her, taking in the black funeral gown. His lips curled in something of a taunting smile.
"The laird is not dead—haven't you heard yet, my lady?"
"What do you want?" she demanded.
"Many, many things. But in particular, at this moment, where is your maid?"
"My maid?" she repeated, astounded. Of all the questions she had expected from David, Mary Jane's whereabouts was not among them.
"Your maid, Shawna. Mary Jane. Where is she?"
"Sleeping, I imagine!"
"She's not."
"Then I—I don't know."
He walked into the room to where she stood, obviously trying very hard not to touch her. "Have you given her time off? Perhaps she has left conveniently now with your approval."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Are you certain?"
"Quite."
"Perhaps you're unaware that Mary Jane gave our son to the Andersons."
Shawna gasped. "She couldn't have—"
"Oh, but she did."
"How—"
"Fergus told me so, my lady."
"I don't believe it!" Mary Jane had served her loyally as long as she could remember! "David! You're going to take the word of that wretched drunkard?"
He stared at her for a very, very long moment. "Aye," he said. "That I am."
He turned and left her. He exited the room, closing the door behind him. Stunned, Shawna stared after him. He'd gone to the Andersons. He'd taken the step she had meant to take herself. And now...
Oh, God! What else had Fergus said?
She ran for her door, throwing it open.
James McGregor stood there, arms crossed over his chest.
No Other Woman (No Other Series) Page 31