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The three of them were alone. Lachlan did not say anything, seemingly trusting her instincts.
In a kindly voice, Moira addressed the maid. “Mary, tell us what you know.”
The maid seemed on the verge of a collapse, but she met Mora’s eyes in a show of braveness.
Long seconds elapsed before she deigned to speak. “Some laddies talked to me,” her voice weak with nervousness probably.
“Who?” Lachlan asked.
The girl did not look at him. Moira remembered she had been the one giggling as she left the chamber with that tub.
“I dinna ken,” she answered. “Promised my brathair’s gambling debt would be paid.”
“In exchange for what?” Moira questioned.
“Telling what goes on in the manor.” Low, her tone did not falter.
“And if you didn’t?” Lachlan pushed.
“They’d harm…me.” The slightest wobbling showed in the information.
“Damned lackeys!” Moira exclaimed in astonishment.
Little by little, her uncle’s modus operandi appeared. He prayed on people’s weaknesses—gambling debts, cheating husbands, sick children, anything that could be used as leverage. Moira would not be surprised if most of them were from the Darrochs. Inside information would always be valuable. It would not be too far-fetched to suspect that her own people put fire to the cottage, or freed the cattle in the oat fields. Would they have killed innocent animals too? Or poisoned Malcom?
“Here’s what,” Lachlan started. “I’ll write a letter to my brother, the Laird. You’ll take it and seek refuge in the McKendricks.”
“Thank you, my laird.” The maid became visibly relieved.
She was but just another victim in Hamish’s schemes. It would be unfair to punish her in the circumstances. A flush of admiration for Lachlan invaded Moira.
At the desk, he started writing. As he gave the girl the letter, she curtsied several times with gratitude.
The maid left behind a heavy silence.
Moira sought the armchair and fairly crumbled on it. An intense disheartenment invaded her; a bitter weariness of trying, of struggling nearly doubled her. Hamish would not stop until he achieved what he sat out to do. Every trick he played, every crime he perpetrated took a piece of her away, in the end she would be broken. To which end? She was a woman, she had no legal right to lead the clan, it would fall in someone else’s hands anyway. One of her callused hands rubbed her brow with a long sigh.
“Moira,” Lachlan rasped.
Perhaps she should quit, leave everything. Open a shop in Aberdeen, or Glasgow. Fly to the moon.
“Moira,” he repeated.
She could find a humble man to marry, a smith, a shoemaker. Live a simple life, with simple problems and simple joys.
“Darroch!” Lachlan called loudly.
Startled, she snapped her eyes at him, not having heard the first two times.
“Cease those sombre thoughts right now!” he commanded.
“How do you know they’re sombre?”
Standing tall and broad before the armchair, he oozed confidence. And masculinity. And everything she had dreamed of in a man. In him.
“Your expression is covered in shadows,” he vented.
“Well, that was poetic,” she mocked.
