Page 95 of The Highland Laird’s Hellion Bride

Becky folded her hands at her waist. “She asked me for a candle, me Laird. Before I said goodnight. She said she wanted to go out to the loch. To see the stars.” A pause. “I thought she’d only be a moment. I didnae hear her come back, but I was tired and I…”

Magnus was already moving.

He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t run. He walked the length of the corridor at a pace that made Becky half-jog to keep up. Then he stopped at the foot of the stairs, looked up and said nothing for the space of three seconds, and what moved through him in those three seconds he put straight back down where it came from.

She went to the loch. She’s at the loch.

He passed the hall and looked around one more time.

Christ, she’s nae here.

He passed Mrs. McAulay in the doorway saying something about the roses and Katherine arguing back, but he didn’t hear either of them. He grabbed Duncan by the arm outside the solar and pulled him three steps clear of Liam before he spoke.

“Elspeth went out last night,” he hissed. “To see the stars. She hasnae come back.”

Duncan set his cup down on the windowsill. His face went still. “The stone circle?”

“Or the loch. Becky said the loch.” Magnus turned toward the yard. “Get Liam. Tell him quietly; I daenae want the household in panic.”

“Aye.” Duncan was already moving. “Horses?”

“Mine’s ready. Have them saddle Liam’s grey.” Magnus stopped in the corridor, hand flat against the wall, and thought about O’Brien’s tracks in the western glen. The broken branch. The sight line to the castle. “Three men from the night watch, the ones who covered the western approach. I want them with us.”

“I’ll get them.”

“Five minutes, Duncan.”

“Aye.”

Duncan went.

Magnus walked to the stables and saddled his own horse, working the buckles in order without thinking about the order, the way he’d learned to do everything in the dark years after the fire. He checked the girth twice. He checked it a third time.

A ribbon was caught on the stable door latch. Auburn, narrow, the kind a woman threaded through her hair when she’d pinned it up. He pulled it free, held it in his fist, and stood there for a moment.

Elspeth had wanted ribbons the morning of her handfasting. She’d said so to Katherine last week, laughing about something he’d only half-heard from the corridor. He’d meant to say something, but he hadn’t. He’d gone back to his accounts and thought he had time.

He put the ribbon in his coat pocket, checked the girth a fourth time, and led the horse out into the yard.

I never let her wear her bloody ribbons.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The loch was empty.

Magnus stood at the water’s edge long enough to be certain, long enough for Liam and Duncan to pull up behind him and say nothing, which was the right call.

The surface was flat and grey in the early light. No sign of a candle. No footprints in the soft mud at the bank beyond a single set of boot prints, small, coming down from the sheep track above and stopping at the stone she’d sat on before.

She’d been here. She’d sat. She’d left.

He followed the prints back up the track and found where they turned, not back toward the castle, but up and west toward the high ground, toward the standing stones on the ridge.

“Stone circle,” he said, and got back on his horse.

The ribbon was on the second stone in from the east, snagged at hip height on a rough edge of granite, a thin strip of auburn silk catching the morning light.

Magnus dismounted and stood over it for a moment, not touching it yet, reading the ground. Crushed grass where she’d sat, her boot prints coming and going in a small arc, and then a third set of prints, heavier, a man’s boots, coming in from the northern side of the circle.