She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. This was useless. All she was doing was imagining the worst and letting it send her down into a spiral—a spiral with no end.
Back home, when a project threatened to unravel, when markets shifted unexpectedly or a supplier collapsed withoutwarning, she did not stand by a window and imagine disaster. She mapped the risk and mitigated it.
Okay. She pulled in a breath to the count of four. Held it. Breathed out for six. Again.
Slowly, she felt herself begin to settle. Her thoughts began to slow, the panic to recede a little. She turned from the window, the hem of her nightdress whispering across the floorboards. The fire in the grate had burned low but still glowed. Beside it stood a small table, holding an ink pot, and a stack of parchment. She sat at the table, spread the parchment flat, and something inside her steadied.Thisshe understood.
Dipping a quill into the inkpot, she wrote across the top in careful strokes:MacInnes risk assessment.If she were Seoras MacInnes, what would she do?
She stared at the words for a long moment, then began listing: test loyalty, isolate asset, escalate demand, remove external influences. He would want to be sure of Evan before he acted. Nobody had been able to catch Seoras MacInnes, which meant he was careful.
Testing Evan’s loyalty was the first and most obvious move. MacInnes would not accept Evan’s story at face value. He would probe. He would look for fracture lines.
What form would such a test take? Her pulse threatened to quicken again, but she pressed the quill more firmly to the page instead. At work, she identified vulnerabilities in a system—overexposure to a single supplier, lack of contingency planning, inadequate oversight.
She drew a line down the center of the parchment. On the left she wroterisk. On the right she wrotemitigation. She almost laughed at the familiarity of it—and the absurdity of doing it in this situation. But it calmed her, helped her order her thoughts. Under risk she wrote:MacInnes isolates Evan. Under mitigation she wrote:maintain covert communication channel.
Evan would be closely watched and any overt attempt at contact could endanger him. So communication must be indirect. Next to what she’d just written she added,trusted intermediary.
She paused. Who? Niall and Bryce were out of the question. Charlie? Too obvious. Flora or Joseph? Again, too obvious. They needed someone close enough to Evan to move without scrutiny, but not so visibly tied to the family feud that MacInnes would suspect collusion.
And Evan could not know. If he did, there would always be the possibility—however small—that something in his expression, his timing, his hesitation might betray him.
Her chest tightened briefly at the idea of keeping something from him, but she pushed through it. On the parchment she wroteRequirement: Observer near Evan. Not obvious ally. Capable of discretion. Somone Evan trusts.
Hamish. The name surfaced quietly, but once it did, it refused to retreat. Hamish had known Evan since he was a boy and, being the headman of Evan’s village, could move around without suspicion.
She leaned back slightly, examining what she had written. Already the panic that had gripped her at the window seemed further away—not gone, but contained. The darkness remained unchanged, but she no longer felt as though it was swallowing her.
She set the quill down and flexed her fingers, which were smudged with ink, then folded the parchment carefully, and slid it into a small drawer. She felt calmer now she had a plan. At first light, she would seek out Hamish and begin putting her plan into motion.
Because if Seoras MacInnes believed Evan stood alone, then he’d already made his first mistake.
THE NOISE WAS SMALL.
So small that for a moment Evan thought he’d imagined it—a shift in timber, the sigh of wind beneath a door. Then it came again.
He was alert instantly but he didn’t move. He lay flat on the wooden floor of his chamber in his dilapidated manor house, eyes open in the dark, listening.
Another sound. This time unmistakable. Footsteps below. Three sets, if he judged correctly. Moving with no attempt at stealth.
He rolled smoothly to his feet and crossed the room, the boards chill beneath his bare soles. He reached the door and eased it open just enough to peer into the corridor. The faintest glow crept upward from the stairwell—lantern light from below.
He grabbed a dagger from his weapons belt, shut the door softly behind him, and crept down the hall. He made barely a sound as he descended the stairs, and as he reached the bottom, he found a familiar figure waiting for him with arms crossed.
Fergus Key.
The lantern he held threw harsh shadows across the planes of his face, sharpening his cheekbones, hollowing his eyes. Two other men flanked him—the same pair Evan had cut loose from Niall’s store room the night before.
Key’s mouth twitched faintly as Evan stepped into view. “Oops. Apologies. Did we wake ye?”
Evan leaned one shoulder against the wall, folding his arms loosely. “Ye could have just knocked.”
Key huffed a short breath that might have been a laugh. “Where would be the challenge in that?”
Evan’s gaze slid briefly to the two men at Key’s side. “So?” he asked. “Ye have news for me?”
Key nodded once. “MacInnes welcomes ye into the fold. He says to tell ye that he thinks ye will do great things together.”
