Agnes folded the paper with shaky hands and returned it to her purse before handing it to Mairi. Emerald eyes stared up at him, and he felt like he could see all the way to Agnes’ soul. She hid nothing, held nothing back. She was giving it all to him. Her love. Her life. All of it.
And there was only one thing he could say in reply.
Turning to the minister, Logan said, “I do.”
An Excerpt from Rage
Read on for a taste of Isobel Sinclair’s story.
The village of Arness, Scotland
Isobel Sinclair should have contacted the authorities the first time she saw the boat sneaking into the cove. But she didn’t. She should have called when there was a storm during the boat’s third visit, and the crew lost some of their baggage on the rocky path up to Arness. But she didn’t. Instead, she’d gathered their lost cargo, called it her own and sold it to help pay off her ex-husband’s debts.
Which made her a thief, just like him.
And her thieving was the reason she still didn’t call in the authorities the time the boat turned up in the dead of night, and there was shouting in the darkness. Or the time she’d seen evidence that someone had dragged something heavy over the beach.
No, she’d never called the authorities. Not once. Even though she knew the boat brought nothing but trouble each time it snuck into shore.
But she should have called, because the boat had come back.
And this time, they’d left a body behind.
“What are we going to do with him?” Isobel’s youngest sister, Mairi, stared down at the man.
The dead man.
“I suppose we could bury him,” Agnes, one of their middle sisters, said.
“We can’t bury him here.” Isobel gestured to the rock-strewn beach. “Even if we do manage to dig a hole, the tide will unearth him in a day or two.”
Mairi looked up at the steep, rocky path behind them, the only route down from the bluff where the tiny town of Arness sat. “We’ll never get him back up there. He looks like he weighs a ton.”
“And he’s wet.” Agnes nodded. “That makes you heavier.”
“Aye,” Mairi said. “Water retention.”
Isobel and Agnes stared at their sister.
“What?” Mairi said.
With shakes of their heads, Agnes and Isobel turned their attention back to the body.
“How do you think he died?” Agnes said.
“I suppose we should look him over and see if we can tell.” Isobel didn’t like the thought of touching the man, let alone examining him for clues as to his cause of death.
“Does it really matter how he died?” Mairi said. “I mean, it isn’t going to change the fact that he’s dead. Or that he was left here by the boat people.”
“The boat people?” Agnes looked towards heaven and seemed to be counting to ten. Again.
Mairi shrugged, her long red hair shifting with the movement. “What else are we to call them? And he was left here by the boat crew. Isobel saw them while she was spying.”
Isobel adopted her patented “haughty eldest sister” look—it helped take her mind off her shaking hands and the fear gnawing at her stomach. “I wasn’t spying. I was looking out of my window and saw them carry him off the boat and dump him here.”
“You were looking out of your window with the aid of binoculars,” Mairi reminded her.
She had a point. “What I don?