Page 76 of The Highland Ghost’s Virgin

Her eyes were fixed entirely on Mòr.

Grisselle stepped down into the hall, her posture erect and her stride completely steady across the cold flagstones.

She walked past Isobel, who remained frozen in her chair. She walked past Greer, stepping into the clear, open expanse of the hall until she stood ten paces from the weeping old woman and her cat.

Mòr did not lift her head at first. She kept her chin pressed to her chest, her small frame shivering beneath her damp apron, her tears dropping onto Sgàil’s hairless body.

"Ye should be in yer bed," Mòr rasped to the floorboards, her voice dry, stripped of its previous screaming edge. "The fever will return."

"I’m fine now," Grisselle said.

Her voice was quiet, thin as parchment, but it carried across the high, stone-vaulted hall without effort. It lacked the sharp, biting edge of London wit, lacked the guarded deflection she had worn like armor since the day she had set foot in the Highlands.

Grisselle took two more small steps forward, closing the distance until she could smell the bitter scent of dried yarrow and wet earth clinging to Mòr’s wool. She looked down at the old woman—not with the cold, sweeping judgment of The Lady of the house, nor with the fierce, protective fury of a woman who had nearly drowned in the cold water Mòr had pointed her toward.

Her eyes were dark, quiet, and clear.

"I heard everything you said," Grisselle said softly.

Mòr’s shoulders twitched. She let out a short, bitter huff through her nose, though she still refused to look up. "Then call the guard, London girl. Tell yer Laird to put the iron on me wrists. I am sure ye have a grand speech prepared for a traitor."

"I have no speech," Grisselle replied.

She let go of the edge of her plaid with one hand, letting her arm hang loose at her side. She looked at Mòr’s twisted, ink-stained fingers, at the matted gray hair falling around a face that had carried forty years of secret, unacknowledged labor in the dark.

"I’m sorry," Grisselle said.

The two words fell into the quiet hall like stones dropped into a deep well.

Mòr froze. Her trembling hands went still against her apron. Slowly, painfully, as if her neck were made of rusted iron, she lifted her head and looked Grisselle in the face.

"What did ye say?" Mòr whispered.

"I’m sorry," Grisselle repeated, her voice steady, unhurried, holding Mòr’s gaze without a single blink. "No woman should have lived the way you lived."

Mòr stared at her, her faded, bloodshot eyes searching Grisselle’s face for a trace of mockery, a flicker of deceit, a condescending tilt of the chin. She found none.

"You were nineteen," Grisselle said softly, taking another half-step closer, her voice carrying a deep, heavy truth that cost her every ounce of her remaining strength to speak aloud. "You were an orphan girl in a strange keep. You gave your youth, your body, and your heart to a man who took everything you had and left you to sit in the cold while his life went on around you. You raised his child in the dark, and you buried her in frozen dirt without a song."

Grisselle’s breath hitched slightly, a sharp pang in her wounded shoulder making her pause, but she didn't break her gaze.

"It was wrong," Grisselle said, the word ringing clear and undeniable across the stone. "It was cruel, and it was wrong. They used your hands to heal them and forced you to pretend you did not exist."

A thick, agonizing silence settled over the room.

Mòr’s mouth worked silently, her lower lip shaking violently as the words sank into her skin. Grisselle could see that she had not prepared for a stranger, a girl from London who owed her nothing, to stand in the center of the Great Hall and validate the ancient, bleeding truth of her suffering.

"Me daughter," Mòr choked out, her voice barely a breath now, a small, helpless sound escaping her throat. "He dinnae even ken her name."

"I know," Grisselle murmured softly. "And it was wrong."

Mòr’s chest gave a great, violent heave, a fresh wave of quiet tears spilling down her cheeks.

Grisselle didn't reach out to touch her; she did not offer a false comfort, nor did she pretend the dark had not happened. Instead, she stood straight, her chin lifted just enough to carry the full, heavy weight of what had to be said next.

"And," Grisselle continued, her voice dropping an octave, solid as the keep’s foundation, "what you did to Alpin was also wrong."

Mòr went still again, the wet light in her eyes flickering.