Page 68 of Highlander of Steel
“I’d like to see the prisoner, and I’d like to see me braither, if ye please,” she said with cold politeness.
Her father scoffed. “Ye’ve nay chance of seein’ the prisoner. As for yer braither, he’s still out there.” He gestured broadly at the gates. “Seems it took the messenger longer to return than it took the recipient.”
So, he delivered the box.
Paisley hadn’t mentioned who had left the box, but Ailis should have known it was her brother, doing her father’s bidding as always. There wasn’t anything Murdock wouldn’t do if their father commanded it.
Her hand slipped into her pocket, closing around the lock of Skye’s hair.
“What did he do to me niece?” she bit out.
Her father tilted his head, his long gray hair fluttering in the autumn wind, his brown eyes glinting with something she couldn’t decipher. “I daenae ken anythin’ about yer niece. The less I have to do with that useless lassie, the better. Aye, the sooner yer braither remarries and sires some sons, the better.”
That useless lassie?
Anger simmered in Ailis’s veins like a pot of rendered fat about to explode and scorch everyone who had the misfortune of being too close.
Was that also what Murdock thought? That his daughter was useless? Is that why he had cut her hair and used her as a threat? To gainsomebenefit from having a daughter?
After all, their father had wanted Ailis out of MacNairn hands, and Murdock knew better than anyone that Skye was her weakness.
“What sort of faither would threaten his own child?” she asked with an eerie calm that surprised even her. A weighted question with more than one target.
She forced herself onto her feet, elbowing the first soldier who tried to reach for her. Her father’s little hand gestures held them back as she produced the lock of hair from her pocket.
“I suppose ye’re goin’ to tell me that ye didnae ken thatthiswas part of me weddin’ gift?” she snarled. “Where is she, Faither? What has Murdock done to her? What other bits was he plannin’ to hack off if I didnae come runnin’, eh?”
The soldiers all around the courtyard and up on the battlements shifted uncomfortably. Some returned to their duties, otherspretended to be busy, and more merely looked away. Anything to avoid listening in on the family quarrel.
“How dare ye accuse yer braither of harmin’ his flesh and blood?” her father hissed. “Aye, she might be worthless, but she’s still an Ainsley, a Lyall, which is more than can be said for ye.”
Ailis met his fierce gaze head-on. “I dare accuse him because he had done it before. He tried to killme,sowhy nae try to kill his own daughter? Och, if he could’ve gained somethin’ by cuttin’ off a piece of me, he’d have had his knife out and sharpened before ye could finish givin’ the order!”
Her father’s face contorted, shifting through a carousel of emotions, each graver than the last: confusion, outrage, scorn, among others.
“If ye mean because he often locked ye in yer room at me command after ye’d done somethin’ wretched, then?—”
“Nay, Faither, that isnae what I mean,” she interrupted, breathing hard.
Frankly, she was terrified. She was finally standing up to her father, and she knew she had to get all of her words out before her courage abandoned her.
“I can nay longer pretend that me nightmares are a memory,” she continued at a clip. “Someone threw me into the sea andheld me under until I couldnae breathe. Someone didnae expect me to survive, or they were interrupted while they were drownin’ me, and Murdock is the only one I remember bein’ there. I heard his voice before he conveniently ‘found’ me. He told me I should never have been born.”
Her father had fallen silent, as had the rest of the courtyard. Maybe some of them recalled that awful day. Maybe they had scraped it from their memories, just as she had tried to do.
Only, for her, it had crept back in like the tide itself, transformed into a pervasive and perpetual nightmare. Her mind desperately trying to tell her in the only way it could that something terrible had happened to her.
“I daenae remember that,” her father said at last, his voice almost soft.
“Well,Ido.” Ailis took a shaky breath. “Maybe he blamed me for Maither’s death—I daenae ken. But I can nay longer pretend that he didnae do it, and I can nay longer pretend that Skye is safe anywhere near him. Let me see me niece.”
Her father studied her for a moment, a deep furrow in his wrinkled brow. He didn’t tolerate anyone giving him orders, least of all his youngest daughter, and especially not in front of his men. Yet, there was an unusual hesitation in his expression that she hadn’t seen before. Ordinarily, he punished her without delay for nothing at all.
“Very well,” he muttered as he turned around and walked back to the main doors of the castle.
“Wait!” Ailis called out, certain she was on the brink of overstepping, but she didn’t care.
Her father paused, his back to her.
