“Good day, Malcolm.” Isabel forced her attention away from her thoughts.
“Aye.” He bowed his head slightly. “The laird asks for ye, my lady.”
A slow chill walked its way up her spine, cooling the heat she had felt with Lachlan. Isabel squared her shoulders, cleared her throat, but neither of those actions could quell the dread. “Is he in the great hall?” she asked. Why had he sent his man to fetch her instead of coming himself?
Perhaps she should be grateful for that.
“In his solar, my lady.”
There was something in Malcolm’s tone that sent a faint ripple of unease and suspicion through her. She nodded and moved past him without hesitation, but as she traversed Dunvegan’s corridors and stairs, she became aware of a subtle change in the air. The sounds in the courtyard coming in flashes from the narrow windows were muted. Whether it was her imagination, or in fact reality, every nerve in her body prickled with warning. Two maids hurried passed on the stairs, their gazes down, mouths pinched.
The narrow steps spiraled upward, the stone icy beneath her hand as she climbed, and with each turn, the space seemed to tighten. The sounds of the courtyard faded from the narrow windows, replaced by a quiet that felt heavier than silence alone.
By the time she reached the solar, her earlier thoughts of longing were replaced by something close to panic. The solar door stood open, Lachlan waiting for her.
She stepped inside.
Lachlan stood near the table, his posture rigid, his attention fixed on the man before him. The stranger turned slightly at her entrance, and Isabel immediately recognized him as one of her uncle’s men, Sir Bernard Douglas.
His boots were caked in mud, the leather cracked and darkened from hard travel. The hem of his cloak was stiff and held a layer of dirt. His face was drawn with exhaustion, but he held himself upright, disciplined, as though the message he carried mattered more than his own fatigue.
“There ye are,” Lachlan mused. There was an edge to his voice that wasn’t normally present. Whatever warmth had existed there had been replaced by his battle name, the Wolf of Skye.
“What has happened?” Isabel feared the worst. That they were about to impart on her news of her uncle’s death. Why else would Sir Bernard come?
Bernard bowed slightly and stepped back, giving them space. Lachlan held a folded letter in his hand.
“This message arrived from Robert the Bruce.”
“Another…” Isabel trailed off. This messenger must have been dispatched shortly after the other.
Lachlan nodded.
She studied Lachlan’s face, but whatever he had read was already locked behind the steel wall of his mind. “And?” she pressed.
He exhaled slowly before handing her the letter, and she glanced at Sir Bernard whose eyes widened at the exchange. Most of her uncle’s men and allies did not know she could read, Sir Bernard one of them. Should she feign ignorance? How did Lachlan know? This felt like a test between them, and she wasn’t sure what the right move would be. Och, but what would be the point now?
“The war council is fracturing,” Lachlan said.
The words carried weight, but it was only as Isabel’s eyes moved across the page that their full meaning began to take shape.
Uncle Robbie’s hand was unmistakable. The writing was controlled, but there was tension beneath it—an urgency that bled through even the careful phrasing. Clans were turning against one another in the aftermath of Falkirk. Old rivalries, long buried for the sake of necessity, had begun to surface again. Some questioned the decisions that had led to the loss. Others feared retaliation from the English, now that weakness had been exposed.
Her breath caught on the next line. Someone had leaked the strategy for the battle. The truth settled into her bones, cold and immovable, as she read it again. We are betrayed. Someone close to the council has spoken to the English. This was everything they’d already believed but until confirmed had not been real. She read further, her focus narrowing. A name appeared near the end, and she ground her teeth together. Kerr.
Isabel remembered the man from Inverlochy. In the great hall he’d stared her down, and as they’d left, he had watched. There’d been malice in his eyes.
“Comyn’s man. He was watching us,” she said quietly.
Lachlan’s jaw hardened. “Aye.”
“And my uncle believes Kerr is in league with Longshanks.” Her mind flashed back to the feast. “Which means our suspicions about Comyn are also true.”
What could have happened to them if they had not left Inverlochy before the sun had risen?
“I dinna believe in coincidences.”
Isabel turned toward the narrow window overlooking the sea, her thoughts racing as the truth reshaped everything she had believed only hours before. Dunvegan had felt like a sanctuary. A place removed from the reach of war. A place where the dangers of the mainland could not follow.
