“Is Grimm all right?” Jillian asked breathlessly. Her entire body ached in a most pleasurable way. Every move was a subtle reminder of the things he’d done to her, the things she’d begged him to do before the night had ended.
“Right as rain,” Hatchard replied dryly. “The animal was indeed rabid, but don’t worry, it didn’t manage to bite him.”
“Did Grimm kill it?” A rabid mountain cat could decimate an entire herd of sheep in less than a fortnight. They wouldn’t usually attack a man, but apparently Zeke had been small enough and the beast had been sick enough to try it.
“Yes,” Hatchard replied tersely. “He and Quinn are burying it now,” he lied with cool aplomb. There hadn’t been enough left to bury, but neither love nor gold could have persuaded Hatchard to tell Jillian that. He winced inwardly. Had the infected mountain cat bitten Zeke even once, the boy would have been contaminated by the ferocious animal’s blood sickness and died within days, foaming at the mouth in excruciating agony. Praise the saints Grimm had been there, and praise Odin for his special talents, or Caithness would have been singing funeral dirges and weeping.
“Zeke rode Occam all by himself,” Jillian marveled aloud.
Hatchard glanced up and smiled faintly. “That he did, and it saved his life, milady.”
Jillian’s expression was thoughtful as she headed for the door. “If Grimm hadn’t believed in the lad enough to try to teach him, Zeke might never have been able to escape.”
“Where are you going?” Hatchard said quickly.
Jillian paused at the entrance. “Why, to find Grimm, of course.” To tell him she was wrong to have doubted him. To see his face, to glimpse the newfound intimacy in his eyes.
“Milady, leave him be for a time. He and Quinn are talking and he needs to be alone.”
In a flash Jillian felt thirteen again, excluded from the company of the man she loved. “Did he say that? That he needed to be alone?”
“He’s washing up in the loch,” Hatchard said. “Just give him time, all right?”
Jillian sighed. She would wait for him to come to her.
“Grimm, I didn’t want to say anything before, but I paid that innkeeper a small fortune to get rid of the butcher,” Quinn said as he paced the edge of the loch. Grimm rose from the icy water, finally clean again, and scowled at the remains of the animal.
Quinn caught his look and said, “Don’t even start. You saved his life, Grimm. I won’t hear one word of your self-loathing for being a Berserker. It’s a gift, do you hear me? A gift!”
Grimm exhaled dismally and made no response.
Quinn continued where he’d left off. “As I was saying, I paid the man. If he didn’t get rid of the butcher, then I’m going to be heading back to Durrkesh to get some answers.”
Grimm waved his hand, dismissing Quinn’s concern. “Doona bother, Quinn. It wasn’t the butcher.”
“What? What do you mean, it wasn’t the butcher?”
“It wasn’t even the chicken. It was the whisky.”
Quinn blinked rapidly several times. “Then why did you say it was the chicken?”
“I trust you, Quinn. I doona know Ramsay. The poison was root of thmsynne. The root loses its poisonous properties if simmered, broiled, or roasted. It must be crushed and diluted, and its effect is enhanced by alcohol. Besides, I found the remainder of the bottle downstairs the next morning. Whoever it was wasn’t very thorough.”
“But I didn’t drink any whisky with you,” Quinn protested.
“You didn’t know you drank whisky.” Grimm gave him a wry, apologetic twist of his lips. “I dumped my final mug of whisky, poured from the drugged bottle, over the chicken to get rid of it because I was sick of drinking and getting ready to leave. The poison is odorless until digested, and even my senses couldn’t pick it up. Once it mixes with the body’s fluids, however, it takes on a noxious odor.”
“Christ, man!” Quinn gave him a dark look. “Of all the luck. So who do you think did it?”
Grimm studied him intently. “I’ve given that a lot of thought over the past few days. The only thing I can conclude is that the McKane have ferreted me out again somehow.”
“Don’t they know poison doesn’t work on a Berserker?”
“They’ve never succeeded in taking one alive to question.”
“So they may not know what feats one of you is capable of? Even they don’t know how to kill you?”