Page 52 of Her Magnificent Mistake
“On your head. The thing you wear on your head to keep the sun and rain off your face. A fookinghat, Bull.”
“First of all,” he said, managing to sound affronted, “I wear a hat to keep my coiffure from becoming mussed. If it becomes afookinghat, then I’m fooking incorrectly.”
She smacked his shoulder. “Where is your hat, you idiot?”
“Second of all…” He glared at her as he rubbed the spot she’d hit. “How should I know? My head is pounding, my mouth is dry, and my sister is screeching at me.”
Gabby rushed to pour him a cup of water. “He was wearing it when Artrip dragged him in. Perhaps during whatever happened, it fell off, Bull was injured, and Artrip plopped it back on again before he brought him back?”
Taking the cup from her cousin, Marcia struggled to lift Bull’s head with the other hand so she could help him drink. “Where is it? Which one was it?”
As her brother sipped, Gabby hummed and glanced around the room. “It must be here somewhere. I remember it was gray, with a small brim.”
Ask my valet to find my gray hat with the smaller brim—that brown one I wore last time I climbed the burn is too big…
Marcia jerked, remembering Hawk’s words from earlier in the day when he’d invited her to Pook’s Glen. “Oh no.”
“Marsh!” Bull sputtered, and she glanced down to see she was dribbling water across his face.
“Sorry,” she murmured, dropping his head—heOoofedfor emphasis, she was certain—and straightening. “I need to see that hat.”
Gabby was just turning back to her, holding a man’s hat before her. “Found it! There’s blood on the band.”
Thrusting the half-full glass at Bull, Marcia eagerly grabbed the hat.
Aye, itwasgray and small-brimmed.
And today, as they’d climbed the burn, Hawk had been wearing another gray hat—he’d made a joke about mischievous fairies when he’d knocked it off accidentally.
Holding her breath, Marcia turned the hat over in her hands.
There was blood on the inner band. Bull had been wearing it when he’d been injured.
If he’d fallen, the hat would have fallen offbeforehe’d hit his head, surely?
What had happened out there in Pook’s Glen?
“I do not think this was an accident,” she whispered. Marcia slowly lifted her eyes to her brother. “I think someone was trying to hurt you.”
Bull’s gray gaze had gone hard. “But Hawk was withye.”
“I know,” she breathed. Lifting the hat, she positioned it as if it were on top of a person’s head. “If you were wearing this when someone attacked you, it would explain why there was blood on the inside of the hat.”
Gabby, who was still standing nearby, reached out and adjusted Marcia’s hold so the hat was tipped a bit backward. “If he was wearing it pushed back on his head a bit more, the bloodstains would line up with his injury.”
“I wouldnever,” Bull murmured in an affronted tone, reaching out to pinch her hip. “Despite what that twin brother of yers might tell ye, a man’s hat isnae merely utilitarian; it’s a fashion statement.”
Marcia slowly nodded as she readjusted the hat to sit properly on the nonexistent forehead in front of her; her older brothertookfashionseriously, he always had. A thought—a horrible, wonderful thought—had been ricocheting around her mind for the last few moments. Now she took a deep breath…
And cocked her hands back, so the hat was at a forty-five degree angle, and her invisible, imaginary Bull—who was of course wearing his hat correctly—was looking upward.
Judging from Gabby’s sharp inhalation, she understood.
“If Bull was looking upward when he was struck, the blood and the injury would line up,” the other woman announced slowly. Her fingers brushed over the hat’s brim, and then Gabby tipped her head back to stare up at the ceiling, as if she could see whatever Bull had been looking at during the moment of impact.
“I told ye I dinnae trip and fall,” Bull muttered. “I’m no’ as clumsy as Hawk. So what happened?”
“You were attacked.” Marcia dropped her hands—and thus the hat to her lap—and took another deep breath. “And I think I know why.”
