“Did you see that?” a man’s voice, one he didn’t recognize, yelled loudly.
“A brute, he is,” a woman murmured. “Lady Megan is lucky that she escaped becoming his bride.”
“Thank God Baron Ewan is alive.”
If you only knew, Holt thought, but he held his tongue. ’Twould look suspicious if he alone knew that Ewan had already left this world and joined his dead wife and children. That thought warmed him. Soon enough, come the morning, no one would any longer question his authority and refer to Ewan as the rightful baron of Dwyrain. ’Twas his now.
“Sir Holt!” Mallory yelled as he ran, ashen-faced, down the keep steps. “ ’Tis the baron.”
“Did he call for me?”
“Nay,” Mallory replied as he crossed the mashed grass of the inner bailey. “ ’Tis Lord Ewan. I’m afraid … ’tis dead he is.”
“No!”
Gasps and wails met the soldier’s announcement.
“ ’Tis true …” Mallory searched the crowd. “Father Timothy, please—”
“Did not the magician say—?” a woman asked.
“Shh!” her husband commanded.
“Say no more.” Timothy held the skirt of his robes high and marched soberly to the keep.
“The baron? Are you sure?” Holt asked. He started toward the keep.
Mallory placed a hand on Holt’s arm, restraining him. “There’s more,” he admitted, staring at the ground and tugging on the end of his moustache. “ ’Tis Lady Cayley.”
“Yes, yes, what about her?” Holt shoved the man’s hand off him and strode toward the great hall.
“She’s missing, m’lord.”
Holt whirled so swiftly he nearly fell over. “Missing?”
“Aye.” Mallory paled and his Adam’s apple wiggled nervously. “She escaped down a rope from her window.”
“For the love of God,” Holt growled, looking at the gate where the two horsemen had escaped. The tall blond outlaw and Cayley? Ewan’s weak, whimpering, and flirtatious second daughter? His blood boiled. Not only had his own wife eluded him, but her simpering younger sister as well. Every muscle in his body grew taut as a bowstring and his eyes narrowed on his pathetic troop of soldiers. “Can’t we hold anyone in this keep? Now, if you don’t want to be flogged, beaten, or hanged, I suggest you take off after the prisoner and return him dead or alive. I care not which.” Though a few troops had left, too many stood idle. “Go!”
“And … and the lady?”
His jaw clenched so tight it ached. Both Cayley and the prisoner were worth more to him alive than dead, but he cared not. “Kill her if she won’t return peacefully.”
“But she’s the baron’s daughter!” the cook proclaimed, unable to hold his tongue.
“Nay,” Holt snarled to the pathetic people clustered around him. “If what Sir Mallory says is true and Ewan has given up his life, then I’m baron of Dwyrain!”
Megan stirred and reached for Wolf, but her hand found only an empty place on cold linen sheets. Opening her eyes, she blinked in the darkness and wondered where he was, what he would be thinking. Her dream of holding him close, of feeling his warm body and demanding lips, had been so real, so vivid, and she’d thought for just an instant that he was here with her.
“So ye’re awake.” The voice, that of the old crone, startled her and she scooted upward in the bed, holding a blanket over her chest.
“Aye,” she said as the woman lit a candle from the dying embers of the fire.
“I know ye be worried about yer man, the outlaw Wolf.”
“How would you know … ?”
“I see things, lass. ’Tis my curse.” Rubbing the huge knots that were the joints of her fingers, the gnarled woman lowered herself onto the foot of the bed and gazed out the chamber’s single window to the star-studded sky. “Something’s amiss tonight,” she said, as if to herself. “The gods are not happy.”