The Bard (Highland Heroes #5) - Maeve Greyson Page 0,73
torchlight flickered across the blackguard up ahead, spread-eagled in an upright position, shackled to the wall. With his head ducked and squinting at the sudden brightness, Garthin worked his hands back and forth, making his wrists even bloodier. With his clothes as ripped and soiled as a beggar’s, the guards had either beaten him or shoved him down the steps. The man already looked like he had been imprisoned for days when it had only been a few hours.
His chest heaving, he lifted his head and sobbed. “I did nothing to end up in this hole. Did the chief throw me down here because we wouldna leave?” Tears streaked down his grimy face. “The only reason I stayed here was for my mother. She overplayed her hand this time. Idiot woman steeped the wrong herbs and did her own self in. She’s the one ye want. Doesna give a whit about anyone’s life but her own. Killed every last one of her husbands, except for my father.” His chains rattled as he attempted a pathetic shrug. “Leastways, that’s what she always told me. The only reason I stayed with her was for coin.”
He swiped the tip of his tongue across his lips. “I dinna ken how to do anything else, and I’ve never been good at begging. Never managed to steal a damn thing without getting caught either. I’m useless! Hear me? Useless! And I proved I had nothing to do with any of those other things that kept happening to ye. I wasna even here when Lady Sorcha and Jenny got trapped. Didna do a damn thing in this godforsaken place but mind my own affairs and drink too much. Why—”
“Enough!” Sutherland had endured all the man’s babbling he could stand. “All here at the keep are loyal to the Lady Sorcha. All except yerself and yer mother.” He edged closer. “Nothing threatened either myself or my lady wife until she and I wed, then the ill events started that verra night. Ye were her last suitor, in what I can only assume was yer pitiful attempt at gaining coin, as ye put it. If not yerself plotting these wicked deeds out of spiteful revenge, then who?” It would be interesting to see just how good a liar Garthin was. His yammering had been very convincing so far. He hadn’t even attempted to paint either himself or his mother in a positive light. Of course, desperate men always told the most realistic of tales.
“How the hell should I know who’s been causing all the trouble?” Garthin glared at him as though he thought him addled. “They didna even tell me why they put me in this pit. I thought the lot of ye had left for MacCoinnich lands. What’s come about now? I was sittin’ in the pub, waiting for word that Mother had finally died. Guards came and grabbed me up. Beat me bloody, then shackled me to this feckin’ wall. Those bastards left me to rot without so much as a single word as to why.”
Damn, the man was a good liar. Sutherland meandered back and forth in front of him, holding the torch closer. He studied him. Panic and fear shouted from the fool. Of course, that was to be expected. Sutherland frowned, noting the soft fleshiness of one of Garthin’s grubby palms. He wondered if the man had even held a knife before or any kind of tool. The scoundrel’s hands didn’t look calloused enough to betray his use of the items he would have used to accomplish his evil deeds.
“Open both yer hands wide,” Sutherland ordered.
“Why?”
Was the man that great an idiot? He had no room to negotiate nor ask stupid questions. Sutherland shoved the torch closer to Garthin’s right hand. “Do it, or I’ll burn them open.”
Terror registering in his eyes, he splayed his fingers open as far as he could.
After examining them both, Sutherland stepped back, and Garthin sagged as though he had fainted. Turning his back on the man, Sutherland scrubbed his chin. That lazy bastard had never done anything with those hands other than lift a glass. And if he had hired the evil deeds done, he would’ve risked discovery.
Sutherland prided himself on being a good judge of a man’s true character. His instincts had never failed him. Garthin had always seemed useless. So lazy, in fact, it took a good stretch of the imagination to envision him both plotting and putting into play everything that had happened to both