Chapter 10
The careful mask Violet had worn all day nearly cracked.
For one moment, she could not move. Hannah stood below with her eyes bright enough to light up a room despite the tiredness crawling on the edges of her eyes.
She looked exactly as she always did when the worry in her eyes had completely outrun the patience she could deliver.
Violet was still staring as Hannah started to cross the passageway. She reached the bottom of the stairs at the same moment as Hannah, and the next breath was stolen by her sister’s arms closing around her.
“I should scold ye first for nae telling anyone where ye have been,” Hannah muttered against her hair. Her grip tightened until Violet felt like a little girl again, safe and trapped and loved too fiercely to breathe properly. “But I am too relieved that ye are alive.”
Violet hugged her back. “I am alive.”
“For now,” Hannah said. “Once I hear the whole tale, that may change.”
A laugh tried to leave Violet and failed halfway. She pressed her face into Hannah’s shoulder for one brief second, long enough to feel the road-dust on her cloak and her familiar scent.
Home had not been a place for years. It had been Hannah’s hands, Hannah’s temper, Hannah’s refusal to let Violet disappear into sickness or silence.
Then Hannah drew back and looked at her.
The inspection was immediate. Hannah checked her face first, then her eyes, shoulders, hands, and gown. Her gaze lingered on the borrowed gown and the tiredness Violet had tried to hide.
Violet lifted her chin. “Daenae look at me like that.”
“I am deciding which question will make ye lie the least.”
“That is unkind.”
“I ken ye, Violet. I ken ye very well.” Hannah took her wrist and turned her slightly toward the sitting room near the nursery. “Inside. Now.”
Violet allowed herself to be led because arguing in the passageway would invite servants to listen, and Moore Castle had enough ears already.
The small sitting room held two chairs, a table, and a narrow window facing the inner yard. Hannah closed the door before turning back.
“I thought ye never wanted to marry,” she started, planting both hands on her hips. “And now I find ye with a groom and a bairn?”
Violet drew in a breath. “It is complicated.”
“Well, ‘tis a good thing I have all the time in the world, is it nae? Start speaking. I am listening.”
“Ye must understand, though. I did write.”
“I didnae receive yer letter until a week ago.”
Violet looked in the direction of the nursery, where John was tucked safely in his cradle. “I wrote enough.”
“Ye wrote that ye were safe, that there was a baby, and that I should come before the wedding. Was I supposed to arrive here all happy and smiling? Did ye nae think for a second that I might be worried as well?”
Her mouth twitched despite herself.
Hannah caught it, and her expression softened only for a moment before concern returned. “Just tell me something, Sister. Is the bairn yers?”
Violet shook her head. “Nay. He is me friend’s son.”
Hannah frowned. “The English lady?”
“Aye. Jane.” Violet’s throat tightened around the name, but she kept her voice steady. “She died after birthing him.”
Hannah’s expression shifted. The sharpness did not leave, but it moved aside for grief. “Oh, little one.”
“She begged me to find him.” Violet folded her hands before Hannah could see them tremble. “To love him the way she would have.”
“So ye broke into this castle?”
Violet could see the stupidity of it now, but she would be a fool to just give up. So she shrugged her shoulders. “It seemed efficient at the time.”
Hannah shook her head. “That word carries more weight than it deserves.”
Violet almost answered, but the nursery drew her attention again. John was near. Safe. That mattered more than pride, embarrassment, or the fact that Hannah was already stripping the story down to what Violet had tried not to say.
Hannah followed her gaze. “If ye need out of this, I can take ye home. Ye and the bairn both. Ye ken Aiden will stand behind me.”
Violet looked back at her quickly. “As grateful as I am that yer husband will help, I cannae leave John.”
Hannah narrowed her eyes and kept her hands folded against her chest. “That wasnae what I said.”
“I mean, I cannae risk losing him. Connor willnae let him go.”
“Connor,” Hannah repeated, careful and far too observant. “So ye are using his name now?”
Violet felt heat crawl up her neck. “It is his name.”
“I thought people here only called him Laird Moore.”
“Daenae start.”
Hannah did not smile. That was worse.
“What happened with him?”
“He believes John is his brother's son,” Violet said, choosing each word with care. “He wants him protected. He thinks marriage will give John a mother and a home.”
“And what will it give ye?”
She paused, considering the answer.
A room? A name? Access to John?
Connor’s mouth on mine in the training yard?
She pushed the last thought away before it showed on her face. “It gives me a way to keep me promise.”
Hannah’s gaze sharpened. “That is nae an answer.”
Violet turned briefly to the window and back to Hannah. “It is the only answer that matters.”
Outside the sitting room, the sound of footsteps echoed along the corridor.
A part of Violet wanted to turn to greet whatever servant was passing by, but she didn’t want to take her eyes off her sister. The other part wondered whether it was actually a servant.
Perhaps it was him.
Connor had heard from Moira that Violet’s sister had arrived, and he had come to welcome her properly. That was when he heard her voice through the door.
“I was sure ye would never stop traveling,” she said.
Violet answered quietly, “I didnae plan to.”
“Ye loved yer fabrics. The markets. Seeing new places.”
“I ken.”
Connor stopped before the threshold.
Thanks to Alex, who found out as much as he could about her a week after she had arrived at the castle, he had learned that she sold fabrics and traveled.
But to him, they had only been facts. Facts he needed to align himself with if he was going to let her stay in his life. It had never occurred to him, until this very moment, that those facts were also a life.
Her life.
He had seen a baby who needed a mother, a woman who loved him, and a danger that required eliminating. He had made the answer fit the emergency, but for some reason, he had never asked what he was taking from her when he closed that answer around her.
The thought did not sit well as he lifted his hand and rapped his knuckles against the doorframe, before stepping inside.
Both women turned, and he could see a faint red hue bloom across Violet’s face.
“Lady MacBain,” he greeted. “Moore Castle is honored by yer arrival.”
Hannah faced him with a composed smile that did nothing to hide her assessment. She had Violet’s eyes in a steadier, sharper arrangement, and she looked at him as if title, height, and reputation were details rather than threats.
“Laird Moore,” she returned. “I thank ye for receiving me.”
“It is an honor that ye came early.”
“Me sister’s letter suggested haste might be wise.”
Connor understood the warning beneath the courtesy. He respected it more than if she had wasted her breath pretending she had come out of casual affection.
“Yer husband is welcome to come as well,” he offered.
“He will join us before the wedding,” Hannah said. “He has matters to attend to.”
“He will find his rooms ready.”
“Good. He is fond of predictability and less fond of surprises.”
Violet made a small sound, almost a warning or a sigh.
Connor looked at her. That was a mistake.
She stood near the window in borrowed wool, her face still flushed from the reunion, her lips pressed into a thin line as if she were holding several truths behind them by force.
We must really get ye some new gowns.
For a moment, the sitting room, Hannah’s watchful presence, and the careful duties of host and guest faded away. He saw the grass at dawn. Her fingers caught in his shirt. The shock in her eyes after he lifted his mouth from hers.
Violet looked back at him for one beat too long.
Her sister noticed. Nothing about that was surprising.
Connor exhaled and broke the silence first. “I will leave ye to settle.”
Hannah nodded her head, the composed smile still on her face. “How considerate.”
Violet’s gaze flicked away as Connor turned and left before the room could pull anything more from him.
He walked down the passageway with guilt he refused to name and the memory of Violet’s quiet words following him.
“I didnae plan to.”
Hannah waited until Connor’s footsteps faded before she spoke.
“What exactly is going on?”
Violet turned back to the window, though there was no safety in looking out of it. The sitting room felt too small now that Connor had left it. His presence lingered in the charged silence, which Hannah had noticed too easily.
“I told ye,” Violet said.
Hannah’s eyebrows arched. “Ye told me enough to stop me from dragging ye out by yer wrist.”
“I appreciate the restraint.”
“Daenae play with me, Violet. I daenae appreciate it.”
Violet turned to her, intending to offer some clever answer, but Hannah’s expression stopped her.
Her sister was not simply angry. That would have been easier. She was studying her with the same quiet focus she had used years ago when Violet insisted she could stand, walk, breathe, and eat while fever burned through every lie.
There was no escaping that look.
“He is strict,” Violet said at last.
“Aye, I’ve noticed.”
Violet held her sister’s eyes. “Well, have ye noticed that he is also a bit arrogant?”
“He is a laird. They all are.”
“He is confusing as well.”
Hannah folded her hands in front of her. “Now, that one is more interesting.”
Violet dipped her head. “Sometimes he is a brute. Sometimes he is almost kind. Sometimes he says something insulting, then does something decent and expects me to always follow along those moods.”
Hannah’s gaze sharpened. “And what of yer heart?”
“Me heart?” Violet’s voice rose, almost in disbelief. “Please.”
Hannah did not smile.
That was unfair. If she had smiled, Violet could have accused her of making nonsense of a serious situation. Instead, she crossed to the chair closest to the fireplace and lowered herself into it as if she had every intention of remaining there until Violet gave her something resembling the truth.
“Has he tried to frighten ye?” she asked.
Violet’s fingers tightened against her gown.
The answer should have been simple. Connor frightened servants, warriors, tenants, and lairds with less effort than most men used to open a door.
He had locked her in the dungeons, ordered a wedding, carried her through the castle, kissed her in the grass, and looked at her as if every argument she made was something he might dismantle with patience and his bare hands.
“Nae in the way ye mean,” she said.
Hannah leaned forward. “Has he hurt ye?”
“Nay.”
“Forced ye?”
Heat rose fast in Violet’s face before she could stop it, and the kiss came back with cruel clarity. Connor above her, one hand braced near her head, the pause before his mouth touched hers, and the fact that she had not turned away.
Hannah saw the blush.
Violet hated that nothing could escape her sister.
“Violet.”
“He is controlling,” Violet said quickly. “Infuriating. Too sure of himself. But he isnae cruel.”
The sentence hung between them, heavier than anything.
Connor was dangerous; there was no denying that. But he was not cruel in the way Hannah feared. That distinction mattered, and Violet hated that she knew it so clearly.
Hannah accepted the answer with a small nod. Then her gaze moved over Violet’s face again, gentler now and somehow more difficult to bear.
“And yer health?”
Violet sighed. “Hannah, it has been years.”
“That isnae what I asked.”
“I am well.”
“Ye were always well until ye werenae.”
Violet looked away. “That is cruel.”
“I like to think I’ve earned that right.”
The words landed so cleanly that Violet had no defense against them because Hannah was correct.
She had earned the right to say them. Hannah had sat beside her through nights when her breath came in shallow bursts and everyone pretended not to listen for death in the room.
She had fed her spoonful by spoonful when Violet could barely swallow, and had argued with physicians, servants, and sometimes friends.
People spoke of love as if it were only a gift, but Violet knew better. Love could become a burden when your beloved’s body kept failing. Love could turn sisters into nurses, husbands into watchers, and children into future mourners.
She had seen what happened firsthand to people who loved too deeply, and she could never afford to let it happen to her. She could not build a home, let children need her, let a husband shape his life around her, then leave them all with the same helpless ache Hannah had carried.
“Ye keep saying John needs ye.” Hannah’s voice softened.
“Aye. He does.”
“But needing isnae the same as wanting.”
Violet’s throat tightened. “What does that mean?”
Hannah shifted slightly in her seat and sighed. “It means ye have always found it easier to be useful than honest.”
“That is unfair,” Violet protested.
She walked out of the room and crossed to the nursery. She opened the door quietly and looked in. John slept in his cradle, one small fist near his cheek, his mouth slightly open. Moira looked up from her chair, then returned to her mending.
Violet stepped inside and went to the cradle. She was not surprised that her sister had followed her.
“He is different,” she said, touching the edge of John’s blanket.
Hannah came to stand beside her, close enough that Violet felt her warmth at her shoulder. “Because Jane asked ye?”
“Because he has already lost enough.”
“Right. And what about yer future husband?”
Violet’s hand went still on the blanket. “What about him?”
“Has he lost enough?”
“Daenae do that.”
Hannah shrugged. “I am only asking whether he is only a duty too.”
Violet looked down at John because looking at her sister would cost too much. “Ye are the exception, wee one,” she whispered. “That is all.”
The words should have steadied her. Instead, they sounded thin.
She was still deep in thought when Connor’s voice came from the passageway outside, low and controlled.
“Tell Alex I want the western gate watched through dusk. No strangers near the bairn.”
Her body reacted before sense could stop it. Her pulse quickened, traitorous and immediate, and her hand tightened around the cradle rail. She kept her eyes on John as if devotion alone could hide the rest of her.
Hannah turned her head slowly and looked at Violet’s face. “And ye are certain that whatever ye have with Laird Moore is only business?” she asked.
Violet did not move. “Daenae.”
“I didnae say anything.”
“Ye were about to.”
“Aye,” Hannah said softly. “Something useful.”
Violet looked down at John and told herself again that he was the only exception. Then Connor’s voice sounded once more in the passageway, closer this time, and her heart betrayed her before she could move.
Hannah saw it.
Of course Hannah saw it.