done with it. “I’ve come back to try and find out who killed the Laird of Ross. Black Ben as you all know him.”
Gwen stood, her face ashen. “What are ye saying, lass. Ben is killed? And when? When is this to happen?”
“I’m sorry. I know this news is terrible and not something you wish to hear, but it’s the truth. It’s already written in history’s pages. Sometime this May, the laird meets his fate.”
“Well, we’ll just have to change the text on those pages.” Gwen paced to the bed and back, a deep frown line between her brows. “Tell me everything ye know of the situation. Mayhap I can help.”
Kenzie didn’t think the time appropriate to remind Gwen that they weren’t technically allowed to change the past, but she held her tongue. “History states there’s an ambush at Castle Ross that happens three months from now. There’s a battle of some kind—over what was never recorded, for I don’t believe people knew, and Ben is presumably killed. It’s one of Scotland’s unsolved mysteries. No one knows what happened to his lad after the altercation, either. The castle was burned to the ground and remains a ruin to this day. Well,” Kenzie said, correcting what she’d said, “in my time.” Kenzie hated seeing Gwen so rattled, but, if anyone could help her twist history, it was Gwen. “There are, of course, different scenarios about why it happened, but nothing has ever been proven.”
“What are the scenarios?”
“That out of the grief of losing his wife, he took his own life, and that of the child.” An awful thought that Kenzie didn’t even want to contemplate. And after meeting Ben, it was a scenario that she no longer believed happened. Ben, for all his scandalous traits, loved children from what she’d seen of him around the estate. The thought that he could harm his own child just wasn’t possible. It just wasn’t in him to do such a thing.
“No, I don’t believe that one,” Gwen said, pacing some more. “What else?”
“That he handed the child over to his wife’s family and disappeared. Burned down his estate to make it seem like he was murdered or had died during the fire. Left Scotland indefinitely.”
Gwen met her gaze. “And what do you think happened.”
Kenzie sat, having agonized over this very question for nigh on two years. “That he was murdered by his wife’s family, and the child taken to be raised under the tutelage of Clan Grant. That’s what I think happened, and I’ll know for sure by May.”
Gwen halted her pacing. “You are not going to Castle Ross with Ben. I forbid it. You could be killed and then what of our family? Our line will end with you. I can’t allow that to happen.”
It was a possibility that Kenzie had thought of herself. Of course, she had. This was medieval Scotland. Anything was possible, and death lurked around most corners, waiting for the unsuspecting to cloak its death shroud upon them. But she wouldn’t allow it to happen to her. There was one thing she had that no one else other than the woman standing before her had. Witchcraft.
“I can leave at a moment’s notice; disappear in a blink of an eye. Should I get into trouble, I promise you, Gwen, that I’ll leave. But I must know what happens to the renowned Black Ben. His story has fascinated me since I was a little girl. Did you know there’s a painting that hangs in this very house, of him? It was painted after he died, and so I always assumed you had it done as a way of remembering him.”
Gwen bit her lip. “I canna let ye go. It would be wrong of me to be so lax in your wellbeing. Had I known you were here as a means to solve or change an historical event. Something, lass, that we should not do, I might add, I would’ve sent ye home myself. In fact, I ought to do it now.”
“I’ll only come back,” Kenzie said, crossing her arms. “I need to know the truth, and I know it’s against the rules, but I will try and halt his demise if at all possible.”
“You care for him.”
It wasn’t a question, and Kenzie sighed. She’d not meant to care for the rough, bad-mouthed, Scottish heathen, but she did. Somewhere between vexing and teasing her mercilessly, he’d managed to spark a yearning in her that she’d never felt for anyone else. And no