Page 58

“Good.” Instead of rushing, Gavan stepped into the centre of the hall instead. “How?”

The second guard swallowed. “Riders were seen on the ridge before the smoke rose. Three, perhaps four.”

“Colours?”

The guard shook his head. “’Tis Calder.” The name moved through the room like a cold wind.

Gavan did not allow it to grow.

He turned to Colin. “Double the watch,” he ordered evenly. “No one leaves the house without escort. Move water from the well down to the fire. We will not lose more than that one building.”

Colin nodded and signalled to four of the men. They moved immediately to go to the well. The energy shifted from fear to action.

Gavan lifted his voice just enough. “Calder seeks to test our nerve. He and his men will find it unbroken.” The steadiness in his tone anchored the room.

Sorcha watched him. His injury did not show now. His doubt did not show. He stood tall, not because he felt no fear, but because he would not permit it to spread.

The hall quieted, then a low voice sounded, but not low enough, “Mayhap we would not be tested so readily had we not taken in a Sutherland woman.”

The words carried. Sorcha felt them like heat against her skin. She did not turn. She would not give the whisper dignity. But the silence that followed thickened.

Gavan heard it. Everyone in the hall knew he had heard it.

Slowly, he turned. “If any man or woman believes,” he said, voice calm but edged in steel, “that Munro strength is so precarious it can be shaken by the presence of one woman, he or she may step forward and say so plainly.”

No one moved.

“Sorcha stands under my protection,” Gavan continued. “As does her brother under my law.” His gaze swept the room. “Our justice is not weakness. It is our spine. We do not burn our own to appease cowards who strike from ridges.”

At his words, Sorcha’s throat tightened. The reprimand was not loud. It did not need to be. The murmur died completely, and something else rose in its place.

Respect. Not merely for his authority, but for his loyalty. He had chosen to protect her when he could easily have ignored the comment. No one moved to challenge Gavan again.

Sorcha felt the shift plainly. The unease had not vanished, nor the suspicion entirely, but Gavan’s words had drawn a line through the room as surely as if he had laid steel upon the table before them. No one would cross it tonight.

Her chest tightened unexpectedly. No one had defended her like that in a very long time. Not since before William’s disgrace. Perhaps not even before that.

Gavan turned then, his gaze finding hers across the hall. For several seconds, the noise around them seemed to recede again—the smoke, the shouting, the crackling fire in the distance—all of it dimming beneath the weight of that single look.

Not pity. Protection. The realisation unsettled her more than the flames.

A gust of wind rattled the shutters hard enough to make several candles flicker. The smell of smoke thickened briefly through the hall. Somewhere outside, she could hear wood collapsing.

Still, Gavan did not look away from her. “We will endure this,” he said quietly. Whether he spoke to the hall or to her alone, Sorcha could not tell. “Calder burns wood because he cannot yet reach what he truly wants.” His jaw hardened slightly. “That will not remain true forever.”

The warning settled heavily over the room.

Sorcha felt it too. This had not been merely an act of spite. It was a message. A promise of escalation. Calder was probing for weakness now, searching for fractures within Lemlair’s walls; for fear he could widen into division.

Outside, voices still carried faintly through the night as men fought to contain the flames. Smoke drifted intermittently through the opened hall doors, sharp enough to sting her throat.

Gavan’s attention shifted towards the courtyard at the sound of a shouted order outside. For a heartbeat, he remained still, weighing everything at once—the fear in the hall, the riders on the ridge, the people looking to him for steadiness.

Then the laird settled fully back upon his shoulders.

He turned to Colin. “Keep everyone inside the main hall until the fire is contained. Set continuous patrols along the north wall and around the lower paddock. No man walks alone.”

“Aye, my laird.”