Page 81 of A Highland Bride Disciplined

“Aye, me as well,” Kian said, standing and walking back downstairs.

“There’s more,” the innkeeper admitted reluctantly as the men started to walk past him. “Day before she vanished, a man came askin’ after her. Big fella. Rode in from the north road. Dinnae give his name. But…” He frowned, trying to recall. “His plaid was green and black. With a white stripe.”

Tam stiffened. Kian’s head snapped toward him.McTavish colors.

The air seemed to thicken. McTavish men did not wander into fishing villages without reason.

“Did he find her?” Kian asked, voice dangerously low.

The innkeeper shook his head quickly. “Nay. She was gone when he came. He left angrier than a kicked bull and near cracked my door off its hinges.”

Kian’s mind spun. Elise’s mother, here, alive, only days ago. A McTavish man looking for her. Then she was gone — whether into the sea or elsewhere.

He stepped closer, looming over the counter. “What else did ye see? Did she say aught to ye? Did she speak of where she came from? Why she traveled alone?”

The innkeeper raised both hands defensively. “Nothin’ more. She was quiet. Kept to herself. Wrote in a wee book, sometimes. Dinnae talk much. That’s all I ken, I swear it.”

Kian studied him a long moment, reading the lines of sweat on the man’s brow, the twitch of his mouth. Truth, or close enough to it.

At last he stepped back. “Fine.”

Tam clapped the man on the shoulder with a force that made him grunt. “Ye’ve been a great help.”

Outside again, the gulls shrieked, and the sea crashed relentless against the rocks below. Kian drew in a breath of salt air, but it did nothing to clear the storm building in his chest.

Tam fell into step beside him, voice low. “So. Either she threw herself to the sea… or someone helped her vanish.”

Kian’s jaw tightened. “And if the McTavishes are sniffin’ around, then it’s nay accident either way.”

A troubled mother. A bairn abandoned. A rival clan circling like wolves.Scarlett’s face rose unbidden in his mind, her laugh at the festival, the way her arms curled protectively around Elise.

He didn’t yet know what he’d tell her. Only that the truth, whatever it was, had grown more dangerous than either of them expected.

They left the village as the tide rolled in harder on the cliffs, and the wind sliced in from every direction. Kian set a brisk pace along the headland road, the gelding sure-footed on the damp track, Tam’s horse a shadow at his flank. Neither of them spoke for a time. The gulls did enough screaming for all three of them.

The letter weighed at Kian’s breast like a stone tucked into his coat. He’d felt its edges the whole time they’d questioned the innkeeper—each answer, each shrug, pressing the folded paper harder against his ribs. He hadn’t opened it. Not yet. A coward’s restraint, or a laird’s caution—he couldn’t say.

Tam drew up nearer, cloak snapping in the wind. “Ye’re ridin’ like ye mean to outrun the night itself,” he called over the gusts.

Kian didn’t slow. “If I could, I would.”

“Aye. The sea and yer temper are kin of the ame beast, if ye ask me.”

“Good thing I dinnae ask ye, then,” Kian said dryly, but he eased the gelding a fraction. The road kinked inland, heather rising to shoulder height, the air losing its salt-knife edge. The keep lay three hours north. He wanted those hours behind him. He wanted this day behind him.

Tam cleared his throat. “So. We’ve a lass who ‘disappeared’ down a cliff. An innkeeper too quick to burn a stranger’s scraps. And a McTavish sniffin’ around the day after she was last seen.”

Kian kept his eyes forward. “Aye. And a letter I’ve found under the lass’s floor boards.”

“A letter! What does it say?”

Kian’s jaw tightened. “I’ll read it when I’m ready.”

Tam let out a low whistle. “God save us. The mighty Laird Crawford, waitin’ on a piece o’ paper like it might bite him.”

“Careful,” Kian said, but there was no heat in it.

They rode on. A skein of geese cut the sky. Somewhere, a burn tumbled busy and unseen beneath broom. Kian listened to the hoofbeats and tried not to let his mind sprint ahead of them—Scarlett’s face when he told her the worst version of the story; Scarlett’s face if he told her nothing at all.