"Ye still dinnae accept her," replied Nanty.
"Someone is trying to kill me, as this last attack proves, and she is the only reasonable suspect right now."
"If she wanted ye dead, then why did she risk her own life to save your worthless carcass?"
"What are ye talking about?"
"I thought ye said ye got your memory back."
"So, I did, or some it, but when I tumbled down that cliff I was knocked unconscious and didnae regain my senses until yesterday. When I first woke and saw her scratches and bruises, I thought she had helped to save me, but now I wonder why she would have been there at all. I cannae ken exactly what happened whilst I was senseless."
After studying Diarmot closely for a moment, Nanty related all Ilsa had done.
It was astonishing to think the small, slender Ilsa had achieved so much. Nanty was right to argue that someone who wanted him dead would not work so hard to keep him alive. Diarmot fought the urge to immediately exonerate Ilsa of all guilt. She could be a pawn in some devious plan her family had devised. Without one of them there to prod her, Ilsa had been unable to leave him to die. As an explanation for her brave act, it was rather thin, but he struggled to cling to it.
The return of his memory was certainly a relief, despite the remaining gaps, but it was obviously going to cause him some difficulty in holding fast to a necessary wariness. He wanted to believe in Ilsa as he had a year ago, wanted to return to that time of joy and peace, but his life was at stake. The only people he could allow himself to trust completely were his family.
"Ilsa didnae look badly injured," Diarmot said when Nanty completed his tale.
"Weel, she didnae fall off a cliff, did she?" replied Nanty. "As ye saw for yourself, she is bruised, scratched, and suffers a few aches and pains, but naught else. She slept from the time ye woke right through til this morning.
There is a stiffness to her movements, but she is up and working again."
"She hasnae come here and tis late in the afternoon."
"Mayhap she needs a wee rest from being insulted and accused by her own husband."
"Curse it, Nanty, someone is trying to kill me," snapped Diarmot. He tried to place his empty tankard upon the table by his bed, but the move ment needed proved too painful. "Thank ye," he muttered when Nanty moved to take the tankard and set it aside. "Ye refuse to admit that Ilsa and her kin have the most to gain from my death, yet ye offer me no other suspects," he said as Nanty retook his seat.
Nanty sighed, stretched out his legs, and rested his feet on Diarmot's bed.
"Ere Angus had to return to Alddabhach, we tried to find someone who might think his claim to Clachthrom was stronger than yours, but there is no one. This has been MacEnroy land for too long and we are the last of this branch of the MacEnroy tree, wee thing that it is. Sigimor, Tait, and I then wondered if it was one of your late wife's lovers, someone who blames ye for her death, believes the rumors."
"She died because she took a potion to rid herself of a bairn. She succeeded in that sin, but the bleeding couldnae be stopped. Ilsa told her brothers that when they heard the rumor that I had killed her. Gillyanne and Connor heard the tale, too. Twas nay my bairn," Diarmot reassured his shocked brother. "I hadnae touched her for near to a year."
"Ye hid that truth from us, didnae ye."
"Aye. Nay sure why. The whole world and its mother kenned she was a whore."
He grimaced. "Mayhap twas because she was dead and there was no reason to blacken her name any further."
"Nay, but that kindness has kept the rumors alive and may have led someone to believe ye killed her, poisoned her. Mayhap the one whose child she was carrying. Mayhap he kenned there was a bairn and blames ye for that death as weel. I dinnae believe tis anyone here at Clachthrom. We certainly havenae found any suspects. Tait and Sigimor are hunting the men who attacked ye this time.
They might tell us something useful."
Diarmot sighed and slumped against the pillows piled up behind his back.
"Anabelle couldnae e'en guess who fathered the bairn. It could have been any one of a dozen men from a dozen places."
"The truth doesnae have to matter. Tis only what some fool believes that must be considered. If some mon was enthralled with her, thought her his love and he hers, he could seek to avenge the deaths of his love and their bairn."
"I cannae believe any mon could be so witless. Anabelle shed the sweet guise she wore to catch me in her net within a month after we were wed. The first time I caught her with another, she ceased to play that game. Tis why I cannae be certain wee Alice is my bairn. Anabelle was faithful to no mon and ne'er pretended to be."