One bed over, Ramsay rumbled assent. “Don’t let her make us sleep anymore, man. My head is splitting from that crap and my tongue feels as if some wee furry beastie crawled in, kicked over on its back, and died there. Three days ago. And now it’s rotting—”
“Enough! Do you have to be so descriptive?” Quinn made a face of disgust as his empty stomach heaved.
Grimm raised his hands in a gesture of assent. “No more mandrake. I promise. So how are you two feeling?”
“Like bloody hell,” Ramsay groaned. “Light a candle, would you? I can’t see a thing. What happened? Who poisoned us?”
A dark expression flitted across Grimm’s face. He stepped into the hallway to light a taper, then lit several candles by the bedside and returned to his seat. “I suspect it was meant for me, and my guess is the poison was in the chicken.”
“The chicken?” Quinn exclaimed, wincing as he sat up straight. “Didn’t the barkeep bring it? Why would the bar-keep try to poison you?”
“I doona think it was the barkeep. I think it was the butcher’s attempt at revenge. My theory is that if either of you had consumed the entire basket, you would have died. It was intended for me. But the two of you split it.”
“That doesn’t make any sense if the butcher meant it for you, Grimm,” Quinn protested. “He’d seen you in action. Any man knows you can’t poison a Ber—”
“Bastard as ornery as myself,” Grimm roared, drowning out Quinn’s last word before Ramsay heard it.
Ramsay clutched his head. “Och, man, quit bellowing! You’re killing me.”
Quinn mouthed a silent “sorry” at Grimm, followed by an apologetic whisper: “It’s the lingering effects of the mandrake. I’m stupid right now.”
“Eh? What?” Ramsay said. “What are you two whispering about?”
“Even between the two of us we didn’t even eat all the chicken,” Quinn continued, evading Ramsay’s query. “And I thought the innkeeper dismissed the butcher after that incident. I asked him to do it myself.”
“What incident?” Ramsay asked.
“Apparently not.” Grimm ran a hand through his hair and sighed.
“Did you get his name?” Ramsay asked.
“Who? The innkeeper?” Quinn gave him a puzzled look.
“No, the butcher.” Ramsay rolled his eyes.
“Why?” Quinn asked blankly.
“Because the bastard poisoned a Logan, you fool. That doesn’t happen without recompense.”
“No vengeance,” Grimm warned. “Just forget it, Logan. I’ve seen what you do when you focus on vengeance. The two of you came out of this bungled attempt unharmed. That does not justify murdering a man, no matter how much he might deserve it for other things.”
“Where’s Jillian?” Quinn changed the subject quickly. “I have these foggy memories of a goddess hovering over my bed.”
Ramsay snorted. “Just because you think you were making some progress before we were both poisoned doesn’t mean you’ve won her, de Moncreiffe.
Grimm winced inwardly and sat in pensive silence while Quinn and Ramsay argued back and forth about Jillian. The men were still at it some time later and didn’t even notice when Grimm left the room.
Having spent the early hours of dawn with Quinn and Ramsay, Grimm checked in on Jillian, who was still sleeping soundly as he’d left her, curled on her side beneath a mound of blankets. He longed to ease himself into bed beside her, to experience the pleasure of waking up to the sensation of holding her in his arms, but he couldn’t risk being seen leaving Jillian’s chambers once the castle roused.
So, as morning broke over Caithness, he nodded to Ramsay, who’d managed to stumble down the stairs in search of solid food, whistled to Occam, and swung himself onto the stallion’s bare back. He headed for the loch, intending to immerse his overheated body in icy water. The completion he’d experienced with Jillian had only whetted his appetite for her, and he was afraid if she so much as smiled at him today he would fall on her with all the slathering grace of a starved wolf. Years of denied passion were free, and he realized he possessed a hunger for Jillian that could never be sated.
He nudged Occam around a copse of trees and paused, savoring the quiet beauty of the morning. The loch rippled, a vast silvery mirror beneath rosy clouds. Lofty oaks waved black branches against the red sky.
Strains of a painfully off-key song carried faintly on the breeze, and Grimm circumvented the loch carefully, guiding his horse past sinkholes and rocky terrain, following the sound until, rounding a thick cluster of growth, he saw Zeke hunched near the water. The lad’s legs were tucked up, his forearms resting on his knees, and he was rubbing his eyes.