Chapter Thirty-Seven
The message arrived at dawn.
Lachlan stood in the bailey, issuing orders as the morning mist burned off the hills, when a rider barreled through the gates—mud-splashed, breathless, and carrying more urgency than words.
Connor caught the man before he could tumble from the saddle.
“Easy, lad,” Connor said. “Ye’ll break yer fool's neck.”
“Message,” the rider managed, thrusting a small, sealed scrap toward Lachlan. “From the south ridge. Passed twice before it reached me.”
Lachlan took it. The seal was plain, no crest, no mark, which meant everything.
His pulse steadied—sharpened. “Who carried it?” he asked.
“A shepherd first. Then a trader. No one saw where it came from.”
Of course not. Claire would never risk anything so obvious.
Lachlan turned the scrap over once in his fingers, then broke the seal.
At first glance, it read like nothing, merely a list of grain tallies. Weather notes. A mention of a broken wheel.
Mundane and meaningless.
An obvious lie.
Lachlan’s mouth curved faintly.
“She’s clever,” Connor said, watching over his shoulder.
“Aye,” Lachlan murmured. His eyes moved over the lines again. Not for what they said, for how they were said.
The spacing and repetition, the subtle shifts in phrasing.
Claire had always chosen her words with care even before she realized she was doing it.
Now every word mattered.
He read it once, twice, then a third time, slower.
And there a pattern emerged. Not in the words, but in the structure.
He reached for a piece of charcoal and a scrap of wood from the nearby cart. “Look,” he said.
Connor leaned closer, then Shamus ambled up. Both men watched as Lachlan marked the first letter of every third line.
Then every fifth.
“Here,” he said.
The pattern locked. Letters forming beneath his hand. Not perfect. Not obvious.
But clear enough.
Shamus let out a low whistle. “Saints.”
Lachlan gripped the message tightly in his hands. ’Twas not about grain nor the weather.
Coordinates and movement and encirclement.
“They’re tightening around us,” Connor said.
“Aye.”
“And this—” Shamus tapped the lower markings, “these are supply lines.”
Lachlan nodded. “Routes,” he said. “Where they think we are weakest.”
A calm settled over him. Claire had done more than warn him.
She had given him a way in.
Maddy approached, arms folded, eyes sharp. “Ye look like a mon who just found a blade where he thought he had none.”
Lachlan handed her the scrap. She scanned it quickly. Then again.
Her brow lifted. “She’s bold.”
“Aye.”
Maddy looked up. “Ye trust it?”
Lachlan did not hesitate. “With my life and hers.”
Maddy nodded once. “Then what do we do with it?”
Lachlan’s gaze lifted to the hills beyond the keep. “We stop reacting and start hunting. Gather everyone in the hall.”
The hall filled quickly. Maps were spread across the table. Claire’s information layered over what little they had known before.
The picture was clearer.
“They expect us to defend Raven’s Berry,” Lachlan said, bracing his hands on the table. “To hold here while they tighten the noose.”
Shamus grinned faintly. “Let them.”
Lachlan’s eyes flicked to him. “We willna be here.”
Silence echoed off the stone walls of the main hall. Slowly, murmuring churned into a ripple of understanding.
Maddy leaned in. “Ye’re going after their lines.”
“Aye.” He tapped the marked routes. “Here. And here. Small units. Fast. We hit their supplies, their reinforcements. Make them bleed before they even reach us.”
“They’ll have to pull back,” Connor said. “Protect what they’ve already taken.”
Shamus nodded. “Or risk starving their own campaign.”
Lachlan nodded. “Exactly.”
A captain frowned. “And if they press anyway?”
Lachlan’s expression hardened. “Then they’ll do it weaker than they planned.”
He straightened, pride in Claire and his men fueling him. “And we’ll be ready.”
By midday, the keep had shifted into motion.
Quiet. Purposeful. Deadly.
Men rode out in small groups—no banners, no noise, slipping into the hills like shadows.
Supplies were redistributed and defenses adjusted.
Not abandoned, Lachlan would never be that foolish, but no longer the center.
Hours passed and a quiet hummed filled the keep and beyond. Excitement, worry and anticipation gave his men the energy to continue finessing their plan.
Dusk broke into twilight which broke into a dark as pitch night. Perfect camouflage.
Lachlan stood again on the ridge, the same place, same wind.
But everything had changed. He held Claire’s message in his hand, the edges worn now from repeated reading. A talisman of her loyalty. Her love.
“Ye’re in the middle of it,” he murmured as a statement, not a question. The truth of the situation regardless of the danger.
He could see her moving through the rigid camp, watching, listening, risking everything with every step she took.
For him and his people.
For them and what they were building between them.
His jaw tightened. “Ye’d better be careful, my English Rose,” he said softly.
The wind carried the words away, but not the promise behind them.
# # #
Claire stood at the edge of her father’s camp once more.
The night was colder now, sharp with a bite deep within her bones.
And she was no longer guessing about her father and Alasdair’s actions, she knew the patterns.
The weaknesses the men in their arrogance missed. Yes, there was a shape of what he intended and more importantly, what he did not expect.
Behind her, a guard shifted. “Cold night, my lady.”
Claire glanced back, offering a faint smile. “It will grow colder.”
The man nodded absently, most likely bored with his duty of watching over her. His boredom was an asset.
Claire turned her gaze back to the hills.
To the darkness beyond, to the place where she knew Lachlan would be. His presence was felt by every fiber of her being. Not waiting, he and his men anticipating, moving and fighting for their clan.
Changing the game her father and his brother so foolishly started.
A slow, steady resolve settled into her bones. “You have your war,” she whispered into the night. “Now you have me in it.”
And this time she would not be the piece moved.
She was the one who moved it.