I forced myself to move, to leave the bed where we’d found such brief joy. My legs trembled as I stood, the cold air raising goosebumps on my naked skin. I reached for my discarded shift and gown, my hands shaking so badly I could barely manage the laces. Twice I had to stop, pressing my palms against my eyes to stem the fresh flow of tears.
“What did ye expect?” I muttered, yanking at a stubborn knot in my laces. “That he would understand? That he would believe ye?” My voice rose with each question, sharp with self-recrimination. “That he would forgive yer lies and take ye in his arms again?”
The empty room offered no answers, only the echo of my own bitter words. I gave up on the laces halfway, leaving them loose as I paced the length of the chamber, my bare feet slapping against the cold stone floor. Each step was punctuated by a new recrimination.
“Ye should have told him from the beginning.” Slap. “Ye should nae have come here at all.” Slap. “Ye should have stayed with yer own clan, accepted yer fate.” Slap.
But even as I berated myself, I knew I could not truly regret coming. For all the pain of this moment, there had been joy too in helping Bess and Guinn, in watching Munro begin to reconnect with his daughters, in the way he’d looked at me last night as if I were something precious rather than cursed.
And now it was all ash. He didn’t want me in his bed. He did not want me near his daughters. He would likely send me away, and I loved him. Losing him was worse than any curse.
I sank onto a chest against the wall, burying my face in my hands. “What am I to do?” I whispered to the empty room. No sounds came, and that scared me the most. Was my curse broken? I didn’t want it to be that way, because I wanted to talk to Isabella about Munro. “Isabella!” I cried out.
No answer came. The silence was complete. And as my desolation intensified, so did the belated faith that the curse had never been a punishment. It was a gift, a responsibility, and I had been careless with it. The thought was so startling that I caught my breath. I had helped one ghost. In all the hundreds who had tried to reach me, I’d aided one.
A certainty burrowed into my bones. I had to listen to them all. Help them all. To hear Isabella, to get her truth for Munro, I had to listen to them all to prove I was worthy. “I’m listening,” I whispered into the silence. “I will help ye. I will help ye all.”
A dozen voices erupted at once, a cacophony of pleas that I vowed to answer one by one.
Chapter Fifteen – Munro
I stormed into the solar, rage burning through my veins like fire. The door slammed against the stone wall with a crack that echoed my fractured trust. My boots pounded against the floor as I strode forward, each step fueled by the betrayal still fresh in my mind. Murieall’s confession sang in my ears, drowning out all else. I needed something, anything, to focus my fury upon before it consumed me entirely.
Uncle Gordon hunched over a large oak table in the center of the room; his fingers splayed across parchments covered with training schedules and maps of our lands. His head jerked up at my entrance, thick brows rising in surprise.
“Nephew,” he said, straightening his spine. “Ye look like ye’ve wrestled with the devil himself and lost.”
I ignored his comment, striding to the table and snatching up one of the parchments. The tight, precise handwriting detailed new training regimens for my warriors. I stared at the proposed drills that would exhaust even the strongest men, and then I glanced over the list of punishments for failures that seemed unnecessarily harsh. My jaw clenched as I scanned the document.
“What’s the meaning of this?” I demanded, slapping the parchment back onto the table. “These training schedules would break our men. Sword work followed archery, then wrestling until dusk? And for what purpose?”
“These are just some thoughts I had for strengthening our forces,” he said. “The MacDougalls have been growing bolder at our western border, and—”
“I’m well aware of our neighbors,” I cut in. “My men already train harder than most in the Highlands. This—” Ijabbed a finger at the parchment, “—this is nae training. It’s punishment.”
“Perhaps they need some hardening,” he replied. “In times like these, warriors grow soft without proper challenge. I was merely planning to suggest these changes to ye later today.”
“Suggest?” I arched a brow, my gaze falling to several other documents beneath the training schedule. There were orders for new weapons and reassignments of men from their regular posts. All were signed with my uncle’s name, where mine should have been. “Ye seem to have moved well beyond suggesting, Uncle.”
He waved a dismissive hand. “Just preparations, Munro. Nae anything I would implement without yer approval, of course.”
The casual way he dismissed my authority pricked at a wound already raw from Murieall’s betrayal. “I’ve always been proud that our men are nae bloodthirsty,” I said, defending my warriors’ moral character. “They fight when needed, protect what’s ours, but they do nae seek violence for its own sake. These methods—” I tapped the parchment again, “—would change that. Make them harder, aye, but at what cost to who they are?”
Uncle Gordon folded his hands on the table before him. “Sometimes a laird must make difficult decisions for the greater good,” he said carefully. “Decisions that might seem harsh in the moment but serve a higher purpose.”
“And ye believe ye ken what’s best for my clan better than I do?” I challenged, the words emerging more heated than I’d intended.
Annoyance flashed in his gaze, but then he blew out a long breath and said, “Of course, nae nephew. I merely offer my experience to supplement yer own.”
“I ken yer trying to help,” I said, softening. “God above kens I’ve nae been the best laird in quite some time, but I’m going to change that.”
“That’s good to hear,” he said, but there was a stiffness in his tone that belied his words. Perhaps he simply didn’t believe me, and I couldn’t fault him for that. I drew in a long breath and thought carefully what to say to show him I valued him, but that I did intend to take control back fully. “I’ll consider yer counsel, Uncle, as I always do. But the final decision on how my men train and fight remains mine alone.”
“Of course,” he conceded, though his tight tone told me I’d wounded his pride. “Was there something specific ye sought me out for?” he asked. “Ye seemed troubled when ye entered.”
The question yanked me back to the reason I’d come here in the first place, my anger about the training schedules momentarily forgotten. The fury that had propelled me through the castle after leaving Murieall returned in a rush, bringing with it the bitter taste of betrayal.
“It’s Murieall,” I blurted, unable to even say her name without feeling the sting of her deception. “She’s admitted everything to me.”
