Chapter 29
Within a day of Violet’s departure, Moore Castle felt completely different.
Meals reached the hall at the proper hours, and the doubled guards changed shifts without delay. Lachlan’s chamber remained sealed, its key on Connor’s person, and no servant entered without written leave.
The treaty with Laird MacAdair had been copied into the clan records, and Henry Tolford’s name had been struck from every gate instruction. For all intents and purposes, he was a wanted man.
Lachlan lay in the family crypt beside their parents.
Everything worked.
Everything.
Connor signed petitions until ink stained the side of his hand. He inspected the stores, corrected the western patrol, and drove the men through training until sweat darkened every shirt in the yard. When a young guard missed the signal to change formation, he braced for Connor’s anger.
“Again,” Connor barked.
The guard blinked, then obeyed.
Connor walked away before the absence of punishment frightened the lad further. No one spoke of Violet unless duty demanded it, and no one spoke of Lachlan at all.
Servants stopped talking when he entered a passage, and men found reasons to study buckles or sword belts when he crossed the yard.
Order had returned, and yet Connor had never found it so useless. Only John escaped the cold precision of his days.
Connor checked the nursery after breakfast, after council meetings, and before supper. He asked whether John had nursed, whether the fever had returned, and how long he had slept.
On the third morning, Moira folded her hands over her apron and endured the questions until he repeated one.
“His skin isnae warm?”
“Nay, me Laird.”
“He kept down the milk?”
“Aye.”
“All of it?”
Moira looked at him, and he, in turn, studied her. A dull despair had left faint shadows beneath her eyes, though her voice remained gentle. “Would ye like me to write the answers so ye can read them every quarter hour?”
Connor considered the usefulness of such a note.
“That was a jest, me Laird,” she added.
He looked down at John, who lay content in her arms and sucked on his own fist. “Send for me if anything changes.”
“I will send for ye if he so much as sneezes.”
Connor accepted that and left before Moira saw how much the promise comforted him.
Later that afternoon, he carried John to the library. He told himself the room was quiet. The fire crackled gently, and the chair near the window supported a man holding a baby with one arm. Yet none of them explained why Violet’s favorite chair remained untouched opposite him.
He chose a volume about disputed eastern borders and opened it across his knee.
“The first marker was placed incorrectly,” he told John. “A mistake that cost three villages grazing rights for twenty-two years.”
John kicked beneath the blanket.
“Aye. A sensible objection.”
Connor continued in the same voice he used with the council. By the second page, John had lost interest in territorial claims and begun chewing on the ever-present blue cloth.
Moira entered, carrying fresh milk. She stopped behind the chair and listened until Connor reached a passage concerning river access.
“Lady Moore would change her voice for the exciting parts,” she said.
Connor kept his attention on the page. “There are no exciting parts.”
Moira shrugged. “That may be the trouble.” She bent to adjust John against his chest, then moved the book lower. “He couldnae see it.”
“He cannae read.”
“He likes the shapes.”
Connor moved the volume so that John could reach toward the page without tearing it.
John struck the parchment with his palm, made a satisfied sound, and closed his eyes. Connor continued to read until the baby slept.
The library had sounded different when Violet filled it with foolish travel accounts and arguments addressed to an infant. Connor had thought her voice an interruption back then. Now, every pause between the pages reminded him it was gone.
The sound of hoofbeats entered the courtyard before dusk. Connor was in his study when Alex arrived, travel-stained and hollow-eyed. Mud had dried on his boots, and his coat bore the creases of several nights spent sleeping wherever the road allowed.
“Well?” Connor prompted.
Alex stood before the desk, his usual humor absent. “Henry Tolford willnae reach Scotland again.”
Connor set down his quill and told him to elaborate.
Alex had found the Viscount Tolford and placed sworn statements before him from the guards who had witnessed Henry’s attempt to kidnap John. Alex had also discovered a letter among Lachlan’s travel papers bearing Henry’s seal and instructions that matched Lachlan’s confession.
“The Viscount kent about all of it,” Alex said. “He didnae defend his son.”
“What did he do?”
“Disowned him before witnesses. Cut off his allowance and turned the letter over to the local magistrate.”
Henry was confined under guard while charges for conspiracy and attempted abduction were brought forth. Two Moore men remained nearby to report any effort to purchase his freedom. Lord Tolford had also signed a statement renouncing any claim to John.
“He offered money for the bairn’s maintenance,” Alex added.
“Put it in John’s name.”
“I thought ye might say that.”
Connor leaned back. Henry had wanted money, freedom, and the prestige of his family name. English law had placed all three beyond him.
Alex’s attention moved toward the closed study door. “When is Lady Moore returning?”
“She isnae,” Connor responded, surprised by how quickly the answer came.
Alex waited.
“She wants an annulment,” Connor continued. “She thinks she is dying. She would rather leave now than let us care for her and lose her later.”
“That sounds familiar.”
Connor lifted his eyes. “Choose yer words carefully.”
Alex rested one hand on the back of the chair opposite the desk. “Ye both think that choosing pain turns it into control.”
Connor could have sent men to MacBain Castle. He could have ordered Violet placed in a carriage and returned before nightfall. He had imprisoned her once. She would spend every day thereafter seeing Moore Castle as another prison. But he had not.
“I could command her return,” he said. “But I willnae do it.”
Alex studied him carefully.
“I cannae demand she trust a future she thinks will kill her,” Connor continued. “I have spent years demanding obedience because I feared loss. I ken what she is doing.”
“Then show her another way.”
“Mind yer place.”
“I am.” Alex’s grip tightened on the chair. “Me place is beside the Laird when he is being an idiot.”
Connor rose slowly, but Alex did not retreat.
“Feelings cannae be trained out of a man. Ye cannae schedule them or lock them beyond the gates. Everyone kens ye love her.”
Connor stopped, and suddenly, memories of the time he had spent with Violet flooded back. Suddenly, all he could see was her. Violet asleep against him. Violet’s blood on the frame of the nursery window. Violet leaving through his gates while every part of him ached to call her back.
His life had already arranged itself around her absence.
He looked toward her favorite chair and understood that she had not left before he loved her. She had left before he found the courage to say it.
John remained asleep in the crook of his arm, one fist tucked beneath his chin. Violet’s chair stood opposite, empty and untouched.
He did not deny Alex’s claim.
The word love, for some reason, gave a proper name to the choices he had already made. He would ride to MacBain Castle, and he would tell Violet plainly. He would bring the healer if she permitted it, and he would ask her to return and endure whatever answer she gave.
A knock sounded before he could speak, and the maid entered, holding a folded cloth away from her body. Her face had gone pale.
“Me Laird, I found this among Master Lachlan’s things.”
Connor handed John to Alex and crossed the room. “Where?”
“Inside the lining of his travel bag. The stitching had come loose.”
She opened the cloth. A small dark vial lay inside, its stopper fitted tightly. Dried residue marked the neck.
“Set it on the table,” Connor said. “I will have the healer look at it.”
The maid obeyed with visible relief and hurried out.
Connor bent near the vial without touching it. A bitter smell drifted to him, faint beneath the old leather and spirits that clung to Lachlan’s belongings. He remembered Violet’s cup in the nursery. Lachlan talking about how he had seen her faint outside the nursery.
God. Dear God.
Connor had doubled the guards and watched every gate, and somehow, Lachlan had walked through the castle under his protection.
“Send for the healer,” he ordered.
Alex moved at once.
The healer arrived carrying her bag and a guarded expression. She examined the vial beneath the window, scraped a trace of residue onto a clean dish, and mixed it with water. The cloudy streak that formed made her mouth tighten.
“What is it?” Connor asked.
“This is a preparation, me Laird, made to weaken,” she answered. “The base was medicinal once. It has been concentrated beyond any honest use.”
“Be precise.”
She looked at him then. “In small amounts, it would cause nausea, cold hands, dizziness, and faintness. More could cause confusion or death.”
Connor gripped the table. “Can it pass from one person to another?”
“Nay.”
“Could it resemble an old illness returning?”
“To someone who had suffered one before, aye.”
His lungs expanded for the first time since Violet had fallen against him in the market.
She was not dying.
The healer packed her instruments while Connor stared at the vial. “Angelica root may have settled her stomach for a time. It couldnae, however, remove the cause.”
“And John’s fever?”
“Unrelated, me Laird. It was only an ordinary fever. The bairn is well now.”
Connor’s knees trembled. He braced one hand against the table and lowered his head for a breath. Violet had blamed her own body. She had left John because Lachlan had taught her to fear her own touch.
Moira entered when summoned. At the sight of the vial, she pressed one hand to her apron.
“Did Lachlan ever give Violet a drink?” Connor asked.
Her brow creased. “Once in the nursery. He said I was needed below and asked another maid to bring her a cup. I thought he was trying to be useful. I should have seen it,” she whispered.
“Nay.” Connor straightened. “It was me fault. I let him stay here.”
He gave orders without raising his voice. The vial was wrapped and locked away as evidence. Lachlan’s chamber would be searched again, every seam opened. A written account from the healer would also go to Alex’s men in England.
Then Connor turned toward the door. “Saddle me horse.”
Alex glanced at him. “MacBain?”
“Aye. ‘Tis time to bring me wife home.”
Connor grabbed the vial and took it with him when he left the study. It weighed almost nothing.
At the courtyard steps, he closed his hand around the box and understood with sickening clarity that Violet had run from a disease she had never had.
But no more.