Iain Douglas was looking directly into his eyes.
Dubhán tasted the blood filling his mouth, but it wasn’t unpleasant to him, and so he relished it for a moment longer.
Yes, now at last he would be free.
* * * *
Tavish rushed ahead to open the door to Iain’s chamber. But it was bolted from the inside. He threw his shoulder against it twice until the door burst inward and Glenna ran past him.
The floor was covered in blood, and Dubhán was sprawled atop Iain. Glenna screamed and ripped the monk away without a glance for him, and Dubhán tumbled to the floor easily, his eyes wide, the hilt of a blade like a mast in the evil hulk of him.
“Da!” Glenna sobbed, her hands going to Iain’s face. “Da.” She turned her head to look at Tavish, and the pain in her face pierced him. “Dubhán killed him. All these years, he never would see him, and now I know why, and he killed him.”
Tavish went to his wife’s side and turned her into his embrace while she wept, but he looked at Iain Douglas’s face and knew the truth right away.
“No, Glenna,” he soothed. “Dubhán didn’t kill your father—your father killed Dubhán. Look at his face, princess. Look at his beautiful face.”
Glenna raised her head, and they both looked at Iain Douglas’s upturned face, his eyes dull but centered. His lips upturned evenly at the ends and pressed together as if about to say Meg.
Tavish leaned toward Glenna’s ear as she placed her palm along Iain’s still cheek; he whispered fiercely. “He will be remembered as the greatest laird Roscraig has ever known.”
Glenna’s breath hitched, and she nodded. “He cannot be buried on the hill.”
“No,” Tavish said, pulling her closer. “No. We will make a new place. And they will be together.”
Glenna nodded again, her chest heaved on a hiccoughing sob, and then Tavish held his wife tightly as her keening sorrow welled up and filled the room. Through the window, the clouds over the Forth began to part.
Epilogue
They burned Dubhán’s cottage to the ground, making it his crematorium. The king’s own priest presided, insisting on driving out the evil spirits before sealing it with a funereal ceremony.
Iain and Meg Douglas were laid to rest together in a section of land carpeted with summer flowers, just beyond the village. Bagpipes’ full, haunting strains filled the warm air, glowing with sunshine as if the whole world were made of nothing but light.
They found Tavish’s coin buried in what was supposed to have been Frang Roy’s shallow grave on the cliff, and he grudgingly sent a good portion of it south, in care of Alec and the king’s sergeant at arms, to what Tavish once considered faraway Northumberland. Now, he thought there was no place far enough on the earth he would feel was a safe distance between Glenna and Vaughn Hargrave and the dark mysteries that still lay buried at Darlyrede.
They walked back to the Tower together, hand in hand, after the funeral. They were tired, in both body and heart. Mam left them in the entry corridor, bustling toward the kitchens as Anne approached with her old double apron. Tavish reached out a hand to stop to her, but Glenna took hold of his arm.
“Let her go, Tavish,” she said. “You have given her the freedom to do anything she chooses. Let her be who she is.”
He leaned down and kissed Glenna’s lips gently. “How does a princess become so wise?”
“I was taught by a prince,” she said lightly.
They continued up the stairs of the east tower toward their chamber, streams of bustling servants flowing around them as they passed the entry to the hall.
Glenna glanced to her right at the business afoot preparing the hall for the evening meal—the aproned servants spreading the cloths, the younger girls sweeping the floor. A man in rough clothes and a cap stood before the hearth, likely laying the wood for the fire. Glenna looked up at Tavish and smiled as they climbed on. She was eager to be alone with him, warm and safe and bare in their private room, where the ugliness of the past could never reach them again.
Where she could at least pray that it would never reach them again.
* * * *
The old man before the hearth turned his head slightly, a feeling of warmth drawing his attention to the corridor. But it passed, and he looked up once more at the portrait hanging on the stones, his eyes filling with tears at the years that spanned such a short distance between his old fishing boots and the boy in the feathered cap.
The blade lent to Iain Douglas was returned to the sheath on his belt, and so now he reached up to lay the double-barred brooch on the mantelpiece—carefully, reverently—his mouth pressed into a hard line.
The first part was over. And yet his journey had only just begun.
Tommy turned away from the portrait and left the hall.
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