Page 35 of Wed to the Highlander (Impromptu Brides #2)

No one spoke of Lachlan without a shadow crossing their face.

The betrayal had cut deep—not just of Duncan but the clan itself.

This was a man they’d broken bread with, fought beside, and trusted.

And yet, for all the anger, there was sorrow too.

Fiona bore the weight of it quietly, with a kind of grace that made the silence around her feel heavier.

Lachlan was held in the two-cell constable’s office in Kilbrae.

He awaited transfer to Inverness, a day’s ride away, where the busy High Court wouldn’t hear his case for months, according to Duncan.

His charges had been read aloud in the town square: conspiracy, arson, attempted murder, property damage, and a host of others.

Duncan expected penal servitude for life to be his sentence.

Maggie had difficulty summoning sympathy for the man—his crimes were neither petty nor impulsive—but the thought of a lifetime spent toiling in the harsh prison workshops, the tedium of oakum picking, or the brutal monotony of breaking rocks under guard was almost too much to fathom.

Fiona had gone to see Lachlan twice. Once alone, returning with red-rimmed eyes. The second trip was with her sons, who’d been asking to see their da. Ever since, the previously rambunctious boys had been quiet as church mice.

Duncan had been to see his nephews and assured them they would always have a home with him and the clan, but his fury renewed along with the desire to pummel his brother bloody again for what his selfish greed and hunger for power had done to those precious lads.

The day after the plain cart, flanked by four men with long rifles, had taken Lachlan away in chains, Fiona’s baby arrived. A girl she named, Eilidh, Gaelic for light, with a robust set of lungs and hair dark as peat. As Maggie had hoped they would, the women of the castle gathered around her.

Agnes had held the child once then left without a word.

One morning, she didn’t arrive for breakfast; by midday, when someone went to check on her, her trunk was gone and so was she.

Duncan and his men went in search of her, finding her back with the Camerons, where she intended to stay.

Maggie took the news with a mix of relief and genuine sympathy.

The shame had been too much, the whispers too sharp.

Some wounds, she knew, could not be mended.

Duncan carried on. Fewer urgent messengers arrived, and the nighttime knocks at their door had all but ceased.

He was still very busy, now managing all his duties without a second, with the added task of overseeing the tearing down of the north wing and tower, board by board and stone by stone.

His cousins, Fergus and Hamish, were both vying for the job of second after falling all over themselves to apologize once it was learned that Lachlan was behind the constant chaos in the clan and that they’d wrongly laid blame at the laird’s feet.

“Will you choose one of them?” Maggie asked one morning over breakfast. After tiring of their boasting and arguing over who he should pick, he had sent them off with a task meant to keep them busy—and out of his hair.

“Likely no’. They’re eager, but very green, with a lot to learn. I’ll need tae make a decision soon, though. Before we return to London for the end of this session of Parliament.”

Her husband had returned to his calm, deliberate demeanor, but sometimes, Maggie caught him staring out over the hills, his eyes distant, his thoughts unreachable.

The betrayal had cut deep. He wouldn’t speak of it, wanting to look to the future.

But she saw it in the way he touched Jamie’s head, in the way he lingered at the nursery door.

Jamie thrived. He laughed as the wonder of his world was revealed, tugged on his father’s beard, tangled his fingers in Maggie’s hair, and cooed and babbled nonsense that made his nursemaids giggle. He was joy incarnate, untouched by the storm that had surrounded his birth.

Maggie was fully recovered from the toxicity and childbirth but had forever sworn off tea.

The coffee the Scots favored was bitter and strong, requiring equal parts milk and too much sugar to get it down.

After a week of trying, she settled on warm milk with breakfast, and Fiona’s ginger wine when she wanted something more than water from the well.

An Englishwoman giving up tea was a sacrifice, but for Maggie, it was more a quiet reclaiming of control.

One afternoon, a few weeks after all the drama, she returned to the chamber to lay Jamie down for a nap and sneak one in herself, but the furniture was pushed to one side of the room to make room for bricks, trowels, and buckets of mortar.

“What’s this?” she asked the workmen.

“By order of the laird, my lady,” one said as he removed the framing of the short door with hammer and chisel.

“There’ll be no napping in there this day, my love,” she told her wide-eyed, quiver-lipped son as she whisked him back down the hallway.

She met Duncan at the top of the stairs. He immediately took Jamie from her, putting him on his shoulder. A firm patting on his back had him settling as if by magic, which his father uniquely possessed.

“They’re sealing the door to the hidden room,” she told him.

“I advised you of the plan.”

“Yes, but not today.”

He hooked her by his arm and pulled her close. “I moved it up on the list, to help you sleep,” he said, brushing her cheek with a kiss. “And to help me focus on more pleasant things.” When their lips met and the kiss went from chaste to passionate in two seconds, Jamie let out a wail of protest.

Duncan half groaned, half chuckled. “The lad has the world’s worst timing.”

Maggie stared up at him, breathless and a little dizzy from his kiss. “My regrets, truly, but it’s time for his nap. Between the tower demolition, bricklaying up here, and two dozen people under this roof, where am I going to find a quiet place to lay him down?”

“I can help you with that.”

He took her hand and led her past the bustle of the great hall, beyond the hammering and shouted orders, down a narrow passage she hadn’t noticed before.

When they arrived at an unfamiliar stairwell, the winding steps stirred memories she’d rather forget.

But Duncan’s hand was warm and steady, and her trust in him unfailing.

She followed, up fifty steps at least, emerging at the top in a room bathed in brightness.

This tower was newer with arched windows that overlooked the loch, the light making it feel as though the sky had come inside. The sun warmed the stone and the air and cast shadows across the floor, but they didn’t reach for her—not anymore.

A bright tartan rug stretched in front of a navy velvet settee, plush pillows in red and gold grouped at the ends. A shelf of old books lined the curved wall: clan histories, Gaelic poetry, and a few volumes so worn their titles had faded.

A tapestry hung opposite the bed, depicting a mystical wood with a stag in moonlight. Not the one from the north tower, with bloody horns and silver eyes that followed her across the room. She shivered at the memory.

“Are you cold? Even in sunlight?” Duncan asked, stretching out on the bed and settling a yawning Jamie on his chest. He extended his arm to her in invitation.

How could she say no?

She curled up against his side, pulling the coverlet soft and thick over them, then snuggled close, her head on her husband’s shoulder and her hand resting on Jamie’s diapered bottom.

“Why isn’t this our chamber?” she asked, voice drowsy already.

Duncan smiled, pressing his lips to her temple. “I can make it happen. If you don’t mind the climb.”

“Up and down fifty steps countless times a day,” she hummed, already drifting. “Maybe it’s not our chamber. Maybe it’s our escape.”

Her eyes closed. Jamie sighed. Duncan stayed wrapped protectively around them both. And because peace had come to the High Glen, the three of them napped blissfully.

The feeling of being haunted had faded, but not entirely.

Duncan had explanations for everything—the whispers were wind through the stones, the woman in white a hallucination brought on by too much wood betony, the white heather a gift from well-meaning clanswomen who believed in its protective powers.

But they never found Anne’s miniature when they tore out the second floor.

And Duncan couldn’t explain how Maggie had known where to find Isla and Jamie that stormy night.

“A mother’s intuition,” he eventually concluded.

Maggie believed in that—she felt it, and it strengthened every day.

But she also believed in Anne’s gentle spirit guiding her that night.

She believed in the warmth that lingered in the hallways at times, in the way Jamie smiled at nothing at all, and in the way she felt at home living in an old relic made of stone.

She hadn’t felt Anne’s presence since the night of Isla’s death.

She hoped not to again, not because she feared it but because it would mean her spirit was finally at rest.

***

Although spring had settled over the Highlands—buds unfurling, loch waters warming, and laughter returning to the castle halls—everyone felt the stirrings of rebirth, except three forlorn boys and their mother.

Their uncle, bound to see the spark of childhood and adventure in their eyes again, roused them early one morning in late April and took them on a nightcrawler hunt then to the loch to catch their supper.

While they were occupied, their step a little lighter as they followed Duncan down the path to the water, Maggie searched out Fiona.

The courtyard had been abandoned since the rebuilding began.

Stone dust settled in the corners, and the raised beds—once Lachlan’s pride—stood bare, their wooden frames weathered and leaning.

That’s where she found Fiona, paused beside one, her fingers trailing over the rough edge.