kill him, aye?”
That notion lifted all their spirits.
“Now, have we gotten a complete tally of the number of Chisolms?” Lachlan asked, moving on to other matters.
Fergus pulled a small bit of parchment from the pouch on his belt. He carefully unfolded it and read his accounting. “Including the prisoners below, there are two-hundred and seven warriors of varying ages and degrees of skill. One-hundred and seventy-two of them are married. We have one-hundred and eighty-seven bairns and weans, and countless women who are with child. There are also thirty-seven lasses who are of marryin’ age and forty-nine lads ready to train.”
“Good, lord!” Lachlan exclaimed. He hadn’t realized just how large the Chisolm clan was.
Fergus gave a curt nod but looked at odds with something.
“What about the elderly and infirm?” Lachlan asked.
“I was just about to get to that,” Fergus said. “There are none.”
Puzzled, Lachlan asked for clarification.
“’Tis as I am tellin’ ye, Lachlan. I can find no one over the age of fifty. No one who is ill, on the verge of death, no one I would consider elderly. I cannae even find a man missin’ a finger. ’Tis the oddest thing I have e’er seen.”
“I have noticed that as well,” Jamie said. “I have nae seen anyone with even the slightest limp.”
The hairs on the back of Lachlan’s neck stood on end. “And have ye made inquiries into this oddity?”
Fergus rolled his eyes. “Of course, I have,” he replied. “And ye can well imagine the response. No one will speak of it.”
Something dark niggled at the back of his mind. There could be no good and sound reason for such an anomaly.
“Did ye count the two women who live in the woods?” Jamie asked Fergus.
Fergus furrowed his brow. “I have,” he replied.
“What two women?” Lachlan asked.
“Accordin’ to some, there are two young women who live in the woods. They be nae of their right minds. The clan shunned them long ago,” Fergus explained.
“Shunned them?” Lachlan asked with a raised brow. “For what reason?”
Fergus shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “For nae bein’ of sound mind.”
“There must be more to it than that,” Lachlan said, clearly appalled by the notion.
“Some say they be witches,” Jamie added.
“Are they a danger to themselves or others?” Lachlan asked.
Jamie shook his head. “I honestly dunnae ken, Lachlan. All anyone will tell us is that they were shunned years ago because they were ‘odd’ and nae of sound mind.”
“Odd? Nae of sound mind?” Lachlan was incredulous.
“They are also convinced those verra woods are haunted. From what I have learned, nae a soul has so much has set a toe inside it in decades.”
“Haunted?” The ache in his head increased.
Jamie scratched his stubble jaw. “That is what they believe. Filled with witches and fairies and ghosts.”
“Fetch me the steward,” he said, directing the order to Fergus simply because he was closest to the door.
Walter Chisolm was a man of few words.
He now sat opposite his new laird in Lachlan’s very cramped study. Any fool could see the man was as nervous as a whore in church. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down repeatedly as he did his best to hide his trembling hands.
Walter was a tall, slender man with thinning light brown hair. He’d tried to hide the fact that he was losing the aforementioned hair by combing one side over at an extreme angle before sweeping it forward to cover his forehead. Lachlan wondered if any of the Chisolms had the heart to tell the poor man he looked utterly ridiculous.
“Have ye found the missing books yet?” Lachlan asked. He hadn’t thought he sounded too harsh, but Walter very nearly jumped out of his own skin. ’Twas a question he’d been asking since the first day of his arrival. Thus far, Walter was unable to ‘locate’ them. Swearing they must have been lost or destroyed during the invasion of the interlopers - better known as the McDunnahs and MacCulloughs.
“N-Nay,” he replied before swallowing hard for the umpteenth time.
Lachlan didn’t believe him. He hadn’t believed him the first dozen or so times he claimed not to know the whereabouts of the Chisolm accountings, journals, and other documents in question. That was why he’d put Fergus and a few other men on the task of finding them.
“Ye’re quite certain?” Lachlan asked.
“Quite certain.”
He knew the man was lying, but Walter was unaware of the fact. For nearly a fortnight, they’d been trying to get an accounting of the Chisolm’s assets and debts. Walter, the steward for the former