Highland Wrath

by Madeline Martin

  “Information on what? Did ye find anything?” Ian drew a hunk of bread through the gravy and bit into it. While soggy and cold, it was rich with herbs and salty on his tongue.

  “I found out they hated ye,” Kyle said. “Looks like ye finally found people ye couldna win over with yer charm, eh?”

  Ian shrugged. “Canna win all the hearts all the time. Did they know who ye were?”

  Kyle shook his head. “Nay, but they knew who ye were.” He nodded toward Ian’s sword. “Yer fine clothes gave ye away as noble.”

  Ian tried to ignore the internal grimace at the second mention in one day of how obvious he’d been. But then he hadn’t exactly known what he was doing when he joined with them. Never had it crossed his mind he ought to hide his identity. “Aside from me, what information were ye looking for? And why the devil did ye care if I was found or no’?”

  Kyle smirked. “Ye changing the subject?”

  “Aye, to something relevant.” Ian popped a juicy piece of meat in his mouth, so tender it broke apart before he even bit down.

  “I was trying to find ye because I need yer help. The marauders said they’d sent someone to kill ye before I joined up with them. Some thought ye were dead, some thought ye were alive. I figured I’d hang about a bit to see if news of ye turned up.” He swallowed the last of his bread with some more ale. “Then the men came in yelling about lasses being taken and rewards coming to them.” His lip curled in disgust. “I readied to fight to protect the lasses. I hadna expected to see ye.”

  He sighed and set aside the empty trencher. “A month wasted with no’ much to show for it.”

  Ian grinned. “Ye found me.”

  “Aye,” Kyle said dejectedly. “No’ much to show for it, like I said.” He raised his brows at Ian, and they both laughed.

  “I’m glad ye were there today, brother,” Ian said. “It would have had a different outcome without ye.”

  “I canna always let ye have all the glory, aye?” Kyle stood and slapped him on the shoulder. “Want me to go back with ye to bury the redhead?”

  It was on the tip of Ian’s tongue to say yes. It was something the old him would have readily agreed to. Someone else could do his dirty work, and he could keep them good company while they did so. But after seeing how hard Sylvi fought for everything she had, everything she did, eschewing his own promises seemed suddenly wrong.

  “Stay here in case the girls need ye.” Ian hesitated. “Ye said ye needed my help. What information were ye searching for? I’ll look through Reginald’s items to see if I can find anything.”

  “There’s something I’ve no’ told ye, Ian.” Kyle put his hand on Ian’s shoulder. He didn’t speak for a long moment, enough time for apprehension to curl around him.

  Ian’s heart pounded. “What is it?”

  “It’s Mum. She’s dead, Ian.” He made the sign of the cross.

  Were a wall not behind Ian, he might have staggered back. Their mother had been spirited and loving. To imagine such a light snuffed out, his mother dead, it was unthinkable.

  Kyle raised his gaze to Ian’s, his eyes as sapphire blue as their ma’s had been. “We need to find who killed her. Da willna look into it further, and I canna find enough to support my suspicions, but I suspect she was murdered.”

  Chapter 25

  Sylvi woke with a start. Her dagger was gripped firmly against her palm, her heart pounding.

  A scream.

  She’d been woken by a scream.

  It came again, a shriek of terror.

  Sylvi leapt from her bed and cursed the spike of pain lancing up her arm. Heedless of her half-dressed state in the long black léine and nothing more, she ran into the hall in time to be greeted with another wail, this one softer and less frightened.

  Percy’s door stood open.

  Sylvi’s heart leapt into her throat.

  Not Percy.

  She ran toward the room with her blade brandished. Nothing would happen to Percy—not if Sylvi had anything to do about it.

  A soft shushing sound came from the room, and the cries began to quiet. Sylvi stopped short at the massive figure standing beside Percy’s bed.

  “It’s all right, lass.” Kyle’s voice drifted from where he bent over Percy. “It was only a dream.”

  “What happened?” Sylvi demanded.

  He turned to her, his movement slow as if he hadn’t wanted to frighten Percy further. If he’d started abruptly like a man caught, he would be dead by now.

  “She had a bad dream,” he said. “Scared the life out of me. These walls are thin as parchment.”

  “I’m sorry,” Percy whimpered. “Sylvi, is that you? I woke you too?”

  Sylvi approached the bed where Percy lay, small and helpless, with a band of white linen bisecting her face. “I was awake anyway,” Sylvi lied.

  “You should have let him take me.” Percy drew in a shuddering breath. “You should have let them take me. I’ve endured it before, I could endure it again.” Her eyes shone bright in the moonlight.

  “Percy, what are you talking about?” Sylvi pressed her hand to Percy’s uninjured cheek. The smooth skin beneath her fingers was burning hot.

  “Rape.” Percy said the word so easily, it shocked Sylvi more than the heat blazing from Percy’s face.

  “She has a fever,” Sylvi murmured.

  When Kyle did not move, she turned to face him. He stared down at Percy with such a wounded expression on his open, honest face, Sylvi could practically feel the pain of his empathy.

  “She has a fever,” she repeated quietly. “Are you familiar with making a tonic to help with that?”

  “It should have been me,” Percy said. “Not Liv, after all she’s been through.” She sobbed softly. “Not Liv.”

  He nodded slowly and turned away with great hesitation.

  “Percy, you’re ill,” Sylvi said. “Liv is fine. She was never touched. Kyle and Ian saved her.”

  Percy slowly released a breath of air, and her body relaxed.

  What she’d said though stuck in Sylvi’s heart like a thorn. How had she never known about Percy? Had any of them?

  “I never knew, Percy.” Sylvi dipped a bit of linen into the small tub of water on the table and draped it over Percy’s head. “I’m so sorry. I never knew.”

  Percy’s eyes drifted closed against the coolness of the cloth on her hot skin. “I never told anyone.” Her hand blindly grabbed for Sylvi’s. “I want to tell you.” She licked her dry lips. “I want someone to know it wasn’t my fault. That I didn’t do it.”

  Sylvi looked over her shoulder at Kyle’s retreating form. She waited until the door clicked before speaking again.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” Sylvi said. Already the cloth in her hand was growing hot from Percy’s skin.

  “I want someone to know.” Percy pressed her lips together. “In case I don’t live.”

  Sylvi’s heart jolted. “Don’t say tha—”

  Percy caught her hand and folded it in the heat of her fever. “I’ve seen infections kill more men than blades. I’m sure Kyle would say the same.”

  “You aren’t going to die.” Sylvi pushed all the conviction she had into her words, as if she could make them so by the way she said them. For truly in her heart, she did not believe Percy would die.

  “We all have our reasons why we came to be at Kindrochit.” Percy spoke as if she had not heard Sylvi. “But I never told anyone mine. Connor saved me, but never told anyone what he knew. He’s always so trustworthy like that.”

  Sylvi nodded to herself. “Yes, he is.” They had all missed him after he left Kindrochit, he and Ariana both. Their occasional visits did not fill the void the two had left behind. A void worth enduring to see them in such happiness together.

  “I lived with my parents in a small country estate outside of London,” Percy said. “We had title, but were by no means wealthy. When I was sixteen, they got the sweating sickne
ss, and, um … ” She pursed her lips and winced slightly. “They died.”

  Sylvi squeezed her hand and released it to remove the cloth from Percy’s brow. “I’m so sorry.”

  Percy nodded in quiet appreciation. “My mother had a wealthy aunt at court who took me in.”

  Sylvi dragged the cloth through the cold water.

  “I didn’t like court.” Percy’s brow flinched. “The men were uncouth and the women cruel. They were uncommonly so because of … ” She shifted in her bed, and her gaze shifted away with discomfort. “Because of the way I looked.”

  Sylvi squeezed the water from the linen. The gentle plinking of water filled the room. She understood what Percy was saying. Hers was a beauty people wanted. Sylvi had seen the reaction most had to Percy. The men with their lust and the women with their bitter jealousy.

  “I hated it,” Percy said. “My aunt got fed up with it as well and took me from court to stay with her in her country estate. I was so relieved. Until my uncle joined her.”

  Sylvi patted the cool cloth over Percy’s face and hardened her heart for what she knew would come next in the tale.

  “He was … forceful … with me.” Percy’s words were flat now, as if she was trying to speak of something she did not want her mind to acknowledge. “Many times. And once my aunt found us, I was so glad because I thought it would finally stop.” Percy swallowed. “But she grabbed a candlestick and hit me with it. She accused me of seducing her husband, then she hit him, and he fell to the ground. Dead.”

  Sylvi turned the compress over, so the coolest side would be against Percy’s skin, and laid it over her brow, then grabbed her friend’s hand. For support and for comfort. For both of them.

  “She said I did it, and who would question her?” The good side of Percy’s lips lifted in a mirthless smirk. “I was a pauper and she was a noble. I was taken to prison, where things were even more awful than they’d been with my uncle.” She drew in a deep breath and slowly let it out. “I don’t know how Connor found me, but my gratitude for his saving me is unending.”

  “Percy,” Sylvi said softly. “I’m so sorry.”

  Her good eye looked up at Sylvi. “When I went out on my first mission, I was so desperate to prove myself. The man I’d been sent to spy on … he became amorous. Not forceful, but it brought back so many memories that I-I panicked and attacked him. I was so much more powerful after my training, and I couldn’t let myself be a victim again. I couldn’t let anyone take—” She clenched both her fists, and when she spoke again, her voice was calmer. “We fought. He almost killed me, but I ended up killing him instead. It was not a fast death or a clean one. Connor never made me do another mission. And he promised to never let anyone go alone again.”

  Sylvi remained silent for a long moment. She held tight to Percy’s hand. It all made sense now. Percy’s refusal to leave, her uncertainty around others when speaking, the way she covered herself in a hooded cloak the few times they were forced outside. If only Sylvi had known all this, she never would have asked Percy to join them. She would have kept her locked in Kindrochit for all of eternity.

  Yet never once did Percy protest what she’d been asked to do, nor issue forth a complaint.

  “I think,” Sylvi said slowly, “you are the strongest of all of us, to come out of something so awful with such sweetness and kindness.”

  “Because of the love I’ve found with all of you.” Percy’s voice cracked. “You’ve given me life. You’ve made me whole.”

  Sylvi kissed Percy’s hand with all the love she would have held for her own sisters had they survived. Love could not undo a life of hurt, but perhaps it could help heal.

  “Thank you.” Percy turned her heat toward Sylvi. “Thank you for listening to my story.”

  “Thank you for sharing, Percy,” Sylvi said. And by God did she mean every word. Even in such a dark time as this, Percy had helped in the most unthinkable way. She’d given Sylvi hope.

  •••

  Who knew gold could weigh so much?

  Ian hefted the bag to his shoulder and made his way up the stairs. To Sylvi.

  He wanted to wrap her in his arms and forget about the dead he’d seen laying where they fell, to warm the haunted chill from his soul. No matter how those men had been in life, he would never forget the horror of seeing so many dead.

  The door was open and the room they shared was empty within. Ian dropped the bags on the floor with a frown. And then he heard it, the low murmur of softly talking voices.

  He followed the sound until he was outside Percy’s room and was able to discern the speakers. Kyle and Sylvi. He opened the door and both spun around, daggers in hand.

  Ian put his hands up defensively.

  “Ye almost got yerself killed,” Kyle said.

  “I’m no’ so easy to kill.” It was difficult to jest with the weight of their mother’s death pressing down on him, and with what he’d just been through. But discussing those things would be harder still. Impossible.

  He looked between them to where Percy lay sleeping. “How is she?”

  “Her fever is just starting to break,” Sylvi said.

  Kyle nodded to the door. “Ye go. I’ll stay with her.”

  Sylvi hesitated, but Kyle put a hand on her good shoulder. “These walls are thin, lass. I tried no’ to listen, but I couldna keep from hearing.” His jaw clenched. “I’d no’ ever hurt her.”

  “I’d kill you if you did.” Sylvi issued the threat with such vehemence, its sincerity could not be questioned.

  He inclined his head respectfully. “I’d no’ expect anything less.”

  Still, Sylvi hesitated before leaving the room, her gaze fixed on Ian, silently seeking his trust. He nodded, and she cast off her reluctance and followed him with confidence.

  She would want details, of course.

  But Ian didn’t want to talk. He wanted to hold her and love her and forget the events of the night had ever happened. The cold, spongy texture of Isabel’s dead skin, the stiffness of her limbs. The memories of it all played over his fingertips as if he gripped her still. A shudder wracked through him.

  Sylvi pulled him into their room and closed the door behind her. She stared up into his face for a long moment, and her expression softened.

  “I know that was unpleasant,” she said. “Thank you for doing that for me. For Isabel. I know she betrayed us. But she was so damaged, so used, like the rest of us.” She frowned. “I’d have done it myself if it wasn’t for this damn arm.”

  He let the bag fall from his hand. It hit the ground hard, the metallic contents jingling against one another like chain mail. Only it wasn’t chain mail. It was jewelry. Necklaces and bracelets and brooches and rings, all the jewelry any goldsmith could possibly be commissioned to make.

  He caught her chin between his fingers. “I’d do anything for ye, Sylvi.” His nails were still rimmed with black from the rich dirt despite the number of times he’d scrubbed them. He quickly let his hand fall away.

  “What did you find out?” Sylvi asked. “About Kyle? Why was he with Reginald?”

  He knew it would come to this. The questions burning in her mind, and the answers he was loathe to give. “He was with them to find out where I’d gone to. Kyle found out I’d traveled with them. He was trying to find out information, but no one would say anything.”

  Her gaze flicked to the bag on the floor. “And what did you find when you went there?”

  “Those two men I’d seen the day ye killed me and gave me to Gregor. They came right as I was leaving. I only just managed to escape.”

  It’d been a narrow getaway, with him slipping from an empty window to the soft grass below. He’d been fortunate in many ways, that he’d already buried Isabel, that he’d hidden the bag in the woods already, that he was on his final look through and had been quiet enough in his escape they hadn’t heard him despite the silence of the dead. It had been so silent in fact, he’d hea
rd their conversation. “They were the king’s men, seeking out the coins. It appears they found out about them and finally tracked down Reginald and his men.”

  Sylvi straightened. “Isabel. They can’t find her body.”

  He shook his head. “I’d already buried her. And I left the coins. They’ll find what they came for.”

  “And that?” Sylvi indicated the bag.

  She carefully lowered herself one-armed to the floor beside the bag. “If you left the coins, then what is this?” She pulled open the bag and gasped at the treasure inside.

  Ian struck a flint to light the small candle on the table. It flickered to life and cast the small room in a stronger glow than the meager hearth provided. Ian sank onto the floor beside Sylvi and carefully pulled out a necklace. The craftsmanship was so fine, it appeared to be made of lace. The candlelight made the gold twinkle like the stars and caught at the large red stone encased at its center.

  “I dinna want to bring this at first,” Ian said. “But then I remembered yer da was a goldsmith. I thought mayhap his creations might be here. I thought ye’d want that.”

  Sylvi pulled in a soft breath and turned to him with a wide-eyed expression. “I never took anything of my family’s when I left. I was in too much of a hurry to get out of there.” She stared with wonder at the necklace in her hand. “Thank you.”

  She turned the necklace in her hand, and the length of chain coiled around her fingers. Her gaze searched the back of the piece for a long moment. “Bring the candle closer, please.”

  He lowered the candle to cast a stronger light on the gold.

  Sylvi set aside the fine piece. “This one is not his.”

  He picked it up. For something so small, its weight was considerable. “How do ye know?”

  “Right here.” She guided his hand to flip the piece over and pointed to where the shape of a bear’s head had been pressed into the soft gold. It was so small, it would never have been noticed had it not been pointed out.

  “Every goldsmith has his mark, something to show it as his work.” Sylvi smiled softly to herself. “My father had what looked like a circle with several dots lining it. The shape of a shield since my mother’s family had descended from a family of Viking shieldmaidens. He was always proud of that and said her bravery was exactly that of her ancestors.”