“With the guests gone and most everyone retired for the night, it’s difficult to find out who saw my father last,” Purity said.
“Have you seen Freen?” Arran asked of Quiver.
He blushed. “He retired to his cottage with a woman from the kitchen.”
Arran turned an inquiring eye on his wife. “Could your father have—”
“I am ignorant when it comes to my father and women,” Purity confessed.
Arran scratched at the back of his head. “He’s either with a woman or has passed out somewhere due to drink.”
Purity didn’t want to voice her own thought, but felt it necessary. “Or he’s been met with foul play.”
“It’s the dark of night, searching for him will do little good. We can walk right by him and not see him,” Arran said, knowing it didn’t help soothe her worry any, but she needed to see reason. A search now would be senseless.
“So I pray the night away that he is unharmed and morning will find him well?” she asked, uncomfortable with the thought. “What if he’s been harmed and needs help? What if morning is too late?”
Arran wanted to kill his father-in-law, searching for the man on his wedding night was not what Arran intended. But if he didn’t, he’d find no peace with his wife tonight.
“We’ll search,” Arran announced. “Quiver go get Freen. He will join in the search.
It was a grumbling Freen who joined them a short time later and with the keep having already been searched top to bottom with no sign of the chieftain, they spread out to search the village.
“You should wait inside,” Arran urged his wife.
She shook her head. “I can’t sit and wait. I must help.”
He didn’t argue with her. He knew it would be senseless. He did, however, order, “You will keep close to me.”
And she did.
It seemed they only started the search when Quiver called out, “Over here!”
His anxious tone alone warned Purity whatever he had found wasn’t good.
Arran grabbed her arm and held her from going any farther when they reached the barn and Quiver shook his head at him.
“Stay here,” Arran ordered sternly.
“No!” Purity protested. “He is my father and I will see for myself.”
“It is better you don’t,” Quiver advised when Purity stepped forward.
Her legs suddenly grew weak and for a moment she thought they wouldn’t hold her up. Thankfully her husband’s arm slipped around her waist and held her firm.
“Let me see to this, Purity,” he said gently. “Believe me when I tell you that you want the last image you see of your father to be one you want to remember, not one you will regret.”
Something told her to listen to her husband, and she nodded.
He saw her to a bench near the barn and ordered Princess to keep watch on her, then he walked around back and saw Freen standing near a body.
Freen shook his head. “His throat has been cut.”
Chapter 24
Purity hugged her cloak around her against the cold that invaded the air and settled over the land. It had been that way a week now—the day since her father died. She cast a glance to the woods, wishing she could take a wander there. She needed to clear her head and her heart. She hadn’t shed many tears for her father when he was laid to rest and she couldn’t say she missed him. She had lived the last five years without him and it had been the first time in her life she had felt at peace. It took returning home to realize just how much she had favored that peace she had found. Losing her father hadn’t been a profound loss since the man hadn’t shown an ounce of love or affection for her. What troubled and upset her the most was that she would never know why he felt no love for his only daughter. The reasons she had surmised continued to haunt as they had through the years. He wanted another son. He was ashamed of her deformity. He thought her weak. Now she would never know.
It hadn’t helped that she and Arran had spent barely any time alone together since her father’s death. He’d been claimed chieftain immediately and had easily taken on the duties that went with it. He was in constant meetings with his brother and father and the various chieftains in the area. And arrangements were being made for him to meet with Brynjar. The evil man had yet to take his leave and Purity knew what her husband would tell him—leave or else.
He had the support of the other clans, and Brynjar had few men with him. He’d be foolish to battle Arran and he didn’t strike Purity as a foolish man. Though, she wondered why he remained in the Highlands. He had to know what he came for was lost to him, so why remain? Had it been to kill her father for what Brynjar saw as betrayal to their agreement? And did he remain to seek revenge against the Clan Macara?