Some doors, he opened, showing us sitting rooms and parlors with windows offering a view of the grounds, a music room, and several bedrooms that appeared untouched for years. Others, he passed without comment, what lay behind them remaining a mystery.
Kiernan didn’t slow when we passed a heavy oak door with a brass handle that gleamed more than the others. He muttered something about a library as we continued. The deflection was subtle but deliberate—the kind of information control I’d seen diplomats use when steering conversations away from sensitive topics. Whatever lay behind that door, he didn’t want us seeing it.
We reached a staircase that curved upward at the end of the next corridor.
“The west tower,” he said, leading us away without breaking his stride. “My private quarters.”
The guest wing was warmer than the rest of the castle, heated by radiators that hummed beneath tall windows. A sitting room with deep sofas in blue velvet faced a hearth already crackling with flames. Two bedrooms opened through separate doorways, each with a four-poster bed draped in fabrics that appeared old and expensive. The view from the windows stretched to the horizon beneath the heavy Scottish sky.
“You’ll have privacy here,” Kiernan said. “Millie can provide anything you need. Dinner will be served at nineteen hundred.”
He left before either of us could respond, disappearing into the maze of corridors without a backward glance.
Oliver collapsedonto the nearest sofa with an exhausted groan. I sat beside him and reached for his wrist, checking his heart rate as I’d done countless times since the attack. The gesture was automatic now, as natural as breathing.
His pulse was steady and strong, better than it had been.
“He’s not the same man we worked with,” he mumbled before giving in to his exhaustion.
“No.” I released his wrist but didn’t step away from the warmth of him beside me. “It’s like he’s been playing a part. Or was.”
“Exactly. Which version do you think is most authentic?”
I thought about his movements through the castle. The underlying command when he spoke to Millie. The wave of his arm as he showed us the portraits of his ancestors, the pride evident when he spoke of generations of service. The Scots had a word—dùthchas—for the deep, inherited connection between a person and their ancestral land. It was untranslatable to English, but watching Kiernan walk through Greymarch, I finally understood what it meant.
“I think this is who he really is.”
When Oliver’s hand found mine on the cushion between us and his thumb traced against my knuckles, warmth spread through me.
In the time we’d worked together prior to being assigned to the Labyrinth investigation, we’d shared glances that lingered too long, touches that meant more than they should, and tension that I’d pretended not to notice. MI6 regulations were clear about discouragingrelationships between officers, and we’d followed them to the letter.
But the days I’d spent with him had stripped away my ability to pretend my concern didn’t go beyond that of a colleague.
“You should rest before dinner,” I said, pulling my hand away.
“Phee,” he whispered. “You don’t have to run.”
“Rest,” I repeated, and fled to my bedroom before he could respond.
I unpacked the single bag I’d brought from Glasgow, but nothing seemed suitable for dinner with a titled lord in his ancestral home.
Kiernan Lockhart baffled me. He owned a castle, lived next door to an estate we’d been surveilling, yet he’d never mentioned it. He was a man accustomed to guarding his secrets.
However, none of those things changed how my body responded when he did as much as say my name.
The dining roomwas colder than the guest wing, despite the fire roaring at the far end. A table, set with silver that gleamed in the candlelight, that could easilyseat twenty, held three place settings clustered at one end. Kiernan sat at the head in a white shirt open at the collar and the sleeves rolled to his forearms, revealing tanned skin and a watch that probably cost more than my annual salary.
He was every bit the part of a lord holding court, and my simple black frock—the only one I’d packed—seemed woefully inadequate by comparison.
The wine breathed in a crystal decanter. Kiernan poured without asking, filling our glasses with a red that smelled of dark fruit and old wood.
“From the estate,” he said when he caught me reading the label. “We don’t produce much, but what we do is worth drinking.”
The food was exceptional. Millie delivered course after course with the ease of someone who’d done this for decades. We’d started with a soup rich with root vegetables and herbs I couldn’t identify, then had fish that melted on my tongue, and meat so tender I barely needed a knife.
Conversation was stilted at first, as it would be between three people who knew each other only through briefings and ops, and were trying to find common ground. Oliver, though, had a knack for drawing people out. Heused his charm to coax stories from Kiernan about the estate, the land, and the history of the Lockhart family.
“We’ve held the Greymarch viscountcy since 1372,” he said, swirling his glass. “We’ve survived wars, plagues, and changes of dynasty. The castle has been burned twice and rebuilt each time.”
