Chapter Four
MacAlasdair Keep, Glenbrae- One Year Ago
Calum MacRae – Age Four and Twenty
Calum had arrived hours later than expected, the excuse thin and poorly offered—some tale of weather, or delays upon the road.
Early spring still clung to the glens, and the mountain pass had been slick with melting frost. But the truth was simpler: he had lingered at Strathloch, walking the ridgeline with Elspeth beneath a dull grey sky.
She hadn’t spoken much, only clutched his hand and blinked away tears she thought he didn’t see. It was her silence, and his guilt for it, that made him late.
He didn’t regret it.
What did vex him, though, was being made to wait after his arrival—even after arriving shamefully behind the hour promised.
He’d expected Sorcha to be presented at once, not held up tending to one of Glenbrae’s Clansfolk.
Something about a woman in labor, or perhaps a fever in the village.
He hadn’t troubled himself to listen—only resented the slight.
Now, seated stiffly across from Sorcha MacAlasdair in her father’s great hall, the fire at his back doing nothing to warm his mood, Calum felt the weight of everything he would not speak aloud.
Not about Elspeth.
Not about how Sorcha’s quiet, assessing stare unsettled him more than he cared to admit.
She had changed since their last meeting. Her hair was different—longer, perhaps. There was a poise in her now. A composure that didn’t belong to a girl, but to a woman grown far too soon.
There was a stillness about her—a calm forged in fire—that made him uneasy. The softness he remembered in her eyes when she had greeted him during their first meeting had vanished, replaced by something unreadable. Hardened.
He didn’t like it. Or rather, he didn’t like that this new version of her made his certainty feel like sand slipping through his palm.
“Let’s make something clear,” he said, voice clipped. “You and I—this is only a matter of obligation. Nothing more.”
She did not react. Not with protest. Not even with surprise. That irritated him—her quiet self-possession, her refusal to flinch.
“I don’t expect affection,” he went on, jaw tight. “And I'll no' offer it. I'll say it a'gain—I've given my heart elsewhere.”
Still, she remained silent.
His voice sharpened.
“You’re cold, Lady Sorcha. Perhaps it will suit us both.
The lass I love is... gentler. More fair of face. More tender of heart.”
The words were meant as fact. Final. But they tasted like cruelty.
And worse—they landed on air. She didn’t flinch. Didn’t rise to defend herself. No spark of temper, no wounded look. Nothing to justify the bitterness coiled in his chest.
Then she spoke—quiet, even.
“You should be on your way. You’ve stayed well past your welcome, Calum MacRae.”
She rose, slow and graceful, the rough wool of her skirts whispering against stone as she moved.
Still, he had said what he came to say.
He stood, offered no hand of farewell.
But the silence between them needled him, and he found himself adding harshly, as if to reassert control—
“Do your duty. You will not shame my clan. And you will stay out of my way.”
Then he turned and walked out, never imagining just how heavy her silence would become—
or how long it would follow him, like a ghost, all the way back to Strathloch.