As he leaves, he knows one thing with absolute certainty.
Losing the castle will break him.
But letting Isla go?—
What is it about this woman, her long red hair, her emerald eyes sharp with emotion and fire, eyes too much like Keir’s, that makes him wary and wanting in equal measure?
Chapter9
The castle doesn’t sleep, but it watches.
Isla feels it the moment she steps into the corridor, the air cool and faintly damp, stone breathing in slow, patient rhythms.Morning light slants through narrow windows, catching dust motes and turning them into drifting constellations.Somewhere deeper in the castle, a door closes.Footsteps echo and fade.
After yesterday, she had spent time in her room, relaxing and trying to decide what she hoped to accomplish while she was here.This morning, she knew and was going to begin her search in earnest, but first, she had to learn the castle.
Didn’t she deserve to know if her mother’s version of her father was correct?Maybe she could find the divorce papers and see if there was any information about why her father chose never to see her again.
She hasn’t seen Callum this morning.That should be a relief.
Instead, it leaves her unsettled, as if something unfinished is humming beneath her skin.The absence sharpens into an edge she hasn’t felt in years, not nerves, not fear.
Defiance.
And something more dangerous.
Desire.
It unsettles her that her body noticed him before her mind caught up.That it answered him without permission, without logic.She doesn’t understand why it chosehim, this man who stands in her way, who challenges her footing in a place that already feels unsteady.
Maybe it’s because men have always come second in her life.
Because boyfriends were rare, brief, and never quite fitting.Most men lost interest once they realized she belonged to the piano, that hours at the keys weren’t a phase but a devotion.That her life was measured in rehearsals and flights, in performances that demanded more than constancy ever could.
She had learned, quietly, not to expect much from them.
And now this man, this infuriating, guarded, impossible man, has awakened something she thought she’d trained herself out of needing.
That realization unsettles her far more than his absence ever could.
She told Callum she would search, and he offered her his help, though she wasn’t certain he meant what he said.She told her mother she would search.She told herself that if she stayed in this castle and did nothing but play music and sleep badly, then her mother would still be right, this would all be indulgence.Emotion.Chaos.
Truth requires action and she intends to find that missing puzzle of her life.Her father and why he never visited her.
Isla stops outside a door she recognizes only because she’s passed it twice already.
Keir’s private study.
Not the conference room near the main hall, the tasteful room lawyers like to gesture toward.This one sits deeper in the castle, down a narrower corridor, its door darker, more worn.The handle is polished smooth from years of use.
Her pulse kicks.
This isn’t accidental anymore.
She reaches for the handle.
The door isn’t locked.
It opens with a faint protest, hinges whispering like they disapprove.
