Connor felt pity and distrust well up together. It was an unpleasant pairing. Lachlan’s grief was real. His weakness was real. That made him harder to judge and more dangerous to keep.
“And Violet?” Connor asked.
For the first time, Lachlan’s smile reached him with something clean beneath the damage. Tired, yes. Unsteady. Still honest enough to make Connor’s chest tighten with distant memory.
“Aye,” Lachlan said. “Jane and Violet were nearly inseparable. Violet helped us meet more than once.”
Connor’s eyebrows rose. “She did?”
“Aye. Annoyingly brave, that one. Talked back to Jane’s brother as if he were a street urchin.”
Connor almost laughed. The urge surprised him.
“She talks back to me, too,” he admitted.
“Does she?” Lachlan’s smile steadied for the span of one breath. “Good. Someone should.”
There he was. The brother Connor had lost in parts, showing himself through shame and bad choices as if the past had cracked open and let one small piece breathe.
Connor looked toward the stairs before he meant to.
Violet was not there. The memory of her came anyway. Her hands in his coat. Her breath breaking against his mouth. Her gown under his fingers. Her voice saying she could not, then the door closing after her while the cèilidh waited outside.
“I’m contemplating sending her back to the dungeons,” Connor said.
Lachlan’s gaze snapped to him. “Back?”
Connor knew the mistake as soon as the word had left him. He did not explain.
The noise in the hall rose around them, along with strained music trying to live again, but Lachlan’s question lingered under Connor’s skin.
It should have mattered more.
Connor knew for a fact that it would matter later.
“Come,” he said, his eyes sharp with more questions. “Let us get ye something to eat.”
17
Violet smoothed her sleeve for the third time the next morning while Hannah watched her from beside the waiting horses.
“Ye look tired,” Hannah noted quietly.
Violet smoothed the cuff. The stitching was neat enough, though she found fault with it because fault was easier than thought. “It was a wedding. I was expected to look awake for too many hours.”
“That isnae what I meant.”
“I ken.” Violet plastered on a bright smile. “I chose to answer that one instead, just because.”
Hannah’s expression softened in a way that made Violet’s chest tighten. Her sister stepped forward and hugged her hard,heedless of the gown, the sleeve, and the careful shape Violet had made of herself for the morning.
“Write to me,” Hannah murmured into her shoulder.
“I will.”
“Soon.”
“I ken whatsoonmeans.”
