Chapter 4
The cell door remained open after he left, but Violet did not move.
Wedding.
Bride.
One week.
The words had not settled. They had struck and stayed lodged somewhere beneath her ribs, sharp enough that each breath touched them.
Laird Moore had stepped into her cell, decided her future, and walked away as if he had ordered fresh rushes for the hall.
And she still didn’t know his name.
A guard stood outside the open door with his gaze fixed somewhere near her shoulder.
“Am I free to leave?” she asked.
He shifted his weight. “The Laird said ye’re to be shown around.”
“So… aye?”
“Aye.”
“Aye.” Violet stepped out of the cell because standing inside it one moment longer would have made her do something unwise. “And everyone here just loves to follow orders, do they nae?”
The guard’s mouth tightened, but he said nothing.
Violet glanced down the corridor. The dungeon air clung to her gown and skin. She had been dragged below as a thief and was now apparently expected to walk upstairs as a bride.
The absurdity would have been laughable if she had not felt so close to screaming.
Protection.
She had grown up hearing that word a lot of times. The people around her had used it with soft voices and harsh hands. Her older sister, Hannah, had once watched her every breath because illness had made her fragile enough to frighten the people who loved her.
That had been love, and still it had felt like being wrapped too tightly to breathe.
Laird Moore did not love her. He did not know her. He had simply decided that keeping her was useful, so now his castle would become another place where her choices were rearranged by someone stronger.
What was new?
A woman appeared around the corner, walking with careful steps. Violet recognized her at once.
Moira. The nursemaid.
Moira stopped a few paces away. Her hands were clasped in front of her, and her face held caution, guilt, and a firmness Violet could not easily despise.
“I owe ye an apology,” Moira said.
Violet folded her arms. “For having me dragged to the dungeons?”
“For frightening ye, nae for stopping ye.”
“How generous.”
Moira accepted the blow without lowering her eyes. “There is a bairn upstairs who had already been left once. I wasnae about to let a stranger carry him away.”
Violet’s anger caught. It should have been easy to hate her. It would have been cleaner, but the answer was too close to the one she herself would have given if a strange woman had tried to take Jane’s son under her watch.
“I am nae a stranger to him,” she said quietly.
“Everyone is a stranger to him. He is a bairn.”
The guard looked between them, clearly hoping someone would decide what he should do.
Moira turned to him. “The Laird said she may be taken upstairs?”
“Aye. Shown around.”
Moira looked back at Violet. “Then come with me. Ye wanted to see the bairn.”
Every angry thought in Violet’s head vanished, and her fingers tightened against her sleeve. “Now?”
“Aye. Before anyone changes their mind.”
Violet followed.
The climb from the dungeons into the warmer corridors of Moore Castle felt longer than it had any right to. The servants slowed down when they saw her, then remembered themselves and moved on. A pair of maids whispered near a stairwell until Moira looked at them and they scattered at once.
Violet barely took in the castle. Stone passages. Stone walls underfoot and the smell of peat smoke. There was even a wall hanging with faded red thread. None of it held long enough to matter. Her mind was focused on the child somewhere upstairs.
Her hand brushed the place where Jane’s blue cloth remained hidden beneath her bodice. She had not shown it to anyone. Not yet. Some promises were too tender to lay before strangers.
“What do ye call him?” Violet asked.
Moira glanced back. “The bairn, mostly. Wee lad, when he’s cross.”
Violet swallowed. “He has no name.”
“Nae yet.”
“His mother didnae have time.”
Moira’s steps slowed. Her expression softened, but she did not ask. That restraint did more to earn Violet’s trust than questions would have.
We would need to do something about the name.
They reached a door near the end of the upper passage, and Moira opened it gently.
A wave of warmth met them first. The nursery was not grand, but it was clean and tidy.
A small fire burned low in the grate while folded linens sat in neat stacks near the cradle.
A cup and a cloth lay on a table beside a pitcher, and beside the window, a small garment waited with one sleeve half-mended, the same one Moira had been holding earlier.
And in the cradle, wrapped in pale wool, was the baby.
Violet stopped at the threshold.
He made a tiny sound, more of a complaint than a cry, and lifted his fist to his cheek. His face was smaller than she had imagined, softer than memory, real in a way that hurt. But then, she had only seen him for half a second before they took him away.
For weeks, he had been a cry through a closed door, a rumor, a road, a promise pressed into blue cloth. Now he was here.
Moira crossed to the cradle and lifted him with care. She held him for a moment, watching Violet’s face as if deciding whether to trust what she saw there.
“May I?” Violet asked.
Moira hesitated for only a moment before placing him in her arms. “Mind his head.”
“I ken.”
The weight of his body settled in Violet’s arms, warm and alive. Her breath caught so hard it nearly broke. She adjusted her hold beneath his head and back, drawing him closer to her chest.
The baby blinked up at her, unfocused and solemn, his small mouth working as if he had an opinion but no strength to deliver it properly. Then his eyes opened wider.
Blue. Jane’s blue.
“Oh, Jane,” Violet whispered.
“What is it?” Moira asked softly.
“Her eyes.” Violet bent her head, fighting back tears. “He has her eyes.”
The baby’s tiny fist brushed her bodice. Violet shifted him closer, careful and firm, and the faint restlessness in him eased.
“Good evening to ye, little one,” she whispered. “I came as quickly as I could. I am sorry it took me so long.”
He made a soft sound against her.
“I promised yer mother I would find ye and love ye. I will.” Her voice lowered until the words were only for him. “I will love ye every day I am allowed to breathe. And I willnae let bad men decide where ye belong ever again.”
Moira said nothing.
Violet did not look up. If she did, she might have to explain the tears she refused to let fall. She pressed her cheek near the baby’s brow, not quite touching him, breathing in milk, wool, and the clean warmth of him.
Jane died without holding him.
Violet held him tighter.
Connor stood in the doorway, watching. He had come only to confirm that Moira had Violet under watch and that the baby remained safe.
He should have stepped in, asked the next question, arranged the next order. Instead, he remained just beyond the room’s light and watched.
Violet did not look like a thief with her prize. She looked struck by grief that had finally found a living thing to hold.
The baby lay against her as if he had always known the shape of her arms. Her head bent over him, her hair loosened from the ruined maid’s cap, her torn sleeve plain against the clean blanket. She whispered something Connor could not hear, but he saw the child’s hand curl into her gown.
The sight settled something deep inside him.
He heard a footstep beside him.
“So it is true, then?” Alex asked.
Connor did not look away from Violet and the baby. “For a scary villain, rumors travel too fast in me own home.”
Alex cleared his throat. “I cannae blame the maids and guards. It isnae very often that a laird offers marriage to two different women in the same week.”
Connor glanced back at him. “Do ye have a point?”
“Several. But none of them will improve yer temper.”
“Well then, choose silence.”
“I considered it.”
“Briefly, I assume.”
“Aye. It didnae suit me.”
Connor looked back into the nursery. Violet had lowered her cheek near the baby’s brow. Moira stood a short distance away, watching with guarded softness, as if she too understood that something had shifted in the room.
“What do ye ken about her?” Alex asked.
Connor watched Violet’s hand smooth the edge of the blanket around the bairn’s shoulder. “That she’ll love the bairn.”
“And that is enough for marriage?”
“It is enough for the bairn.”
Alex studied him. “And for ye?”
Connor’s jaw tightened. “Hopefully, she’ll bring me peace.”
Alex gave a low sound that might have been a laugh. “Aye. She looks peaceful.”
Inside the nursery, Violet murmured again to the baby. Connor still could not make out the words, but the bairn’s fingers tightened in her gown as though he understood enough.
Connor turned away before either Violet or Moira could see him.
His decision remained practical. It was still order, structure, protection, and the cleanest answer to a problem that could have torn into his clan if mishandled. But Violet’s promise to the baby had changed the weight of it.
She was no longer merely the woman who would serve the solution. She had become part of the thing he could not afford to lose.
Violet eventually found Connor’s private study after questioning three maids, offending one footman, and making a kitchen maid so nervous that the poor girl pointed down the west passage just to be rid of her.
By the time she reached the door, her anger had sharpened into something much more.
The passage was quiet. Too quiet. She had been here for just a few hours, and already she knew Moore Castle had a way of swallowing sound after dark, as if everyone inside it had learned to move carefully because its master liked order more than noise.
Violet refused to be another careful thing within his walls.
She lifted her hand and knocked. No answer.
She knocked again, harder. Still nothing.