Much Ado About Highlanders (The Scottish Relic Trilogy) by May McGoldrick Read Free Book Online Page B

apart as his hand rested intimately against the warmth of her belly. A flush rose into her cheeks. He saw her gaze move down to his mouth, but then her eyes narrowed.
    “You come this close to me again tonight,” she told him, “and I’ll make you my wife.”
    Shaking his head, he took the dirk and walked away.

    Sir Ralph Evers followed his squire down the winding torch-lit stairwell from a tower chamber.
“Anything out of him?”
    “Nothing, sir. Can’t get him to say a word. Redcap says he thinks there ain’t much more the old codger can take.”
    Ducking under the low round arch of the doorway, Evers stepped into what was once an attractive Great Hall. Now scores of men huddled in groups or lay on the filthy, blood-soaked rushes that covered the floor. Some were bound; others were too whipped to make a difference.
    “The stench is getting worse,” Evers said, letting his gaze sweep across the room
,
searching for any remaining hint of defiance.
    “Aye, m’lord. Got dead
’
uns mixed in.”
    “Good. Keep it that way. It will remind the living ones that they’re next.”
    The man motioned to a dead body near them. “This one, soon as he saw the end a-comin’ for him, had a bushel full to pass on.”
    “Anything of interest?”
    “Aye. Swore that Cairns talks to the dead. Knows all their secrets. Says the codger talked to his dead wife. And their lad that drowned in the river. Claimed the old man told him things only his dead kin could know.”
    Evers nudged the corpse with his boot, hoping there was some life left in him. He had more to ask him. Vacant eyes stared back.
    This was the same thing he’d heard from others since Maxwell brought in the old man.
    In a murky, torch
-
lit antechamber beyond the Great Hall, Redcap had strapped Cairns over a barrel. Blood was pooling around him on the floor. In the burly torturer
’s
hand a whip dripped red.
    Seeing Sir Ralph Evers enter, Redcap Sly shook his head in disappointment before
kicking the heap of skin and bones.
    “Tell his lordship the secret behind yer trickery and ye might receive his mercy.”
    There was no answer. The old man’s breathing was labored. This room reeked worse than the Great Hall.
    Evers glanced one more time at Cairns. Like all the others, the man was a fraud.
    “Finish him,” Sir Ralph ordered.
    Redcap Sly ran a hooked blade across Cairns’s throat. Not even a scream of pain followed. Nothing.
    Cairns’s body slid to the floor. Lifeless eyes stared up at Evers.
    Evers turned to leave but stopped at the sight of a collection of items on a block of wood. Prayer beads, acorns, a hand-carved whistle, small knives.
    “Any of these belong to Cairns?” he asked.
    “The small pouch there. A paltry piece o’ stone in it. Hanging around his neck, it was.”
    Evers snatched up the pouch and walked out. He had stayed long enough in this Borders hellhole. It was time to cut loose and move north. In the Great Hall, he paused by his captain in charge. “Finish them all. We’re moving north at dawn.”
    Stopping beneath a torch ensconced on the wall, Evers pulled open the pouch. He reached in, only to jerk his fingers out.
    The stone burned him. He shook it out of the bag, and it dropped to the floor. He crouched down.
    Just a light-colored stone with markings carved on it. He picked it up. It was still hot to the touch.
    He turned as the sound of cries and pleas filled the hall. His men were moving among the
prisoners, putting an end to their miserable lives.
    A movement near him drew his eye. A man stood beside the dead Scot he’d passed before.
    It
was
the dead Scot. No chains. No shackles. Just staring at him.
    Before his unformed question could take shape, Evers had his answer. One of his soldiers walked by and stepped through the specter. No living man. A shadow. A ghost.
    Beyond him, others were sitting up, rising from their bodies, standing, staring at him.
    Evers strode back to Cairns’s corpse.
    “I know you cannot deny me