“I’m very sorry, my son.” The priest passed him by with two younger priests in training following him.

Several of the maids began wailing, the sound driving a stake through Gordon’s heart. He staggered, lacking the strength to cover the remaining distance to the bed.

How could she be gone?

“What are ye crying for?” The cook burst through the door, her hands full with a steaming pot. “Get out of my way, ye useless lack wits!”

“But the priest gave the mistress her last rites.”

The cook scoffed and kept moving toward the bed. “Well, that’s well and good, but no one’s dead yet so stop yer whining. I don’t abandon hope so quickly, else I might have sent half of ye back to yer mothers on the second day ye served in this house.”

The cook suddenly noticed him. “Good, a pair of hands that are strong enough to help me.”

“Help?”

“Aye.” The cook reached into the bed and whisked the covers away from Jemma. Her lips pressed into a hard line. “She’s too hot beneath all of this. Poor lass has enough to deal with without being smothered.”

The lack of bed coverings allowed him to set eyes on Jemma. He stared at her and watched her chest rise and fall. It was a shallow motion, barely noticeable, but it filled him with strength.

“Get out! Anyone who isn’t helping, get ye gone from this chamber!”

There was a flurry of motion toward the door. Several shrieks came from those trampled in the frantic crush of bodies trying to obey the laird’s commands. Gordon dismissed them from his mind. He ripped the bed clothing even farther away from his wife, throwing it toward the nuns.

“Gordon?”

He gasped, sitting heavily on the side of the bed. Jemma’s eyes were open just the tiniest amount. He reached out to grasp her hand.

“Aye, lass, I’m here.”

She nodded and opened her mouth, but nothing came out except a dry rattle of breath. Her face was the same color as her chemise and her lips bloodless.

“Sit her up now, Laird, as gentle as ye would a babe.”

Gordon realized that he was afraid to touch her. His hands shook, and he discovered he was grinding his teeth while he reached for Jemma. Her eyes remained on him, giving him the strength to slip his arms beneath her shoulders and raise her up.

“Now support her head. I forgot that ye have most likely never held a babe.”

“I hope to.” He shifted one hand so that it clasped Jemma’s neck. She felt too delicate, too small now. The woman who had wrestled with him had somehow vanished, and left in her place was this mere whisper of life. But it was the most precious thing he had ever felt. Gordon gathered her up, placing one of his bent legs behind her and sitting behind her to make sure she was steady.

“What do ye plan?”

The cook was stirring something into her pot. Steam rose from it and a bitter scent. He suddenly frowned. “And why don’t I know yer Christian name? Everyone calls ye Cook.”

“Because I detest me given name, but to say so would be to disrespect me father, so call me Cook. ’Tis a better name than the one I was baptized with, for sure.”

The cook pulled a small ladle from the waist tie of her apron and used it to measure out some of her brew into a pitcher. It was the smallest pitcher in the house, a pewter one used for serving cream.

“We need to help her drink, or she’ll be a ghost by tomorrow for sure.”

The cook gently placed the dimpled part of that pitcher against Jemma’s mouth and tipped just one spoonful of the fluid against her tongue. Gordon’s wife jerked and lifted her chin.

“Forgive me, Mistress, for I know ’tis a bitter concoction.”

The cook placed another measure of it in Jemma’s mouth, and this time she swallowed it. Gordon felt sweat trickle down the side of his face. Every muscle felt as though it was tight enough to snap. The cook kept placing spoonfuls of her brew inside his wife’s mouth until Jemma sighed.

“Better . . .” Jemma turned her head to rub against him before her eyes slid closed and her breathing became shallow. So shallow it sent fear through him once again.

“That will have to do for the moment.”

The cook stood up and blew out a long breath. Her eyes swept Jemma from head to toe, and her face became clouded with serious thought.

“That was an antidote?”

“It’s something I learned when I was a young woman, but I don’t know if it will be doing the job needed.”

Gordon gently laid his wife down and pulled up just enough sheet to cover her.

The cook continued. “Ye see, we don’t know what was used to poison her, so I don’t know if what I mixed up was what she needed or if it came too late. The mistress was working on the books, and no one knows how long she was ill before Ula discovered her. It’s possible that the evil person behind this has already done the wicked deed by stealing her away from us.”

Gordon felt a shiver go down his spine. Anger flashed through him like a spark through black powder. Rage exploded inside him, and the helplessness in his wife’s pale face only made that anger burn hotter.

“Anyon.” He snarled the word.

The cook’s eyes went wide, and horror clouded her face.

“Tell me, woman, why do you look like that?”

The cook wrung her apron with nervous hands. “I sent the girl to serve the mistress cider this morning. I thought it would impress upon her the place she needed to learn was hers. I never thought Anyon had evil in her heart.”

“That bitch tried to drown my wife earlier this week.”

“Lads fight and then they drink together when their tempers have cooled, Laird. I thought Anyon just needed a firm hand to teach her to be content with what God had given her. I never thought she’d turn to murder. It still baffles me; I’ve knelt in church beside her. How could that be—how could so much evil be right there and none of us see it?”

Gordon ground his teeth together. “I don’t know.” He forced himself to think, to make his mind work despite the rage burning in his gut.

“I don’t know, but I do know this. Someone did this foul deed and I am going to see them hanged for it.”

Chapter Ten

“The Baron Ryppon is on the road with his men.”

Gordon turned and followed Kerry up to the top of the wall. He looked through the spy glass and inspected the flags being carried by the men preceding the baron. Those flags danced wildly because Curan was riding hard. The horses were lathered, and his men were stripped down to only breastplate armor and helmet to lighten them.

“Allow them through!”

There was a hustle along the walls, his men filling the positions in spite of his order to allow the English force to enter. He couldn’t blame them for that, inviting an English party of knights inside the curtain wall would have most of his Scottish neighbors questioning his sanity.

He felt on the verge of losing his mind. He could feel the rage melting his principles until he was nothing but a savage willing to strike out at anything that might have been responsible.

That was not the way to trap the guilty. He knew it and was trying desperately to maintain his wits. Descending the stairs, he went to meet his friend. Desperate times called for equally desperate measures. There was no one in the castle he might trust. Whoever had poisoned Jemma was one of his own. It infuriated him, it sickened him, but it was the truth.

Curan was out of the saddle and moving quickly to meet him.

“She still lives.”

“I want to see her, now.”

Gordon grunted and turned with an English baron following him. His father was sure to rise from his grave tonight for the fact that he was making an English army welcome in his home, but that was a torment Gordon would gladly suffer if he gained what he desired.

Jemma.

That was it. He needed his wife and didn’t want to think about the very real fact that she might not live to see the next day.

Gordon held up a hand and pushed the chamber doors open slowly to keep them from making noise. Whispers came from inside where the nuns were still on their knees praying. They took shifts with their other sisters, an hourglass set on the bed to mark their allotted time.

“Send them out, Barras. We need to talk.”

“Aye.” Gordon crossed the room and stood near the bed. One of the sisters lifted her face. He pointed at her, and she looked at the hourglass.

“Go, Sister. My wife’s brother would be in private with his sister.”

The nun hastily crossed herself and grabbed the hourglass. “The English are heretics. You should keep them from her and save her soul.”

“That sounds as though you are judging me, Sister.” Curan stepped up closer to the bed and eyed the nun. She grabbed her fellow sister’s arm and pulled her off her knees.

“God will judge us all.”

“Yes, He shall.” Curan leaned forward with his response, and the nuns slipped on the floor because they tried to run so quickly. The chamber door burst open as they hit it hard. Curan shrugged.

“I seem to have forgotten how to deal with nuns.”

“I hear being raised in England has that effect.”

Curan knelt down, and his armor shifted and filled the chamber with the soft sounds of metal moving against metal. He sat his helmet aside and reached for his sister’s hand.

“Open the bed drapes, I need light.”

Gordon slid the drapes back to allow the afternoon light to illuminate the bed. Jemma’s breath was the only sound in the room, and it was far too faint. Her brother lifted her hand, tilting it so that the light fell on it.

“What are you looking for?”

“A blue tinge on the fingernails. It’s a sign of eastern poisons.” Curan continued to inspect his sister’s hand but finally gave a grunt of satisfaction. “There is none, and for that we should be grateful. The Moors brew poison that is deadly.”