“Aye.” He nodded calmly. “His father and mine were brothers, but mine was the younger. That small fact cut me out from inheriting. So long as Duncan lived.”

Iliana shook her head at his deliberate misunderstanding of her meaning. “His father took you in. He raised you alongside his own children. He—”

“Tossed us crumbs from his table,” Allistair inserted coldly. “It was charity and we were never allowed to ferget that.”

“Surely Duncan and his father would never—”

“Oh, they never said as much. But others did, and the great Dunbars let us ken in other ways. Fer instance, Duncan and Seonaid, as children of their father, had rooms o’ their own in the castle. Do ye ken where we slept?”

Iliana blinked at that. “Nay.”

“In Giorsal’s cottage. She was our mother’s sister and we lived with her. Oh aye, we took all our meals with the great laird and his wondrous children, but we were not good enough to sleep under his roof with them.”

Iliana blanched and shook her head in confusion. That did not sound like the Angus Dunbar she knew.

“Ye don’t believe me.” He smiled slightly. “Well, ye can be askin’ yer wondrous husband about it when he gets here.”

“Gets here?” Iliana’s eyes widened in alarm.

“Aye. I told ye ye weren’t the target and yer not, not fer me and not fer Greenweld. ’Tis yer mother and Duncan who are really the ones we would see dead. ’Tis just unfortunate ye got in the way. And that ye ken too much.”

Unwilling to consider the meaning behind his words, Iliana ignored them and muttered, “Duncan will not come.”

“Aye. He will. When he gets to Colquhoun he will find out the message was a fake. If he doesn’t get hisself killed by attacking the Colquhouns without reason, he shall return. When he does, it’ll be to find ye’ve been taken. He’ll come fer ye.”

“Nay.” Iliana shook her head.

“Aye. I ken me cousin. He’ll come fer ye.”

“If ye heard so much that night at the table, then you also heard that all is not well between my husband and myself. The reason he was not in our room the night you came for him was because he was with his mistress—”

“Aye. Kelly’s also my mistress,” he told her with amusement, giving a name to the faceless woman her husband had gone to that night. “Another one o’ the great Dunbar crumbs that I’m allowed to feed on. I ken he was with her that night. She told me all about it. It seems ye’ve ruined him. He couldn’t mount her no matter her tricks.”