Chapter 27

When Domnhall opened his eyes, he found himself in a small, dark room. There was nothing there but the four bare walls and the chair on which he was tied, the rope making its presence known when he tried to shift to lessen the ache in his muscles. Whoever had tied the knots had made sure they were uncomfortably tight, the rope biting into his skin and leaving it raw and chafed.

He had no doubt it had been done on purpose.

As he looked around the room in the dim light of two torches, he saw Ferguson’s familiar face, accompanied by a few men he didn’t recognize. Domnhall chuckled humorlessly, shaking his head.

How did he get tae me?

Could it be that Ferguson had a man on the inside? Perhaps one of the men Laird Robertson had sent him was one of his allies, or perhaps there was a spy in his castle, just as he had been suspecting. Either way, it meant that maybe he wasn’t the only one in danger. Maybe Billie and Hugo and everyone else he cared about were in danger, too, and there was nothing Domnhall could do about it now.

“He’s awake,” one of the men said, and that caught Ferguson’s attention. He walked over to Domnhall slowly, but the room was so small that he reached him with only a few steps.

“That he is,” Ferguson said. “Good. I want him tae be awake when I kill him.”

Domnhall couldn’t help but roll his eyes at the man, even though it hurt him to do so. His head throbbed with every movement of his eyes and it felt too heavy on his shoulders, but he refused to break eye contact.

“If yer plan is tae kill me, then kill me,” Domnhall said. “I’ve had enough o’ ye.”

“Och, I will,” Ferguson promised him. “But first, I shall wait fer yer bride tae come so she can watch ye suffer.”

It was no surprise to Domnhall that Ferguson wanted to get Billie involved in this, though he didn’t know how he would manage that. Surely, with his disappearance, everyone would be on high alert and they wouldn’t let Billie out of their sights. Ferguson couldn’t pull the same trick twice.

There is somethin’ I’m missin’.

And yet Domnhall couldn’t focus on that. If he had any chance of making it out of there alive, he had to find every weakness Ferguson possibly had. He had to stall, too. He hoped his men would manage to find him on time.

“The MacAuley Clan doesnae belong tae ye,” Domnhall said, his lips curling into a snarl. “I dinnae ken what ye think ye will achieve by bringin’ me here, but even if ye kill me, me clan will never accept ye as their laird. Ye will never succeed.”

Ferguson laughed, hollow and bitter. “I will simply have tae make sure there is nae one left tae oppose me. How many people dae ye think I must kill before they understand they cannae go against me? Yer entire council? Half o’ yer clan? At some point, they will surely submit.”

“What is the point?” asked Domnhall, unable to keep the rage from seeping into his tone. “What is the point o’ takin’ the clan only tae destroy it? What is the point o’ killin’ innocent people?”

Ferguson gave a small shrug. “Revenge, I suppose,” he said nonchalantly, as though it made perfect sense to decimate a clan just so he could have his revenge on a man and a woman who were both dead. “This wouldnae have happened had yer faither nae stolen the clan right out o’ me hands.”

Domnhall looked at this man in front of him, taking in his close-set eyes, the sharp jaw, the shape of his features. He didn’t think he looked like him, but then again, he didn’t resemble his father either. Everyone had always told him he was the spitting image of his mother, which only made the matter of his lineage even more obscure.

It didn’t matter if he was Ferguson’s son or not. Either way, his father was a cruel man, bordering on insanity, and that was not who Domnhall wanted to be.

“So, this is what it is all about, ye fool?” Domnhall said with a humorless laugh of his own. “Ye claimed tae love me maither but what ye truly loved was the clan.”

Domnhall hadn’t expected the slap that followed. The back of Ferguson’s hand connected with his cheek with such force that his head was whipped to the side, his ear ringing with the force of the impact. It took a few seconds for this new pain to settle in, but once it did, it seemed to drown out every other ache in his body. Soon, he tasted blood, thick and metallic on his tongue, from where his lip had been split open against his canine.

“Ye dinnae ken anythin’,” said Ferguson. “Yer faither had nae right tae dae what he did. He was but a bairn, takin’ what didnae belong tae him an’ look how that ended. He’s dead, Fiadh is dead, an’ now ye’ll die too, havin’ achieved naething. Truly yer faither’s son.”

Laughter bubbled out of Domnhall at that and he shook his head at the irony of it. Here was a man who could very well be his father, making such grand and hurtful statements.

The laugh caught Ferguson by surprise, brows knitting together in confusion as he watched Domnhall. “Dae ye find this amusin’?”

“Och aye,” said Domnhall. “Considerin’ me maither told me she doesnae ken who me faither is.”

It took a few moments for Ferguson to process what Domnhall had said. His confusion only intensified for a moment, before understanding dawned on him, his eyes widening almost comically, mouth falling slightly open. Domnhall would be lying if he said he didn’t enjoy it, seeing Ferguson at a loss for words when he seemed to love talking so much.

The surprise, however, left his face as quickly as it had appeared on it. “Well, yer maither was wrong,” he said. “Rest assured John MacAuley was yer faither.”

It was Domnhall’s turn to fall silent. Ferguson seemed entirely certain of it. It didn’t sound like the kind of lie one comes up with on the spot, something to simply cover up the truth hastily.

“How dae ye ken?” Domnhall asked. Now that he was so close to finding out the truth, he felt an inescapable need to know, a desire so strong that he would have done almost anything to find out.

Ferguson hesitated. He looked at Domnhall, then at the guards who stood behind him in the small room. For a moment, Domnhall thought that he was either wrong to think Ferguson was telling the truth or that he was going to keep him wondering just as a torture.

“Get out,” he told the guards, who flinched at the sudden command. When they didn’t move, Ferguson walked over to the door and opened it for them. “Did ye nae hear me? I said get out.”

Reluctantly, the guards filed out of the room, exchanging confused glances. Ferguson didn’t budge, though, and closed the door behind them, their footsteps receding down what Domnhall assumed was a corridor.

Only once the sounds were gone did Ferguson turn back to him, pinning Domnhall with his gaze. “Ye will die soon, so I suppose it doesnae matter if I tell ye,” he said. “An’ besides, a man should ken where he comes from. Consider this one last act o’ kindness from me part, as a token o’ affection tae Fiadh.”

“Tell me what?” asked Domnhall, now more confused than ever. As much as Ferguson claimed it to be an act of kindness, he couldn’t help but think there was a catch to it, something that would give the man even more satisfaction.

“I havenae managed tae have a bairn,” Ferguson said. “With all the lasses I’ve bedded, nae even one has been with a bairn. Nae noblewoman, nae a maid, nae one—an’ I cannae say I was careful with any o’ them. But Fiadh, o’ course, couldnae have kent that. So ye see, I cannae be yer faither.”

Domnhall took a few moments to digest the news. By the end of it, though, he still didn’t know if he should be relieved or repulsed. He supposed there were no good options here—his father and Ferguson were both terrible men, and no one in their right mind would want to be their son.

The only true relief was that his life wasn’t a complete lie, after all. The man he had grown up to know as his father was, in fact, his father, and he would no longer need to spend any time or energy thinking about how things would have been different had he grown up with Ferguson instead.

It is what it is.

“Well, I suppose I cannae convince ye tae nae kill me because I’m yer son, then,” Domnhall said with a chuckle. Ferguson wasn’t very amused by his efforts at humor, but at least Domnhall didn’t receive another slap for his troubles. He could only count that as a win.

Ferguson opened his arms in an expensive gesture. “All o’ this could have been avoided if ye had simply handed over the clan.”

“I’m afraid I cannae dae that,” Domnhall said. “It’s a clan, ye see, nae a shoe or a dirk. It’s nae only land. There are people. Their lives are nae mine tae hand over.”

Of course, he didn’t expect Ferguson to understand. If he did, they wouldn’t be in this position in the first place.

“It doesnae matter now, though, does it?” asked Ferguson as he headed towards the door. Domnhall didn’t know whether that meant he would be finally left alone or if the guards would come back to torture him, though he supposed he would find out soon enough. “Once I kill ye, I will have the clan anyway.”

With that, Ferguson was gone, locking the door behind him. For the first time since he opened his eyes, Domnhall could finally focus on his surroundings, trying to figure out where he was.

He was certain he could hear faint noises from outside the room, voices and footsteps belonging to several people, though he couldn’t be certain if those people were guards or not. He didn’t even know what time of the day it was, since there was no window in the small room, nor how much time had passed since Ferguson had taken him from the castle. For all he knew, it could have been anywhere from a few hours to a day, judging by the fact that his head still ached but he was more or less fine, the time he had spent unconscious leaving no discernible damage.

Was he being held in a keep? In a cottage in the middle of nowhere? He couldn’t tell.

And if he couldn’t even tell where he was, how was he supposed to escape?

“Four guards are dead,” said one of the men in Domnhall’s council. “Four. An’ the laird is gone. How could this happen?”

“I don’t know any more than you do,” said Hugo as he paced back and forth in Domnhall’s study. Billie watched him from the corner of the room, where she had been pushed after Domnhall’s council had entered like a storm. “If anything, I can only assume that you know more than me. So, how about you explain to me how it happened?”

Silence fell over the men. None of them had an answer for Hugo, and while some muttered among them, others averted their gazes, unable to meet Hugo’s eye. The first one to speak was one of the older men, Donald, who stood from his chair with a sigh.

“It doesnae matter now,” he said. “All that matters is that we bring him back. We must begin plannin’.”

“Planning?” asked Hugo. “What, precisely, do you wish to plan? Shouldn’t you already have a plan in place for this?”

“We cannae prepare fer every eventuality,” Donald said. “Besides, who amongst us expected that Ferguson would manage tae infiltrate our walls once again?”

“How much time dae ye need tae plan?” asked Billie.

Everyone in the room save for Hugo turned to look at her as though they had forgotten she was even there. It wasn’t the first time something like this had happened, of course. Billie was used to being ignored, pushed to the side by men who thought they knew better than her. This was a matter of life and death, though, and she wasn’t going to allow their delays to prove lethal for Domnhall.

“A few weeks, at least,” said Donald.

“Surely, you cannot be serious,” said Hugo, scoffing. “A few weeks? You expect Domnhall to be left with Ferguson for weeks? Can you not see that Ferguson will kill him?”

“He needs our laird,” said Donald. “He cannae kill him.”

“Torture him, then,” Hugo said. “Or do you think he is too kind for such a thing?”

This time, Donald had nothing to say. Throwing his hands up in frustration, Hugo stormed out of the room, and Billie hesitated for only a moment before she followed him, leaving all the other men behind.

She managed to catch up with him at the end of the hall and placed a hand on his shoulder to stop him. Hugo always seemed so composed that it was strange to see him in such a panic now, the slight tremble in his hands visible despite his efforts to hide it.

“We cannae wait fer weeks,” Billie said. “We must convince them tae act sooner.”

Hugo let out a bitter laugh. “They won’t. They will insist it’s too risky, that it will be putting too many men and Domnhall himself in danger.”

“How can ye ken that?” Billie asked. “We could try tae speak tae them. They willnae listen tae me, but surely they must listen tae ye.”

“They never listen to me,” said Hugo. “They only ever listen if Domnhall is there. You must know they’re not happy that I am his right hand. I am a stranger to them, a foreigner. They will never forget that.”

Hugo’s anger and disappointment radiated around him. Billie couldn’t fault him. She knew what it meant to be the odd one out, to be the only one who wasn’t being listened to. It was certainly not a good feeling, that much was certain.

Hugo began to pace back and forth once more, as if standing still would bring him to the kind of inaction of which he accused the council. Billie watched him, not knowing what to do or say to help. She had not grown up near her father’s plans and strategies. She had never even touched anything other than a kitchen knife.

“I will go, then,” said Hugo, finally coming to a halt. “I will gather a few men and I will go myself.”

Billie sighed, wringing her hands as she considered it. “Ye will die,” she said. “Ye cannae dae it alone.”

“I won’t be alone.”

“Ye will be alone enough,” Billie said. Even if he got the best of the men, there was little chance Ferguson, with all his troops, wouldn’t manage to kill them all. “Ye cannae win with brute force. Ye ken what ye must dae. What we must dae.”

Hugo had considered it, Billie could tell. There was no surprise on his face when she spoke. There wasn’t even resistance, at least not at first. Hugo, too, knew that if he wanted to win this, he had to trick Ferguson—and in order to do that, he had to let Billie help.

“You understand why I cannot allow that,” Hugo said, though without his previous conviction. All Billie had to do was convince him this was the only good solution; she was certain it was. “Domnhall?—”

“Domnhall was taken,” Billie interrupted. “An’ I willnae sit here an’ wait while his life is in danger. If ye refuse tae dae that, why should I?”

“Because you are not a warrior,” Hugo pointed out, not unkindly. “Billie, I can’t put you in this kind of danger.”

“I’ll be fine,” Billie insisted. “Ye will be there, an’ so will the other men. All ye have tae dae is use me to get tae Domnhall. I willnae be involved in any fight if this works. Ferguson wants me tae go there.”

“Aye,” said Hugo. “Tae kill ye.”

“Aye,” said Billie without hesitation. It was what it was. Perhaps it would give them the advantage they needed. “But it’s the only way tae get close tae Domnhall. I pretend tae follow Ferguson’s orders an’ ye come with the men tae pull us out o’ there.”

There was no fear in Billie, or at least she could easily ignore the grip of it around her chest, that terrible weight that made it difficult to draw in a breath. She and Domnhall had only just managed to get to know each other, to help this relationship between them bloom. Billie’s feelings for him had grown like a meadow until she was overgrown with it, her love for Domnhall too strong now to allow this marriage to come to such a horrible ending.

“Please,” she told Hugo when he didn’t respond. “I cannae lose him. Let me help.”

For a few more moments, Hugo remained silent, his brow creased as he was in deep thought. When he spoke again, he did so reluctantly.

“Very well,” he said, much to Billie’s relief. He didn’t seem happy about it, but at least he was agreeing. “But if we do this, we must first train you.”