“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 cannaeschedulethem 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 wordlove,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.
