were the children?
His heart missed a beat when he saw a still, bare foot under the edge of the bed. When he dropped to his knees amid the broken crockery, he saw a tangle of arms and legs under the bed. He prayed hard for a sign of life.
“’Tis safe to come out,” he said, speaking in a low voice. “It’s me, Alex.”
When Seamus’s head and shoulders popped out from under the bed, relief coursed through Alex’s body. He pulled Seamus out and held him on his lap as if he were a bairn Sorcha’s age.
Una rolled out from under the bed with a fire poker in her hand. The lass was covered in blood. When she saw Alex holding her brother, she blinked several times and then slowly dropped her arm with the poker to her side.
“I did it, not Seamus,” she said. “I killed him.”
“Ye had good cause, lass,” Alex said. “No one who knows what your father did to ye will blame ye.” Whether everyone would believe it was another question.
“I would die of shame if anyone knew,” Una said. “I don’t want anyone to know what he did.
Una had started shaking, and Alex did not have the heart to cause the lass any more suffering. He took a deep breath as it became clear what he would have to do.
“If you and your brother can pretend that none of this happened,” he said, “then no one need know that ye killed your father or why.”
Both of them nodded. Keeping secrets about what happened in this house was not new to them.
“I’ll take his body out to sea in his boat,” Alex said. “Fishermen are lost all the time. When he fails to return home in a week or two, folks will assume he drowned.”
Seamus and Una looked at Alex as if he were the second coming.
“Can ye clean up here while I’m gone?”
“Aye,” the girl said.
“Seamus, I’ll need a rope and a shovel,” Alex said, as he took off his boots. “Bring them down to the boat.”
Alex hefted the body over his shoulder and carried it down to the boat, which he found on the beach just below the cottage. Their father had kept the boat in such poor repair that none of the fishermen would be surprised when it washed up on shore with a hole in it. A body with a knife wound, however, could be a problem. Alex grunted as he lifted a heavy rock onto the boat.
Seamus came out of the darkness and put the shovel and rope in the boat.
“I’ll be back in a few hours.” Alex squeezed the lad’s shoulders. They felt frail and bony beneath his hands. “It will be all right.”
After sailing down the coast a bit, Alex took the boat straight out to sea for a mile or more. He tied the stone to the body and dumped them both over the side. Damned if he’d say a prayer for the man.
After ramming a hole in the boat with the shovel, Alex dove over the side. He was a strong swimmer, so the worst part of the long swim was the cold. Still, it seemed to take forever to reach shore. When he did, he was so cold he was shaking. He was barefoot and soaking wet, but he warmed up as he made the long walk back by starlight.
By the time he reached the cottage, the sky had the gray cast of predawn. Thankfully, the children—though Una was seventeen, Alex could not help thinking of her as a child—had a good fire going. Alex stood before it to dry his clothes as long as he dared.
“Ye did a good job cleaning up,” he said, as he put his boots on.
“I burned what I was wearing,” Una said.
“Good. Now get some rest.” They were both too pale and had dark circles under their eyes. “I’ll come back to check on ye tomorrow.”
Alex was exhausted when he returned to the castle just as dawn was breaking. The guards at the gate were men who had come with him from Skye. He suspected they might think he had been in some woman’s bed, as in former days, but he could not very well tell them he’d spent the night disposing of a body at sea—and he was too damned tired to think of a better explanation. He would set them straight in the morning.
Praise be to the saints that Glynis was a sound sleeper. All the same, before easing the bedchamber door open Alex took off his boots and then set them down carefully just inside the door. After hanging his damp clothes over a stool, Alex slipped under the bedclothes and wrapped himself around Glynis. After the hellish night, peacefulness settled over him, as it always did when he fell asleep with his wife in his arms.
* * *
Glynis lay on her side watching the pink dawn sky through the narrow window. Her husband’s arm felt heavy slung across her ribs. With every breath she took, the weight seemed to grow heavier and heavier until she felt as if she were wheezing. But she knew it was not his arm, but the weight on her heart that made it so hard to breathe.
She told herself not to rush to judgment. There could be a dozen reasons why Alex crept into bed with the dawn. And yet, she could think of only one. It throbbed in her head.
She squeezed her eyes shut and prayed.
If Alex had planned to meet a lover, that would explain why he was distracted all through supper last night. And then there was his vague explanation about needing to visit a tenant, something he never did in the evening. And his parting words:
