by Marie Laval
McNeil shrugged but didn’t answer.
‘Talking about Inverness, I have a few questions for you,’ Bruce carried on, trying to focus his thoughts. ‘First of all, who was that other girl I’m supposed to have manhandled?’
‘The McKay girl.’
‘Fenella? And how did she end up in a brothel in Inverness?’
McNeil stared stubbornly at his boots.
‘Then tell me how I got both women back to Wrath,’ Bruce asked.
This time McNeil cast a nervous glance at McRae before answering in a hesitant voice. ‘You ordered me to hire a carriage, a driver and a henchman to take them back to Wrath ahead of us. Malika and Fenella were in a bad way by then. I took them to the usual place.’
‘The usual place?’ Bruce’s throat tightened again. Dear Lord. So there had been other women?
‘A cave near the beach. That’s where you killed them. You were violent, demented …’
Bruce rubbed his forehead with a weary hand. ‘Where are the driver and his associate now?’
‘They went back to Inverness. I don’t remember their names.’ McNeil crossed his arms on his chest, a stubborn look on his thick set face. ‘That’s what I’ll tell the constables and the judges. You killed that Arab dancer and the McKay girl in a fit of rage.’
Bruce felt a great emptiness inside him. Was that the truth? Had the datura affected him so badly that he actually raped, tortured and killed two young women and didn’t even remember any of it?
Worst of all was the knowledge that Rose must hate him right now. He couldn’t blame her. Whatever he’d hoped in his wildest dreams would never happen. She would never be his.
It came as a shock to hear Rose’s calm voice pierce through the haze of doubt and pain torturing him.
‘This is a pack of lies,’ Rose said to McNeil. ‘But even considering for one minute that it is the truth …’ She paused, closed her eyes and took a deep breath. ‘The judge will ask why you did nothing to prevent the women from being killed, why you didn’t speak out to denounce Lord McGunn to the authorities, and you will be sent to jail, too.’
‘I’ll run away.’ McNeil turned an anxious face towards McRae. ‘You promised to pay my passage to Canada, my lord, if I testified.’
McRae shook his head and snarled. ‘Shut up, you big fool.’ He walked across the room and poured another whisky. His hand shook so much he spilled most of it onto the front of his jacket but he didn’t seem to notice.
‘Actually, McGunn,’ he started, ‘there is still a way out of this unsavoury mess. Give me that letter we talked about and we’ll forget all about Inverness.’
Bruce shook his head. The time had come to tell the truth. ‘I don’t have it. And I don’t have the faintest idea where it is.’
‘You lied?’ McRae snarled, hatred shining in his eyes.
‘I have the letter,’ Rose said in a calm voice, then.
‘What?’ Both Bruce and McRae exclaimed in unison.
Bruce stared at her, once again marvelling at how brave she was. She didn’t know where the letter was – how could she? – yet she sounded so convincing, he almost believed her.
‘Looks like our little lady has a few more surprises in store for us,’ Morven chuckled. ‘Where is it, lass?’
Rose stood up, defiant. ‘I won’t tell you anything until you give my father’s journal back.’
‘I’m afraid it’s a bit late for that,’ McRae said, pointing to the flames in the fireplace.
With a cry of despair she rushed to the fireplace, knelt down and stared into the pile of ashes on the grate.
‘Oh no … you destroyed it? I hate you!’ she said, springing to her feet.
McRae shrugged. ‘Please yourself.’
‘That’s all you ever wanted from me, wasn’t it? First you offered to buy it from me, then tried to destroy it in Algiers, and after that you arranged for the burglaries in my hotel room.’
Annoyance and surprise flashed in McRae’s eyes but he raised his glass in a mock salute. ‘Well done, Rose, you’re not half as stupid as I thought. And when that didn’t work either, I courted you and you fell for it. I paid three drunks I met in a dockside tavern to act as vicar and witnesses for our wedding. The idea was to get the diary from you after enjoying my wedding night and sail away in the morning. Unfortunately, and unbeknown to me, you’d taken the blasted thing to the bank and spoiled everything.’
‘What if I had come after you to Scotland, or complained to the authorities in Algiers that you’d conned me, raped me and stolen from me?’
He shrugged. ‘You wouldn’t have dared. I would have left a note explaining we were never married. You were alone in Algiers since that hopeless old manservant of yours had left and your mother and brother were hundreds of miles away. You would have been far too ashamed to make a formal complaint against me. No, the way I saw it, there was nothing you could have done.’
The bastard had everything planned, Bruce thought.
‘Yet something went wrong,’ Rose remarked. ‘You hurt that dancing girl in Algiers, didn’t you? Malika saw you, that’s why you had to leave without waiting for the bank to open. You ordered me to wait for the Sea Eagle, and told me to keep our so-called marriage a secret. You were going to take the diary from me as soon as I arrived, then send me back or dispose of me before I could make a fuss and alert your precious fiancée … Morven knew about me, that’s why he had the post guard and the driver lock me up in that abandoned cottage in Sith Coille.’
‘That’s right, my dear … anyway, enough talking. You said you knew where the letter was. I want it now.’
Rose shook her head. ‘First, you must give me your word that you’ll let Bruce go unharmed.’
‘This is getting bloody ridiculous,’ Morven interjected. ‘Let me handle the girl, sir. She’ll soon tell me what we want to know so we can finish this.’
‘All in good time, Morven,’ McRae replied. ‘Darling Rose, I fear you have the whole thing the wrong way round. You see, I’m the one holding all the cards here. McGunn’s life is hanging by a thread – or rather by a golden hair of your pretty head. There are two things you can do to save his skin. One is to give me the letter my useless father wrote to his slut of a mother. The other, we’ll deal with later, and this time I swear you’ll enjoy it as much as I do …’
His gaze roved over her, hot and hungry, and he licked his lips. ‘If you don’t want Morven to shoot your precious McGunn, you’ll get the letter for me now.’ McRae gestured to McNeil. ‘You go with her, and hurry. My patience is running thin.’
McNeil nodded, grabbed hold of Rose’s arm and yanked her to him. Once again Bruce groaned with frustration. What was she going to do now? There was no way she knew where the letter was. She was bluffing, and all because of her misguided belief that she loved him.
Even now, after all she had heard about him killing Malika and Fenella, she was prepared to play a lethal game to save him from McRae, the man who sought to destroy him. His brother.
Chapter Thirty-one
‘Faster, lass.’ McNeil pushed her up the stairs so hard she tripped on the landing.
‘Which way now?’ he asked, pulling her to her feet. ‘And don’t try anything stupid.’
She gestured towards her old room – Bonnie’s room.
He frowned. ‘Are you sure? It’s where Lady Patricia is resting.’
The door creaked softly as he pushed it open. The curtains were drawn and a blazing fire made the room hot and stuffy. Dr Kilroy sat on the bed, watching over a woman who was asleep.
So this was harsh, merciless Lady Patricia locals had nicknamed ‘the female Black Donald’. She didn’t look so formidable now with her grey hair stuck to her pale forehead, her eyes sunken in deep orbits and her hollow cheeks.
‘Rose?’ Doctor Kilroy let Lady Patricia’s arm down gently onto the counterpane. He stood up, strode towards her and took her hand. ‘My dear, I had no idea you were here. Do you know what’s going on? I couldn’t get
any sense out of McGunn earlier, and even less out of McRae and his men.’ Turning towards McNeil, he added, ‘I see you chose your camp, you traitor.’
‘This has nothing to do with you, doctor, so shut up,’ McNeil retorted in a harsh whisper. Gesturing to Rose, he urged, ‘Get on with it.’
Rose’s throat was tight as she stepped towards the fireplace and her fingers shook as she reached out to touch the clock. Was Niall McRae’s letter still in there? Had it ever been there? Perhaps Morag was mistaken or deluded, or she’d made the whole story up.
She lifted the clock off the mantelpiece and shook it slightly. There was the rattling sound again, just like the first time she touched it. ‘I need something sharp to open the panel at the back,’ she said.
Doctor Kilroy looked puzzled, but pulled a scalpel out of his medical bag. ‘It’s very sharp,’ he said, taking the clock from her hands. ‘I’d better handle it.’
He unfastened the tiny screws at the back of the clock then delicately lifted the panel off. ‘Here you are.’
‘Give it to me.’ McNeil snatched the clock. Shoving his fingers into the opening he pulled out pieces of yellowed paper and a medallion hanging at the end of a leather thong. Niall’s half of the medal.
‘You were right, lass,’ he said in a surprised voice. ‘It’s here, it’s all here.’
Just then, the clock made a clinking sound, so loud in the silent bedroom that McNeil recoiled in shock. The clock and the papers fell to the ground.
Rose quickly bent down and clutched the letter and the medallion against her chest.
‘Give them back,’ McNeil snarled. ‘Give them right back or I’ll …’
‘If you value your life, you won’t do anything at all,’ Doctor Kilroy said, slipping behind the man and holding the scalpel to his throat. The sharp point dug into his skin.
‘You’re making a mistake, doctor,’ McNeil grunted, standing still but with a murderous glint in his dark brown eyes. ‘You won’t get away with it. Neither of you will.’
‘We’ll take our chances,’ Doctor Kilroy answered calmly. ‘Rose, please bring me the roll of bandage in my bag so that I can secure our friend to that chair.’
A few moments later, McNeil’s hands and feet were tightly bound to a chair and his mouth taped shut. Doctor Kilroy unscrewed the top of a small flask and poured some liquid onto a pad which he pressed hard against McNeil’s nose. Almost immediately, the man slumped into the chair, unconscious.
‘We can’t risk him calling for help, though all of Morven's men seem to have left,’ the doctor explained. ‘I heard rifle shots, a lot of shouting and sounds of men riding out, then it all went very quiet.’
‘Bruce’s friends must have lured them away.’ Rose unfolded the documents. Her heart tightened as she recognised her father’s handwriting. The ink was so pale it was hard to read the tightly written words and she stepped closer to the fire to have more light.
It was all there, in that short but poignant letter: Niall McRae’s burning declaration of love for Bonnie and their baby son, together with the assurance that he had sent his last will and testament to Langford and Stewart in Inverness and warned Lady Patricia about his decision to give half of the McRae fortune to his illegitimate son Bruce.
“Alas, our plans to forge a better life in Canada for the three of us will not become reality, but at least tonight I die knowing that Bruce and yourself will never want for anything. I am only sorry that I wasn’t a stronger man to oppose our fathers when they forced our separation and my marriage to Patricia. My love for you will never, ever die.”
No wonder Lady Patricia had blackmailed Morag into killing Bonnie and her baby, and ordered Capitaine Pichet’s murder. For years she must have believed herself safe in the knowledge that nobody would ever find out about Bruce having rights to part of the McRae fortune. Even her lawyers had chosen to side with her and keep her secret. Then Rose’s mother had written to her about the military diary …
There was a post scriptum, and Rose opened her eyes wide in shock as she read it.
“Should either Patricia or the lawyers fail to implement the new legal dispositions, I urge you not to remain your father’s prisoner at Wrath but to collect the gold from our hideaway on the island and sail with our son to this New World we dreamt so much about – the only place where we could be free.”
This was extraordinary … Niall McRae and Bonnie had found the gold the Jacobite rebels had hidden when the English redcoats had caught up with them. Could the island Niall referred to be the one near old Eilidh Graham’s farm, where he and Bonnie courted in secret?
Doctor Kilroy pointed to the papers. ‘What are these?’
‘Niall McRae’s last letter, written for him by my father after the battle of Quatre-Bras, and the proof that Bruce is Niall McRae’s first-born son.’
He let out a cry of surprise. ‘Did you just say that McGunn was in fact a McRae?’
Rose nodded.
‘This is extraordinary. And that medal you’re holding looks uncannily like his own.’
‘It was Niall McRae’s. The man cut his medal into two and gave one half to Bonnie. Just before he died, he asked my father to send his half back to Bonnie, and there it is.’
She let out a sigh. ‘Now I have the letter, I’m not sure what to do with it. Cameron is downstairs with Bruce and Morven. They are saying that Bruce killed …’ she swallowed hard, ‘… that he murdered Malika and Fenella McKay in a fit of rage.’
‘Nonsense! McGunn would never hurt a woman.’
‘The thing is, McNeil has been poisoning him with datura for months. That’s why he’s been so ill and why he believed he was going mad … and that’s why he thinks he could have hurt Malika and the McKay girl.’
She heaved a shaky breath. ‘He said he would stand trial.’
Doctor Kilroy combed his blond hair back with his fingers, his blue eyes darkened. ‘Damn. This is serious.’
Lady Patricia let out a few wheezy, whimpering sounds from the other side of the room, and Doctor Kilroy sighed.
‘Lord McRae’s mother is very ill, and I fear I can’t be of much help.’
‘What is wrong with her?’
‘Her heart has given up. Ironic, don’t you think, for a woman who is rumoured not to have one? It was pure folly of her to come all this way from Westmore, of course. I wonder why she insisted on coming here.’
‘She probably wanted to make sure Bruce was destroyed once and for all,’ Rose answered. ‘She isn’t likely to be overcome by remorse, is she?’
‘You never know, I’ve seen harder, meaner people repent on their deathbed.’
Thoughtful, Rose pushed the letter back into the envelope and stuffed it into the pocket of her dress but she kept the medallion. Doctor Kilroy had just given her an idea – a rather daring idea – but it was better not to keep all the proofs of Bruce’s lineage together. Pulling her Ouled Nail necklace out, she attached the thong securely to one of the clasps before slipping the necklace back under her dress. She now had both halves of Niall’s medal.
‘I’m going to try and split Cameron from Morven and lure him up here,’ she said. ‘Can you take care of him the way you took care of McNeil if he comes into this room alone?’
The doctor glanced towards McNeil, tied up and gagged, and held up the roll of bandage and the pad soaked with sleeping liquid. ‘I can certainly try,’ he smiled and added, ‘Be careful, my dear.’
Rose gave him a valiant smile and rushed back downstairs. She’d never been so afraid in her life. Her heart beat so fast she thought she might faint and she had to lean against the wall to take a few deep breaths before walking into the drawing room.
As soon as he saw her, Bruce leaned forward as if trying to get up but Morven pulled him back sharply. ‘I told you before, don’t even think about it,’ he snarled.
‘You took your time.’ Cameron’s eyes were red-rimmed, the nervous twitch at the side of his thin lips more pronounced. He must have been drinking he
avily whilst waiting for her to return.
‘Where’s McNeil, and more to the point, where’s the letter?’
Now was her chance. She could only hope he believed her. ‘McNeil stayed with Doctor Kilroy,’ she replied with as much assurance as she could muster. ‘I gave the letter to your mother. She said her dying wish was to make things right between you and Bruce, that it was high time you two behaved like brothers. That’s why she insisted on coming here despite being so ill.’
Cameron’s face paled. ‘I don’t believe you.’
Rose nodded. ‘Yet it is true. Your mother deeply regrets having wronged Bruce and now she wants him to have a share of the McRae fortune.’
‘You’re lying. My mother would never give McGunn a farthing.’
‘Why don’t you ask her yourself? You should be with her anyway. The doctor says she is very poorly.’
Cameron took a deep breath and walked to the door. ‘Morven, keep an eye on them both while I talk to my mother and get hold of that damned letter once and for all.’
As soon as he’d left, Morven waved his pistol at Rose. ‘Stand over there where I can see you.’
She crossed her arms on her chest, defiant. ‘No.’ ‘Don’t be stupid and do as I say.’
She tilted her chin higher. ‘Why don’t you make me?’
He shrugged. ‘Very well. You asked for it.’
Morven walked across the room, turning his back on Bruce for a second. Bruce rose to his feet and lunged at him. He grabbed Morven around the shoulders but was too weak and Morven slid out of his grip. He raised his knee into Bruce’s groin and slammed the butt of his pistol into his face. Bruce staggered back and crashed into the wall next to the claymore.
Morven wiped his mouth on the cuff of his jacket.
‘Look at you,’ he said. ‘As helpless as a baby. Forget dragging you to the courts and getting you hanged for murder, I’ll finish you here and now, and never mind what my Lord McRae wants.’ He cocked the pistol back, extending his arm to aim at Bruce’s chest.