The Heiress Bride - Catherine Coulter [146]
Colin rode alone. MacDuff rubbed his hands together. With luck, Colin would return to Vere Castle sometime tonight, money in hand. He’d decided to let them all gnaw on their fear for her, and not deliver the other letter until the following morning. But something urged him to bring it all to a close. There was no reason to draw it out.
He rather liked the notion that both her brothers and their wives were here at Vere Castle. He hoped they would try to interfere, that they would somehow try to fool him with some stupid plot, and come with Colin into the trap MacDuff had set for him. He would enjoy showing them up as inept English bastards. He was rather pleased they were here; he couldn’t have planned it more to his liking.
The English losing soundly. That had a delicious irony to it and MacDuff was pleased. It dulled the ever-present pain in his chest.
He waited a while longer to see if either of Sinjun’s brothers would leave the castle, but no one came through the great front doors. He waited another hour. Finally satisfied that nothing was afoot now, MacDuff mounted his horse and rode back to the small croft.
It was Jamie, the youngest of the crofter lads, who slipped into the side door off the kitchen, the infamous doorway Sophie swore was the one used by the murderer to get into the castle. He was only one of a dozen small boys who’d been stationed around the castle in a wide perimeter, well hidden, waiting and watching.
Colin was waiting there, seated at the kitchen table, a mug of thick black coffee in his hand.
“ ’Tis a man, milor’. ’Tis yer cousin, th’ giant wi’ all th’ red hair. MacDuff ye calls him.”
Colin paled. Ryder’s hand came down on his shoulder.
“Who is this MacDuff, Colin?”
“My cousin. Douglas met him in London. Dear God, Ryder, why? I don’t understand any of it.”
Ryder gave Jamie a guinea. Jamie, mouth agape, gasped and said, “Thank ye, milor’, thank ye! Me ma’ll bless yer soul, aye, she will.”
Colin rose. “Now, Jamie, take us to the place you saw him.”
Douglas slipped through that side door off the kitchen an hour later. His eyes glittered with ill-suppressed excitement. He looked up to see the same look in his wife’s eyes. “We’re two of a kind, aren’t we?”
“Oh yes. And soon we’ll have MacDuff. Remember him, Douglas? He was the very nice giant of a man who came to see Colin in London. Colin was knocked off kilter. He doesn’t understand why MacDuff would do this.”
“Dear God.”
“I know. It’s a shock. Colin and Ryder went with the lad who saw him to the place he is hiding.”
“Soon we’ll have Arleth’s murderer as well as Fiona’s. I do wonder what his motive was.”
Alex just shook her head. “I don’t know, Douglas. Neither does Colin. Ofcourse, Sophie is claiming she would have suspected him instantly if only she’d been in London with us to meet him.”
Douglas laughed.
When Douglas rode back to Vere Castle at seven o’clock that night, he knew MacDuff was watching him and from what vantage point. He was careful to keep his face averted from that dense copse of fir trees. He was careful to ensure that MacDuff got a good look at the bulging packet fastened to his saddle. He hoped MacDuff wouldn’t notice that Gulliver wasn’t sweating from his hard ride. Indeed, Gulliver had been running only about ten minutes. He was a terror, Douglas thought, wondering if Colin would sell him the horse.
Thirty minutes later, Philpot retrieved the letter that had been left on the front steps. He opened it and read it. He smiled.
MacDuff was whistling as he pulled his horse to a stop in front of the deserted croft that huddled beneath some low-lying fir branches just short of the eastern edge of the Cowal Swamp. It was a damp, utterly dreadful place, redolent with rotted vegetation and stagnant water. The croft itself was on the verge of collapse. Supposedly an old hermit had lived there for years upon years. It was said that he’d just walked into the swamp one night during a mighty storm, singing to heaven that he was on his way. There was one window, long since