Page 23

You will scrub the rooms . . . the words echoed in his mind, harsher than he remembered speaking them. Distance was necessary, he told himself as he crossed to the hearth. He stirred the cold ashes with the toe of his boot, eyes fixed on nothing. The image of Sorcha standing alone in that doorway refused to leave him. She had been bruised, proud, too thin beneath her cloak.

A conspirator would have argued. A liar would have wept for mercy. She had done neither.

Gavan swore softly beneath his breath. The forged letters lay folded inside his coat even now, their edges worn from too much handling. He drew them out and spread them across the desk once more, the firelight catching against dark ink, broken wax seals, and counterfeit signatures meant to condemn an entire clan.

One passage near the centre still made anger crawl hot beneath his skin.

Clan Munro stands prepared to support the Stuart cause when the signal is given. Men loyal to King George within Ross-shire have already been marked, and provisions are being quietly gathered for those willing to rise against the Crown.

Another read:

The Crown’s influence weakens in the north. When the proper alliances are secured, Munro men will ensure the eastern trade roads remain in sympathetic hands.

It was treason shaped carefully enough to sound believable. Not the wild boasting of drunken Jacobites but measured political language designed to invite fear and suspicion. If the Crown accepted the letters as genuine, soldiers could descend upon Munro lands before truth ever caught up to rumour. Estates might be seized. Tenants imprisoned. Loyal men hanged merely for carrying the wrong name.

And already the damage had begun.

Certain merchants had quietly redirected shipments away from Munro-controlled crossings. Trade agreements once secured through years of trust suddenly unravelled beneath whispers of rebellion. Prices in Dingwall shifted strangely while rival traders profited from routes the Munros had long protected. Whoever had crafted these lies had understood precisely how fear could be used to weaken a clan without drawing a single sword.

Gavan stared at the handwriting again, forcing a calm he did not feel. Some strokes belonged unmistakably to William Sutherland—the sharp slant, the uneven pressure of a man writing too quickly beneath strain. But other portions differed. Certain lines were smoother, more disciplined, written with the calm elegance of someone accustomed to careful correspondence.

And there were phrases that unsettled him more than the accusations themselves. The matter requires discretion, lest unnecessary panic spread among innocent households.

Another line read, May prudence guide those wise enough to recognise where true loyalties must soon lie. The wording carried a refinement William lacked. Too measured. Too thoughtful.

Gavan leaned back slowly, the chair creaking beneath him as a memory stirred unwillingly through his mind, a view of Sorcha seated near the window at Foulis months earlier, sunlight burnishing her red hair while she copied correspondence for Destiny. Her handwriting had been graceful, steady, elegant.

A hard unease settled low in his chest. Had William used her hand? Asked her to copy passages under the guise of merchant business or clan correspondence? Had she polished certain lines without understanding what they would become once joined to forged seals and treasonous claims? Or had she known more than she admitted?

Gavan closed his eyes briefly. He could still see her kneeling before him, pale with fatigue and shame, admitting that her brother had forged the letters. She had not defended his actions. Had not begged Gavan to believe William innocent. Instead, she had spoken like a woman already grieving the ruin her brother had unleashed.

That honesty disturbed him more than denial would have. He looked down again at the elegant phrases woven through the lies and felt his jaw tighten. Whether Sorcha had knowingly helped or not no longer mattered much in the eyes of the Highlands. Men would see only her blood, her family name, and traces of her hand hidden between accusations of treason.

And if the Crown chose to widen its investigation, Sorcha could easily find herself condemned alongside her brother for a conspiracy she might never have fully understood until it was far too late.

Gavan rubbed a hand across his mouth, frustration tightening his chest. He did not know how much Sorcha understood about the forged letters, but he no longer believed she had stood beside her brother, shaping treason deliberately. He had seen too many liars in courtrooms and council chambers, men who spoke with smooth confidence and eyes that never faltered. Sorcha’s gaze had not been smooth. It had been raw, unshielded, wounded.

Somewhere deeper within Lemlair House, a bucket scraped faintly across stone, followed by the muted sound of movement. Sorcha was already cleaning. The thought unsettled him more than it should have. Most women of her birth would have railed against such humiliation. Sorcha had simply taken up the work as though exhaustion no longer mattered beside necessity.

Gavan crossed slowly towards the window overlooking the grey sweep of the forest in the distance. Rain threatened beyond the hills, clouds dragging low across the roads winding north through Ross-shire.

If Sorcha knew anything useful, he would uncover it eventually. But the more he replayed her words in his mind, the less he believed she had fully understood what William had become entangled in.

A guilty woman would have protected herself first. She would have arrived armed with carefully shaped denials and rehearsed explanations. Sorcha had done none of that. She had walked alone through winter forests with thieves on the roads and suspicion gathering around her family name, yet even kneeling before him, she had spoken far more of William’s danger than her own. As though her own ruin no longer mattered beside his.

Gavan’s jaw tightened. That was not innocence, perhaps, but it was not calculation either. It felt instead like the kind of blind loyalty that ruined families as surely as betrayal did. Sorcha might have copied a passage for William. Polished a line of correspondence. Shared information she believed harmless. Though none of it carried the cold precision woven through the forged letters themselves.

Those letters had been crafted by someone who understood far more than clan resentment. They manipulated Crown fear and merchant greed together, poisoning trade routes while planting suspicion of Jacobite treason upon Munro lands. William possessed anger enough for forgery, but not the patience required to quietly break alliances across the Highlands.

Someone else had guided the larger scheme.

And if Sorcha knew even a fragment of who that might be, some forgotten conversation, some name overheard, some detail she herself did not yet realise mattered, then she had become dangerous simply by remaining alive.

Gavan frowned. He thought again of the attack in the forest. At first, he had dismissed it as common theft. But now he was less certain. A lone woman travelling winter roads made easy prey, aye, yet something about the bruises at Sorcha’s throat continued to trouble him. The fear in her eyes had not looked like fear of stolen jewellery alone.

Had someone merely seen vulnerability? Or had someone hoped to stop her before she reached Munro protection? The possibility settled cold and unwelcome beneath his ribs.

From down the hall, another dull scrape echoed through the old manor. Sorcha, still scrubbing soot and dust from a room long neglected, likely believing hard labour alone could somehow repay what her brother had done.