of amazement came from the crowd, followed by the rumble of excited conversation.
Cameron waited until the chatter died down before continuing. “That sum should allow you to pay what you have been billed and have enough left to help you build a new life. I still wish to hear each of your petitions individually so that I might know how you and your loved ones have suffered.”
There was only gentleness in his voice. How odd that a warrior who filled his days with strife and conflict could also be so kind. True, he had an obligation to his people, but what he did here went well beyond what even they expected.
Mariam watched for the next hour as Cameron listened to each and every petition with interest and concern. Hobbins wrote each name in a ledger and sent them to the back of the chamber where four of Cameron’s men waited to pay each what the laird had promised.
The chamber and the castle emptied as they each returned to their homes. It was only when the chamber had nearly emptied that Mariam noticed a man wearing a hooded cloak standing near one of the tall thin windows. When the last villager had left, the unknown visitor came forward. As he did, an icy chill shuddered through her. She knew that walk, that silhouette.
The man lowered his hood and faced her. He was unchanged since she’d seen him last—dressed in a mud-colored monk’s robe, complete with a rope belt tied about his ample belly. His hair was a dull red and streaked with white. His lips hard, and his dark eyes bored into her own. “Father. Why are you here? The king told you to have no further contact with me.”
Beside her, Cameron tensed and his hand drifted toward his sword, but he did not draw. Instead, he remained still, watchful.
“Did you do it?” her father asked, his voice harsh.
“Did I do what?” Mariam asked, unable to keep her fear from showing in her voice. Her father’s arrival here could only mean one thing. Somehow the tale of what she had done this morning when herding the animals had reached him.
John Swinton stepped closer and put a heavy hand on her arm. A surge of revulsion turned her stomach, but she did not pull away. That would anger him more. It had been a long time since he’d struck her, and she doubted he would do so in front of Cameron, but she had also learned early in life never to underestimate her father’s ability for cruelty.
“I’ve heard rumors about you.” His grip tightened on her arm. “Rumors that you have been wicked, using witchcraft to charm animals into submission.”
Beside her, Cameron stood with his legs slightly apart, hands on his hips, making him appear both threatening and much larger than her father. “Sir, I would ask that you unhand my ward.”
“She is my daughter, and I shall do as I please.” Instead of releasing her, her father jerked her to her feet. John Swinton’s eyes glittered more wildly than she’d ever seen them before. “Is it true? Are you filled with sin and evil that needs to be purged?”
Mariam’s stomach pitched. In the year since she’d seen him, her father’s fanatical zeal for rooting out witches had definitely deepened. Even her relationship with her father would not protect her from him. And she’d deluded herself into thinking she was beyond his reach here at Ravenscraig and under Cameron’s care.
“I shall know the truth, Daughter. Are ye a witch?”
Just as the words left his mouth, twenty of Cameron’s men flooded the chamber. They paused at the word ‘witch.’
“I am no witch. You better than anyone else should know that.” Despite her fear, she held her ground as her father reached for the leather sheath attached to his belt from which he withdrew a long, cylindrical, brass needle that tapered to a fine point. The violence in her father’s gaze told her one thing—he meant to harm her as he had harmed so many others suspected of witchcraft before her.
In a blur of motion, Cameron spun Mariam away from her father with such force that she stumbled then caught herself just as Cameron drew his sword.
Her father’s face hardened as he lunged at Cameron with his dagger-like weapon.
The seasoned warrior feinted to the right, easily avoiding the blow. “Go back to Haddington. You do not belong here.”
Swinton bared his teeth in a snarl as he slashed at Cameron with his lethal needle. “Not