Spotting Thomas running, Bàs jogged out from a group of men he was working with in an adjacent field. He halted next to Ella as Thomas reached them, his face red above his bushy beard. “He is gone, the cell…relocked, but he is not in it,” he yelled between pauses to draw breath.

“Hew Mackay is missing?” Cain asked, his gaze scanning the fields above them. “How long?”

“Last meal of turnips and bread was at dusk last night,” Thomas said. “I went down just now and saw a lump under his blankets.” He stopped to draw in more air. “Made to look like a sleeping man, but I noticed the key was oddly hung on the spike across from the door. The door was locked again when I pushed on it, but I went inside to investigate.”

“Good attention to detail,” Ella said, making Thomas’s shoulders relax, and he finally slowed his breathing.

“Continue,” Cain said, and the man’s eyes went wide.

“I pulled back the blanket on the bed to see that he was indeed gone,” Thomas finished. “His food from last night was eaten, and his piss pot was—”

“Lead a group of ten warriors to Varrich Castle,” Cain said to Bàs. “If the bastard shows his face, demand his surrender or the cost I determined for his freedom.” He looked to Ella. “The bride price that ye forfeited.”

“They will capture or kill your men,” Ella said, caution in her voice. It warmed him. Did she no longer see Sinclairs as the enemy? Could one night in Heaven do that?

“Not with Bàs leading them,” Cain said, his gaze turning to his lethal brother. Just like himself and his other two brothers, Bàs had been trained from the cradle how to win against all odds. He used perfected skill, intimidation through reputation as the harbinger of death, and clever strategy to predict enemy maneuvers and response.

Bàs gave a nod, and Cain turned back to Ella as his brother jogged toward his practicing men. “He knows not to enter the castle gates without our armies surrounding the place. We need to know if Mackay is hiding or flaunting his escape.”

“Maybe he will send out the recompense,” Ella said, though the heaviness in her eyes spoke her thought that Hew Mackay wouldn’t give in so easily.

“Thomas,” Cain said, without taking his gaze off Ella.

“Aye, chief?”

“Determine how Mackay left his cell with a key that was two yards away.”

“Aye,” Thomas said and hurried back toward the keep.

Ella’s eyes opened larger as she came to the obvious conclusion. “He had help,” she said low. “From within Girnigoe.”

Her surprise, even without the knowledge that she’d never left his awareness through the festival and all night long in his bed, told him that she wasn’t involved. Her fury at her once-betrothed during the oath ceremony had not been an act.