Thalia’s breath caught. MacAdair took her arm and drew her back toward the hall, his men closing around them.
Connor did not watch them go. The treaty he had built collapsed behind him, and the men in the courtyard waited for orders, punishment, certainty.
Something.
He had none ready.
He looked down at the baby in his arms. The baby blinked up at him, his face still flushed, his fist pressed beneath his chin as if offended by every living soul within reach.
Connor tightened the blanket around him. “Who are ye, child?”
Two Weeks Later
Violet kept her head down and her pace brisk as she followed the servants’ passageway deeper into Moore Castle. She had learned a week ago, after several investigations and looking through taverns, that the castle had, in fact, received an unnamed newborn baby.
Her heart pounded as she moved, inwardly thanking the unsuspecting footman who would not stop talking.She still remembered her words as she asked that the man receive another tankard of the strongest ale.
“Ye are very kind, lass,” he had said, his voice coarse.
“Nae to worry,” she had responded, the mission playing in her head. “So tell me, how do ye enter the castle?”
Now, as she braced the cold and navigated the dark passageway that led straight into the heart of Moore Castle, she couldn’t help but wonder if she had signed up for something she simply couldn’t handle.
The linen bundle in her arms was large enough to make her look useful and awkward enough to make people avoid stopping her unless they had reason to.
Beneath the folded cloths, tucked where no careless glance would find it, lay Jane’s blue cloth. Violet had carried it all theway from England, through every mile of road and every lie she had told to get this far.
Now Jane’s son was somewhere within these walls; she was sure of it. And that knowledge steadied her more than courage did.
Courage sounded too grand for the way her palms grew clammy around the linen and the way her heart beat hard each time a servant walked past her. Only a fool would not be afraid in the stronghold of a laird feared by half the Highlands.
But fear had not made Jane’s child vanish. Men had.
Violet passed a maid carrying a bucket and gave her the tired half-nod of someone who had been sent on too many errands before breakfast. The maid did not slow down.
Good.
Servants who looked busy became part of the walls, and Violet needed to become stone, wool, and silence until she found the nursery.
That was when she heard it—a thin cry cutting through the passage ahead.
She nearly stopped.
The sound came again, faint through stone and distance, and her fingers immediately tightened around the linen.
Is that him?Is that Jane’s son?
Violet turned toward the sound, determined more than ever to reach him, when a voice snapped from behind her.
“Yethere.”
She took one more step before stopping, as if the command had been an inconvenience rather than a blade pressed to her back. This was just another bump in the road. She just needed to be calm enough to overcome it.
When she turned, a guard stood near the archway, his eyes narrowed beneath dark eyebrows.
“Aye?” she asked.
“Is it nae a bit too late for ye to be roaming around?”
