Devil of the Highlands Page 0,65

patting his arm soothingly.

"I am sure whoever let him loose simply did not see me in the paddock," she said, then explained, "I was on my hands and knees searching through the grass for your pin just before I realized he was charging. I am sure it was an accident."

"Aye," he agreed, but was still bothered by the whole incident.

"Well," his wife said with a forced smile. "I shall just go put this back in your chest where I found it."

Evelinde hurried away before he could stop her.

Cullen watched her go, his eyebrows drawn together with worry.

"It was no accident, me laird," Hamish murmured quietly, drawing his gaze away from his wife. "No one ever deals with Angus but me. No one would have a reason to open the door… unless they saw yer lady wife in the paddock and wanted to loose him on her."

Cullen stared at the man for one long moment, then asked, "Why would anyone wish to do that?"

Hamish shrugged. "Why would anyone kill your uncle, father, or first lady wife?"

"Those were accidents," Cullen said coldly, though he wasn't at all certain they were. However, he'd never been able to find out for sure one way or the other so had been forced to accept that they were accidents and move on.

"And this would have appeared to be an accident, too," Hamish pointed out.

Cullen stiffened, his head jerking up at the words as if under a blow.

"Just something to think about," Hamish pointed out, and turned to walk along the paddock toward the barn.

Cullen watched him go, his mind crowding with thoughts. His uncle Darach had been the first questionable accident. An arrow to the back had taken him while hunting. No one had ever admitted to loosing the arrow, but it was thought at the time that the individual might not have known he did it. Cullen had been fourteen and on his first hunt when it happened. They'd been hunting wild boar and come upon a family of them. There had been at least twenty men. When the two adult boars had charged, trying to protect the younger ones, every one of those men had scattered, each heading in a different direction to get out of the way. Boars were vicious when provoked.

Arrows had flown from every direction that day as the boars had gone after anything that moved, chasing one way, then another, hardly seeming to notice the arrows that soon stuck out of them until they resembled oversized hedgehogs. It wasn't until both boars were down that anyone realized that Darach, their laird, was not there to help collect their prizes and carry them back to the keep. A search had started, and the laird of Donnachaidh had been found lying in the bushes, an arrow through his back. Darach had still been alive, and told them that he'd fallen from his mount when one of the boars charged him sending his horse rearing. It was while tumbling into the bushes that he'd felt the arrow pierce him. He'd thought it an accident, that he'd fallen into the path of the already loosed arrow, and everyone had accepted that. When he died three days later with fever from his infected wound, all the keep had thought it a tragic accident.

Cullen's father, Liam, had then become laird and brought peace and prosperity to their people for ten years until the day he'd been found at the base of the cliffs that backed Donnachaidh. The hill that sloped away from the front gates of the outer wall ran along three sides of the castle, but at the very back it dropped away as if God had sliced away the gentle incline, leaving a very steep drop of rocky cliffs. This was where his father had taken the fall that had killed him. Cullen had been at Comyns the day it happened. Tralin and he had grown up friends and often visited each other, and that was where he'd been.

Cullen had returned home from the Comyns' to find his father dead and rumors being whispered that he himself had been seen near the spot where he died… and that perhaps it wasn't an accident.

It hadn't been long before people recalled that he'd been on the hunt when his uncle was killed, too. They began to wonder if that had really been an accident at all. It was suggested that Cullen could have loosed the arrow that had killed his uncle. Perhaps he had sought the