Chapter Four
Dawn unveiled the Highlands properly.
The mist ruling the previous day tore apart under a hard blue sky, and Claire saw the land at last—not in fragments, but in breadth.
The world opened around her in wild, astonishing measure.
Heather-clad slopes rolled away in deep violet-brown folds.
Gray rock thrust upward like the bones of the earth.
A loch lay below, dark as polished glass, reflecting clouds moving like armies overhead.
In the distance, cliffs dropped toward a line of sea light so pale she wondered if she imagined it.
The wind came fierce and clean.
Nothing about it was soft. Nothing about it apologized.
Claire forgot, for one treacherous heartbeat, to be angry.
“Ye’re staring,” Lachlan said behind her.
“I am deciding whether Scotland is all cliffs and intimidation.”
“Mostly.”
“That explains a great deal about your temperament.”
His low chuckle startled her. The sound changed him. Not softened. But it made him seem less carved from stone and more like a man who had once known ease.
By midmorning they rode through a pass where wind funneled between towering slopes and tugged at her hood like impatient fingers. Pines thickened in the lower reaches, their resin scent dark and rich. Burns ran white over stone. Deer flashed once at the tree line and vanished.
Then the keep emerged.
Raven’s Berry Keep, she had heard him say, rose from a shoulder of land above water and glen, its gray walls seeming born from the same rock beneath them. Towers lifted against the sky. Banners cracked in the wind. Smoke poured from chimneys, not in menace but in proof of life.
Not merely a fortress.
A stronghold with heartbeat.
As they rode through the gates, Claire took everything in—the bailey, the children darting between barrels, women carrying baskets, men at the smithy, the smell of bread and horse and peat smoke. A village sheltered inside stone.
Lachlan dismounted first, then set his hands at her waist and lifted her down.
The contact lasted only a moment.
Her body noticed anyway.
She stepped back too quickly, then proceeded to stride toward the curious clansmen.
A woman pulled her child slightly closer.
A group of men watched her carefully from the smithy.
Not hostility—wariness.
A strong-featured older woman approached with clear-eyed composure. “The English lass?”
Claire straightened. “Lady Claire Ashford.”
The woman’s mouth twitched. “Aye. And I’m Maddy, which matters more at mealtime.”
Despite herself, Claire smiled.
Lachlan said, “A chamber is ready.”
“A chamber,” Claire repeated. “How generous. Shall I also be granted walls?”
Maddy made a strangled sound which may have been a laugh smothered for safety.
Lachlan only said, “If ye prefer the stable, ’tis colder.”
She bit back a harsh retort, cooling her words and the tone in front of the older woman. “You mistake me, sir. I simply did not realize kidnapping came with hospitality.”
His eyes held hers. “Only when the guest is troublesome.”
She offered a quick smile and shrugged away the flutter in her belly. To her annoyance, part of her wondered when she would see him again. “Then your burden has just begun.”
A spark moved between them—bright and uninvited.
And Claire knew with a sudden certainty Scotland itself was not the greatest threat to her peace.
It was the laird who looked at her as though he meant to unravel every certainty she possessed.
# # #
When the gates closed behind them, Lachlan exhaled for what felt like the first time in two days.
Home.
The wind off the loch hit the keep walls with familiar force. The clang from the smithy, the call of stable lads, the smoke rising from the kitchens—every sound settled into him like old armor.
Yet nothing felt quite usual with Lady Claire Ashford standing in his bailey in travel-worn English wool and looking at his home as though she meant to memorize its weaknesses before supper.
God, she was brave.
Or furious.
Likely both.
He watched her take in Raven’s Berry—its people, its motion, the disciplined ease of clan life. She hid it well, but he saw the instant surprise touched her features. She had expected harshness. She had not expected warmth.
Grand. Let her see truth where she could.
He would have to keep enough hidden as it was.
Maddy gave him a look as old women do when they know too much.
“She’ll have the blue chamber,” she said.
“Aye.”
“And answers?”
“Later.”
Maddy’s brows lifted. “If ye wait too long, the lass will sharpen herself on suspicion.”
Lachlan glanced at the English Rose, who stood with her chin high and her temper practically glowing. “That may have happened already.”
He should have left then. Handed her over to women’s care, ridden to inspect the outer watch, forced his thoughts elsewhere.
Instead, he kept looking.
At the way the Highland light struck warm notes into her dark hair. At the stubborn grace in every movement. At the defiance she wore like silk over steel.
He had brought danger into Raven’s Berry.
And worse, he had brought temptation.