Viola’s face scrunched, her lips curling in distaste. “Even if she knows her secret has been revealed and her groom may slaughter the only thing standing in the way of his conquest of her castle and lands?” Viola asked, her voice full of vindictiveness.

Cain’s gaze snapped away from the corridor to Viola’s face. Her eyes narrowed as she stared at Kenneth. The man’s mouth dropped open, and he turned to Cain, questions there that he could not speak.

Cain grabbed Viola’s arm. “No one knows about that but my close family.” His face turned lethal. “And somehow ye.”

His brothers now stood behind him, listening. Joshua had drawn his sword, his expression brutal as if he readied for war. War against whom? The Sutherlands? Ella? Viola?

Gideon was the first to speak. “How do ye know about Jamie Sutherland?”

Kenneth turned to him, his eyes wide. “How do ye know about Jamie Sutherland?”

Viola’s glare turned to panic as if she realized that she’d said too much. Cain shook her, bringing her face back to him. “What evil have ye planned, Viola?”

“Maybe ye should be asking your bride’s steward about planned evils,” she said, looking to Kenneth. “Did ye think I would not look in the bag ye sent to her, ye fool?”

Kenneth’s lips pressed firmly together as he stared at her, but Viola continued. “He sent up a vial of poison to Ella before the wedding,” she said. “Was your bride planning to poison the whole wedding party or only her new husband?”

Poison? To kill him. Pain tore through Cain. If not for his brothers there, Bàs and Joshua grabbing Kenneth’s arms and taking his sword, Cain would have roared. His nostrils flared as he inhaled. “To arms!” Cain yelled. “Find Ella!”

Down the aisle, his warriors grabbed the other Sutherland clansmen, disarming them as mothers dragged and shooed their children from the hall as if a battle was about to break out under the garlands of flowers. He turned back to the archway where Ella had run. Bloody hell. She wanted him dead?

…

Ella grabbed a dagger from her room and flew down to Cain’s bedchamber, sliding it into the hidden pocket through the inner petticoat of her gown.

In the bottom of the pocket, her knuckle bumped into the chess piece she had made as a wedding gift for Cain. She set it, tied in the handkerchief, on the chess table with a trembling hand where it wobbled and fell. It hit the white horse, and a small sob caught in Ella’s throat as they both fell over.

Cain distrusted her, and now she had slaughtered his pride before his entire clan by running away from the wedding ceremony.