She chuckled.

He cast her one of his hot, sexy, wolfish smiles.

He finished cutting open the rest of the boxes, and she started on the third one while he began separating the journals into piles. “Wait, I think these look like the very first. Calf skin leather. Very old. Earliest date.”

“Okay,” Colleen said, taking the precious journal in her hands and sitting on an embroidered rose-colored chair. “Why don’t you see if you can find anything around the time of your mother’s death? See if you can learn what Neda thought. Maybe the journal shortly after your father’s death also.”

The reading wasn’t easy. Colleen didn’t recognize some of the terms or the ancient way of spelling things or the old cursive handwriting. But then she came to the part about Uilleam and she said, “Ohmigod, Grant, he was courting her. She had lost her mate, who was Theodore’s father, my grandfather, Gideon Playfair, and then she had hired Uilleam as her manager when her other manager died. Her husband had hired the first manager.”

“So there was a manager even before Uilleam. How did the other manager die?”

“Accidental death. Fell off the cliffs while they were building the walls of the keep on the leeward side.” She glanced up at Grant, her skin crawling over the similarity to the other deaths.

“Convenient,” Grant said, still looking for the other journals.

“Yes, sounds like a tried-and-true method for getting rid of competition. Neda was really happy, talking about seeing Uilleam on walks and running with him as wolves in the woods, and then she didn’t write for several days. When she did, she said John MacQuarrie, scribe for the clan, had told her about discrepancies in the accounts.”

“Neda’s husband, Gideon, was supposed to have died on the battlefield. Was it true?” Grant asked.

“Clan battle, she says. Looks legit.”

“Aye, unless one of his clan stabbed him in the back and made it look like it was the enemy’s doing.”

“True,” she said.

“Here’s the one for the time period when my father died.” He handed it to her. “I’m still looking for the one when my mother died.”

Colleen read some from the first one he’d handed her, then said, “Nothing else in this one. Just a lot of praise for John and how glad Neda was that she had installed him as the new manager. Wait, okay, here is when he was murdered. She was horrified, swore it was Uilleam who had been behind the killings. She…yes, she’d had spies learn the truth. Then she sent men to hunt him down.”

“Good. Bastard.”

“Then she installed your father.” Colleen opened the journal that Grant had handed her. “Okay, she loved your father just as she had his mate, Eleanor. But when Robert died, Neda suspected foul play because it was too much like when Eleanor had died years earlier. She couldn’t learn who had done it.” Colleen skimmed through page after page after page. “Wait, here we go. She learned that Archibald’s father, Haldane Borthwick, had been visiting Theodore the day Robert died. She’d been away at her aunt’s sickbed and stayed for the funeral, then got word that Robert had fallen from the cliffs to his death. She was furious. Some had said he might have committed suicide. She didn’t believe it for a minute. You boys were away at college and she… Holy cow.”

“What?” Grant asked, setting down the journal he was holding and joining her. He rubbed her back as he looked over her shoulder.

“Neda learned Archibald’s father had killed Robert. She and Darby went to pay Haldane a visit. She killed him, she says. Haldane never expected her to do it, though Darby was there to aid her if she needed him to.”

Grant’s jaw dropped. “I can’t believe it. That’s why Darby would never say. We thought he’d gone missing for a day and done it and that Neda was away shopping. I never knew.” He let out his breath. “She was a remarkable woman.”

“I’m sorry,” Colleen said, taking Grant’s hand. “I wish I’d met her. Ever since I got here and learned so much about her, I’ve hated my father for ensuring I never saw her and hated myself for not seeing through the deception.”

“You couldn’t have known, lass,” Grant said, pulling her into his arms. “Come, let’s look at more of this later. I didn’t find the one for the time period when my mother died yet. But let’s take a break. Why don’t you tell me what you’re doing for your hen night.”

“Ha! That’s a secret,” she said, knowing he only mentioned it to keep her from feeling so sad about what had happened to his family and her own. “What about you and your bachelor party?”

“You think I would tell you about the stag party when you won’t tell us what you’re up to? Where are you having yours?”

She chuckled. “If I told you, you might crash it.”

The guys might think they would crash the girls’ party again, but she had every intention of the ladies storming the men’s affair.

Chapter 22

At dinner, Grant and Colleen noticed that Frederick, the lad who was taking care of the dogs, seemed upset about something. He kept avoiding looking at her—or at Grant.

Colleen suspected what the matter was, but wasn’t about to approach the boy. He needed to come to her and tell her what he’d done.

“He’s been avoiding you ever since we returned to Farraige Castle,” Grant said, seeing her look again in the boy’s direction.