Highland Dream (Book 1)

Chapter 45

AN - Hope you are enjoying the story so far. As this story will be finishing soon, I have started posting another. 'Silently Hunted', I'd appreciate if you could check it out. Thanks, enjoy...

Chapter 45

Camdyn ran. As he made his way thorugh the parting crowds, like the story of Moses and the red sea. His men seemed to sense the urgency and fell in behind him. He could not seem to go fast enough. Like a dream where no matter how fast and hard you run, you stay in the same place the whole time.

He thought back over what he knew of Iona. She was Minna’s cousin by their fathers. But her mother, her mother had been the bastard sister, of Toren. Not many knew that fact, he only knew it because his father had once told him before falling into a drunken stupor. It seemed blood was showing through. As a child she had always hung around him and his friends. Always in the background.

Then he thought to the time since he had brought Aislinn back to the Keep. She had been there the day of the mock battle. Introducing herself as a friend. Always one of the women in the groups that surrounded her. If he thought extremely hard, with the little oxygen he was receiving from his punishing run, he could remember something of the night of the posioning.

A flash of golden hair in his vision, just before Aislinn had started choking. There were others in the clan with such a colour, though most would have been with their husbands or serving further down in the main hall. Iona was one of the few Isla put to serving a the high table. Though that was usually on a rota, and he was sure it was not supposed to be her that night.

He thought of later, after the poisoning she was always asking after Aislinn. Was she asking to see if she had died? Would she have been glad of that? The poison Corey had told Hamish of was something that had to be treated with such care. And he remembered the female in rich clothing that had been spotted. With Minna’s access to the upper rooms, Iona would not have been out of place on the corridor if seen. She could claim she was looking for her cousin. And as Aislinn’s new friend, she could have said she ahd entered the wrong room. It was plausible for her to have taken soemthing from Larena’s extensive wardrobe.

It would not be, and was not missed. If it had been, then his sister would have kicked up enough fuss the whole village would have known about it.

Then there was the rumours. He remembered the tale of Iona being the one to apologise for the clan’s women. What a perfect way to deflect the root of the problem by being the one seen as sorting the problem out. Feeling guilty enough, or at least showing it, that no one would ever suspect her for being the cause.

Corey going missing. No one had really notcied. Now it made him think. If she had managed to start the rumour, with no one remembering who began them, then she could have been fully capable of trying to cover up Corey’s absences. She seemed to be blessed with a sliver tongue, which was to become the curse of the clan. Her family roots really were coming through now.