Read Sue-Ellen Welfonder - [MacLean 02] for Free Online

overlaid with a subtle warning.
One Iain caught and understood.
His refusal to embark on such an endeavor would not be tolerated.
At his silence, Donall continued, “You’ll ken Dunkeld’s status as an important reliquary church. More Columban relics are sheltered within its walls than anywhere else in the land. A foster brother of our father once served as bishop there, and Da himself was a great benefactor—”
“Could you not choose a more distant place?” Iain cut in, his stomach turning over. He stared at his brother, disbelieving. “Dunkeld lies in the very heart of the mainland. I would need two full cycles of the moon even to near its boundaries.”
Donall gave him a hard look. “Time is not of essence. Nor the hardship of the journey,” he said. “Dunkeld is needy. The English, and the Disinherited, those landless Scottish lords who serve them, have repeatedly fallen upon the cathedral and its holdings in recent years. They’ve ransacked and stolen, burned orchards, and even cut down canons in their sleep.”
“Holy men, slaughtered whilst washing the feet of the poor!” Gerbert shook his head, clucked his tongue.
“So I am to lend them my sword arm?”
“Only if they fall under attack when you are there.” Glancing aside, Donall signaled to someone outside the open door, and, to Iain’s surprise, one of his brother’s younger squires entered the chamber, two leather satchels
clutched in his hands.
Two bulging satchels.
The red-cheeked lad deposited them at Iain’s feet before near stumbling over his own in a hasty retreat.
Iain cocked a brow. “You are so eager to see my back that you’ve packed for me?”
“Those”—Donall gestured at the satchels with his thumb—“are gifts.” He resumed his pacing, his hands clasped loosely behind his back. “Dunkeld has lost much to the marauders: silver cups and salvers, golden crosses, an illuminated manuscript with jewel-set bindings.”
Halting beside his wife, he slung an arm about her waist and drew her near. “The thieving dastards even helped themselves to the revered Cathbhuaidh, the ‘yellow battler,’ St. Columba’s own crozier.”
“And we are to replenish their empty coffers?”
Donall nodded. “Our own panoply of relics and treasures is vast enough for us easily to restore a portion of their lost wealth. In doing so, we can attempt to”—he paused to rub his forehead—“atone for the sacrilege you committed by setting fire to the chapel.”
Tight bands, cold as frozen steel, slid round Iain’s chest, clamping hard and stealing his breath. “You’d send them our greatest wealth? So I am granted remission of my sins?”
So you can reclaim the life you should have had.
The words, feminine and sweet, came close to Iain’s ear. Soft as a sigh, and in a voice hauntingly like Lady Isolde’s lilting voice, but his brother’s fair wife’s lips hadn’t moved.
Nor had she left her husband’s side.
And Amicia still fretted across the room, far too hampered by sniffles to form a coherent word. A chill lifting the hairs on his nape, Iain turned back to his brother, only to find Donall’s gaze resting on the precious reliquary in Gavin’s hands.
Iain looked at it, too. And the longer he did, the more the tiny casket seemed to glow and pulsate, its glittering gemstones staring at him like so many multihued eyes, each one brimming with accusation.
Brought back from the Holy Land by a distant forebear who’d gone on Crusade, the casket and the holy relic contained within had been in the MacLeans’ possession since time immemorial.
By all reckoning, two hundred years, if a day.
’Twas the clan’s greatest treasure.
And his father and every MacLean laird before him would return from their graves in protest if e’er it passed through Baldoon’s gates.
Some amongst the elders even claimed tragedy of untold proportions would be released if e’er it did.
“The tragedy has already come to pass,” Donall said, confirming Iain’s conviction that, at times, his brother could read minds. “A heavy