But at the door of The Reivers, Drummond stopped, putting out his hand cautiously to touch the latch.

He’d seen her only that morning, she’d surely do nothing so rash—it wouldn’t save Fiona—

The latch lifted, and his heart began to thud.

She had the other key—

Kicking off his shoes, he swung the door open, tensed for whatever stood behind it. What if there were the two of them here—what if she had shot him? They’d hang her too!

Nothing happened. There was nothing in the darkness.

He listened intently, begging the silence to talk to him, to tell him if one person—or two—had come here. . . .

No sound except for his own breathing, and the blowing of the rain against his back. The wind was picking up a little; he could feel it across his shoulders.

Making his way into the entry, he moved forward one step at a time, soft-footed in his stocking feet. The hair on the back of his neck standing on end, his eyes wide against the pitch-blackness, concentrating on the stairs just ahead of him.

But it wasn’t dark enough here—

Another step. On his wet skin he could feel the air from the open door that led from the family’s quarters into the side of the bar.

It had been closed before—he’d closed it when he fed the white cat.

Stretching out his hand, he could feel the frame of the door. Moving cautiously, he leaned forward to stare into the bar.

For an instant he thought he heard a word spoken softly.

A white smudge on the floor at the far end of the bar— The cat, then.

He took another step, unsure where the voice had come from, and in the same instant, his toe nudged something blocking the threshold, immovable, nearly tripping him up.

Startled, Drummond dropped swiftly to his knees, praying hard now.

“Don’t let it be her—please, God—”

His fingers found the rough fabric of a man’s overcoat.

A sudden gust of wind and rain blew into the open doorway behind him, shaking him, crouched and defenseless there. He flinched away.

Even as he realized that it was only the rain, his heart seemed to choke him, rising in his throat like a stone.

He reached for the coat again, found an arm—the warm blood soaking a shoulder—a face. Trying hard to find a pulse, he thought, She has shot him—not herself.

But his fingers touched the blade and then the handle of a knife instead. Protruding grotesquely from the throat.

Someone spoke.

Drummond jerked to his feet, and then saw in the pale square of light from a window that someone sat in a chair twenty feet away.

“Madelyn?” Drummond called softly, unconsciously using her given name as he’d done when she was a child. “What’s been done, then? Are you hurt?”