Wild Highland Magic (The Celtic Legends Series Book 3)(34)

“Your mind is quick to pick up idle sailor’s talk with you five days in the hold.”

She frowned and focused on odd facts, personal ones. “Angus is longing for more pepper on his meat. He has determined that if some comes in on one of his boats, he will keep most for himself, no matter the cost.”

Lachlan made a point of glancing at a tray on the table by the bed—his dinner, she supposed, for she had not yet eaten. On it was the remnants of a stew, speckled with dark flecks that looked suspiciously like pepper.

“He had a wife, a beloved wife,” she continued. “Everyone called her Aunt Eva but she was Eveline to him. She died from childbed fever after giving birth to his sixth child, a son. He mourns her every St. Stephen’s Day by lighting candles in St. Columb’s Cathedral.”

Lachlan went still.

“Right now,” she persisted, sliding toward him, “Angus is lingering in the great hall below with two of his clerics. One of them is from Donegal. He took his orders in Armagh, he’s an Augustinian. He wears a hair shirt beneath his cloak and flogs himself during Lent to purge himself of a sin he’s never committed but is tempted by frequently. He also has a small dog he feeds from the table. His abbot doesn’t approve, but he named the dog after an old Irish deity, Dagdá—”

“A priest’s dog with a pagan name? Come, lass—”

“—Angus loved your father like a brother,” she said, despite the rising glower on Lachlan’s face. “In their youth, they went to war together against the Campbells. Angus would never betray him, nor you, not for all the pepper in the world. I tell you true: Angus O’Donnell is not your enemy.”

“Enough.”

Lachlan shot up from the chair so fast it clattered backwards. Then he turned on a heel and walked out of the room.





CHAPTER FOURTEEN


Impossible.

Lachlan gripped the railing of the second-floor balcony and stared down at the great hall below. He saw the clerics Cairenn had mentioned standing up from the trestle table. He heard the rustle of their clothes, the scrape of their feet, and the last-minute orders from Angus as they headed out of the hall. He told himself that noises carried easily in this house. Much of the nonsense she’d just said she could have guessed from things she’d overheard.

The rest she must have made up—like Angus’s pet name for his wife and the damn pagan dog.

Pushing away from the railing, Lachlan made his way down the stairs and laid eyes on his shaggy-headed kinsman. How had she guessed Angus’s loyalties? Lachlan had learned the truth yesterday when he roughhoused his way into Angus’s mead-hall, carrying a woman in his arms. His burly, big-bellied kinsmen had looked at him with the elation of a father glimpsing his prodigal son.

Now Angus bellowed from the head of the table, “There you are, cousin. How fares our madwoman?”

“Delirious.” He planted himself at the end of a bench and reached for the pitcher of ale. “Nothing a hearty meal and another night’s sleep won’t cure.”

He poured himself some of the brew while Angus barked for one of the servants to bring a tray to their guest upstairs. Lachlan took a long gulp of ale and remembered how, at Inishmaan, her curious green eyes used to bore into him as if she were trying to penetrate his skull.

A clatter of wood upon stone brought him back to the moment.

“My son,” Angus said, tilting his head toward a small boy of about five playing by the hearth. “He likes to destroy castles, mostly Campbell ones.”

Lachlan stilled with the tankard halfway to his lips. Somehow she’d known that Angus and his father had fought against the Campbells all those years ago.

He shook off the thought as the tow-headed boy kept trotting his wooden horse around the rubble. “Your youngest?”

“Indeed. Does he not look more like Eveline every day?”

Aunt Eva, for whom every St. Stephen’s Day Angus lit candles in St. Columb’s Cathedral.

Lachlan took a gulp of ale. There was an explanation for all of this. Magic didn’t exist, not without the touch of the devil.

“Tell me,” Lachlan said, turning his mind to other things, “have you heard any more news about my father’s murder, or what is happening in my clan?”

“I sent two men to make queries in the alehouses, but there are few Scots in Derry at the moment.” Angus raised bushy brows as he poured himself more wine from a dusty bottle sitting beside the pitcher of ale. “You should prepare yourself for the worst. It has been weeks since your father’s death. I suspect they’ve called council by now to determine the new chieftain.”

“Maybe not.” It had taken three tense months before they’d elected his father. “Even if a council was called, it will be a false council, and my arrival will prove it so.”

“Your father’s decision to change the tradition was never well-received. Many who had nothing to do with your father’s death may still welcome the change—”

“Which means that whoever claims the rod at council must be the man who ordered the assassins.”

Angus shook his great, shaggy head.

“Why else,” Lachlan asked, “would someone murder the head of a clan and his heir, if not to grasp the rod for himself?”

“The men of your clan are not stupid. At council, they, too, will suspect anyone who claims the chieftaincy.”