Chapter 19
Isabel walked back toward the castle alone, her mind abuzz with a hundred complications. The kiss, his hands on her body, the feeling of home she had when she spoke with the MacLeod women, and then the hammer of reality in the missive from her uncle.
Dunvegan, the Isle of Skye, Lachlan… everything felt like a dream. So far away from danger and reality. She’d almost let herself believe that were true.
The wind coming off the sea loch rustled the pines and tugged at her cloak, whipped loose strands of her hair across her face, but she hardly noticed. The path curved upward beneath her feet, and she couldn’t help but feel the tranquility had been a smoke screen, and her desire a trick of the mind.
As she hurried back toward the castle, her thoughts refused to settle. They circled back again and again to the same moment, the same man, the same impossible choice she had not truly realized she was making until it had already been made for her.
She had been kissed before.
That fact, once so simple and unremarkable, now felt almost irrelevant.
Men at court had offered gestures shaped by expectation rather than desire—careful, measured touches that spoke more of alliances than affection.
A gentleman’s lips pressed to her knuckles at the close of an evening.
A polite brush of a kiss against her cheek when a dance ended or a promise was implied but never spoken aloud.
Those moments had been easy to understand. Easy to accept. Easier still to forget.
What had passed between her and Lachlan had not been anything like that.
There had been no politeness in his mouth pressed with ardent passion to hers.
No courtly gesture in the way his large, strong hands had touched her buttocks.
In the arms of Lachlan, she had been a woman free of responsibility.
A woman living in the moment. A woman giving in to desire.
Her fingers lifted unconsciously to her mouth as she climbed the final stretch of the path, her breath catching slightly as the memory returned with unsettling clarity.
The heat of his mouth, the slide of his tongue…
She could still feel the strength of his hands at her waist, the way he had drawn her closer without hesitation, without apology, as though the distance between them had been something to overcome rather than respect.
The warmth of him had cut through the cold wind, steady and unyielding, the hardness of his body against her softer frame had been intoxicating, and the kiss itself had carried a certainty that left no room for doubt.
Isabel was undone.
But what unsettled her most was not that he wanted her—it was how she had responded to that want. Not only without hesitation, but with enthusiasm.
The realization moved through her like heat, sharp and disorienting, settling low in her belly and spreading outward in a way she could neither ignore nor control.
Isabel slowed just beyond the courtyard gate, her steps faltering as she exhaled slowly, trying—and failing—to steady herself.
She had never imagined that something like that could feel so consuming, so immediate, so impossible to dismiss.
Even now, standing alone in the open air, the memory of his touch made her pulse quicken, her breath catches in a way that felt precariously close to surrender.
They had crossed a line, aye, and she was not certain she wanted to step back from it. She was ready to take on her uncle and break her betrothal with Comyn. Would Lachlan step up for her? Would he support her? Or would he bow in supplication to Robert the Bruce??
What if he didn’t feel the same as her? Mayhap for him, kissing her was only a game.
A distraction from the English, and the traitors that crept along the outskirts of their minds.
That thought unsettled her more than anything else, and she shuddered.
That full body movement snapped her out of her thoughts.
She was no country lass in love with a laird.
She was Robert the Bruce’s niece. She was a lady with brains, and she would slap herself out of this pity spiral she was going down.
She told herself she was a prize, and if this MacLeod brute didn’t want a prize, then he was just a stupid oaf, and she could and would stab him.
Wasn’t she? Wouldn’t she? She hated how unsure he made her feel.
Or was it that he made her feel sure. And there she went spiraling again.
Isabel was very close to screaming or throwing herself off one of the many cliffs around the loch.
Isabel made her way back into the castle and up to her chamber where Elsa was fretfully pacing.
“My lady, I thought ye were…” She clamped her mouth shut, obviously not wanting to finish her sentence.
“What?”
Elsa shook her head. “Ye’re back. Doesna matter.” Color rose into Elsa’s pale cheeks. The poor dear had clearly been out of her wits with worry.
Two sharp raps on the door had both women facing the wooden planked entry as if Longshanks himself was waiting on the other side of it.
“My lady.” A man, not Lachlan, called from the other side.
When Elsa opened the door, Freckles slinked around her ankles into the chamber, evidently done with her play time with Zeus.
“Is Lady Isabel within?” Malcolm’s tone was respectful, but the way his eyes scanned the chamber when Elsa widened the door, Isabel noted the change. Rather than the jovial glances of homecoming the day before, his gaze exposed that everything had changed.
“Good day, Malcolm.” Isabel forced her attention away from her thoughts.
“Aye.” He bowed his head slightly. “The laird asks for ye, my lady.”
A slow chill walked its way up her spine, cooling the heat she had felt with Lachlan. Isabel squared her shoulders, cleared her throat, but neither of those actions could quell the dread. “Is he in the great hall?” she asked. Why had he sent his man to fetch her instead of coming himself?
Perhaps she should be grateful for that.
“In his solar, my lady.”
There was something in Malcolm’s tone that sent a faint ripple of unease and suspicion through her.
She nodded and moved past him without hesitation, but as she traversed Dunvegan’s corridors and stairs, she became aware of a subtle change in the air.
The sounds in the courtyard coming in flashes from the narrow windows were muted.
Whether it was her imagination, or in fact reality, every nerve in her body prickled with warning.
Two maids hurried passed on the stairs, their gazes down, mouths pinched.
The narrow steps spiraled upward, the stone icy beneath her hand as she climbed, and with each turn, the space seemed to tighten. The sounds of the courtyard faded from the narrow windows, replaced by a quiet that felt heavier than silence alone.
By the time she reached the solar, her earlier thoughts of longing were replaced by something close to panic. The solar door stood open, Lachlan waiting for her.
She stepped inside.
Lachlan stood near the table, his posture rigid, his attention fixed on the man before him. The stranger turned slightly at her entrance, and Isabel immediately recognized him as one of her uncle’s men, Sir Bernard Douglas.
His boots were caked in mud, the leather cracked and darkened from hard travel. The hem of his cloak was stiff and held a layer of dirt. His face was drawn with exhaustion, but he held himself upright, disciplined, as though the message he carried mattered more than his own fatigue.
“There ye are,” Lachlan mused. There was an edge to his voice that wasn’t normally present. Whatever warmth had existed there had been replaced by his battle name, the Wolf of Skye.
“What has happened?” Isabel feared the worst. That they were about to impart on her news of her uncle’s death. Why else would Sir Bernard come?
Bernard bowed slightly and stepped back, giving them space. Lachlan held a folded letter in his hand.
“This message arrived from Robert the Bruce.”
“Another…” Isabel trailed off. This messenger must have been dispatched shortly after the other.
Lachlan nodded.
She studied Lachlan’s face, but whatever he had read was already locked behind the steel wall of his mind. “And?” she pressed.
He exhaled slowly before handing her the letter, and she glanced at Sir Bernard whose eyes widened at the exchange.
Most of her uncle’s men and allies did not know she could read, Sir Bernard one of them.
Should she feign ignorance? How did Lachlan know?
This felt like a test between them, and she wasn’t sure what the right move would be. Och, but what would be the point now?
“The war council is fracturing,” Lachlan said.
The words carried weight, but it was only as Isabel’s eyes moved across the page that their full meaning began to take shape.
Uncle Robbie’s hand was unmistakable. The writing was controlled, but there was tension beneath it—an urgency that bled through even the careful phrasing.
Clans were turning against one another in the aftermath of Falkirk.
Old rivalries, long buried for the sake of necessity, had begun to surface again.
Some questioned the decisions that had led to the loss.
Others feared retaliation from the English, now that weakness had been exposed.
Her breath caught on the next line. Someone had leaked the strategy for the battle.
The truth settled into her bones, cold and immovable, as she read it again.
We are betrayed. Someone close to the council has spoken to the English.
This was everything they’d already believed but until confirmed had not been real.
She read further, her focus narrowing. A name appeared near the end, and she ground her teeth together. Kerr.
Isabel remembered the man from Inverlochy. In the great hall he’d stared her down, and as they’d left, he had watched. There’d been malice in his eyes.
“Comyn’s man. He was watching us,” she said quietly.
Lachlan’s jaw hardened. “Aye.”
“And my uncle believes Kerr is in league with Longshanks.” Her mind flashed back to the feast. “Which means our suspicions about Comyn are also true.”
What could have happened to them if they had not left Inverlochy before the sun had risen?
“I dinna believe in coincidences.”
Isabel turned toward the narrow window overlooking the sea, her thoughts racing as the truth reshaped everything she had believed only hours before. Dunvegan had felt like a sanctuary. A place removed from the reach of war. A place where the dangers of the mainland could not follow.
Now that belief felt dangerously na?ve. Whatever pocket of happiness she’d carved for the last twenty-four hours, was soon to disappear.
Behind her, Lachlan stepped closer to the table, his presence steady, unyielding. “If Kerr betrayed us at Falkirk,” he said quietly, “he will no’ stop there. He is being handsomely paid. But for what, I dinna know.”
Isabel turned back toward him, the truth of the letter still pressing heavily against her fingers, and then she let it drop to the tabletop, the news suddenly burning her flesh. “Will there ever be peace?”
She didn’t realize that she’d spoken the words aloud until Lachlan moved closer, not touching her, but near enough that she could feel the solid and steady presence of him.
“Ye will no’ leave the castle alone again.”
Isabel glanced up at him with challenge. “And neither will ye.”
He grinned.
“What happens when he inevitably arrives?” she asked.
Lachlan did not hesitate, his voice deadly as he said, “Then he will no’ leave.”
The certainty in his tone should have reassured her, instead, it made her realize there would be more casualties on both sides.
That the MacLeod men she had come to know, her uncle’s men, Lachlan himself, could fall.
The only thing certain was that the war would come to an end, and that end was rushing toward them.