Highland Scoundrel (Campbell Trilogy #3)(94)

“Auchinbreck doesn't need a motive, only an opportunity,” Patrick said through clenched teeth.

Duncan looked at Jamie and Elizabeth, both of whom looked as uncomfortable as he felt. None of them wanted to think that Colin could be responsible.

“I was no threat to him,” Duncan said. “Colin had everything he could possibly want. If anyone should have been envious it was me. I was the first born, but he was the heir.” Duncan glanced at Jeannie, his throat suddenly hoarse as the memories flooded him. “He was the one betrothed to the woman I wanted to marry.” He turned back to the others, one corner of his mouth lifted in a wry smile. “Not that I can blame him for that. No one knew.” Catching Lizzie's frown, he corrected himself. “Except Lizzie and my father when I returned from court.”

Lizzie's frown turned to a grimace. “Colin did know.”

“After I left,” Duncan said.

Lizzie shook her head. “No, he must have known before. When Jean—Lady Gordon—had come to Castleswene looking for you, Colin was furious. He said you should have gotten over your attachment to her after his betrothal. That you'd been a fool to think you could ever marry her.”

Duncan didn't know what to make of Lizzie's pronouncement. Had his brother purposefully engineered a betrothal with Jeannie to hurt him or had he, like Duncan, simply fallen for the same woman? Colin's recent efforts to secure another betrothal seemed to suggest the latter.

Jamie seemed to have reached a similar conclusion. “Colin's actions have been reprehensible, but he's always been loyal to the clan and to our cousin. It's hard to believe he would turn traitor over jealousy. Our father died at that battle.”

“But what if he didn't know what my father intended?” Jeannie posited.

“She's right,” Lizzie said. “We've all been assuming that whoever took the map was conspiring with Grant to betray the Campbells, but what if it was simply to discredit you? What if Grant's defection to the other side was just as much a surprise to him as it was to everyone else?”

Jeannie tried to slip her hand away, but Duncan held firm. Her father's actions hadn't been a surprise to everyone—not to her at least—but he found he no longer blamed her for not telling him. He'd been too angry to realize the difficulty of the position she'd been in—choosing between him and her father. It was a choice no one should have to make. She'd done what she could, he realized. At great risk to herself.

Something about Lizzie's words rang true. “And then the gold was planted afterward to cover it up.” Aye, it was possible. And rash enough to sound like something Colin would do.

But still he wasn't convinced.

Something was missing—a piece of the puzzle that would make it all fit into place.

In any event, right now all they had was conjecture, which wasn't enough to keep him from the hangman's noose.

“Where is Colin?” Duncan asked Lizzie.

It was her husband who answered. “If he's smart not within a hundred miles of Niall Lamont.”

Lizzie shot him a look and then glanced back at Duncan. “Last I heard, he had returned to Dunoon.”

Damn.

“What is it?” Lizzie asked, seeing his expression.

“That's where I sent your letter—the letter intercepted by the person who sent troops to wait for my man in Inverness.”

Jeannie lay in bed on her side, watching the candle flicker and melt into a soft blob of gooey wax. Her ears pricked at any sound in the darkness, but the silence of the night surrounded her like a tomb. Shadows flickered across the plastered walls, cast from the bedposts and ambry—not from a man.

She'd retired hours ago. After the troubling conversation in the solar, the midday meal had been a somber affair. Duncan had disappeared with his brother afterward, and when she'd seen him again at the evening meal he'd barely spoken to her.

Had she been wrong? When he'd asked her to come to the laird's solar with his family, and made his unexpected declaration as to her innocence in taking the map, she'd thought—

She startled. Though all her senses had been honed to the door, the sound of it opening and then quickly closing shut still made her heart jump and nerve endings flare.

She sat up, instinctively tugging the bedsheets up to her neck, her breath stuck high in her throat.

All but his form was hidden in the darkness, but she didn't need light to know it was Duncan.

He'd come.

He stood dangerously still, looming in the shadows like a lion ready to pounce. Tension radiated from his powerful body, his muscles flared. He'd changed from his battle garb to the simple shirt and belted plaid of the Highlander, but if anything it only served to make him appear more overwhelming. More daunting.

“Tell me to leave, Jeannie.” The husky lilt of his voice wrapped around her in a dark sensual vise. She could hear the tightness underneath—the strain of a man held by a very taut string.

He'd come to her like this before. All those years ago. But the danger that emanated from him now was not from anger and betrayal; it was fueled by desire.

She shivered. Not from fear, but from anticipation. Her body flushed with awareness: her skin prickled, her ni**les beaded, and the tiny little hairs on her arms stood on edge. But mostly, the soft juncture between her thighs quivered. The heavy warmth of desire spread through her body. It was a woman's desire. Desire forged in the fires of heartbreak and disappointment and made stronger by experience.