At The Laird's Command (Sword and Thistle 3)

If she’d gotten past Malcolm to do that, we’d both be hanged!

“Of course not. The cook doled it out to me in compensation for giving up my salt-beef to the warriors. I thought I’d share it with you, since you once shared yours with me, when you first came here, and the laird wished to spoil you so…”

My heart swelled a bit that she remembered me kindly. I felt very selfish for it. “I’m so grateful, but I really couldn’t eat a bite. You have it. Enjoy it for me.”

She dipped the biscuit into the honey, as if to entice me. “Oh, I should think you need it more than I do. You’ve been through so much. I cannot imagine how it’s been for you, Heather. To nearly be killed by assassins then abandoned by the laird.”

Abandoned by the laird.

Those words still thudded into my chest and stole my breath away. That was exactly the way of it. And I wondered if it would ever stop hurting.

“Take the honey,” Brenna said. “Keep your strength up. I imagine Ian Macrae is a demanding man.”

There was something in the way she said his name that held a note of reverence, but also a touch of possession. Another glance at the rumpled bed told me how resentful she was of my sleeping arrangements.

That was the my only warning. The only thing that sent the hairs up on my nape. The only reason I pulled back just as she raised the biscuit to my lips. “I said I’m not hungry, Brenna.”

“Of course you are,” she replied, her eyes hardening to mean little slits. “Voracious as any harlot. So why not open your mouth wide for a little honey the way I’m sure you open it wide for the men you seduce.”

The beckoning glitter of the honey in the light was as sharp as a dagger tip. I grasped her by the wrist to stop her from pushing it into my face. “What’s in the honey, Brenna?”

“Don’t you know? You took it from me and then I took it back.”

There was a certain madness in her expression, and the squeak gone from her voice. She’d always seemed a timid thing to me, in everything except for her love for Ian Macrae. Was that what she meant? “I didn’t take anything or anyone from you.”

But her eyes darted to the windowsill and when I looked, I realized something was missing. The jar with the rune symbols. I hadn’t returned it to my sister because I hadn’t quite figured out the mystery of it, but it was gone from my windowsill where I’d left it. How long had it been gone? I’d been too busy helping the castle with its dwindling supply of water to notice it’s disappearance. And now a terrible suspicion welled up in me that Brenna had taken it, and that she knew exactly what was in it. “T’was the jar you took, was it? And it was poison.”

“Belladonna,” she confirmed, with a malicious snarl.

I cursed myself for a fool. Belladonna. Beautiful woman. It was there for me to see all along if I had been clever enough to see it. I didn’t have knowledge of herbs and poisons—that was my sister’s realm. But I knew enough to deduce that if Brenna had taken it and laced my honey with it, she wanted me dead.

I might have told her that what passed between Ian and I at night was entirely innocent, or at least mostly so. I might have tried to defend my conduct. But the thought that I might be with child brought forth in me nothing but a fury of indignation. “Get out, you jealous little viper. And find some hole to hide in before I tell the laird and his men that you tried to murder me with food you probably did steal from the larder after all.”

“You won’t tell anyone anything when you’re dead,” she said, breaking free of my grasp. The biscuit and the poisoned honey fell to the floor, but from her apron she drew out a knife. “Now I must gut you, when you could have done it easier. Poison isn’t so painful. A flush, a rash, a bit of stumbling and hallucination before you fade away…”

My hands flew up and away at the sight of the butcher knife, my heart thumping wildly. Even though I could scarcely think of anything but the sharpness of it, her words slowly penetrated through the haze of fear. The symptoms she was describing were the same as she’d suffered…

“Come to your senses, Brenna. The poison has destroyed your mind!”

She didn’t reply, but swiped with the knife. I shrieked and jumped back from the slash of her blade, throwing a chair down between us to stop her. And in spite of my fear, another realization struck me.

Assassins, she had said. Not assassin.

The laird had told everyone it was a lone assassin. Only me, Malcolm, and Ian knew differently. And I gasped, “By the blood of Christ, Brenna. You’re the traitor, aren’t you? You let those assassins into the castle to kill the laird. But why?”

“I did it for Ian,” she said, thrusting again with the knife, the tip catching the lace of my sleeve and tearing it open. “So he would become laird. He would never take it himself. He’s too honorable. Someone had to do it for him. I’m going to make him the laird of Clan Macrae, which he should have been from the start. When I do, he’ll see that your love is tawdry and cheap and for sale. But my love is true.”

“Your love is true?” I asked, in outrage, scrambling with my hands along the dressing table for something to use to defend myself. “You nearly killed him that night, did you know that? He was wounded fighting the assassins you let into the castle. That’s what comes of your love.”

“He shouldn’t have been anywhere near the laird’s chamber! I think it’s your fault he was. I don’t know how, but I have my suspicions. I know that the laird shares women, and I’ve heard you moaning like the whore you are in his rooms. I won’t let you corrupt an upright warrior like Ian Macrae.”

With that, she thrust her knife again and this time she struck true. I didn’t feel the blade go into my side—at least, it felt more like someone had punched me rather than stabbed me. But the warm gush of my own blood told me what had happened.

Another woman would have fallen to her knees with the pain, I suppose. But the dark games I played with the laird conditioned me to take pain and turn it to something else. Sometimes lust. In this case, fury.

And in my fury I struck Brenna so hard that stumbled. Her foot caught in the sticky honey on the floor. She fell, hard, the knife skittering out of her hand. I grabbed it up before she could rise. “Guards!” I screamed, wondering why I hadn’t thought to do it before. Perhaps it was the shock of it.

But Brenna was nothing if not wily. Apprehending her danger, she too began to scream for the guards. In fact, she staggered to her feet, then made for the door, shouting, “Help! I’ve found the traitor!”