Page 30

“I will not,” she whispered.

Gavan nodded once, then he turned away as if the matter were settled, as if he had not just stopped a cruel ritual from forming around her in his kitchen.

Before he reached the door, he stopped and said back over his shoulder to the cook, “Tell the stableboy I’ll want him to ride tonight. Another message to Dingwall.”

Sorcha’s breath caught. Another message about William?

Gavan did not look at her as he spoke, but Sorcha felt the words like water to a thirsting mouth.

He left the kitchen, shutting the door behind him.

Sorcha stood in the warm kitchen with her hands shaking and her heart pounding, surrounded by servants who now looked at her with fear. Fear of Gavan, and what he would do if they crossed him.

For the first time since she’d entered Lemlair, Sorcha understood the twisted truth of her new life. Gavan Munro’s hatred might be the sharpest blade pointed at her throat, but it was also the shield that kept everyone else’s knives away.

*

The door closed behind him, muffling the warmth of the kitchen and the low murmur of voices within. Gavan did not slow until he reached the main hall. Only then did he stop, bracing his left hand against the back of a chair as if the simple act of standing still required effort.

Her voice lingered in his mind. I thought they were bandits.

He exhaled slowly. Anger had been easier when she was silent. Easier when she looked like a symbol of everything taken from him. But the woman kneeling on that kitchen floor had not sounded like a conspirator. She had sounded like someone remembering fear.

Gavan crossed to the window and stared out into the grey afternoon. Frost clung to the bare branches beyond the yard; the world stripped to bone and truth. He reached into his coat and drew out the folded letters.

Gavan had known William’s hand appeared in parts of the script, but not all from the beginning. What he did not know was who else was involved or why Sorcha’s name seemed to hover at the edge of every answer without ever landing fully in guilt.

If she had been part of the plot, she would have bargained in that kitchen. She would have used her brother’s life like coin. Instead, she had stood there, bleeding pride onto the stone floor.

Gavan swore under his breath. He had wanted her to be simple. Guilty. Deserving of the harshness he had given. It would have made everything cleaner.

His gaze dropped to his right hand, the one that no longer obeyed him as it once had. Pain flared faintly beneath the skin, a reminder that mercy came at a cost he did not yet know how to pay.

“What are you?” he muttered quietly. “Pawn or player?”

The question lingered in the empty room.

He thought of Sorcha’s eyes—too honest, too wounded, too stubborn to belong to a woman who had willingly tried to destroy the Munros. Gavan pushed away from the window and paced once across the room, slow and measured. He would learn the truth, not by breaking her, but through careful observation.

“If you are innocent in this,” he murmured, “I will find then who is not.” And though he would never admit it aloud, another thought followed quietly behind: And I will not let them break you before I know.

Chapter Seven

The courtyard at Lemlair lay open to the wind, the house rising solidly behind it, the land stretching wide and unguarded beyond. Gavan stood near the steps, his gaze moving over the distant rise, the line of the trees, the narrow track that cut across the fields.

Colin Bayn, the captain of his guard and his friend, joined him, quiet as ever, though there was nothing idle in his watch. “You’ve brought a woman into this,” Colin said at last.

Gavan did not look at him. “I have.”

Colin studied him a moment. “The same one who arrived at Foulis under your brother’s roof?”

“Aye.”

“And you’ve brought her here.” A pause. “To Lemlair.”

Gavan’s jaw tightened. “I have.”

Colin folded his arms. “She’s a Sutherland.”