Highland Scoundrel (Campbell Trilogy #3)(77)
If she were mine. Jeannie's heart stopped for a long beat and then throbbed painfully. He would be a wonderful father.
The pain sharpened and she had to turn away. After all he'd done for her, she wanted to trust him. But could she? Should she? Did he trust her?
Too much was weighing on her decision. This was not something she could decide on the spur of the moment—on a feeling. For once, she would take the time to think about it.
Taking a deep breath, hoping to hide the sudden flood of turmoil, she lifted her eyes to his again. “The man recognized you.”
“Aye.” He seemed disappointed by the turn of conversation. “I fought with him at Glenlivet.”
“Will he say anything?”
“Before I would have said nay, but now …” He shrugged.
Because of the death of the Mackintosh chief's son questions would be raised. “What will you do?” she asked.
His eyes met hers. “What I set out to do. Find the truth.”
He watched her expectantly, as if waiting for her to say something. To tell him she would help. But she couldn't. Not yet. “You will leave?”
“Aye, soon.”
Her heart tugged. “Where will you go?”
He gave her a solemn look. “I don't know.”
Duncan paused outside the door, listening for any sound that might indicate that all the occupants of the keep weren't tucked safely away in their beds. But the soft crackle of the dying fire was the only sound to disturb the empty black void of night.
Still he hesitated. He hated that it was necessary to do this, hated the need for subterfuge. Sneaking about in the middle of the night was not his way. But he'd waited as long as he could. He could delay no longer.
What had he been waiting for?
Jeannie. Part of him had hoped that she would change her mind about helping him.
He bit back the wave of disappointment. Maybe he was a fool, but after Ella's wee hunting adventure and Jeannie's near disastrous attempt to find her, he'd allowed himself to think that she'd softened toward him. That maybe, just maybe, she would confide in him what she knew.
That he wouldn't need to sneak into the laird's solar to look through her dead husband's papers because she would show him herself.
He'd thought she'd been about to offer her help, but something had stopped her. Loyalty to her family? To her husband? Or something else?
He didn't know, but he'd waited as long as he dared. Every day he lingered put him in greater danger of discovery.
And with what had happened this morning, Duncan knew his time was running out. The proverbial dogs had been unleashed and the hunt was on.
He'd sent Conall to Inverness to check for a response to the message he'd sent Lizzie at Dunoon Castle earlier this week, asking for her help and instructing her to leave word for him at an inn. Fortunately, his men were well trained and Conall had smelled the trap. From an alehouse across the way, he'd spotted soldiers beneath the battered plaids meant as a disguise.
Duncan frowned. Someone must have intercepted his note; his sister would never betray him. But who? Colin was the captain of Dunoon Castle. Had his brother sent soldiers after him? After Colin's help in seeing him safely away ten years ago, Duncan didn't want to think it possible. But in the notes he'd received from Lizzie over the years, he'd sensed her growing distance from Colin. It was Jamie she admired, Jamie she trusted, Jamie she begged him to talk to. Though Argyll was usually at Inveraray this time of year, he supposed there was always the possibility it had been his cousin.
Whoever it was, what mattered was that his return was no longer a secret. He was now the hunted. Wherever he went, he would need to be very careful. In the alehouse Conall also had heard that rumors of the Black Highlander's return were spreading across the countryside. Once word reached Aboyne, it wouldn't take the Marchioness long to figure out his identity. Though the way she watched him, he wondered if she already had. He couldn't risk staying around to find out.
They would leave tomorrow.
Originally, he'd planned to go to Freuchie Castle, but now it would be too dangerous. With rumors spreading of his return, he knew the Grant's stronghold would be one of the first places they looked. They would guess Duncan was looking for a way to clear his name. Only Lizzie knew of his connection to Jeannie, but with the Marchioness he couldn't risk staying any longer.
Over the years Lizzie had begged him to go to Jamie and it looked like he had no other choice. But he sure as hell wished he had something more to give his younger brother than his word.
He'd searched the laird's solar the night before he'd fallen ill and found nothing. But the very fact that he'd come across no personal correspondence at all had bothered him. When Jeannie had brought him in here the other day, his eye had caught on an oddity in the wood paneling of the walls near the fireplace—a gap in the carving, almost undetectable. The back of his neck had prickled, wondering if the rumors of a secret chamber were true. Before becoming part of the Gordons’ holdings, Aboyne Castle had once been in the possession of the Knights Templar and rumors of a secret “monk's room” had circulated for years.
Carefully, he opened the door and slid into the solar. With no windows the inner-chamber was pitch-black except for the soft orange glowing embers of the fire. It took him a moment to find a candlestick, but with a few puffs of air he managed to light it.