Page 75 of The Highland Ghost’s Virgin

"I sat in the dark with ye when ye were a lad, Alpin," Mòr said, her voice dropping into a dry rasp. "I cleaned the saltwater from yer shoulder. I held ye while ye cried for old Alpin when the sea took him."

"And when me father grieved himself to bone," Alpin stepped closer, "ye whispered in his ear. Ye told him the only peace was out on the waves. Ye sent him to the water."

Mòr’s shoulders twitched. A sharp, ragged sound came from her throat, a laugh that snapped in the middle.

"He couldnae live with it!" she cried out, her voice suddenly breaking wide open, echoing off the high rafters. "He couldnae look at the sea without seeing his father's face! I told him the truth! I believed it! I have always believed it!"

She took a jerky step forward, her fingers twisting into the wool of her skirts, her faded eyes burning with a sudden, wild light that made Sgàil shift uncomfortably beside her.

"I gave me life to this castle!" Mòr spat, her voice cracking as the words poured out of her. "I came here an orphan girl! The old healer took me in, and I gave this family me youth, me hands, me heart! I loved old Alpin in the dark through his whole bloody marriage! I asked him for nothing, nothing, and that is exactly what he gave me!"

Isobel rose slightly from her chair, her hand pressed against her throat.

"Forty years!" Mòr screamed, turning her sharp gaze toward the hearth, her breath coming in ragged gasps. "Forty years I healed yer wounds! I birthed yer babes! I loved yer laird without a word of thanks, and he paid me in silence! He walked past me in the hall as if I were a shadow on the wall!"

She struck her own chest with a trembling fist.

"He left me a child," she whispered, her voice dropping into a terrifyingly brittle edge. "A secret daughter. Old Alpin’s blood. He never looked at her. Never held her. Never acknowledged the breath in her lungs. I raised her alone in the cold under the east wall while his legitimate kin sat by the fire!"

She wiped a hand across her wet face, smearing ash across her cheek.

"Me girl grew up at the edges of this keep," Mòr rasped, her hands shaking so violently she had to curl them into fists. "She married one of yer clansmen. And she died bringing Nora into this world."

A collective gasp went through the hall. Greer’s hand slipped off the chair. Isobel’s mouth opened, her eyes widening as she stared at the old woman.

"Nora..." Alpin breathed, the weight of the name settling like iron in his chest.

"Yer own blood," Mòr spat, a terrible, twisted smile cutting across her cracked lips. "Old Alpin’s granddaughter. Standing right in front of ye all these days, and nae one of ye ever knew. One more thing this family took from me without even bothering to ask!"

She took another step toward Alpin, her chest heaving, her eyes wild and dark.

"I held ye when ye wept as a boy, Alpin," she whispered, her voice trembling between a sob and a curse. "I loved yer grandfather, I loved yer father, and I loved ye. But love and poison grow from the same root when ye let it sit in the dark long enough!"

She threw her arms out wide, her small frame shaking so hard her knees buckled slightly before she caught herself against the hound's heavy flank.

"I wanted it to end!" she shrieked, her voice echoing in the dead silence of the hall. "I wanted the sea to take the last of ye! I wanted this grand house to feel what it is to be hollowed out, to be left with nothing in the cold! I pointed the Herston men to the waves because I wanted ye all to suffer the way I have suffered!"

She puffed her chest out, trying to hold her chin high, trying to glare at Alpin with pure, unyielding venom.

"Go on then!" she shouted at the room. "Fetch the iron! Call the guards! I am nae sorry!"

Her voice rang out loud and harsh, but as the last word died away, her lower lip gave a violent tremble. Tears spilled over her wrinkled eyelids, cutting pale tracks through the dirt on her face. Her shoulders collapsed inward, her chin shaking uncontrollably as her body folded in on itself.

She stood in the center of the Great Hall—claiming defiance, yet completely shattered, her face cracking wide open under the crushing weight of forty years of buried grief, secret blood, and silence.

The room stayed completely still.

Isobel sat frozen, her face drained of color. Greer stared at the stone floor near Mòr’s feet, unable to look up. Dougal kept his face buried in his calloused hands.

Alpin stood motionless, his hand resting loose on his hilt, watching the old woman weep beside her cat.

The silence in the Great Hall was so thick that the only sound remaining was the ragged, wet hitch of Mòr’s breathing.

Then came the faint, metallic clink of the heavy latch at the far archway, the doorway leading to the private bedchambers.

A shadow shifted in the archway. Grisselle stood leaning heavily against the stone frame, her weight pressed hard into her left side to keep her legs from buckling. She stood in the archway wearing a dark green wool gown, a deep plaid pinned securely at her shoulder with silver. The fever that had held her for days was entirely gone; color had returned to her high cheekbones, and her dark green eyes held a sharp, luminous clarity that commanded the entire chamber.

Greer moved first, taking an instinctive step toward her, her hand outstretched, but Grisselle lifted two fingers off the stone wall to stay her. She didn't look at Greer. She didn't even look at Alpin, whose head had snapped around at her entrance, his chest rising on a deep, held breath.