Page 74 of Once Upon A Haunted Castle
Elizabeth nodded without meeting his gaze as he expected. He had brought her to heel long ago and she would not dare disobey him now. Cowed. Obedient. At his feet. Like his best hunting bitch but less useful now that she could no longer bear him children and had never given him the son he wanted.
They gathered in the tower and he inspected his daughter’s chamber alone first. Nothing was amiss here. No struggle had taken place. The bonds that had held his leman and the guard lay in a pile by the bed. Last night’s tray sat on the table, scraps and bits still in the bowls.
Something was missing. Surely. He glanced around the room slowly knowing that something would be a clue to what had happened. Ranald lifted and smelled the bowls. He could detect nothing unusual in what was left over. He reached out and lifted the pitcher of wine. It was empty.
Not only was it empty, it had been rinsed out.
Checking, he discovered the cups in the same condition.
Strange that. His daughter usually drank watered ale. The leman would drink wine, but never that much. And even a pitcher of wine would not have robbed the guard and the whore of their memories. Isabel had used something in the wine to make them sleep.
“Search her belongings.”
And they found nothing out of the ordinary—no potions or bottles that could cause such a sleep.
It took hours but Ranald left the chamber with more knowledge about the possibilities than when he entered it. In his experience, the truth would out in the end, but the middle needed to be filled with just the right amount of force, threats and pain. With the correct balance, most any hidden knowledge could be outed.
The most surprising thing he had learned was from Evanna. Though she would suffer for keeping it from him as long as she had, the whore revealed that his daughter thought she was carrying.
Which meant a man had dared to ruin his daughter.
So, the tidiness of her disappearance now made more sense to him and he knew she must have had help to get away. Who would be bold enough to do something like this? Who would defile his daughter and then take her from under his watch?
With the betrothal to a MacKinnon, they would not have done so and risk the dowry she would bring. That left only one other clan on the isle to consider—the MacDonalds. His family’s oldest enemy and the clan whose leader carried the title Lord of the Isles. Had that old bastard sent his nephew’s man in to ruin Ranald’s heiress? To insult him personally? To stir up a war between them or to reclaim lands lost to them? They were the only ones foolish enough or, possibly, strong enough to take on the MacLeods.
He would quietly send trackers south toward the MacDonald keeps and lands on Skye even while searching his own. They would find Isabel and those behind this. No one, especially not a MacDonald, played The MacLeod for a fool.
