Leona looked at Rufus, who’d gone pale. She reached out and squeezed his hand. “It’ll be all right.”
“Will it?” he whispered.
Before she could answer, the door opened.
“The Laird will see ye now,” the guard announced.
Murdock sat in his daughter’s room, a book of Highland tales open on his lap, and tried to focus on the words. Skye was curled against his side, her small body warm and solid, her dark hair tickling his arm. She’d insisted on a story before bed, and he’d found himself unable to refuse her.
He could never refuse her.
“And then the selkie said—” he read, his voice rougher than he had intended.
“Faither?” Skye interrupted, tilting her head to look up at him. “Do selkies really exist?”
“The stories say they do.”
“But do ye think they do?”
Murdock considered the question. His daughter had an uncanny ability to ask things that had no simple answers. “I think the world is stranger than we ken, wee one. So, maybe they exist.”
Skye seemed satisfied with that. She snuggled closer, and Murdock felt something tight in his chest ease slightly.
This. This was what mattered. Not wars, not politics, not the machinations of ambitious men. Just this small girl, who looked at him like he hung the stars, who somehow loved him despite everything he was.
A knock at the door interrupted them.
“Enter,” Murdock called, irritation sharpening his voice.
A maid appeared, looking apologetic. “Forgive the intrusion, me Laird. But ye have visitors.”
Murdock’s jaw tightened. “Visitors? Who?”
“Lady Leona Gilmore and her brother, me Laird. They’re asking to see ye.”
For a moment, Murdock couldn’t process the words. Lady Leona Gilmore. Here. At his castle.
Impossible.
“I’ll be right there,” he said, his voice coming out flat.
He rose slowly, ignoring Skye’s disappointed sound. “I’ll finish the story later, lass.”
“But Faither…”
“Later,” he repeated, more firmly.
He followed the maid through the corridors, his mind racing.
What was she doing here? He’d left her at Kerr Castle. Had walked away. Their business was concluded.
This is where we part, lass. Told ye ye willnae have to marry him.
As he rounded the corner into the entrance hall, he saw her.
Leona Gilmore stood in the middle of his hall, covered in road dust, her hair a wild tangle around her face, a hissing black cat in her arms. She looked exhausted, fragile, and somehow more beautiful than he remembered.
Their eyes met, and he felt something jolt in his chest. Something he immediately crushed down and buried.
