Page 20 of A Highlander’s Heart

Taken by surprise, she nodded at him.

The laird left her to eat her food. She assumed he was interested in information on Morgan, but he’d been in the healing hut before. However, this time, it seemed as though he wanted to speak about something he didn’t want Morgan to hear.

Her stomach twisted when the thought occurred to her that he might have made a decision about the warrior’s fate. Surely he wouldn’t put him in the dungeon after all her hard work. Her hunger—if she’d had any at all—seemed to disappear completely.

Then she wondered why she would care about the mon’s fate. He was just another patient.

As she stared at her food, she almost believed that.

*

Emma knocked on the laird’s solar door.

“Come in.”

She entered the room to see the laird sitting in his large, comfortable chair behind his massive desk. He waved at the wooden chair in front of it. “Please, Emma. Take a seat.”

She didn’t care for the look on the laird’s face. Pensive. Troubled.

Trying very hard not to wiggle like a young lass, she watched Daniel stand and move to look out the window. After a couple minutes, he swung around, and returned to his chair. He leaned both his forearms on the desk.

“A rider returned yesterday from Edinburgh.”

So many questions raced through her mind. Were Megan and Gregory in trouble? What of the warriors who went with them? Had the king denied Gregory’s marriage and given Megan to the Gunn?

It had been a while since Gregory and a group of men had left for Edinburgh to get Megan back, and now the look on his face made her quite nervous.

The laird released a deep sigh. “I’m sure ye are wonderin’ and I doona ken exactly what’s happening with Megan and the Gunn. I am sure we will have the whole story once she and Gregory return. It will probably be soon since the rider said they were behind him by a day or so.”

“So Megan was no’ taken from Gregory?”

“Nay, and as I said, none of us will have the full story until they return.”

She breathed a sigh of relief knowing that Megan and Gregory were safe and still together. However, it was apparent the laird was troubled. She waited—not too patiently—for the Mackenzie to continue.

“The information that the rider brought with him is that it was revealed at the hearing before the king that the Gunn and the Sinclair conspired together to have Sinclair’s nephew, Laird Robert Sinclair, killed in the border skirmish.”

Emma sucked in a deep breath. “Megan’s deceased husband?”

“Aye.”

Her heart pounded at the news. While she had seen the deep love between Gregory and Megan, it was still sad that her deceased husband had been purposely killed in battle.

Her attention went back to the laird.

Daniel took a deep breath and continued. “The king sent them to the dungeon to be hanged for their crime of conspiring to kill a laird.”

Emma thought for a moment. Then her heart skipped a beat and she licked her lips, her words coming out breathless even to her own ears. “Morgan Gunn is his uncle’s heir, which was why the mon was so determined to marry Megan Sinclair. He wanted to have a son to follow him.” She stopped for a minute to take a breath when she realized how all her words had run together.

“An’ that means Morgan Gunn, recovering right now in my healing hut, is laird of the Gunn clan.”

Chapter Eleven

Two days later, Emma entered the healing hut after having made her calls on the older patients who mostly wanted to talk and take the food she brought them.

The situation with Morgan had been going over and over in her mind since her conversation with Daniel. He hadn’t said anything else to her about it, but that was no surprise because as he’d said he wouldn’t know much more until Gregory and Megan returned.

One main question was since the Gunn and the Sinclair had conspired to kill Robert Sinclair, and had been sentenced to hang, what would Daniel do with her patient now?