from the best of ghosts.” She grinned, flapping her eyelashes at the woman who’d been her tutor.
“Nay, ’tis too much of a risk. Besides, what if you ended up killing an innocent?”
Gran paced for a moment, stroking her chin and huffing as if she were about to strike something with her blasted cane. The woman had cause to hate the Campbells. Not only did the late Earl of Argyll lay siege to Toward Castle with cannons, fire, and sword, he’d decimated an entire clan. Alice’s clan. During the siege, Sir James Lamont had ordered his wife to take their only grandchild and spirit her out the secret passageway to the hidden cellars, the same route Alice had used that very day. Praying for a miracle, Gran had taken the newborn bairn and hid.
That fateful day all had been lost. When Gran’s husband, the feared knight and Lamont chieftain, negotiated the terms of surrender, he’d given up his castle and livestock to preserve the lives of his clan. But no, not even evicting his enemy from his land had been enough to satisfy the earl. Argyll’s bloodlust proved far too great to merely accept surrender of lands and livestock of an entire clan.
Alice gripped her stomach as her mind fixed upon the story. No matter how much she tried to steel her nerves, the brutal truth always made her blood pulse with ice.
After Grandfather had conceded defeat, Argyll marched the Lamonts to the churchyard in Dunoon. There the earl brutally executed every man, woman and child and then commanded his men to put all Lamont lands to fire and sword while Gran remained tucked away deep in the caverns below Toward Castle where she remained with Alice for an entire year. Only when it was safe did she take her granddaughter to the cottage in the wood.
Shaking off the chill, Alice poured herself another cup of water. “They’re going to the fête at Rothesay Castle, I’m certain of it.”
Gran leaned heavily on her cane, her gnarled fingers wrapped around the worn crook. “How do ye ken?”
“I heard them talking.”
“Good heavens, child. You could have been smote where you stood.”
“I hid in the cellars. Heard every word.”
“You are careless.”
“Nay!” Alice’s ears rang, and this from the brave woman who’d saved her from the massacre. “How can you say such a thing? You hid in the cellars with me.”
“That was long ago, afore the keep completely fell into ruin.” Gran slid onto the bench beside Alice. “Tell me what they said.”
“They were talking about me, mostly. One of them saw me in the clearing and then made chase.”
Clapping a hand over her heart, Gran pretended to swoon. “My word, it grows worse.”
“Nay, the others decided the heir had seen a selkie.”
“Heir?”
“Aye, one man called the leader ‘your lordship’ and the other referred to himself as the second son—and then they decided to set up camp for the night. Then the Campbell heir started ordering the others about.” Alice decided against telling Gran the man in charge had been ever so braw and strikingly handsome with his thick chestnut hair clubbed back. Such an admittance would reveal exactly how close she’d been to the scoundrels. And their looks mattered not. All three were knaves and scoundrels.
Gran leaned on her cane, her lips twisted as if deep in thought. “Two of Argyll’s offspring will be sleeping in Toward Castle this very night?”
“Aye. What can we do?” Alice sprang to her feet and pounded her fist on the table. “This is our chance for vengeance—our chance to repay the crimes against Grandad, my father, and our clan.”
“If he is the heir to the earldom, then it is Quinn Campbell who is sleeping in the remains of a once great and powerful clan, the grandson of Archibald the black-hearted beast.”
“Quinn, aye?” Alice wasn’t overly anxious to know the man’s name. He might be pleasing to the eye, but he was the spawn of the devil and she doubted he’d be alive come dawn. “Nightshade might do the trick.”
“Nay.” Gran pulled Alice out to the garden. Oddly, she didn’t stop by the plot with medicinal herbs—the plot with a clump of nightshade and a wee clump of hemlock. Hobbling along, she kept going until she reached the stone fence. There she gestured to a spindly bush of thorns with but a half-dozen leaves.
“After two and twenty years, my demask rose has finally produced a bud,” Gran said, her voice soft, as if she’d nurtured a plant from a