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Now she rode straight-backed in the pale morning light, the blue-grey gown settling around her like something she had once been meant to wear. The change unsettled him more than he cared to admit. He told himself it was because William needed to see her strong. Whole. That was the reason he had bought the dress. Nothing more. Yet the image of her standing in Lemlair’s doorway lingered stubbornly, refusing to be folded away with the rest of his thoughts. She had not looked like a servant then. She had looked like a woman stepping towards something she refused to name aloud.

Gavan shifted in the saddle, forcing his attention back to the road. Sentiment dulled a man’s instincts, and today he could not afford dullness.

The wind shifted. A break in the birdsong reached him, subtle, yet not quite right. Awareness prickled at the base of his skull. They were not alone.

Gavan did not turn his head. Instinct told him that looking back too soon would only confirm to whoever trailed them that they had been noticed. Instead, he loosened his grip on the reins and shifted his weight in the saddle, letting his posture relax as though nothing troubled him beyond the cold.

He slowed his horse by the smallest measure.

Sorcha matched the change without question. He felt the awareness in her again, quiet, watchful. She trusted him. That trust settled uneasily beneath his ribs.

Behind them, one of the guards drew closer at a subtle signal, the other drifting wider along the edge of the road as if to give the illusion of casual spacing.

Gavan listened. Hoofbeats did not sound, not clearly, but the silence between wind gusts carried the faint scrape of movement too controlled to be chance. ’Twas a rider who knew the land. Someone patient.

Gavan urged his horse forward again, then veered slightly off the main track, where the ground dipped towards a narrow stand of birch. It was the sort of shift a man might make to avoid frozen ruts, nothing more. He watched the snow-dusted grass at the edge of his vision.

A moment later, a shadow moved where no shadow should have been. His jaw tightened. Not one rider. At least two.

Gavan leaned closer to Sorcha as though to speak about the road ahead. “Stay close,” he murmured, voice low enough that only she would hear. “And do not look behind you.”

Her fingers tightened on the reins, but she gave the slightest nod.

Good. No fear. Only readiness.

He straightened again, lifting a hand as though adjusting his glove, the signal for the guards to close formation. The world felt suddenly narrower. The birch trunks leaned in like witnesses. Frost cracked beneath the horses’ hooves.

Gavan let them follow. Let them believe they remained unseen. Because whoever shadowed them did not merely watch. They waited, and Gavan intended to learn why.

Not opportunists, Gavan thought grimly. Hunters.

The memory of her arrival at Foulis stirred once more, but this time his thoughts moved to before he had seen her. He pictured her in the woods, panicked at the approach of men who probably had not meant to rob her. Men who had meant to frighten her and send her running towards something even more dangerous. That she had turned to Foulis had spared her further violence.

The closer they rode to Dingwall, the more the truth pressed in on Gavan, relentless and unavoidable. The Munros had not been betrayed by William Sutherland’s hand alone, if at all. The lies were too carefully laid, the timing too precise to have sprung from desperation. Someone else had shaped the accusations and meant William to serve as their convenient end.

Sorcha’s presence beside him sharpened the truth rather than clouded it. She did not ride like a woman guarding secrets, but like one bracing herself for loss. If William were silenced, it would not only end a life, but it would also seal the lie forever. Whoever stood behind the forged letters knew that.

And Gavan knew something else now as well; if Sorcha was part of this plot, she had been used as surely as her brother. And if she was not, then she was the key that could unravel everything.

Gavan tightened his grip on the reins and fixed his gaze on the road ahead. Someone had wagered the Munros’ name, William Sutherland’s life, and Sorcha’s fate on silence.

Gavan had no intention of letting them win.

*

The meeting with William took place in a stone chamber off the main hall. The room was cold, bare, and guarded. William was thinner than Gavan remembered, and bruised, but standing. Alive.

Sorcha made a sound at the sight of her twin, not a sob, not a cry, but something small and broken free from restraint. She crossed the space between them and caught her brother’s hands, pressing her forehead to his chest as if anchoring herself to the fact of him.

William lifted his head slowly when Gavan entered the holding chamber beneath the Dingwall courtroom. Weariness hollowed his face, but wariness still sharpened his eyes. He studied Gavan for a long moment before speaking.

“You are the Munro.”

“I am.” Gavan remained standing rather than taking the stool near the wall. “And you are fortunate you remained alive long enough to speak openly.”

A humourless smile flickered briefly across William’s mouth. “Fortunate is not the word I would choose.”

Sorcha stood beside the barred door, her gloved hands wrapped tightly together against the cold. William barely looked at her, and that unsettled Gavan more than anger would have. Twins shared grief differently than other siblings. For William to avoid her gaze entirely meant fear already sat too heavily upon him.