Page 109 of The Laird's Masked Passion

“He looked like Laird MacKenzie,” Skye said, which was both answer and accusation against all men. “Pale, stubborn, unpleasant, and very determined tae convince the room he hadnae nearly died yesterday.”

Elspeth swallowed. “He nearly died?”

“Nay,” Skye said quickly. “That isnae what I meant.”

But the words already entered Elspeth and took root.

She reached for her shawl. “Where is he now?”

“The Council has ended.”

“And?”

Skye looked toward the door as if it betrayed her by existing. “One of the lads said he was seen near the lower passage.”

Elspeth tied the shawl with fingers that did not feel entirely steady. “Which lower passage?”

“The one toward the dungeons.”

Skye still stood before her with anxious eyes and the expression of a woman preparing to be disobeyed. The worddungeonsfell cold into the room.

Elspeth thought of the prisoner, Robert Munro’s man. He was the one who had come with others to turn a feast into slaughter, the one who had perhaps aimed at her, or at Colin, or at any innocent body that might cause enough grief to satisfy his master.

Elspeth felt fear rise. Colin wounded was alarming. Colin wounded and angry near a prisoner was something else entirely.

“I am going tae him,” she said.

Skye stepped in front of her. “Ye are going naewhere without shoes.”

It was so absurd, so practical, and so Skye that Elspeth sat long enough to let her maid thrust slippers onto her feet and tighten the wrap more securely around her shoulders.

“If Fionn asks,” Elspeth said, moving toward the door, “I am resting.”

Skye followed at once. “If Fionn asks, I am blaming ye.”

“Wise. It has served many people well.”

The corridors beyond the chamber were quieter than they should have been. The castle had the hushed feeling of a body after fever: alive, but listening anxiously to itself. Servants moved with lowered voices. Guards stood at turns where none had stood the day before. Men bowed when they saw her, some with respect, some with curiosity, and some with a gentleness that made Elspeth’s throat ache.

She walked faster. Her ribs protested every step. She ignored them. The lower passage grew colder as she descended, the air losing hearth smoke and taking on damp stone, iron, and the faint sourness of enclosed places. Torches burned along the walls, their light shivering over old mortar.

A guard at the stair straightened when he saw her.

“Me lady?—”

“Is the laird below?”

His hesitation answered before his mouth did.

Elspeth lifted her chin. “I asked a simple question.”

“Aye, me lady.”

“With the prisoner?”

Another hesitation. “Aye.”

Elspeth looked down the stairway where darkness waited below, carrying the low murmur of male voices and, beneath it, something colder than speech. She thought of Colin’s face when he had seen the blood at her side. She thought of the arrow in his shoulder. She thought of the way guilt suited him too well, like armor he had worn so long he mistook it for skin.