believe they owed him a favor. "But Jane and I part on good terms."
That much was true. Jane, who was upstairs joyfully packing, was almost as relieved as he was to avoid a marriage destined to make them both miserable. But Connor could not help thinking that if she had never arrived, Ilysa would still be spending her nights in his bed.
* * *
Lachlan decided he was still captain since Connor had not said he wasn't. While the chieftain drank whiskey with his guest, Lachlan made sure the men had their weapons and supplies ready. He marveled at Connor's patience. With a battle to be fought, he had to sit inside the keep playing host to the Thane of Cawdor, who looked to be an arrogant son of bitch if there ever was one.
"Lachlan!"
He turned to find Robbie, one of the young men he and Connor had trained, running toward him with a bloody dirk in his hand.
"What's happened?" Lachlan asked.
"I think I killed Sorely."
"Take me to him," Lachlan said. "Ye can tell me why ye did it on the way."
His own calm seemed to settle Robbie, which was good. Lachlan didn't want a garbled explanation.
"I was guarding the gate, like ye told me," Robbie said as they crossed the courtyard. "I let everyone in and no one out."
The gist of the story was that when it was most chaotic with all the newly arrived guests and warriors coming in, Sorely tried to leave. When Robbie stopped him, Sorely started to argue and then suggested they go inside the gatehouse to discuss it.
"As soon as I went through the door, he tried to dirk me," Robbie said, his eyes wide. "Without thinking, I did exactly as ye taught me. Next thing I know, Sorely's on the floor bleeding. I think he's dead."
"Sometimes a man isn't as dead as he looks." Lachlan walked faster and hoped Sorely was still there.
When he entered the gatehouse, Sorely had dragged himself a few feet across the floor.
"Ye don't look as if you're going to last," Lachlan said, kneeling beside him. "That will save us the trouble of executing ye since I assume you're the one who murdered the two guards."
"To hell with ye, Lachlan," Sorely said and spit out blood.
"Ye want to tell me why you're a miserable traitor to your clan?" In Lachlan's experience, men wanted to talk at the end, and he suspected Sorely would want to justify himself.
"Ye think ye know so much," Sorely said in a rasping voice. "But I'd wager ye don't know your mother was murdered."
"Mind the door," Lachlan said to Robbie, wanting him out of earshot.
Lachlan was not going to give Sorely the satisfaction of asking. Sorely wanted to tell him, so he waited, hoping the man wouldn't die before he got the words out.
"Hugh pushed her! Aye, that's right. Your da has been helping the man who killed her. Isn't that a laugh?" Blood seeped through Sorely's teeth in a grisly grin. "I told Hugh that your mother was carrying another child of the chieftain's, so he got rid of her."
Lachlan was tempted to put his hand around Sorely's throat and speed his journey to hell. Instead, he asked, "How would ye know she was with child?"
"Jenny told me," Sorely said, and tears suddenly filled his eyes. "No one knew, but we were sweethearts."
Who in the hell was Jenny? Then it struck him. "Jenny was the nursemaid. That's why ye see her ghost."
"She was waving to me when she dropped the babe," Sorely said. "The chieftain didn't have to cast her adrift at sea. She never meant to harm the child."
He was blubbering so that Lachlan could almost feel sorry for him - until something else occurred to him. "Ye didn't try to save Jenny, did ye? Ye didn't speak to the chieftain on her behalf or go out in a boat to rescue her."
"I couldn't!" Sorely choked out. "The chieftain would have banished me, and I would have lost my place in his guard."
"I guess that explains why she haunted ye." Lachlan was disgusted with him. "I suppose ye held what the chieftain did to her against Connor." That's what his own father had done.
"I was willing to forgive all...when I thought Connor...would make me captain," Sorely said, his voice growing weaker with each breath. "But he kept delaying...and delaying..."
His voice faded, and his head fell to the side.
"What a sorry excuse for a MacDonald." Lachlan got up and went to the door. "Ye did