It was more than a purposely sheared linchpin on a carriage he was supposed to take to meet her the day she arrived. More than the fire that could have destroyed his entire east crop of barley. And more than the violence against his governess and the frightened pain he glimpsed in her eyes.
On top of everything, there was the way Jani looked at his daughter, or Andrew looked at Liam, or Gavin and Russell looked at Mena.
The banked fire in everyone’s eyes simmered with the risk of eventual combustion.
Except for her eyes … They held nothing but shadows.
“Everyone, it seems, is hiding something from me,” he said darkly, stepping toward her. Of all the secrets he felt haunting Ravencroft like erstwhile ghosts, he found he wanted to discover hers the very most.
At first he’d thought her features contorted in terror because he’d advanced toward her, but then the sounds of splintering wood preceded the deafening, unmistakable crash of a whisky barrel.
Liam lunged forward, grasping Mena around the waist and lifting her from the ground. He drove them both into the alcove between the shelves and the door, plastering her body against his as the four-hundred-and-fifty-pound barrel rolled past them with the cacophony of a herd of wild horses.
They stood like that for a moment, his arms on either side of her head. Their chests heaving together with frantic breath. God, but she was as soft as she’d been in his fantasies. Her lush breasts were yielding pillows against the hardness of his own chest. Every hair on his body rose, not just from the danger they’d survived, but the unexplainable electric sensation of her body against him. Beneath him, for all intents and purposes.
“Did ye see what happened?” he panted.
She stared at him with wide, moist eyes for a beat longer than she should have before they darted away and she shook her head. “It was all so fast.”
A panicked ruckus from the square told him that the barrel had rolled right out of the open doors and into the yard. It would pick up momentum down the yard, heading straight for …
Andrew.
Liam leaped away from Mena and bolted after it, dashing into the square and chasing it toward the open barrel fires. Nay, if it reached the flames with as much alcohol as was inside the barrel, the consequences would be as explosive as a barrel full of gunpowder.
Bellowing his son’s name, Liam lunged for the runaway barrel, ready to throw himself beneath it if need be to ensure his son’s survival. Others reached it at the same time, and between them they were able to grapple it into stillness inches away from the open-framed building where the fires burned.
Frantically searching the distillery yard, Liam called for Andrew, the need to cast eyes on his son first and foremost in his mind.
“Where is he?” he demanded of Thomas Campbell.
“I doona ken where he went, Laird.” Thomas stumbled out of the forge on unsteady legs, obviously shaken by how close he’d come to death. “He disappeared right after ye did.”
A sick fear lodged in his gut as Liam turned and rushed back toward the warehouse. Mena flattened herself against the door to get out of his way as he stalked past her to check the shadows and corners below the place where the barrel had landed.
No Andrew. He was safe. But as Liam inspected the shelf from where the whisky had fallen, one thing became staggeringly clear. The barrel had been pushed by someone. And if Liam hadn’t stepped toward Mena when he did …
It would have crushed him.
CHAPTER NINE
“Andrew?” Mena pushed open the door to Andrew’s bedroom only to find him bent over in the corner scrubbing the stones with a bucket and brush. “Whatever are you doing?”
“Miss Lockhart.” He scrambled to his feet and scowled at her. “What are ye doing in my room? Is my father with ye?”
Mena read something beneath the aversion in his voice. Anxiety, maybe, or guilt, as though she’d caught him doing something wrong. The farther she ventured into his chamber, the more concerned she became. It was done entirely in red and black, but for the goose down fluffs that now covered the floor and almost every other surface of the otherwise tidy room. They rolled across the stones and carpets in the slightest breeze caused by her skirts. The disemboweled corpses of his pillows lay strewn at the foot of his bed, and one or two hung limply by the wardrobe.
“There was an … incident at the distillery. Your father is dealing with it now,” she explained. She didn’t feel comfortable calling it an accident. Because she’d become certain that it wasn’t. She’d seen more than she’d let on. A figure in the darkness.
The Brollachan?
“Andrew. Tell me what happened here. Did you … did you do this?” Motioning to the chaos, she bent to pick up a shoe that appeared to have been torn apart. Just what was going on in this ancient keep?
“Aye. It was me.” He hadn’t moved from whatever he protected on the floor in the corner, though he regarded her with the frozen, unsure expression of a culpable party in a crime.
Heart squeezing with concern, Mena stopped at his writing desk, where charcoal renderings of dark shadows and red eyes stared up at her with spine-chilling familiarity. That shadow. She’d seen it before the ledge supporting the Scotch barrel had given way and nearly crushed Ravencroft. How terrible it was, to not trust your own eyes. Had Andrew seen the demon as well? Did he have something to do with this?
“Andrew, do you mind explaining to me—”
A commotion interrupted her. It came from the wardrobe, the heavy wood doors trembling as something pressed against them, struggling to be released. Was all this some kind of elaborate prank? Or something entirely more sinister?